Page 16 of Damaged

More than a few people turned their heads our way but since Silver hadn’t seemed to notice them, I ignored them too.

“Have you ever spent time in the US?” I asked. “You don’t have a Russian or German accent.”

Silver eyed me suspiciously. “How do you know I speak Russian and German?” he asked. “Did Jace tell you that?”

I sighed and shook my head. “You were mumbling in your sleep. I could only make out a few words, though. Some were Russian, some were German, and there were a few English ones too.”

“What words did I say? The English ones?” he asked in response.

“You were calling for your parents. You asked them not to leave you.” It would have been easy to lie to him but even if I didn’t understand the reason why, I had a craving to earn his trust, and that would only happen if I told him the truth. “You said Maggie’s name a few times too. I don’t speak Russian or German, so I can’t repeat the other words.” I paused for a moment before carefully adding, “Your parents left you?”

Silver stiffened, then leaned back against the booth as if to put as much space between us as possible.

“Why do you hurt so much?” he blurted.

I shook my head too quickly before I could think about what I was doing, and my body immediately screamed in protest. Pain raced down my spine and out to what seemed like every nerve in my body.

I braced my hands on the table to ground me and pulled in several long, deep breaths. Clearly, the painkillers hadn’t kicked in yet. At least there was a silver lining… the hard-on I’d been sporting for the young man across from me died a quick death.

“Like that,” Silver whispered.

Heat enveloped one of my hands. I managed to shift my eyes enough to see that one of Silver’s hands was resting on mine.

“Combat injury,” was all I said, and I didn’t even know why I was telling him that because it wasn’t any of his or anyone else’s business.

I was both grateful and surprised when Silver turned my hand over and began massaging my wrist and then the rest of my hand. His gentle but firm touch gave me something to focus on. It wasn’t until he did the same treatment to my other hand that he began speaking again.

“Yes. They left me,” was all he said.

I remembered that I’d asked about him mumbling about his parents leaving him.

“When?”

Surprisingly, my pain had begun to dissipate, so when Silver began to pull his hand back, I gently linked my fingers with his. Silver hesitated, as if he were determining whether he should make a spectacle of himself as he tried to get free of my hold or if he should just ask me to release him.

He didn’t do either.

He left his hand where it was and this time, I was the one doing the massaging.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I think I was around eight or so. I only know that because I have this memory of a birthday cake with eight candles on it. Ivan never acknowledged my birthday, so I guess I’m remembering it from the time I was with my parents. But it could have been someone else’s birthday cake… before I belonged to Ivan, I mean.”

I was forced to release Silver’s hand when the waitress appeared with our drinks. I nearly laughed at all the glasses lined up in front of Silver. “Dalton…” he began with a shake of his head.

“Just take a sip of each one,” I reminded him.

When he didn’t move and just continued to look longingly at the line of drinks in front of him, I realized why he wasn’t reaching for any of them, and I wanted to kick my own ass for my insensitivity.

“You’ve only ever had water before,” I suggested. “It was all you were… allowed.”

The last word made me sick to my stomach just to say it out loud.

So he wasn’t worried about wasting them. He was afraid of what would happen if he took even one sip. I didn’t know everything about Silver, but I knew he’d been held captive for a long time, and captives usually weren’t given choices.

Any kind of choices.

And if they were ballsy enough to do something that went against the rules and ended up getting caught, they were repaid with punishment.

“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath. I knew I just needed to stay out of all of it since I was only doing a favor for this kid because of his connection with Jace. But once again, my brain and tongue were on opposite ends of the response spectrum.

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