Page 24 of Silenced

My husband’s dangerous—a part of me accepted long ago that he’d be the reason I died young. But this man is different. Red flags pop up around him like his own personal fireworks, but the sparks don’t touch me. The flags never brush my skin…

My read on him has me swallowing my nerves while he returns us to the bathroom.

This time, there’s no sheet between us. The jacket covers my top half but not the bottom, so his forearms and the faint hair dusting them brush against the surprisingly sensitive backs of my thighs.

How he holds me is unnerving.

It’s obvious he means to keep me here against my will—why else would he lock the door? Why else would he strip in front of me?

His embrace, however, is discordant.

There’s no escape here, granted, but I know violence and aggression. They became Harvey’s love language, after all. He stopped holding me with any tenderness years ago, but it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it, doesn’t mean that I don’t know how it should be between a man and a woman.

And this, bizarrely enough,iskind.

“Who are you?” I demand, but it’s weaker than I’d like. The words crackle with my exhaustion and the remnants of the drugs Harvey forced down my throat.

Again, he doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even flinch as—

A ‘eureka’ moment backhands me.

When he places me on the vanity again, I stare at him and sign, “Who are you?”

Or, at least, I try to.

The bandages are unwieldy and the flexibility of my fingers is diminished because Harvey got me into his trunk at knifepoint and my palms bear signs of my defense.

Fuck, those cuts hurt.

Still, the pain is worth it—progress. His brows lift as he studies the words I sign.He understands.

Oh, thank fuck.

So, he’s hard of hearing?

Calling on a childhood spent communicating with ASL, a language I stopped using years ago, I request, “Please, tell me who you are.” He just stares at me blankly until I continue, “I’m scared.”

His nostrils flare. “You’re safe here.”

I almost sag with the relief that swells at our first bout of communication, my eyes stinging as I roughly translate the movements of his fingers.

“I want to go home,” I reply.

Of course, that’s when the thought strikes me—I don’t have a home anymore.

“Too dangerous.”

Swallowing, I demand, “I want to leave.”

“Not safe.”

“It’s my choice!”

That’s when he stops answering because his hands are busy with his fly.

Gulping, I watch as he opens the zipper. My attention is immediately caught on the scars I can see on his lower hip—they’re nasty. Deep and still puckered, I can tell they’re old. There’s one on his face which is, at least, cleanly healed—a knife, probably. Maybe a serrated blade? I’ve been around the kitchen enough to know my scars and the eyebrow one is nasty and uneven, though I can tell it was stitched. The other on his hip speaks of a run-in with fire.

The thought has me biting my lip in sympathy considering the extent of the burn and how badly the flesh…

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