Page 116 of Speak

“I’ll take a cup.” I say, doing my damnedest to have a truce but the beast really likes pushing my buttons.

“I’ll bring it up.” He nods, leaving the door slightly ajar.

“Baby, can you tell us what happened that night? I know you never told anyone, and I don’t want to push, but I think, we need to know what type of brain damage it is, so we can help you.”

Raven pushes off me and finds Maverick’s shirt and pulls it on. She sits beside me and asks if I can interpret.

I nod.

She takes a deep breath and begins.I didn’t want to talk about it because I hated remembering. Not what happened, but who I used to be before it happened. Trying to remember everything hurt my head. That’s when the stuttering started. I’d get flustered and I’d give up. So I just decided not to. Everyone wanted to interview me, I was the next great podcast episode and people were offeringthousands of dollars for my story. It was unnerving and if I’m honest, after being drugged up for so long, it was hard to tell what was real and what was fake, what was a nightmare and what was a memory sometimes.

I nod. The first few months of her being at Lorne Wood she was in constant survival mode, fighting. My vicious little bird. I try hard not to smile at the memory of the first time I had to put her in a straight jacket nor smile at the warmth it gives me at how far she’s come. And so her story begins.

She tells us of how she was on her way to the music hall which I already know about thanks to Axel’s sessions with me. The immense guilt he carried around. She tell us of her audition, talking to the former custodian, Lex, and him leaving her for the evening after he locked up. How she was ambushed from behind and beaten, left for dead.

Disgust rolls through me. One tear rolls down her cheek, she wipes it away as quickly as she can before continuing.

Before they closed the door of the locker, they punched me one last time on the side of my head and then they tugged the leash so I couldn’t move or scream and locked me in, then pounded it shut with a hammer.

“Jesus Christ.” I murmur, seething.

When Lex finally found me, it had been days. And yet he’s the one who saved me.

“My sister told me that. He’s the one who found you.” Jonas says.

Raven shakes her head. No I mean… I was dying. When they say your brain begins to replay your life, that was happening to me. I was remembering things from my childhood, my dad, my mom, the first-time meeting Axel… and music would be playing. He’d pull me out of my memories and I would just listen to him play.

Not a lot of people know this about Lex but he was a child prodigy. He could play any instrument, listen to a piece of music and replicate it instantly. He had a car accident after he married his wife and he broke both of his hands. It took years of him teaching himself to play again. When he took the job as a custodian, the university granted him full access to the music rooms and any instruments left behind.

So, I would tap against the door of the locker but he’d be playing so loudly he couldn’t hear me. But on the third day, I thought he was a hallucination. The music, too. So I pretended I was tapping on my phone to change the song. Even requested a few.

“He finally heard you.” Jonas whispers with unshed tears in his eyes.

Raven nods and looks down, not meeting our gazes.I tried to talk at first, but my throat always hurt and the words were hard because of the medication I was under and then… and then it seemed like they didn’t matter anymore. I was lost to the pills or in my mind most of the time and then they, my family, gave up trying to talk to me or I was always alone and then it really didn’t matter anymore.

“But why the vow of silence?” I ask.

She looks up at me and blinks.I want my words to matter when I finally speak them.

“Everything you do matters, little bird. Even if you don’t impact millions of people, even if you only decide to tell your story to us, you’ve changed our lives. That’s the thing people tend to forget; the way you impact just one person creates a ripple effect. You’ve been created ripples for a very long time that are causing tsunamis.”

She smiles sadly at me.

“Well, I for one, can’t wait to see the type of destruction you leave behind.” Jonas leans over and kisses her jaw in a place that makes her squirm. “Make those waves, baby. Fuck with their heads and then drown ‘em all.”

Maverick pops up with two mugs of steaming coffee, black for me, and one for himself. “So, what did I miss?” He asks, sitting on the other of the bed, his back against the headboard beside me, even though he’s lax, he’s still tense in his own home.

I shake my head. “We were just talking about how Riordan is probably being arrested at this moment, and how since the police department said it was an open and closed case, we can start rebuilding soon.” I half-lie.

Maverick takes a sip and then clears his throat, “There’s… There’s no rush.”

“Maverick, we’re obviously crowding you, we’ll find an Air BnB in the meantime and either rebuild once the insurance moneycomes through or find a new place to live. I’ve already been scoping out a few places I could purchase if Raven doesn’t want to rebuild.”

“I’m uh, just not used to… I’ve lived alone since I was a teenager. This is all just… new to me but you aren’t… I’m not entirely uncomfortable. I just need to adjust.”

I understand what he means. Every room in this house is impeccable. Nothing is out of place. Not even one throw blanket on the plush sofas downstairs are actually thrown. They’re perfectly placed to make the house look warm and inviting, but it’s not. It’s just a place someone lives but doesn’t livein. It’s desolate in the many ways it shouldn’t be - a house of this size. As a single man, it was why I’d opted for living in an apartment. There was something that felt wrong about having an entire home and nobody to share it with. Men like Maverick and I… we weren’t the type to be hosts either.

“We argue a lot.” Jonas states.

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