Page 188 of His To Erase
“I’m not done asking questions,” I say.
“I’m done reminding you who you’re asking them to.”
My hand hovers over the folder, fingers curled at the edge like peeling back one more inch might change everything.
“I said come here, Ani.”
Somehow, the way he says it is worse than if he shouted it. There’s something in his voice that slides straight under my skin and coils around every nerve. I step around the desk, heart hammering now, standing inches from him.
“Why am I here?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer, instead, his hand comes up and slides behind my neck, pulling me in until my breath catches.
“You’re asking questions,” he murmurs, “you already know the answers to.”
“I don’t,” I whisper. “And that’s what makes this worse.”
He studies me while I stare up at him, his thumb stroking once at the nape of my neck. His expression doesn’t change, but something in his body shifts. I can tell he’s trying to rein something in—and he’s not doing a great job of it.
“You know more than you think,” he murmurs. “You just don’t trust it yet.”
A flicker of heat crawls up the back of my neck, slow and invasive, like the words know where to go before I do.
“And you do?” I ask, quieter than I mean to.
“I trust patterns,” he says. “I trust instincts. And mine are rarely wrong.”
My ribs lock around a breath I don’t fully take. “So what are your instincts telling you about me?”
His eyes stay locked on mine. “That you’re terrified of something,” he says finally. “Something you haven’t put words to yet. And that if I push too hard, you’ll run—but if I don’t push at all, you’ll drown.”
My throat goes tight.This cannot be happening right now.
“But that’s the problem with you,” he continues. His voice dips low enough to settle under my skin. “You never learned how to call for help. You just sink quieter.”
And fuck him, because it hits too close, he didn’t just pull a thread—he found the one holding me together and yanked, hard.
I want to laugh and tell him to go to hell, or throw up a wall and call it sass—but all I can do is stare. I’ve been carrying this sinking weight for so long, I stopped realizing it was heavy. Part of me still believes drowning quietly is safer than surfacing.
“And what does that make you?” I rasp. “The lifeguard?”
His mouth twitches with something meaner, and something sad. “No. Just the bastard watching from shore who got tired of waiting.”
The silence stretches again, and my hand curls slightly against the desk behind me.
“You don’t even know me,” I whisper, voice cracking.
“I know how your whole body tenses when a floorboard creaks behind you. Like you’re waiting to be dragged back somewhere you’ve already fought your way out of.”
He moves closer, and his voice drops lower.
“I know you check your reflection twice—not to fix it, but to make sure no one’s behind you. I know you sleep with your phone in your hand like it’s a weapon. And I know the silence isn’t peaceful for you. It’s fucking loud.”
My breath snags, and my chest tightens as he keeps going, like he’s unraveling me stitch by fucking stitch. And I can’t breathe.
Not because I’m scared—God, I wish that were it—but because he’s cutting too close. Closer than anyone ever has. Closer than I want him to. He doesn’t just ask, he knows. He’s somehow already slipped past every defense I’ve got, and now he’s just… taking inventory.
He’s right though. I don’t ask for help. I never have. I learned a long time ago that silence was safer than trust, that shrinking in on myself hurt less than being left bleeding with my heart hanging out. That if I kept my wounds quiet, maybe nobody would notice how deep they went.
