Every day, he knew a little more about her.
Every day, she saw a little more of him.
Every day, her scars solidified a little more on her skin.
But she didn’t talk to him.
Her mother said she had started to whisper little sentences. Vin told him she’d started to whisper little questions. Even fucking Tristan had said she’d started to whisper little words to him.
But not with Dante.
That fucking bugged him.
Years passed.
She became his person.
He would usually finish his day by going to her house and spending a few hours with her. She listened when he talked and communicated if she had questions. She made him watch movies and indulged him when he just wanted to be.
Sometimes he would see her flinch in the middle of nothing and he wondered if her torture had ever become another kind of violation. But the doctors had said nothing and she said nothing and Dante didn’t know if he should assume just because of the shit in his head.
His father never questioned him about her, but Dante kept him in the loop, saying he was keeping an eye on her. He knew he was being reckless. He knew he was being rebellious again. But he was a grown man and not a boy, and he could keep her safe.
Vin came outright and asked him what his intentions were with her, while Dante demanded he confirm he was nothing but her best friend. He confirmed and Dante was relieved.
The thing between them grew, feeling the sun and the water, feeling the nurture and the affection. They began to feel more like magnets than puzzle pieces, finding their way to each other, close but not close enough, as the tension between them built and built and built.
She became his person.
She became his.
Did he possibly have a girlfriend?
Amara didn’t know why it jolted her out of her reverie, but it did. As she watched him lead the beautiful woman across the floor in a dance, Amara realized she’d somehow fallen into the safety of the time he spent with her.
Over the last year, Dante had become something like the sun. She waited every day to feel his warmth, if only just for a few minutes before the clouds returned. But as long as she had the sun, the clouds were bearable.
She didn’t know what she felt for him anymore, everything inside her convoluted in the way he’d been weaved into her life. But she did know that he’d become important to her, very important. And watching him dance closely with a pretty woman? It kinda hurt.
Okay, it really hurt.
But it made sense. He was older and more mature and needed someone who could compliment that. And it wasn’t a traumatized seventeen-year-old girl in therapy who never spoke a word to him. While she had begun speaking to a few people, she didn’t to him. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. She did. But god, she hated her new voice. And she really, really didn’t want him to hate it.
Taking a deep breath, Amara walked the edge of the dance floor at the mansion, heading towards the kitchen where her mother was. There was a party at the big house for Mr. Maroni’s 50th birthday, and while Amara wasn’t supposed to attend, she had needed something out of her routine.
The compound had started to suffocate her, to the point where she actually looked forward to her therapy sessions in the city. Yeah, she was going to therapy, had been going for a year. And she’d been homeschooling with the same tutors who came to teach Tristan, helping her with her education.
But she honestly didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t recognize herself anymore.
Things she once cared about seemed pointless to her. She knew the people around her cared for her, and after a few weeks, she’d realized she couldn’t hurt them as she hurt. So, she had put a smile on her face and listened to them talk, and lived on, pretending something very, very wrong, very ugly hadn’t taken root inside her.
She didn’t know how to push it out. She didn’t want to talk to people, didn’t like the sound of her own voice, didn’t like the look of her skin. She felt the scars under her feet every time she put on her shoes, felt the slight twinge in her back every time fabric slid across her flesh to cover it up. Worse, she saw the ugly, mottled skin on her wrists, vertical lines on the sides of her stomach, and that one surgical slit across her neck.
Her torture had been written on her skin and stained on her mind. And she hated who she was at that point – lost, adrift, clueless.
The ballet flats she wore as she made her way through the people reminded her she probably could never wear heels. Her sense of balance had been a little off since the incident. There wasn’t any physical reason for it, as her doctor had reminded her kindly. It was psychological. A lot of things were psychological with her.
God, she hated her brain some days for not shielding her, not blacking out the entire memory, and leaving her with a clean slate. That would’ve been better. Some days, anger at herself made her want to do something drastic. Some days, the knife on the kitchen counter looked friendly. Some days, all she wanted was to let go, but only knowing how much the people around her would hurt stopped her every time. She took hot showers to clean her skin but the filth stayed buried in, no matter how hard she scrubbed.
“Ma,” she called out to her mother, her new voice barely louder than a high whisper, and felt the eyes of the staff come to her. She ignored the awkward looks they gave her. Yeah, that was a new development – the staring, the whispers, the gossip. She had become a pariah. Boo-fucking-hoo.
Her mother looked up from where she was talking to two waiters, a smile on her face.
Amara swore her mother was a superhero at this point. She saved her, every single day, without even knowing. Just by giving her the same smile she used to give her before, loving her the same way she used to love her before. When everything around her had changed, her mother had been her constant through it all.
“I’m heading home,” she told her ma, feeling the strain in her throat as she spoke. The doctor had told her it would get better over time as her cords healed completely, but this would be her voice now.
At least, she’d never have to listen to her own screams again.
“I’ll walk you out,” the feminine voice beside her had her looking up at another new development in her life. Her half-sister, Nerea.
She had shown up one day out of the blue, with attitude for everyone else except Amara, and Amara really didn’t know how to deal with that. She already had too much on her plate without adding an older half-sibling she’d never known about.
And she wanted to be alone.
Giving Nerea a small smile, she shook her head. “It’s okay, enjoy the party.”
God, her voice.
“Are you sure?” Nerea asked, looking concerned. “I’d love to spend some time getting to connect with you.”
“Me too,” Amara reassured her. “But another time?”
Nerea nodded.
Leaving the staff to their duties attending to the party and her half-sister standing there, Amara walked out the back door, exiting into the lawns. Wrapping her scarf around her, even though it wasn’t cold, she looked up at the clear sky, watching the stars twinkle, and headed to the lake.
A few people milled outside, the noise from the party loud on the wind as Amara kept her head down and made her way down the hill.
This was another development over the year. While she still had her social graces, she didn’t like being around many people anymore. They always stared and not because she had grown up to become beautiful. She didn’t feel beautiful. She felt ugly and rotten on the inside. Where they just saw a tall girl of seventeen with wild black hair framing a face with pretty features and dark green eyes, she saw a girl who didn’t know who she was under that skin.