Page 60 of Bound By Threads
If I can’t seeher, I can’t read her lips.
If I can’t read her lips, she can’t say she doesn’t love me.
Not the ones that’ll break me. Not the soft, sweet rejection I know she’ll try to make gentle, but will still carve me hollow.
I can live in the silence. I’ve always lived in it, but now it’s the only place I can go to protect myself.
Then I feel her.
Her fingers brush my cheek. A feather-light touch, tender and grounding.
I don’t flinch. I freeze. Her palm settles against my face, warm, soft, and trembling. I keep my eyes shut.
I stay in the dark because I can’t bear to open them and see goodbye written on her mouth.
But her hand is still there, and when I finally open my eyes, she’s looking at me like I just handed her my heart.
Her mouth moves slowly. I see the words as clearly as if she screamed them.
“I love you.”
Three syllables. Deliberate. She’s not saying it to soothe me but because she wants to.
I stop breathing.
She signs it next, removing her hand from my face, and I already miss the warmth.
Her hands are shaky but purposeful.“I love you.”Tears track her cheeks, but she doesn’t try to hide them. But then she adds, slowly.“I love Archer, too.”
“I know,”I sign, exhaling hard.“I’ve always known.”I see it in the way her body softens around him, the tension draining out of her just from him being close. I see how they look at one another, and how she listens when he talks, giving him her full attention.
And I know because she does the same with me.
She’s our girl. Our Lottie.
“I would never make you choose,”I tell her. Her breath stutters, and she presses a hand to her chest like she can finally breathe.“You don’t have to love one of us more. You don’t have to give me anything back. I just need to love you.”I reach for her hand, pull her onto my lap, and rest my forehead to hers.“I could never ask you to choose. That’s not love. That’s control, and I love you too much to put you in a cage.”
Tears spill again, and she presses her forehead harder into mine.“How are you okay with this?”
I give a tiny smile.“Because I only want your happiness. I’d rather have a piece of you than nothing at all.”
Her arms wrap around me, and my hands find her back, her waist, memorizing the shape of her through Archer’s hoodie.
She’s wearing him.
She’s curled into me.
She’s carrying us both, and it seems to settle something inside of me.
We staylike that for a while.
No words. No signs. Just the quiet.
I’ve always lived in silence, but this silence feels full. It feels like the hush right before a storm breaks, or the kind of quiet you find wrapped up in someone’s arms when everything else has gone to hell.
She’s trembling slightly. I can feel it in the way her fingertips keep brushing against the back of my neck like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she stops touching me.
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cheeks streaked with tears—but she’s beautiful.
