Untold Story

Chapter Fourteen: The Silence Between Heartbeats

Evelyn's POV

We sat on the floor, backs against the couch, the room quiet except for the distant hum of the fridge. The air smelled like jasmine tea and antiseptic — like the night was trying to pretend things were okay.
My hand throbbed under the bandage, useless in my lap.

Arya didn’t speak. Didn’t ask questions. Didn’t fill the silence with soft words or pity. She was just there. Her thigh pressed against mine. Not a hug. Not a gesture. Just presence.
It made the silence bearable.

Everything I’d said still hung in the air — heavy and sour. Stella. Henry. My past. All the things I didn’t talk about. Things I never let myself talk about. 

“My testimony was recorded,” I said, my voice splintering at the edges.“I couldn’t… I couldn’t look at him. Not once. Not even through the screen.”

I swallowed hard.

“Fifteen,” I said. “Broken.”

Like dragging splinters through my throat.

“Saying what he did into a camera like it was just some… homework assignment.”

I laughed — but it came out wrong. Bitter. Crooked.

“Like that was enough.”

A pause. My voice wavered.

“Like maybe if I said it right, he’d go away forever.”

My fingers twitched toward the bandage. I peeled at the corner without thinking.

“But monsters don’t stay in cages, do they?”

My voice buckled on the last word. Monsters.

And just like that, I was back in that body — fifteen, small, scared, hoping words could fix the unfixable.

Arya turned slightly. I felt her watching me. Still not speaking.

“He wasn’t supposed to get out,” I said, staring at nothing. “Thirty years. That’s what they gave him.”

A beat passed.

“Thirty years for trying to kill me. For turning my life into something I’ve had to survive every day since. I was supposed to be safe.”

I let the words hang there, like smoke that wouldn’t clear. My fingers curled in my lap.

“But sentences on paper don’t erase what happened. They don’t fix your ribs. They don’t unteach your body how to flinch when someone raises their voice.”

I blinked slowly, forcing my voice to stay level.

“And they don’t keep the nightmares away.”

I exhaled shakily. My hand went instinctively to my side, to the spot that always remembered before my mind did.

“I moved. We moved,” I said finally. “New town. Pretended like we got a clean slate.”

I looked at her, and it hurt. It hurt because her eyes weren’t full of horror. Or pity. They were… still. Like I hadn’t ruined anything.

“I used to have nightmares every night,” I said, my voice trembling. “Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t walk down our old street without choking.”

I looked down.
“She came to see me. Before we left.”

Arya frowned slightly. “Who?”

“Stella.” The name felt like a bruise in my mouth. “She didn’t say sorry. She just stood in the doorway. Like… she expected me to say something. Like she deserved closure.”