Silence
694 Words
Silence had weight.
It filled rooms, pressed against glass, hummed through every second like static you couldn’t switch off.
It had been five days since Amara last heard from Damian Voss.
Five days without a message, a call, or a sign that he was still orbiting her world.
She’d wanted distance.
Now she had it — and it felt like drowning in air.
Every morning she told herself to move on. She worked, she designed, she smiled for the team at Voss International as though nothing had shifted beneath the surface. But it had.
The collection they were preparing for launch — her collection — was flawless on paper. Yet every time she touched the fabric, she remembered his words:
“You build armor. Let me be the metal underneath.”
She hated that they echoed louder than her own thoughts.
That evening, her studio felt colder than usual.
The city outside was alive — laughter, sirens, music — but none of it reached her. The clock ticked like a reminder that time only moves forward when someone’s watching.
She poured herself tea, opened her sketchbook, and found her pencil tracing the outline of his face before she even realized what she was drawing.
“Pathetic,” she whispered to herself, and closed it quickly.
Her phone remained stubbornly silent.
No messages. No “Unknown Number.”
And yet, somehow, she still checked it every hour.
The next day, she arrived at the company to find whispers waiting for her. Conversations stopped when she entered. Laughter died too quickly.
Lina met her at the café downstairs.
“Okay,” her friend said, folding her arms. “What happened between you and your boss? Because people upstairs act like the building lost its power source.”
“Nothing happened,” Amara said flatly.
“Right,” Lina said. “And I’m secretly the Queen of England.”
Amara sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“It always is,” Lina said gently. “But I see you, Mara. You’ve been quieter. Edgy. You don’t need him to exist. You never did.”
“I know.”
“Then act like it.”
Easier said than done.
By the third week of silence, Amara’s anger began to replace the ache.
She realized he’d trained her without her consent — to expect him, to look for him, to interpret silence as punishment.
It was manipulation disguised as romance.
And she had fallen for it.
That night, she returned to her apartment and found the mail piled at her door. In between the envelopes was one without a stamp or address — just her name, written in that same sharp hand.
Her stomach flipped.
Inside: a single key. Silver. Cold. No note.
Amara turned it in her fingers, heart thudding. It didn’t belong to her building. The tag was engraved with one word: “Choice.”
Her phone buzzed immediately after. Unknown Number:
If silence hurts, fill it. The key is yours.
She stared at the screen. No address. No explanation.
Where does it lead? she typed.
To where control ends.
Her chest tightened. “You think this is a game,” she muttered aloud.
No response came.
For the rest of the night, she couldn’t stop looking at the key. She left it on the table, tried to work, failed, and ended up pacing the room like a trapped shadow.
At 2:00 a.m., another message arrived:
You asked for distance. I gave you silence. But you should know — silence doesn’t mean absence.
Amara typed back before she could think:
Then what does it mean?
The reply came instantly.
It means I’m watching how you move without me.
She dropped the phone. Her breath hitched.
The lights flickered once, briefly, like the city itself exhaled.
She looked toward the window — and for half a second, she could have sworn she saw a reflection in the glass that wasn’t hers.
When she turned, the room was empty.
Only the silver key gleamed under the light, waiting for a decision she wasn’t ready to make.
Teaser:
He gave her silence—but silence, in his hands, was never empty.
- Writer
