Chapter Thirty-Two – The Silence of Skin
1093 Words
The corridors of the clinic were a husk by the time Elena finished her last report. The echo of her pen scratching against paper seemed far too loud in the hollow silence. Even the heater had shut itself down, leaving only the low hum of fluorescent lights above. She stacked the files neatly, though her hands lingered on them longer than necessary. The order was her shield; if everything around her was tidy, perhaps the chaos inside her could be ignored.
Her scarf lay folded on the desk. She lifted it and wrapped it slowly around her throat, savoring the faint scent of her own perfume clinging to the fabric. It was one of the last small comforts of her day.
When she stepped out, the heavy clinic door closed with a final click that sounded like a lock on a cell. The parking lot was half-lit, the only lamp buzzing and flickering, casting sharp slices of light and dark. Her car sat at the far edge, waiting beneath the lamp like a loyal dog, and yet the distance to it stretched as though the shadows had lengthened the ground.
Her heels tapped against the asphalt, the rhythm too sharp, too exposed. Each sound came back to her ears, doubled by the emptiness. She tightened her scarf, tried to still her nerves. Get home. Shower. Bed. Tomorrow you will be strong again. Routine. Always routine.
She was reaching for her car door when a hand closed around her wrist. Another forced her shoulder forward.
The world shifted brutally, her cheek colliding with the cold wall. Pain shot through her jaw. Her breath caught in her throat. For an instant she couldn’t move, couldn’t think.
A voice. Low. Familiar.
“Don’t fight.”
Recognition slammed into her chest like ice water. Vincent.
Her pulse roared in her ears. She opened her mouth to speak, to protest, to scream—but the scarf tightened across her lips. His hand had caught it, pulling it just enough to silence her. Not strangling. Just control.
“Shhh.” His breath brushed her ear, hot against the night’s cold. “Words don’t matter right now. Words lie. I want to see the truth.”
Her body was pinned, not by force but by proximity. His weight behind her, the wall before her. There was nowhere to go.
His fingers hovered near her shoulder, then grazed her neck with maddening slowness. The skin rose in goosebumps before she could stop it. Adrenaline, she tried to tell herself. Fear. But her body didn’t care what her mind named it.
“You feel that?” His whisper was velvet and poison. “You tell yourself you’re the savior. The healer. But your body…” His hand drifted lower, tracing the line of her back through her coat. “…your body doesn’t listen to lectures.”
Her breath came faster, ragged. She pressed her palms against the wall, desperate for solidity. No. This is fear. Nothing more.
But his voice wove around her thoughts like rope. “I’ve watched you, Elena. Watched the way you avoid my eyes. The way your throat tightens when I smile. You think it’s disgust? No. It’s hunger. And you hate yourself for it.”
She shook her head, muffled sound trapped beneath the scarf. Tears pricked her eyes.
His knuckles brushed the curve of her hip. The contact was slight, but her body betrayed her with a sharp gasp, a sound that escaped without permission.
Vincent chuckled, the sound curling low, triumphant. “There it is. The truth beneath the mask. A single sound more honest than every rule you recite.”
Her chest burned with shame. Her mind screamed no, but her body’s tremor screamed louder.
“You lecture them about hobbies, about substitutions,” he murmured, leaning closer, his lips tracing the air near her jaw without touching. “You tell them to avoid temptation. But you…” His voice dropped, intimate, almost tender. “You are temptation. The one I want to test. The one who can’t keep her breath steady when I stand this close.”
Every nerve flared. His words carved into her skin deeper than touch.
“Do you know what makes me alive?” he asked softly. “Not the stage. Not the lights. Women like you. Righteous. Untouchable. Until I press close enough that your body forgets who you pretend to be.”
Elena squeezed her eyes shut. Her knees trembled, traitorous. This isn’t me. This isn’t real. It’s fear. Just fear.
But inside, another voice whispered: Why did you gasp? Why did you make that sound?
He lingered there, breath tracing down her throat, across her jaw, until it hovered at her chin. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t need to. The absence itself was suffocating.
“You see?” he whispered. “I don’t have to touch. You confess without words.”
Then, just as suddenly, he released the scarf. The fabric slid loose around her collarbone. She dragged in air like a drowning woman breaching the surface. She turned sharply, ready to fight, to scream—
But he was gone.
The parking lot stretched before her in stillness. The lamp flickered overhead, buzzing like an insect. No footsteps. No shadow. Nothing.
Her scarf dangled useless at her throat. She staggered back against the wall, clutching it as if it might shield her. Her body still trembled, alive with echoes she despised. Her own gasp replayed in her ears like a confession she couldn’t erase.
She slid down until she sat on the curb, hands shaking. The night pressed close, indifferent. Report it, her mind ordered. Call the police. Tell someone.
But another thought rose, darker: And say what? That your patient pinned you in the dark, whispered in your ear, and you moaned?
The shame was a weight she couldn’t carry into words.
When at last she forced herself into the car, her hands shook so badly she dropped the keys twice. The engine coughed to life, but she didn’t shift into gear. Instead, she leaned forward, forehead pressed against the steering wheel. Her breath fogged the cold interior.
She lifted her eyes to the mirror. A pale woman stared back—her scarf crooked, her lips parted, her gaze hollow. Not the professional. Not the savior. Just a woman who had been unmasked.
“Never again,” she whispered. The words shook, as fragile as the silence that swallowed them.
But even as she said it, she knew: his laugh would follow her home.
- Writer
