Chapter 65: Voices Come to Light – Part XI

Noah leaned against the window frame, arms folded tightly, gazing at the city lights bleeding into dusk. “We should give him space,” he said, voice low but firm. “He told us to stay away. Forcing it will only prove him right.” Silas sat at the table, methodically folding the edge of a notepad between his fingers. “Space doesn’t cool men like him. It hardens them. Leave him too long, and he’ll convince himself we were never real.” Noah turned, frustration flickering across his face. “Or maybe he convinces himself we weren’t another trap. You saw the way he looked at me. Like I was wearing her shadow.” Silas didn’t look up. “Then the only way to change that look is to keep standing there until he sees something else.” The silence between them grew heavy, filled with the unspoken truth that neither answer was safe. Noah rubbed the back of his neck, torn between empathy and urgency. “He’s not Lucas,” he finally said. “Lucas wanted to talk — he just needed a reason. Aaron doesn’t want anyone near him.” “That’s what makes him dangerous,” Silas replied. He set the notepad down and finally met Noah’s eyes. “Dangerous to her, if he ever decides to turn. But also dangerous to himself if he keeps drowning alone.” Noah exhaled shakily. He hated how easily Silas made it sound like a strategy instead of pain. Yet part of him knew the older man was right. Aaron’s anger wasn’t the silence of someone gone; it was the roar of someone still bleeding. “Fine,” Noah muttered. “We go back. But if we push too hard and lose him completely, that’s on you.” Silas stood, slipping his coat over his shoulders. “If we lose him,” he said, “it won’t be because we tried.”

Aaron answered on the third knock, the door chain rattling before he slid it free. His eyes were bloodshot, a sour edge of alcohol clinging to him. He filled the doorway with a presence that was all wall, no welcome.

“You two again,” he said flatly. “Didn’t hear me the first time?”

Noah swallowed, forcing his voice steady. “We’re not here to harass you. We just want—”

“What? Closure?” Aaron’s laugh cracked like glass. “Some kind of redemption story? You don’t get to drag me back through it so you can feel better about yourselves.”

Silas didn’t flinch. He met Aaron’s stare evenly, hands loose at his sides. “We’re not here for ourselves. We’re here because you’re not the only one she hollowed out.”

Aaron’s jaw tightened. His fingers curled against the doorframe, white at the knuckles. “You say that like you understand. Like you’ve walked the same path. But you can leave. You can play savior. I’m the one left with the pieces.”

Noah stepped forward, careful, palms open. “You’re right. We can leave. But we don’t want to — not without giving you the choice she never gave any of us.”

Aaron’s expression hardened further, voice dropping to a growl. “Choice? You think this is about choice? She took that from me the moment I stepped into her world. And now you’re standing on my doorstep pretending you can give it back.”

He shoved the door half-closed, wood slamming into the frame before Silas steadied it with one hand. For a second, it looked like Aaron might strike, tension sparking in every line of his body.

“Get off my porch,” Aaron hissed. “Last warning.”

The air between them buzzed with the same fury that had made him dangerous in Adrienne’s notes. Not broken. Not docile. A flame burning on fumes, desperate to scorch anything that dared to get too close.

The slam of the doorframe still shook through Noah’s arm. He pressed his palm flat against it, not to force his way in, but to hold Aaron’s eyes. “She did the same thing to me,” he said. The words came out raw, faster than he meant. “Different formula, different mask—but I know what it feels like when every thought in your head belongs to her.”

Aaron froze. The fury in his stance flickered, confusion threading in. His lips parted like he might answer, but nothing came.

Silas didn’t move, didn’t interrupt. He let Noah’s voice carry.

“I woke up every day thinking I couldn’t breathe without her approval,” Noah went on, chest tight. “She rewired me, made me believe the need was mine. It wasn’t. It was hers, twisting me into something I didn’t recognize.”

Aaron’s stare cut sharper, suspicion reigniting. “So what is this? You unload your sob story, and I’m supposed to spill mine? That’s the deal?”

“No,” Noah said quickly. “There’s no deal. I just—” He faltered, words catching. “I just don’t want you to think you’re alone in it.”

Aaron’s laugh was harsh, but his voice cracked under it. “Alone? That’s the point. That’s how you survive what she did—by cutting yourself off before someone else sharpens the knife.”

Silas’s hand stayed firm on the door, steady but unthreatening. “You’re not surviving,” he said quietly. “You’re circling the fire she left in you. And one day it’s going to burn you down.”

Aaron’s shoulders heaved with a breath, his face drawn tight with anger and something darker beneath. He shoved the door again, this time forcing it past Silas’s hand. The slam echoed down the stairwell.

“Don’t come back,” he barked through the wood. “If you do, you’ll regret it.” The lock clicked, sharp and final. Noah stared at the door, unsure if it might still open. The stairwell was silent except for his uneven breathing. “That was it,” he muttered. “We lost him.” Silas studied the peeling paint and faint fist marks, then stepped back, pulling Noah down the stairs. “No,” he said at last.

Noah frowned, frustration crossing his face. “He told us not to come back.”

“And yet he listened,” Silas countered. “Longer than he meant to. He heard you. Anger doesn’t hit that hard unless it’s holding onto something it doesn’t want touched.”

They walked to the car in silence, the night air heavy with the dampness of concrete and the hum of a fading streetlamp. Noah’s shoulders sagged, his hope fading, but he couldn’t get rid of the image of Aaron’s eyes—fury wrapped around fear, a storm barely held back.

Inside the apartment, Aaron leaned against the door, forehead pressed to the wood. His breath was ragged, every muscle tight as if he’d just fought off an intruder. He unquestioningly reached for the counter, fingers closing around a bottle.

The first sip burned, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy. He slammed the bottle down and dragged both hands over his face, muffling a sound that was half-growl, half-broken laugh.

He wanted them gone. He wanted it to stop. But even as he told himself that, another name slipped from his lips in a whisper too soft for the empty room.

“Lucas.”

The sound of it hung there, proof that, however much he hated it, the past wasn’t buried. Not yet.