Chapter 1 SHAMED
RORY POV
"You're fired."
Two words.
Just two words and Mr. Smith had managed to destroy the last stable thing in my life.
I stared at his mouth, making sure I had read it correctly. I wasn't wearing my hearing aids today. I never wore them if I could help it.
But right now I was desperately wishing I had misread his lips.
I hadn't.
Two words I had been dreading since the day I started working here three years ago.
If I lost this job I would spend an eternity looking for another one. Nobody wanted to hire someone like me. Deaf. Occasionally mute.
A stammer that ambushed me at the worst possible moments, snagging sounds before they ever left my mouth.
I had learned to live with the ridicule that came with it but it never stopped stinging. Not once.
First it was Steve, my fiancé who had ended our engagement last week without a single explanation. He blocked me on everything and disappeared like three years meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.
And now this.
My boss was taking the last thing keeping me sane.
"Did you hear me?" Mr. Smith said. Then he caught himself and smiled at his own joke. "Or should I say did you read me?"
Nobody ever got tired of that one.
"I h-heard you."
The stammer hit the way it always did when I was tired or stressed. I hated that he could hear it.
Talking always hurt, every word felt like forcing something sharp through my throat.
But I refused to whisper. That was the one thing I refused.
"But I don't understand. What did I do w-rong?"
"You're a liability." He leaned back in his chair completely unbothered. "Customers complain every week. They say you ignore them."
"I don't ignore them." | kept my voice as steady as I could manage. "I'm deaf Mr. Smith. Not difficult. There's a difference."
"Is there?" He shrugged. "All I know is that it's affecting my business."
The unfairness of it sat in my chest like something heavy and hot.
I thought about every night I had spent in this bar.
Every customer who turned their face away mid sentence and left me guessing Every man who had grabbed at me, slapped and gripped my butt, sometimes my breasts, and every time I had gone to Mr. Smith's office shaking with anger only for him to wave me off. Repeating the same words, "Let them touch. They tip better. We get more customers." Like I was furniture. Like my body was part of the service.
And I stayed. Because I needed the money.
Because my mother was lying in a hospital bed and the bills didn't care about my dignity.
"Please." The word came out cracked and I
let it. My pride meant nothing right now.
"Three years. I have given you three years. I have never been late, I have covered shifts that weren't mine. Whatever the problem is, I will fix it. Please don't do this."
He said nothing for a long moment.
Then he stood up and walked around the desk toward me slowly. Like he had already decided how this was going to end.
"There is actually a way to fix it," he said, his voice dropping low, "I've brought it up before. You chose to ignore me." His eyes moved over me in a way that turned my stomach. "I'm giving you one last chance Aurora. Sleep with me and your job is safe.
Simple as that."
Of course.
This wasn't the first time.
Three weeks ago after closing he had stood exactly this close, said almost exactly these words. I had walked out that night and convinced myself it was an empty threat. That he wouldn't dare take it further.
I had been so wrong.
"No," I said.
"Aurora-"
"No."
He laughed.
I couldn't hear the sound but I could see it, his mouth wide, his tongue were visible, his shoulders bouncing. I imagined it was harsh and ugly. The kind of laugh meant to humiliate rather than amuse.
"Look at yourself," he said. "You're deaf, you're mute half of the time. You can barely string a sentence together without breaking down.”
His eyes dragged over my body slowly and deliberately. "Walking around here with all that fat and loose skin and you think you have options? You think you can say no to me?"
Something inside my chest cracked open quietly.
"And every time those men touched you," he continued, "every time you came crying to my office, did you really think I was going to choose you over paying customers?" He stepped closer. "You were never the asset here Aurora. You were the inconvenience I tolerated."
I tried to speak.
I pushed hard for the words the way I always had to, the way that scraped my throat raw and left my hands trembling. But the humiliation had wrapped itself around everything and squeezed until there was nothing left.
My hands moved on their own, signing 'please let me keep my job. I will do better.'
He watched my hands with amusement.
It was useless. He didn't understand.
"Even your fiancé figured out you weren't
worth it. He packed up and left without a word, didn't he? Can you blame him?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Not a single word. The emotion had wrapped itself around my voice and squeezed everything out the way it sometimes did on the worst days.
I picked up my bag.
I turned toward the door.
A very loud knock on the desk stopped me.
The kind that said turn around without
saying a word.
I turned around.
His smile was wide and slow and completely without shame.
"Your ex fiancé is getting married tomorrow." He tilted his head. "You should definitely attend."
The words hit me somewhere I didn't have a name for.
It doesn't really get better, does it?