Chapter 100 The devil
Rory POV
My hands were sweaty, and I couldn't stop rubbing my palms together as Alexander and I sat in the waiting room. My husband had made this appointment for my monthly check-up, and I was a nervous wreck. I was terrified that we would go through all these tests only to be told there were no changes-that the silence was still winning.
"Hey." Alexander grabbed my palm in his, his large thumb soothing my skin. "Don't be nervous."
I couldn't help it. I was so fucking nervous, especially remembering when the doctor told me my hearing issue wasn't natural and that there was a possibility I might hear again. What if today was the day she realized it wouldn't work?
Alexander rubbing circles on the back of my hand somehow helped me relax. I gave him a tight smile, knowing I couldn't trust my voice to speak.
Before he could say anything, the specialist entered the room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Miller, good to see you again," she greeted us professionally. She looked at me with a soft expression. "Are you ready, Aurora?"
I looked at Alexander. He gave me a reassuring nod, his eyes locked on mine. I turned back to her and nodded. "Yes."
We moved into the exam room. Per her instructions, I removed my tiny hearing aids and changed into the medical gown.
and sat on the table while the doctor explained what they were going to do. They were going to place a set of electrodes along my scalp — small, painless, designed to measure the auditory nerve’s response — and run a series of sound tests to map what was happening and how much had changed since last month.
I sat very still while they attached them.
The panic hit me. The world went dull and quiet, and the weight of the moment felt like it was crushing me.
And then I started crying.
I don’t know exactly when it started. I wasn’t aware of deciding to cry. One moment I was sitting there being brave about it and the next my face was wet and my hands were shaking in my lap and I couldn’t make either of those things stop.
The nurse looked at the doctor. The doctor looked at me with kind eyes.
I looked at the door.
"Can you... can you get my husband, please?" I begged the doctor.
A few seconds later, Alexander burst in. He looked worried, his face hardening into an angry mask as he looked at the specialist.
"Did you hurt her?" he barked.
The doctor looked startled. "No, sir! We were just starting—"
"Can you stay? Please?" | interrupted, reaching for him.
His eyes softened instantly. He wiped my tears with his thumbs and settled down next to me, holding me firmly against his side.
Relax for me, baby,” he said quietly as they began the first sequence. His thumb moved across my knuckles again. “Just breathe.”
I breathed.
“There you go.” His voice was low, close to my ear. “Good girl.”
Oh.
The warmth that moved through me at those two words in that voice was completely inappropriate for a medical examination and I was aware of that and completely unable to do anything about it. My tears were still drying on my face and somehow Alexander Miller calling me good girl in a clinical setting was doing things to me that I had no business feeling right now. I almost forgot what the doctor was doing entirely.
I focused very hard on the wall.
The doctor leaned forward. “Aurora, I want you to tell me if you can hear anything.” Her mouth moved, I could see her speaking but my aids were out and the electrodes were doing their work and everything was that familiar muffled nothing.
I waited. Nothing.
I shook my head in response.
The doctor made a note and tried again, adjusting something, repositioning, running the sequence differently.
Alexander’s thumb kept moving. Circles. Steady.
“Can you hear anything now?”
I opened my mouth to say no —
And then.
Something.
I froze. It was distant, like a sound coming from far away, but I heard it.
I nodded. My hand gripped Alexander’s so hard I probably hurt him. “Yes,” I managed. My voice broke completely on the word. “Yes — I heard you. I heard —”
I was crying again. Properly this time, no pretending, no holding back. My whole body shaking with it.
The doctor smiled, wide and genuine. She reached for a small instrument. A tuning fork, thin and precise. She struck it against her palm and held it near my ear.
The hum reached me. Faint and wavering but there. Undeniable.
I nodded frantically. “Yes. Yes, I can hear it.”
I couldn’t sit still anymore.
I turned and threw my arms around Alexander.
He went still for a heartbeat, his body adjusting to my weight, before he started soothing me, rubbing my back.
“I heard something,” I said into his neck.
“Alexander I heard something —”
“I know.” His voice came out rough at the edges. “I know you did.”
His hand moved up into my hair.
"I'm taking twelve orgasms out of you when we get home for hugging me like this," he whispered into my ear, his voice thick with vulgarity.
I pulled back, my face heating up with a massive blush. The doctor coughed, looking surprised by how blunt Alexander was.
I hit him in the chest, and he let out a mock
"Ouch."
"Have you forgotten I'm still a patient?" he teased, referring to his months-old gunshot wound.
I rolled my eyes at him, but he just leaned down to my height and kissed me deeply. It took everything in me not to tell him I love you.
I swallowed them back down.
The doctor cleared her throat again, more deliberately and we separated.
“There’s real improvement,” she said, settling back into her professionalism admirably fast.
“Your auditory nerve is responding in a way it wasn’t when we started. If you continue with the treatment, the sessions, the drops, managing your stress levels, you could have full functional hearing within a year.”
A year.
My heart was racing. All my life, I never thought I could hear again. My parents had made it so clear to me that I was born this way.
Did they lie to me? Why would they do that?
And if I wasn't born this way... what could have possibly caused me to lose my hearing?
Outside in the corridor while Alexander handled the follow up appointments I stood and let it settle over me.
He had done this.
Found this doctor, made this appointment, sat in that chair with me, wiped my tears, stayed in that room because I asked him to. Nobody in my life had ever done something like this for me.
Nobody.
And somehow it was him. My devil.
When he came back down the corridor toward me I felt everything I had no permission to feel and said none of it.
“Thank you,” I told him softly. “No one has ever —” my throat tightened. “I never expected it to be you, the devil.”
He looked at me for a moment. Something moved across his face.
He leaned in, his shadow falling over me, and traced my lower lip with his thumb.
“Maybe I’m just your kind of devil, sunshine. Now let's go home. I have a debt to collect.”