“What are you doing,” he mumbles, his gaze lifting from my chest to my eyes while I straddle his lap.

“We’re both adults, Josh.” I drop my mouth to his neck as his hands move from my waist to my ass, pulling me closer to him. “We just have to stop before things go too far.”

He rolls his head back, giving me access to his neck. “You have to be in charge of stopping it,” he mumbles, his hand on the back of my head.

Then our lips crash together, our hands everywhere, all at once. His hips push up, and I push down, grinding against the hardness trapped in his pants. The room fills with the sounds of our breaths, our moans, our lips, our tongues. But in my head, all I can hear is the thumping of my heart. His hands are on my back now, holding me to him. His hips keep moving, matching mine. My breath catches when a familiar ache builds in the pit of my stomach. My breath catches and my eyes squeeze shut. “Stop?” he asks, his breaths as heavy as mine.

I nod, still refusing to look up.

He cups my face and makes me look up at him. Then smirks as he runs the back of his fingers across my cheek. “What happened?” he asks, but he knows what happened. He thrusts up, just once, and my eyes roll involuntarily. “Are you okay?”

I try to get off him but he holds me in place. “What? You’ve gone back to not talking to me?”

I slap his chest and try again, in vain, to move way.

He kisses me once and finally releases me, but I don’t move.

His smile slowly fades as his eyes search mine. “Can I ask you something?”

“Same rules as you?”

He nods.

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you talk?”

I drop my gaze and focus on my fingers tracing the outlines of his abs through his shirt. “I haven’t always spoken like this. With this voice, I mean. I hate the way I sound and the way people look at me when I speak. You saw how your aunt and uncle responded when they heard me—”

“Yeah…” he interrupts, “that’s because I told them you were mute and a germaphobe.”

“What?”

“I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable so I lied. I’ll tell them later that I was kidding. They won’t even question it. I say stupid shit all the time.” He taps my leg twice. “So what happened to your voice?”

“It was a car accident. I wasn’t able to wear a seatbelt. When the car collided with the tree, I flew forward and the dash flew back and landed right against my throat. I was stuck that way until they were able to pull me out. But it was kind of too late. The damage had already been done to my vocal cords.”

“Holy shit. Are you okay? I mean, how badly did you get hurt?”

I shrug. “It wasn’t so bad. I’m alive, right? Anyway, the doctors told me not to talk too much because it can make it worse, so can whispering. But it’s hard to get used to not using it at all, especially when physically I can. But because of how I sound, I whisper more than I talk. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. Trust me, I hold back a lot. But I don’t know, after the accident, there were just a lot of people asking a lot of questions and I used the whole no talking thing to get out of answering them. Plus, like I said, I sound like a freak so it’s no big deal.”

His brow bunches and I can see the thousand questions flickering in his eyes. He raises his hand, his fingers gently stroking my neck, and out of all the questions he can possibly ask, he asks the one I can never answer. “What do you mean you weren’t able to wear a seatbelt?”

“Did I say that?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He nods even though I’m sure he can tell I’m avoiding. Then he asks, “Do you talk to your grandmother?”

“Not really,” I whisper, glad he’s not pushing me.

“But you talk to me?”

“Because you understand. You get that I don’t want to talk all the time. She’s one of those that ask a lot of questions all the time.”

“So tell her that, Becca.”

My eyes snap to his and whatever he sees in them has his face falling. “I’m not scolding you. I’m sorry if that’s how it sounds. I just know your grandmother. I know her heart—and I know it would be killing her to think that she’s not helping you or that she’s doing something wrong. And I can see it in the way she looks at you. She loves you, Becca, just like she loves Tommy and I. She was the only one there when we really needed someone to save us. And she did. She saved both of us, no questions, no demands. She’s the only one who hasn’t turned her back on us and up until my aunt and uncle came along, she was the only family we had. She’ll understand, Becca, whatever it is you’re wanting to keep to yourself, she’ll let you do it. I just think you should give her something. Anything. Because having you give even the tiniest piece of you is a million times better than having nothing at all. Trust me.”

His eyes fix on mine and I nod because he’s right. And because I’m pretty sure he and my grandmother are the closest thing to family I’ll ever have. “Okay,” I whisper.

“Good.” He smiles. “So movie?”

I return his smile. “Okay.”

9

-Joshua-

We’re lying on the couch, the movie’s on mute and she’s fallen asleep. There’s a strand of hair stuck to her lips, but it moves every time she breathes. I know all this because I can’t stop watching her. Then suddenly, her breathing stops and she jerks in my arms. I sit up slightly, waiting to see if she’s okay. She whimpers and exhales slowly and I smile, watching her body relax and her breathing return to normal. But it only lasts a few seconds before she whimpers again, her body shaking now. “Stop,” she whispers, her hands forming fists.