Love is Silent

Chapter 13

“I don’t know how long I ran for, but eventually I collapsed on the side of a road and a cop found me. He brought me to the hospital and had me treated. They tried to get me to tell them what had happened, but I wouldn’t speak to anyone. They eventually found my uncle the next morning, but he had killed himself, leaving behind a note that stated simply that he was sorry.”

He stopped talking and stared at the TV, though I knew he wasn’t watching it. I was quiet for a few minutes as I absorbed everything that had happened to him. He’d just been a kid when his parents died and his life had turned to hell. Yet here he was, able to show me compassion and kindness, even if he couldn’t show it to anyone else. I laid my head on his scarred shoulder and kissed the side of his neck. “I love you,” I murmured.

He jerked slightly and pulled away to look at me. “I tell you all of that and you say that you love me?” he asked incredulously.

I nodded. “You’re an amazing person, Chase. The fact that you survived all of that just gives me further proof of that. I knew I loved you before you told me about your past; now just seemed like a good time to let you know.”

“Dana, I’m not a good person. I’ve gotten into a lot of fights in the past, and I probably will in the future.”

I rolled my eyes. “I think you should let me judge whether or not you’re a good person. The fact that I love you shouldn’t be a bad thing; it’s supposed to be a good thing.”

He took my hand and pressed his lips to the palm of it. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmured.

“Yes you do,” I replied. “Now tell me what happened after you were in the hospital.”

He sighed. “I was placed into the system. They shuffled me around from foster home to foster home. I started running to let off steam, since it had saved me in the past. I still refused to talk to anyone unless I absolutely had to and I despised having anyone touch me after what my uncle did.

“Eventually the cop who had rescued me looked me up, and I learned that he had been on the force with my father. He’d been promoted to captain, so he had a little pull in the system. It was only then that I learned the friends of my parents that I’d stayed with had tried to gain custody of me. They weren’t registered foster parents at the time though, so they were turned down. The cop pulled some strings and had me placed with them.”

My eyes widened. “Bev and Carson were friends with your parents?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

I thought back to the first time I’d hear him speak about them. “But you seemed so bitter about them the first time you said anything about them.”

He looked surprised. “I did?”

“Yeah, you were talking about them having money.”

He frowned as he thought back and then his expression cleared. “Oh, that had nothing to do with them in particular. It was more the fact that a lot of the foster parents I’d been placed with in the past refused to spend money on a kid like me, since I never stayed with them for long.”