There was something cruel about silence—how it stretched between memory and longing, how it echoed louder than any scream. Aaliyah heard it everywhere. Between the pauses in her parents' voices. Between the verses she recited half-heartedly. Between the moments when her reflection wouldn't look back.
She hadn't told anyone what happened at the mosque. Not the slap. Not the stare. Not the venom laced in Lucien's words.
She buried it. Like every other wound she wasn't allowed to show.
That night, her mother reminded her that marriage proposals were pending. A cousin in Jinja. A young engineer in Mbale. "Good Muslim boys," her father insisted. "Respectable. Obedient."
But she wasn't sure obedience lived inside her anymore.
She said she needed air and left the house.
Where did girls like her go when the faith she clung to felt too fragile and the men circling her felt too wild?
Apparently, they ended up in bookstores at 9 p.m., pretending to care about the spine of a poetry collection just to keep breathing.
And that's where she found Silas. Or maybe, where he found her.
He didn't speak immediately. Just walked up beside her, leaned against the same shelf, and pulled a book down without looking.
She didn't move. Didn't greet him. Couldn't.
He broke the silence. "Lucien told me you slapped him."
She blinked.
"I'm impressed," Silas added, flipping the book open. "He's used to women doing the opposite."
"I don't want to talk about your brother."
"You sure talk with your eyes, though."
She snapped the book shut and turned to leave, but his hand caught her wrist. Not hard. Not possessive. But with a strange gentleness that made it worse.
"Why do you always run, Aaliyah?"
She stared at him, trying to find words that wouldn't betray her.
"I don't run," she said, though her voice trembled. "I retreat."
Silas leaned closer, eyes dark. "Same thing. Only difference is who you're retreating from—us... or yourself."
She yanked her hand back. "You and your brother think you're deep. You're not. You're bored, broken men who think pain makes you interesting."
For a moment, he smiled. Not cruelly. Almost… sadly.
"Pain doesn't make me interesting," he said. "But it's the only thing that's ever been honest with me."
Aaliyah stared at him, and for one second—one devastating, raw second—she saw the boy he used to be. Before the cold eyes. Before the sharp tongue. A boy with too many bruises and not enough God.
And it broke something in her.
She left again, but slower this time.
Not because she was afraid.
But because for once… she wanted to stay.
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