He Gave Me Hearing, Then Taught Me What Silence Really Means novel Chapter 46

"I had to go back to Oakley. I ran into Brooks."

"No wonder Mrs. Lane suddenly called me. Your dad didn't give you a hard time, did he?"

"I didn't see him."

Her throat felt uncomfortably tight. She was genuinely exhausted, her vitality thoroughly drained by the sheer chaos of the past two days.

Yara let out a massive yawn. She had been working back-to-back night shifts at the hospital, and one night of sleep simply wasn't enough to recover. "I'm gonna go catch up on some more sleep. You just..."

Before she could finish her sentence, her eyes locked onto the marks on Juniper's neck. She hesitated. "Who left those?"

Juniper was wearing a loose-fitting pajama top, and the hickeys had already deepened in color, blooming across her pale skin like dark flowers.

She quickly yanked her collar up, turning toward her room. "I'm going to go change."

But Yara stepped right in front of her, her expression dead serious. "Don't tell me it was Nelson."

Juniper fell silent. She was never any good at lying to Yara.

Seeing her silence, Yara took a sharp breath. "He's a married man. His wife and kid are right there with him. Do you want to be destroyed even worse than before? Did you forget how you clawed your way out of that hellhole? Juniper, if those people team up to lock you away again, what are you going to do? Who's going to save you then?!"

A blinding spike of pain pierced through Juniper's skull. She instinctively pressed a hand to her forehead.

In truth, she had blacked out the exact details of how she managed to escape that place. All that remained were hazy, fragmented memories of her on her knees, begging someone for mercy—though what exactly she had begged for was entirely lost.

Her face was chalk-white as Yara continued, "If you're seriously going to stoop so low as to be a married man's mistress, then we are done! I will move out and find my own place. Juniper, we didn't work so hard and study so much just to throw our lives away! People back home can call our degrees useless, but we can't believe that ourselves. It's precisely because I got an education that I know exactly what I'm worth!"

"Yara, I didn't..."

"Then that bastard forced himself on you."

Yara quickly connected the dots, letting out a long breath before pulling Juniper into a gentle, protective hug. "Juniper, I know you're beautiful. When you were working at the auction house, I bet there were countless powerful men who wanted to keep you as their dirty little secret. But we can't live like that. We're going to make our own money one day. Lots of it."

Juniper managed a weak laugh. "I know. Don't worry. If he ever tries anything again, I'll stab him."

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