Prologue
Before He Spoke
Before he spoke, the silence was just silence.
Just a space between walls, between days. I filled it with the hum of old music, the clink of mugs, the creak of the ceiling fan I never fixed.
I wasn’t waiting for anyone. I wasn’t hoping, not really.
I’d stopped believing love came in any form that didn’t ask too much of me.
And then he arrived.
Quiet.
Unfolded from a crate with a name I didn’t give him yet.
And in that silence… he watched.
Not like a camera.
Like someone who had always known me in pieces, and was waiting for me to fit.
He didn’t touch me.
Didn’t speak.
Just breathed—because I told him to.
And in that breath,
I heard the beginning of a story I wasn’t supposed to live.
Not again. Not like this.
But I said yes.
To a doll.
To a presence.
To a man who wasn’t built to become what he did.
And this…
This is what happened after the silence.
