PROLOGUE

|| Ava' POV ||

The fact that my life was far from perfect was a fact I had to live with and of course make myself embrace ever since I was a young girl.

I had a father who gambled away everything he touched…and a brother who treated me like something he scraped off the bottom of his shoe…and a condition that made the whole world see me as less than human.

I had long stopped expecting things to go smoothly. Until I met and fell in love with Xander three years ago. He had been the one person who just made it enough to keep going regardless of what the whole world thought of me.

Never in a million years did I think or imagine that a day would come where I would watch my entire life as I knew it fall apart before my very own eyes.

But that was what was happening now….that was what I was seeing as I looked at Xander from across the table at the restaurant he had chosen for our Valentine's Day dinner.

The candles between us flickered. Couples at nearby tables laughed and fed each other dessert. And Xander sat there with an expression so cold it made the air around us feel like January, staring somewhere just past my shoulder like he could not bring himself to look directly at me.

He had just broken up with me.

On Valentine's Day.

I counted twenty full seconds in my head, waiting for him to crack. Waiting for him to laugh and say it was a joke, some strange prank that I would eventually forgive him for because he would spend the rest of the evening making it up to me. But the twenty seconds passed. Then thirty. And the coldness on his face never shifted.

His words rang over and over in my head: "I want to break up with you."

I raised my hands and signed, Xander, what do you mean? You cannot be serious.

His jaw tightened. "See? That. That right there is exactly my point." He gestured toward my hands with barely concealed irritation. "This is fucking embarrassing, Ava. Don't you get it? Going out with someone like you — all the hand waving, people staring like we are some kind of circus act. I cannot keep doing this. This is not the life I want."

His words landed in the center of my chest, sharp like they were a dagger digging through my skin.

How could he say that to me? This was Xander — the same man who had held my face in his hands two Christmases ago and told me that my silence was the most peaceful thing he had ever known.

The same man who had learned to sign basic phrases just so I would never feel left out of a conversation when we were together.

He had vowed, with his whole chest and both eyes open, to love every part of me. And I had believed him, because he was the only person in my life — after my mother died — who had ever made me feel like my muteness was not a defect to be ashamed of. He had made me feel seen in a way that no one else ever had, not even close.

Now he sounded exactly like my father. Exactly like my brother.

I signed again, slower this time, because I needed him to understand what he was doing. Xander, what is happening right now? Talk to me. Whatever this is, we can work through it.

"I am done with the theatrics!" His voice rose sharply enough that the couple at the next table glanced over. He did not seem to care. "Can you not get it through your head? Or does being mute mean you are stupid too? I said I am done, Ava. Done with you. All of this. I cannot fucking take this anymore so there is nothing to work through. You…embarrass me and I am tired of pretending that things are forever going to be a ray of sunshine between us."

Pretending?

Before I could raise my hands to sign something else, he stood up quickly, pushed his chair back hard enough that it scraped against the floor, and walked out of the restaurant without once looking back at me.

I sat there and stared at the space where he had been.

My vision blurred at the edges, but I refused to let the tears fall. Not here.

I breathed in slowly through my nose and out through my mouth, pressing my hands flat against my thighs under the table, anchoring myself to the present. I was not going to fall apart in public. I was not.

I stood up on legs that were not entirely steady, gathered my coat and my bag, and walked out.

By the time I got to our house four blocks away, the willpower I had been using to hold myself together was already near its finishing point and all I wanted was to head straight to my room, lock myself up and cry it all out…because my chest was so heavy that it hurt.

I pushed the front door open — and stopped.

My brother, Daniel, was standing in the middle of the sitting room with three police officers. His eyes were puffy and red, like he had been crying for a while.

Oh God, what had he done this time?

Or perhaps my father had gotten himself into another problem with his gambling and debts.

He looked up the moment I stepped in, and his face immediately contorted in anger when he saw me.

"Where the hell have you been?" he snapped.

"I was on a date with Xander." I signed, stepping further into the room. "What is going on here? Where is dad?"

One of the officers stepped forward with a sad expression that made my heart leap. "Miss Ava," he said quietly, "we are very sorry. Your father was found in his office a few hours ago. We have reason to believe he took his own life."