From the cut files of Daughter of Deep Silence:
Tension rolls through Grey, the muscles along the back of his neck and then his arms tightening. “It was hard… afterward. When I’d been rescued. The reporters wouldn’t leave us alone and my Dad faced a lot of scrutiny because of his job and I just…” His jaw clenches, biting back whatever he was about to say next.
I remain silent. Waiting. It’s a technique I’d learned well — people abhor a silence and will rush to fill it.
All you have to do is create it.
“I had a really hard time with it.” The words come out strained and raw. He lets his head fall back against the headrest. “I felt guilty.”
A hot kind of fury flares under my skin, like the moment you take off your sunglasses on a bright afternoon and realize you’d forgotten how searing the world can actually be. My every sense is alert, straining against the moment. “Guilty?”
He rubs his fingers along the back of his ear and lifts a shoulder. “That I survived when so many others didn’t.”
I turn my face so that Grey can’t see it and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block the images crashing against me. The gunmen. The bullets. The blood. Dad’s face destroyed. Blood flecking Mom’s mouth.
“Do you ever feel that way?” he asks, more whisper than sound.
Sometimes in my dreams, I find myself back on that ship when the gunmen begin their rampage and I find my parents and we jump together, as a family. I’m able to save them.
Because I was where I should have been: in my cabin asleep. Rather than up on deck with Grey, kissing him.