WHERE THE SILENCE ENDS

I woke to the smell of bleach and someone else’s heartbeat.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure who I was or where I belonged. Voices drifted in and out, muffled like they’d been dropped underwater. Machines beeped around me in slow, stubborn rhythm. My eyelids felt glued together. When I managed to pry them open, the world assaulted me with white: sheets, ceiling, curtains, the light drowning me like a very judgmental spotlight.

Great I’m at the hospital

I tried to sit up but my body gave up immediately.

A sharp breath escaped me, and suddenly something lurched forward from the chair beside my bed, dark hair, rumpled clothes and eyes hollow.

Julian.

He didn’t look like a rockstar or a villain or the man who kissed me like the world was collapsing. He looked like a boy who hadn’t slept since the Renaissance. Maybe it was the morphine swirling in my bloodstream but he looked like a water-damaged Caravaggio painting.

“Ava?” he whispered, afraid even my name might break.

My vision steadied. His hands were shaking badly. One hovered over mine, like he wanted to touch me but feared he’d break some hospital rule… or the universe’s.

“You’re awake,” he breathed.

“Last time I checked,” I croaked.

He let out a laugh broken, hoarse, disbelieving. He pressed trembling hands to his face. I’d never seen him look so human. Or so ashamed.

“How long?” I asked.

“Two days,” he said. “You lost a lot of blood. They weren’t sure you’d…”

He didn’t finish.

He didn’t have to.

My throat tightened.

“Noah…?”

Julian’s eyes shifted away. “He’s dead.”

The words hit like cold stone; expected, but heavy.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

“For what?” he snapped, not at me but at the ceiling or God or fate. “For trying to save me? For throwing yourself in front of a gun?! For wiping fingerprints off a weapon while you were bleeding out?”

The heart monitor picked up, desperate for its own subplot.

“Julian”

“No,” he rasped. “Don’t do that. Don’t soften it. You could’ve died.”

His voice cracked on died.

I had never imagined Julian Vale could unravel like that not after Berlin, not after his brother, not after the ghosts he carries like tattoos on bone. But grief clung to him now, thick and choking, and for once… it wasn’t his own.

“What happened after I blacked out?” I whispered.

He exhaled long, pained, like the truth was razor-wired.

“Claire called the ambulance. She was screaming your name, not mine.”

His jaw flexed.

“I stayed with you the whole time. They… kept trying to push me out. Said I wasn’t family.”

A humorless laugh scraped out of him.

“I told them I wasn’t leaving. They threatened security. I still didn’t leave.”

He looked like a confessional in ruined silk.

“I don’t know how to make any of this right,” he whispered.

You can start,” I whispered, “by telling me whatever Noah was trying to force out of you. He pointed the gun at you too, Julian. So tell me what you’re still hiding. I know he didn’t wanted me to trust you…”

He stared at me like I’d asked him to peel off his skin.

“Ava… if I tell you everything, you won’t forgive me. You won’t even look at me.”

“Try me.”

He stood abruptly pacing, frantic, like a prophet trapped in a tragedy with too many psalms. The window behind him caught the headlights of a passing ambulance and threw lightning across his face like divine judgment.

“You think the attic was the worst part?” he said. “You think Berlin was the whole truth? Ava… there are things you haven’t asked me because you’re afraid of the answers.”

My pulse stuttered. The room felt smaller, warmer, ready to combust.

He stepped closer, leaning over the bed.

“Before Noah came to your room,” he whispered, “he came to mine.”

My breath snagged in my ribs. “What?”

“He confronted me first,” Julian said. “He wasn’t looking for justice. He wanted a confession.”

“And… did you give him one?”

His silence answered.

“Julian… what did you tell him?”

“I told him Levi wasn’t the only death I blamed myself for.”

Ice crawled through me.

“Whose?” I whispered.

“Hanna’s.”

The monitor beeped faster, frantic, terrified.

Before I could speak, the door swung open.

I blinked hard, because this-this actual person was Claire.

Up until now, she’d only existed as a disembodied force of a voice and frantic phone calls, but in person she was… overwhelming.

She was all sharp blond hair that fell in a glossy, surgical bob, eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses that looked expensive enough to have their own security detail. Her mouth was set in that perfectly controlled line you only see in movies. And the scent that followed her, God. A cold, expensive perfume that smelled like white lilies crushed under ice and a hint of citrus that promised violence. The kind of smell that made you straighten your spine without knowing why. She swept in like Miranda Priestly radiating the fury of someone who’d just escaped a meeting about flowers for spring; an unforgivable sin in her world.

In that moment, I finally understood why Julian looked afraid of her.

Honestly? I was a little afraid too

“Oh thank God,” she sighed when she saw me awake. Then she glared at Julian. “You. Hallway. Now.”

“No,” Julian said softly, not looking away from me. “She deserves the truth.”

Claire groaned. “Ava needs rest, not another of your confessions.” She said annoyed.

“Let him,” I whispered.

Claire froze. “Ava, sweetie, don’t make me hate you more.”

“I said let him.”

Julian sat again beside me, dragging the chair closer with trembling hands.

“Alright,” he whispered. “Listen carefully. Because once I say this… there’s no going back.”

The room hummed. Machines buzzed. Even the air paused.

“Ava,” he said, “I wasn’t just a witness to Hanna’s death.”

He swallowed.

“I was the reason she was in that room.”

Before I could unravel that, chaos exploded from the hallway, shouting, chanting, screaming.

The world outside.

Reporters. Fans. Conspiracy theorists. Opportunists. The entire internet, apparently, gathered like the world’s least holy pilgrimage.

Claire threw her hands up.

“Oh for Christ’s sake! This is worse than when Elvis died!”

“What’s happening?” I asked.

Claire paced like she was preparing for battle.

“What’s happening? WHAT’S HAPPENING? You nearly die, rumors erupt, and suddenly every internet prophet thinks they’re Watergate reincarnated!”

Julian closed his eyes, pained. “It’s my fault.”

“Yes,” Claire snapped. “But let me finish preventing CNN from turning Ava into Princess Diana 2.0.”

“What rumors?” I asked.

Claire sighed. “Honey… the internet says Julian tried to kill you. AND Noah.”

Julian flinched.

“But I’m alive,” I protested weakly.

Claire threw her arms up. “Logic packed its bags and left this country ages ago, sweetie.”

She inhaled sharply. “Also someone leaked Hanna’s name. Someone leaked where she died. Someone leaked she went to Julian the night she tried to report Levi.”

My stomach knotted. “Who leaked it?”

“Who do you THINK?” Claire barked.

Julian whispered, “Noah. Before he came for me… he went for the truth.”

The world spun.

Claire continued, “We have a PR crisis of biblical proportions. I’m talking Les Mis barricade. French Revolution. People have formed a CULT around the bullet that hit you.”

“I hate the internet,” I muttered.

“Welcome to the sorrow, babe.”

Julian looked shattered. “Ava… if things get too dangerous”

“Oh don’t you start,” Claire said. “You, my eyeliner-smudged disaster, are Public Enemy Number One.”

She pointed. “Do you know what your fans are doing?”

He blinked, hollow. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“They’ve declared Ava ‘The Chosen One.’ They’re building SHRINES. They’re holding VIGILS. Someone baked a life-sized cake of your FACE.”

Julian buried his face in his hands.

“It melted,” Claire added. “Tragically.”

Julian groaned in existential suffering.

Claire turned to me. “And that’s BEFORE the Hanna story fully explodes.”

I stared at Julian.

“Julian… what did you do?”

He slumped, caving inward like guilt had weight.

“I didn’t kill Hanna,” he whispered. “But I didn’t save her.”

His voice broke. “She came to me with proof of what Levi did. She wanted me to stand with her. And when the label threatened her… I let them.”

My heart twisted painfully.

“She ran that night,” he said. “We argued. She tried to get help from someone else, anyone else. I followed her because she was frantic, terrified… and when she climbed the bridge railing…”

His voice shattered.

“I froze. She slipped. I watched her fall. And I told no one.”

Claire whispered, “Jesus…”

Outside, the crowd roared.

Inside, Julian waited for me to hate him.

But hate didn’t come.

Fear did. Confusion. Grief that wasn’t mine but somehow lived in my bones anyway. The room felt too small to hold everything he wasn’t saying.

“Julian…” My voice cracked.

“When Hanna came to me,” he said quietly, “she was already breaking. The label had silenced her once. PR spun Levi as a ‘misunderstood darling,’ and every time she tried to push back, they called her unstable. Dramatic. A liability.”

Claire’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t interrupt.

Julian swallowed. “She had proof. Actual proof. Messages. A recording. A statement she wrote by hand because she didn’t trust emails anymore.”

He rubbed his face. “She begged me to stand with her. Not as a savior just as a witness.”

My heart twisted. “And you didn’t.”

His laugh was bitter. “I was a coward. I told her the label would destroy her. And me. And anyone who stood too close. They threatened to make her ‘disappear from the industry.’ They threatened lawsuits. Blacklists. Press leaks. They said no one would believe her because no one had believed her the first time.”

Claire muttered, “Seems like a good regular business day to me”

Julian looked wrecked. “I told her to wait. That we’d ‘figure something out.’ But she didn’t want careful plans or strategic timing. She wanted someone to believe her. Just once.”

He looked at me, hollow. “She kept saying no one ever had.”

A cold dread unfurled inside me.

“What happened on the bridge?” I whispered.

Julian’s breath shook. “She was crying. Not loud, the kind of crying that looks like someone is unraveling from the inside. She kept asking what the point of surviving was if even the truth couldn’t save her.”

The heart monitor beeped, soft and uneasy.

“I tried to calm her, but she said…” Julian swallowed hard. “She said I was just like them. That I saw what Levi did. That I knew she wasn’t lying. And I still chose silence.”

My stomach lurched.

“She stepped onto the railing,” he whispered. “Slow. Methodical. Like she’d already practiced it in her head. I reached for her. I swear I did but I froze. I froze and she slipped and…”

He broke off, pressing a hand to his mouth like he could physically stop the memory from escaping.

“And the note?” I managed to ask.

Julian’s eyes glistened. “They found it in her pocket. Folded so small it looked like a piece of trash.”

His voice dropped to a tremor.

“One line: I just wanted someone to believe me.”

Even Claire went still.

“The label buried it,” he said. “Said it would ‘hurt the company’s image.’ They made me sign an NDA so tight I couldn’t breathe. They threatened to ruin anyone who mentioned Hanna’s name. They paid off the cops. They paid off her family. They paid off the press.”

I felt my pulse thudding beneath my skin.

“Why didn’t you say anything after Levi died?” I asked.

“Because they told me,” Julian whispered, “that if I said a single word… they’d tell the world I pushed her. And after that night on the bridge, I didn’t trust myself to know if that was a lie.”

His voice cracked. “Maybe I didn’t push her. But I didn’t catch her either.”

Silence pressed in around us heavy, suffocating.

Claire finally spoke, softer than I’d ever heard her.

“Noah found the note, didn’t he?”

Julian nodded. “It was in Hanna’s box of things. The one the label tried to confiscate but never found.”

He exhaled shakily. “He confronted them. They threatened him too. So he did what Hanna tried to do he went looking for someone who would listen.”

His voice broke.

“He came to me first. Because he thought I’d help him finish what she started.”

My chest squeezed. “And instead… he found out you’d failed her.”

Julian flinched like I’d stabbed him.

“And when he realized,” he whispered, “that the only person Hanna trusted couldn’t save her… he snapped. He blamed me. He blamed the industry. He blamed himself. And he leaked everything he found.”

Claire let out an annoyed whisper. “And now we have her whole story on display”

Julian continued slowly. “He was done being silent. He didn’t care if it burned the whole world down.”

A beat passed, thick as smoke.

“That’s why he came for you,” Julian said. “Not because you did anything wrong. But because you were the last person close enough to the truth to finish the story.”

I swallowed, throat burning.

Outside, the crowd roared louder, chanting my name, chanting Julian’s, chanting Hanna’s.

Her ghost is everywhere now.

And inside the room, Julian Vale stared at me like he expected me to be the one to send him over that same bridge.