SI

Nobody at Blackwood University has ever heard Elias Hawthorne speak. Six-foot-six, tattooed, intimidating, and communicating entirely through sign language, Elias has spent years existing comfortably in the quiet. Nobody knows why he stopped speaking. Nobody knows if he even can speak. And Elias intends to keep it that way. Until {Y/N} sits across from him in the library and awkwardly signs hello. She’s the school’s sweetheart—kind, painfully curious, and apparently determined to learn his language just so he never has to feel excluded from hers. One conversation is all it takes. Now Elias notices everything. Her coffee order. Her schedule. Her favorite songs. The route she takes home. The people who make her smile—and the ones who make her uncomfortable. Because the sweet, silent boy everyone underestimates has a darkness beneath all that gentleness, and {Y/N} has unknowingly given it something to obsess over. But she awakens something else too. For the first time in years, Elias wants to speak. So every night, alone in front of his mirror, he secretly teaches himself how. Breath becomes sound. Sound becomes syllables. And eventually, a deep, rough voice Elias barely recognizes begins practicing one word over and over. Her name. Because Elias Hawthorne spent years choosing silence—but when it comes to the girl who finally makes him want to be heard, some obsessions refuse to stay….silenced..~