He Crushed My Hearing Aid to Keep Me, Not Knowing I Just Heard His Confession Chapter 01

He Crushed My Hearing Aid to Keep Me, Not Knowing I Just Heard His Confession Chapter 01

Silas Thorne ripped my hearing aids out just minutes before the Alden entrance exam. Blood was running down my neck before the pain even caught up with me. He dropped them to the ground and crushed them under his heel.

That’s when I heard it — his thoughts, breaking through. Frantic beneath all that calm.

“Let’s see how she takes the exam now.”

“Blair keeps her spot at Alden. And Clara stays. She stays with me — forever.”

I couldn’t move. His thoughts kept coming.

“Cry for me. Tell me you won’t take the test. Tell me you’re never leaving.”

“I was there the night Blair hit your parents. I saw everything. I never called 911.”

“Because then, you’d have no one left but me.”

My expression cracked — barely visible, but it cracked.

I turned my back on him and walked straight to the police station.

***

My teacher came running after me. She was shouting something — I could see her mouth moving, but the sound barely reached me.

I stopped. Turned around. Looked at her with completely hollow eyes.

Her gaze dropped to my ear, and the color drained from her face. She pointed, mouth still open, but whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat.

That’s when Blair Sterling showed up.

She took one look at me — and clapped a hand over her mouth. Not to gasp. To laugh.

“Oh my God, Clara. What happened to you? That’s so sad.”

“Wait — you’re not seriously still taking the exam, are you?”

“Your luck is actually unreal. First your parents die in a car crash, and now you’re deaf? Orphaned and disabled — you really can’t catch a break.”

“Want me to Venmo you for a new pair? Oh wait — the exam starts any minute now. Guess that won’t help.”

Without my hearing aids, the world reached me in fragments — scraps of sound I couldn’t hang on to. But Blair made sure I caught every word. She leaned in and practically shouted.

Across the hallway, Silas crouched and scraped what was left of my hearing aids off the floor. He walked back, pressed the broken pieces into my palm, and headed into the exam room without a word.

His back was barely turned before the thoughts hit me again.

“Poor Clara. God, this is killing me. But I can’t go to her. Not yet.”

“Once I ace this exam — once I’m at the top — I’ll be the only one who can protect her. Love her. Keep her.”

With the exam about to begin, my teacher grabbed my wrist and signed at me, fast and desperate. “Take the exam. Go.”

I shook my head. But my eyes kept pulling back to Silas.

He’d promised to protect me forever. Promised we’d get into the same school.

Instead, he destroyed my chance at Alden so Blair could have it — and so I’d have nowhere to go but back to him.

He’d watched Blair’s car slam into my parents. Watched them die on the pavement. Did nothing — because losing them meant I’d need him more.

My teacher grabbed my shoulders and held me steady.

Her face was fierce and shattered at the same time. She signed: “Take the exam. I’ll talk to the proctor — they can delay the listening section for you.”

Her hands were shaking as she signed — too fast, too frantic, terrified she was costing me time. Something warm and painful opened in my chest.

I checked my watch.

I signed back, “I’m not taking the exam.”

“I’m going to the station right now to file a report. My parents didn’t die so I could sit here and do nothing.”

I watched the understanding hit her all at once.

Her hands slid off my shoulders. She turned away, but not before I saw the tears.

She didn’t try to stop me again. Just looked at me — really looked — and stepped aside.

I walked past her and headed for the police station.

By the time the exam started without me, I was sitting in the police station, staring at the clock on the wall, while the officer across from me tried to speak to me — careful, gentle. I couldn’t make it out.

I shook my head and pointed to my ear. She leaned forward — then froze. The blood. The raw, torn skin where the hearing aids had been ripped out.

Behind her, one officer looked away. Another clenched his jaw in quiet fury.

I signed: “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

They brought in an interpreter.

“I’m reporting a hit-and-run. The driver is a student named Blair from Crestview High.”

“Her classmate Silas witnessed the whole thing and covered it up. He’s an accomplice.”