Chapter 4
Chapter four
Nicky
The idea to go outside feels ridiculous when I say it out loud.
“Fresh air,” I tell him, trying to make the words light. “Coffee. A walk. Ten minutes. If it’s too much, we come straight back.”
Liam looks at me as if I’ve suggested we walk through a thunderstorm naked. His fingers worry at the hem of his hoodie. “What if there are too many people?” he asks, voice small.
“There won’t be,” I lie because I don’t know how to say, I’ll push them aside if they get in your way. Instead, I try humor. “It’s still early. The only people out will be runners and those young men with man-buns who shout into their phones about cryptocurrency.”
He manages a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Okay,” he says finally. It’s a small surrender, but I feel like I’ve won something monumental.
We leave the apartment with ridiculous care. I lock the deadbolt twice, like physical clicks can make the world less precarious and keep it out of our home. It’s not a completely crazy idea. The apartment is Liam’s home now. It needs to remain his sanctuary. A place of safety.
Especially when I am dragging him out, probably long before he is ready. But part of me is convinced that Liam doesn’t need anymore time inside, locked away from the world.
I guess time will tell if I am right about that.
I hand him my sunglasses because even though it is winter, the sunlight is bright, and I can see how it makes the world look sharp and dangerous. He takes them with hands that tremble just a little.
The MX5 rumbles into life and we’re off.
He stares out at the passing buildings with a strange, detached focus, like he’s cataloguing exits.
To me, the city looks the same as it always has.
Trains grumbling, deliveries stacking on pavements, a flock of pigeons erupting from a rooftop.
But for Liam, each sight is a possible threat.
I can see it in the way he flinches at a delivery van’s beeping reverse alarm, how he watches every face as if it might tilt toward him and recognize him as someone defeated.
We park two streets from the little park that reminds me of the one we used to hang out in when we were teenagers and had nothing but time. He peers out from beneath my sunglasses and exhales like the air itself is somehow new to him.
“It smells,” he says.
“London always stinks,” I say, reminding him. “Pigeons, overpriced coffee and a faint odor of people taking themselves too seriously.”
He snorts. The sound is so small and fragile I nearly choke on it, but it’s a sound. Progress.
We walk slowly. I keep my hand near his elbow, not touching, just a promise of proximity. Passersby drift around us, some hurried, some oblivious, and my eyes watch them like a hawk. Every time someone gets close, Liam’s shoulders bunch up, and he pulls away as if the world might bite.
I should have chosen a better day. It is winter, but the sky is blue. A rare day without rain, where the cold feels invigorating and not something to bear.
It has brought people out in droves. Everyone is eager to soak up some rare winter sun and escape the indoors for a little while.
I should have chosen a rainy day for Liam’s first outing. We would have had the park to ourselves. But it is too late now.
Halfway through the park, a dog rockets past, knocks into a kid, and the kid’s scream is bright and sudden. Liam spins, eyes blown wide, a flame of panic flaring up in him. He takes a step back as if the sound were a physical blow.
“It’s okay,” I say, steadying my voice. I step in front of him because I don’t know any other way to protect him. The kid is already laughing, the parent fussing, and the dog owner hustles the dog away. It’s ordinary, banal. But to Liam, it’s an avalanche.
And it doesn’t stop. The city is relentless. I don’t understand how I never noticed before.
A woman on a bench sneezes loudly. A bus hisses at the stop. Each noise is a jagged edge. His breath comes faster. I hear it before I see the color draining from his face.
“Nic…” he starts. He looks like he might bolt. For a moment my chest drops.
I close the small distance between us. “Look at me,” I demand softly, and when he does his eyes are wild, pupils blown, he is barely an inch from me, and two seconds away from being gone all at once.
“Remember when we ran to the park with all those sweets we had stolen?” I say, worthlessly, but clinging desperately to anything I can think of. “We couldn’t stop puking. Rainbow colors all over the grass. You said it meant we had marked our territory and the park was now ours.”
He blinks. He breathes. He gives me the tiniest of crooked smiles. It’s ridiculous, but it works. I’ve reminded him that he used to be fearless. That we used to be silly. That I’ve always been by his side, through thick and thin.
“That was a different park,” he says.
I grin. “Still counts.”
A glimmer flashes in his eyes. A faint shake of his head at my utter absurdity. But he goes along with it.
“Okay,” he whispers.
We keep walking, but slower, like together we’re coaxing a skittish animal. People brush past, an old man with a blue carrier bag, a teenage girl on a skateboard, and my whole body tightens. I hate that the world is too loud for him. I hate even more that I can’t make it softer.
We reach the little kiosk at the park entrance. It’s run by a woman who wears too much perfume and a smile that belongs in an earlier decade. She takes our order with a brisk nod. “Two flat whites,” she states as she hands them to us. Her voice is mundane and perfect.
Liam takes his coffee carefully. He cradles it as if the warmth through the paper cup is a lifeline. He brings it to his lips and sips. The steam fogs his sunglasses, and for a tiny second he looks like a boy again, not a man who has been shaped by life inside metal bars.
We sit on a low wall and watch the world move.
He talks in fragments, not about prison, not about the cells or the men, but about the small things.
He mentions the game we played with empty bottles as kids, the nicknames we invented, how he’d stolen my hoodie once because he liked the smell of it.
He licks the rim of his cup, clearly embarrassed by the memory.
I laugh because remembering is how we come back.
But the edges never fully soften. A skateboarder clatters past, music blasting, and Liam startles so violently he spills a little coffee down his wrist. He swears softly, not at the skateboarder but at everything, and a lost look flickers across his face.
He drops his gaze, pressing his thumb into the wet stain as if making sense of its shape will make sense of the world.
“Do you want to go back?” I ask.
He looks at me as if he’s considering whether to hand me his life. “Not yet,” he says with, an achingly familiar, stubborn lift of his chin.
We linger by the little kiosk for a short while longer. Then we start ambling along with our half-drunk coffees in hand.
As we walk, a woman jogs past. Her tee shirt is tight-fitting, and she is well-endowed. Some creepy asshole whistles. The sound derogatory and suggestive.
The woman has headphones on. She either doesn’t hear it, or she chooses to ignore it.
Liam freezes, cheeks flushing, not with outrage but with some raw, animal shame. He hunches into himself, and for the first time since he was released, his facade fully breaks in front of me. He looks so vulnerable. So small and broken.
I take his hand without thinking, fingers threading over his knuckles. It’s a tiny gesture, private. He doesn’t pull away. He squeezes back, a tight, clumsy pressure that says more than words.
He is holding it together. Barely. He has splintered, and now the thousand pieces of his sanity are teetering on the very edge of falling apart.
It is time to go. I never should have done this to him.
I hurry us back to the apartment as quickly as I can. Going out was a terrible idea. It was far too soon, and I am incapable of protecting Liam from the world.
When we reach the flat, his legs are unsteady. I lead him inside by the elbow, mothering him like a hen. I don’t think he notices. I think all he sees are the walls and the door and the fact that he’s back in a place that smells like safety. I hope so, anyway.
He sits on the sofa and buries his face in his hands. He looks like he might start to cry, like the dam inside him has a leak he didn’t know about. I sit down beside him, and let the silence sit between us like a third person.
“You did good,” I say finally, because the silence can’t last forever, and small things are the only things we can measure today. “You came out. You didn’t run. That’s huge.”
Tiny things. Things I never, ever thought in a million years would be a challenge for Liam. Yet here we are. In this strange new world where I am the brave one.
He lifts his head. His eyes are red-rimmed and tired, but they find me. “You didn’t let me go,” he says. There’s no accusation in it. Only recognition. Acknowledgement that I’ve kept my word. I’ve done what he asked.
I don’t answer with words. I press my thumb to his wrist where the coffee cooled, where he still bears the stain of the park. It is a ridiculous, tender gesture. He looks at our hands, and for a moment, something like peace eases the tightness in his face.
We both know the world will keep being loud. But for now, there’s a small island of quiet, and we can sit in it together.
He lowers his head again, and the silence settles over us once more.
Liam doesn’t move for a long while. He sits hunched over, elbows on his knees. I can hear the rhythm of his breathing, ragged, uneven, like his lungs still can’t decide whether to panic or rest.
I want to reach for him, but I don’t. Not yet. If I push too much, he’ll retreat back behind the walls I can already feel him building.
Instead, I flick the TV on. The sound fills the silence. A documentary with a low narrator’s voice about sharks gliding through dark water. It’s background noise, nothing more.
He liked the nature documentary the other day. But maybe I shouldn’t make choices for him.
“Here,” I say, nudging the remote toward him. “You pick.”
He peeks at me through pale strands of hair, skeptical. “It’s the fanciest TV I’ve ever seen. What if I break it?”
“It’s a remote, not a landmine,” I say dryly. “And if you do, I’ll buy another one.”
He stares at it like I’ve handed him a loaded gun. Then, slowly, he takes it. His thumb hovers over the buttons, uncertain. When he presses one, the screen jumps to some cooking competition. A chef is screaming about undercooked lamb. Liam flinches but doesn’t look away.
“Better?” I ask.
He shrugs, but I catch the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
We watch in silence. The contestants chop vegetables with frantic energy, and the judges bark critiques.
Every once in a while, Liam shifts closer to the cushions, his body slowly unwinding.
By the second commercial break, he’s leaning back properly, his legs tucked under him, the tension in his spine easing just a fraction.
I use the excuse of getting up for water to grab a blanket from the armchair. I toss it over him casually when I sit back down.
He freezes. Then, very carefully, he pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders.
“Thanks,” he murmurs.
The word is soft, hoarse, but it hits me harder than any bullet I’ve ever dodged.
By the time the episode ends, his head has tilted sideways, his hair brushing the fabric of the sofa. His eyes are half-lidded, fighting sleep.
“You can crash here,” I say.
His lips part like he wants to argue, to insist he’ll go to his own room, but the fight dies before it even starts. He sinks lower into the cushions, his body sagging with exhaustion.
I turn the volume down until it’s barely a whisper.
Minutes pass. His breathing evens out, and before long he’s asleep.
I sit there, not moving, watching the rise and fall of his chest under the blanket. The apartment feels different with him in it, not quieter, not louder, but alive in a way I hadn’t noticed was missing.
I remember the way he gripped my hand in the park. Tight. Desperate. Like he needed the anchor.
I glance at him now. His hand is curled on the cushion between us, fingers twitching faintly with dreams. Without thinking, I let my own hand drift closer, not touching, just near enough that if he reaches out again, I’ll be there.
Because that’s the vow I made on the first night in the dark. I won’t let him go.
Not now. Not ever.