Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Liam
The front door clicks shut, and the sound echoes through the apartment like a gunshot. I flinch, my whole body jerking against the wall where I’m still pressed like I’m trying to become part of the plaster itself.
He’s gone.
Nicky is gone, and I’m alone with the lie that’s been clawing at my chest since that man, the one called Dante, looked at me like I was something he might enjoy breaking.
Your little friend from your school days. The pretty boy who killed that girl.
The words circle in my head like vultures, picking at the wounds I thought had started to heal. But it’s not what Dante said that’s destroying me. It’s what Nicky didn’t deny. What he couldn’t deny.
Because he doesn’t know. He can’t ever know.
And if that wasn’t painful enough, there is also the truth of what he is. One lie, one truth, two ends of the scale that are eating me up. A conversation that is going around and around my head.
Sometimes.
Do you kill people, Nicky?
Sometimes.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, my knees drawn up to my chest. The expensive carpet is soft under me, it probably costs more than most people make in a month.
Everything in this place screams wealth, success, the kind of life we used to dream about under that overpass with our stolen beer and impossible plans.
Blood money. All of it.
My hands are shaking. I try to stop them, pressing my palms against my thighs the way I learned to do in my cell when the walls felt like they were closing in. Control the breathing. Count to ten. Find something to focus on that isn’t the panic crawling up my throat like bile.
But it’s not working. Nothing is working.
Because the walls aren’t closing in, they’re too far away, too open, too much space and too many windows and too many ways for danger to get in.
In prison, at least I knew where the threats were coming from.
I knew the rules, the hierarchy, the careful balance that kept you alive if you were smart and quiet and invisible.
I knew what I needed to do to survive.
Here, I don’t know anything.
I don’t know who Nicky really is. I don’t know what he’s done, what he’s capable of. I don’t know if the boy I loved ever really existed, or if he was just a mask worn by someone who was always going to become a killer.
The apartment is too quiet. In Brixton, there was always noise, men talking, arguing, crying in the dark.
Guards walking their rounds. The constant hum of fluorescent lights that never went out.
Here, the silence is oppressive, broken only by the distant sound of traffic and my own ragged breathing.
I force myself to stand, my legs unsteady beneath me. I need to move. Need to do something with my hands, my body, before the panic takes over completely.
I walk through the apartment like I’m seeing it for the first time. The sleek kitchen, with its marble countertops and expensive appliances. The living room with its cream-colored sofa and massive television. The dining table that could seat six but has only ever been used by two.
Everything is perfect. Everything is clean. Everything is paid for with other people’s blood.
In the bathroom, I catch sight of myself in the mirror and barely recognize the person staring back. Pale, hollow-eyed, wearing clothes that don’t belong to me in a life I don’t understand. My hair is too long, hanging in my face like I’m trying to hide from the world. Maybe I am.
I look like a ghost. Like someone who died five years ago and just hasn’t figured it out yet.
The shower still smells like Nicky, that soap he has always used, sandalwood and something else I can’t name. I used to love that smell. When I told him he smelled like home, I meant it. Now it just makes me feel sick.
How many people has he killed? How many families were destroyed so he could buy Italian marble and German appliances and a car that costs more than most people earn in a year?
How many times did he come home to this perfect apartment, wash blood off his hands, and think about me locked in my cell?
The thought makes me double over, retching into the pristine white toilet. Nothing comes up but bile and the taste of betrayal.
When the heaving stops, I sit on the bathroom floor with my back against the wall. The tiles are cold through my clothes, grounding me in a way that feels almost like punishment. Good. I deserve to be uncomfortable. I deserve to feel small and lost and broken.
Pretty boy who killed that girl.
That’s what I am to the world. That’s what I’ll always be. The stupid kid who got drunk and drove a car into a tree, who took an innocent life because he was young and reckless and thought he was invincible, even in the rain with a dodgy tyre.
Except...
The memory comes without warning, sharp and brutal as a knife between the ribs.
I’m eighteen again, stumbling out of the pub with Sam and Olivia, the three of us laughing about something I can’t remember now.
Amy had to work late at her weekend job at the cinema.
Saving money for university. We were supposed to pick her up at eleven.
Sam was behind the wheel initially. Of course he was. it was his car, his license, his responsibility. But then Amy called, crying, and everything changed.
“I know you’ll be here soon, but I have to tell you now because I’m freaking out. I just…”
He snatched the phone off speaker and held it between his ear and shoulder. I watched as his face turned pale.
“I’ll be there soon, baby,” he said, and then he dropped the phone onto the center console.
“She’s pregnant,” Sam had said, his face white in the glow of the dashboard. “Fuck, Liam, she’s pregnant and her mum’s going to kill me. Kill us both.”
Olivia had been in the front passenger seat, trying to comfort him, telling him it would be okay. She was always the reasonable one, the one who could fix things. Even drunk, she was trying to take care of everyone else.
Then came the squeal of rubber on wet tarmac. The jolt. The shattering of glass. The world went dark for a moment, and I don’t think I ever did fully find my way back to the light.
“I can’t get arrested,” Sam had said, his hands shaking on the steering wheel as steam hissed from the mangled remains of the engine. “If I lose my license, I lose my job. If I lose my job, I can’t support her. I can’t support the baby.”
And Olivia... God, Olivia had seemed fine. Shaken up but alert, talking, moving. When the car hit the tree, she’d been conscious. She’d been asking if everyone was okay.
It was only later, at the hospital, that the internal bleeding became apparent. By then, the story was already set in stone. By then, I was already the driver.
I’d made that choice in the space of a heartbeat, climbing over the center console while Sam scrambled into the back seat. A stupid, impulsive decision born of loyalty and love and the na?ve belief that I could handle whatever consequences came. Because I was the brave, tough, confident one.
I thought I was being noble. I thought I was saving Sam’s future, protecting Amy and their unborn child. I thought the worst that could happen was a fine, maybe a suspended sentence.
I never imagined Olivia would die.
I never imagined five years in Brixton.
I never imagined losing everything, my freedom, my sanity, my sense of self. And Nicky.
Especially Nicky.
The irony cuts deeper than any blade. I sacrificed myself to protect someone I cared about, and it destroyed my life. Nicky sacrificed others to protect our future, and it destroyed his soul.
We’re both monsters, just different kinds.
The tears come then, hot and silent, running down my cheeks like acid. I don’t try to stop them. In prison, crying was dangerous, a sign of weakness that could get you hurt or worse. But here, alone in this blood-bought bathroom, I let myself fall apart completely.
I cry for Olivia, whose death I couldn’t prevent no matter whose hands were on the wheel. I cry for Sam and Amy, who got their happy ending while I rotted in a cell. I cry for the boy I used to be, confident and cocky and full of dreams that seem impossibly na?ve now.
And I cry for Nicky, for the man he’s become and the boy he used to be. For the future we planned together and the present we can never escape.
When the tears finally stop, I’m empty. Hollowed out. A shell of a person sitting on a bathroom floor in an apartment bought with crime and violence, trying to figure out how to keep breathing.
I could leave. The thought comes suddenly, sharp with possibility. Nicky gave me a key. I could pack what little I have, walk out that door, and never look back. Find a hostel somewhere, maybe get on benefits, try to build some kind of life away from all this.
But even as I think it, I know it’s impossible.
I have nowhere to go. No friends left, they would have moved on while I was inside, got jobs and partners and lives that don’t include space for an ex-convict with more trauma than sense.
No family worth speaking of, my evil stepmother never liked me, and Dad made it clear I was dead to him the moment the verdict came down.
More than that, I can barely handle a trip to the park without falling apart.
How would I manage finding a place to live, dealing with landlords and benefit offices and all the bureaucracy of normal life?
How would I explain the gaps in my resume, the prison tattoo on my ribs, the way I flinch at sudden noises?
The world outside is too big, too loud, too full of people who look at me and see exactly what I am, a killer, a criminal, a broken thing that doesn’t belong in polite society.
At least here, with Nicky, I’m wanted. Maybe not for the right reasons. Maybe not by the person I thought he was. But wanted nonetheless.
And despite everything, despite the lies, the violence, the way my hands shake when I think about what he’s done…
I still love him. The boy who shared his lunch with me when I forgot mine.
The teenager who held me when I cried about my dad being a dick.
The young man who got drunk with me under the streetlights and promised we’d always be friends.
That person was real once. Maybe he still exists somewhere underneath all the blood and brutality. Maybe if I stay, if I’m patient, I can find him again.
Or maybe I’m just a fool, clinging to a ghost because the alternative is facing the world alone.
I drag myself up from the bathroom floor, my joints aching like I’m twice my age. The apartment feels different now, not like a home, but not quite like a prison either. Something in between, maybe. A way station for broken people trying to figure out how to live with the weight of their choices.
In the kitchen, I make tea with hands that barely shake at all. It’s progress, I suppose. Small victories.
I sit at the dining table that seats six, and drink my tea in the silence, watching the city lights twinkle through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Somewhere out there, Nicky is doing things I don’t want to imagine.
Somewhere out there, Sam and Amy are probably tucked up in bed with their child, the child I helped them keep by taking the fall.
And here I am, suspended between my past and my future, trying to decide whether love is worth the price of staying with someone whose hands are stained with blood.
The tea grows cold in my cup as I sit there, waiting for dawn. Waiting for Nicky to come home. Waiting to see if I’ll have the courage to stay or the strength to go.
Outside, the city hums with life I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to join. Inside, the silence stretches on, broken only by the sound of my own breathing and the tick of an expensive clock marking time I’ll never get back.
I think about freedom, about what it costs and whether it’s worth the price. I think about choices made in the dark and consequences that stretch across years like shadows.
And I wait.
Because waiting is the only thing I know how to do anymore.