Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Nicky
Ican’t sleep.
It’s half-past two in the morning, and I’ve been lying here staring at the ceiling for hours, my mind replaying the same horrible sequence over and over like a broken record.
Liam gripping those railings. The wind whipping his hair across his face as he stared down at the Thames.
The way his knuckles went white against the metal, like he was holding on to the only thing standing between him and the water below.
Except he wasn’t holding on. He was letting go.
My chest tightens with the memory, that sick, falling sensation of watching someone you love contemplate stepping off the edge of the world.
I’ve seen death before, I’ve caused it. But nothing prepared me for the particular horror of watching Liam’s face as he calculated whether his life was worth continuing.
Thank God for whatever instinct made me shift to command mode. Thank God he still responds to authority the way prison taught him to. Thank God I could pull him back from whatever dark place his mind had dragged him to.
But what happens next time? Because there will be a next time. I’m not na?ve enough to think this was a one-off incident. The guilt he carries isn’t going anywhere.
How many more bridges will we have to walk away from?
Beside me, Liam is curled into a tight ball, his back pressed against my side. He’s been asleep for maybe an hour, exhausted by the emotional toll of the day, but it’s not peaceful sleep. Even unconscious, his body is tense, coiled like a spring waiting to snap.
I want to touch him, smooth the furrow between his brows, run my fingers through his hair the way I used to when we were teenagers and he’d fall asleep watching films at my house. But I’m afraid of waking him. Afraid of triggering whatever nightmares are already lurking behind his closed eyelids.
Instead, I lie here in the dark and try not to think about how close I came to losing him today.
Try not to imagine what would have happened if I’d been a few seconds slower, a few words less convincing.
Try not to picture myself standing alone on that bridge, watching the Thames carry away the only person I’ve ever truly loved.
The thought makes my stomach turn. I press my palm against my chest, feeling my heart hammering beneath my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
How do you love someone who’s constantly balanced on the knife’s edge between survival and surrender? How do you build a life with someone when you’re never sure if they’ll still be there tomorrow?
Liam shifts beside me, and the small movement pulls me from my spiral of anxiety. For a moment, I think he might be waking up naturally, maybe ready to talk about what happened or just needing comfort in the dark.
But then he makes a sound, low and choked and full of terror, and I realize this isn’t waking up at all.
“No,” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep and fear. “Please, no. I don’t... I can’t...”
His whole body jerks, muscles seizing like he’s been electrocuted. His hands fly up to his face, fingers clawing at something I can’t see, and he lets out a sound that’s half sob, half scream.
I fumble for the lamp on the bedside table and switch it on. Soft golden light floods the bedroom. But Liam is still lost in the shadows.
“Liam.” I keep my voice low, gentle, the way you’d speak to a frightened animal. “Hey, you’re dreaming. You’re safe.”
But he doesn’t hear me. He’s somewhere else entirely, lost in whatever hell his sleeping mind has conjured. His legs kick out violently, nearly catching me in the ribs, and his breathing becomes rapid and shallow.
“Stop,” he gasps. “Please stop. It hurts. It hurts.”
The words hit me like ice water. This isn’t about the car accident or Olivia or the bridge. This is about prison. About things that happened to him in that place, things he’s never told me about but that I can see in the way he flinches when strangers get too close.
“Liam, wake up.” I reach for his shoulder, but the moment my fingers make contact, he explodes into motion.
His fist swings toward my face in a wild arc. I duck instinctively, catching his wrist before he can connect, but he’s thrashing now, fighting against me with desperate strength.
“Get off me!” he screams, his voice raw and broken. “Get the fuck off me!”
I grab his other wrist, pinning both his hands above his head to stop him from hurting himself, or me. He bucks beneath me, trying to throw me off, his eyes wide and wild in the darkness.
“Liam!” I say his name sharply, putting every ounce of authority I possess into the single word. “Wake up. Now.”
His eyes snap into focus, pupils dilated with terror as he stares up at me. For a moment, he doesn’t recognize me. I can see it in his face, the way he’s cataloging threats, trying to figure out who’s pinning him down and what they want to do to him.
Then awareness crashes back, and he goes completely still.
“Nicky?” His voice is small, confused, like a child waking from a nightmare.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I release his wrists slowly, watching for any sign that he might start fighting again. “You were having a bad dream.”
Slowly, carefully, I release him. But I don’t go far. I stay hovering over him as if somehow it helps.
He lies there panting, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool night air. His hands flutter down to his face, covering his eyes as if he can hide from whatever he just relived.
“I can’t stand it, Nicky,” he whispers, and the break in his voice nearly destroys me. “I can’t do this anymore. The nightmares, the shame, the way my own mind tortures me every time I close my eyes. I can’t...”
He trails off, but I can hear what he’s not saying. I can’t keep living like this. I can’t keep fighting. I can’t keep pretending that love and therapy and all the good intentions in the world are going to fix what’s broken inside me.
“Claim me,” he says suddenly, his hands dropping from his face to meet my eyes in the darkness. “Make it stop. Please, Nicky. I need... I need to belong to someone who won’t hurt me. I need to feel safe.”
His breath shudders. “If I’m yours, no one else will even dare to try and hurt me.”
The desperation in his voice breaks something inside me. All my careful reasoning, all my determination to do this the right way, the healthy way, crumbles under the weight of his pain.
Because he’s right, isn’t he? The conventional approaches aren’t working. Therapy and medication and all the professional wisdom in the world haven’t stopped the nightmares, the shame, or the guilt or the way he looks at bridges like they’re offering salvation.
Maybe what he needs isn’t what the textbooks say he should need. Maybe what he needs is exactly what he’s asking for. To feel owned, protected, claimed by someone who loves him enough to fight the entire world to keep him safe.
I lean down and kiss him.
It’s not gentle or careful or any of the things I planned our first kiss would be. It’s desperate and fierce and full of five years of wanting, and fear and the terrible relief of finally, finally being allowed to love him the way I’ve always wanted to.
His lips are soft beneath mine, warm and slightly chapped from the winter air. He tastes like toothpaste and something uniquely him, something I want to memorize and keep forever. For a moment, he’s completely still, shocked into immobility.
Then he kisses me back.
It’s like a dam bursting. All the careful distance we’ve maintained, all the walls we’ve built to protect each other, come crashing down in an instant. His hands fist in my tee shirt, pulling me closer, and I can feel the way his whole body melts beneath me, tension draining away like water.
This is what he needed. Not therapy or medication or careful professional boundaries. He needed to be claimed, owned, possessed by someone who loves him enough to take responsibility for keeping the demons at bay.
When I finally pull away, we’re both breathing hard. I can see my own shock reflected in his wide blue eyes, the way he’s staring at me like he can’t quite believe what just happened.
“Nicky,” he whispers, and my name sounds different in his mouth now. Softer. More intimate. Like something precious he’s been saving.
“I know,” I say, though I’m not sure what I’m acknowledging. That everything has changed? That we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross? That the kiss was everything I dreamed it would be and nothing like I expected all at once?
The silence stretches between us, heavy with possibility and terror and the weight of a lifetime of unspoken feelings finally given voice. I can feel his heart beating against my chest, rapid and fluttering like a bird’s wings.
“Was that...” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in the golden light of the lamp. “Was that because you felt sorry for me?”
The question cuts through me like a knife. “No. God, no. That was because I’ve been wanting to do it since we were eighteen years old and too stupid to know what we were feeling.”
His eyes search my face, looking for the lie, the moment when I’ll admit this was just pity disguised as passion. But all he finds is truth. Raw and honest and completely overwhelming.
“I love you,” I tell him, and the words feel different now. Heavier. More real. “Because you’re you. Because you make me laugh and you worry about everyone except yourself and you’re the bravest person I know even when you’re falling apart.”
Tears spill down his cheeks, but they’re not the desperate, anguished tears from earlier. These are something else. Relief, maybe. Or the overwhelming emotion of finally being seen clearly by someone who matters.
“I love you too,” he whispers. “I’ve always loved you.”
The admission settles between us like a benediction. All those years of wondering, of hoping, of carefully not asking the questions we were too afraid to hear answered. All those years of loving each other from a distance, pretending friendship was enough when we both knew it could never be enough.
A few days ago we agreed to work toward this. Now, all of a sudden, it is here. Not someday. Not one day. Today.
“What happens now?” he asks.
It’s a simple question with an impossibly complex answer.
What happens now that we’ve fully admitted what we are to each other?
What happens now that I’ve kissed him? What happens now that we’ve stepped off the cliff of friendship into something deeper and more dangerous and more necessary than breathing?
“Now,” I say, settling beside him and pulling him against my chest, “We figure it out together. One day at a time, one night at a time.”
“And if I have more nightmares? More bad days? More moments on bridges?”
“Then I’ll be there. Every time. For as long as it takes.”
He burrows closer, pressing his face against my neck, and I can feel the exact moment when his body finally, truly relaxes. Like he’s been holding his breath for five years and can finally exhale.
“The nightmares are quieter when you’re holding me,” he murmurs against my skin.
“Then I’ll hold you every night.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
And as I lie there in the darkness, feeling his breathing slow and deepen as he drifts back to sleep, I know that something fundamental has shifted between us. We’re not just friends anymore, not just two broken people trying to heal in parallel.
We’re something new. Something that doesn’t have a name yet but feels like coming home after a very long journey.
It’s terrifying and exhilarating and completely overwhelming all at once.
As I reach for the lamp, carefully, so I don’t jostle him, I realize I’m not afraid of the future. Whatever comes next, be it nightmares or good days, bridges or coffee shops, ghosts from the past or hope for tomorrow… we’ll face it together.
And maybe, just maybe, that will be enough.