Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Liam
I’m back in my own bed for the first time in what feels like weeks.
The sheets smell like fabric softener instead of sandalwood and Nicky’s particular scent that I’ve grown addicted to.
The mattress feels too hard, too cold, too empty.
Everything about this room feels foreign now, like I’m a guest in someone else’s space instead of lying in what’s supposed to be my sanctuary.
But I can’t go back to Nicky’s room. Not after what happened. Not after what I almost made him do.
I stare at the ceiling and listen to the sounds of him moving around the apartment. Footsteps in the kitchen, the clink of a glass, the soft thud of cabinet doors closing. Normal sounds from a normal evening, except nothing about this feels normal anymore.
The silence between us is deafening. We haven’t spoken since I emerged from the bathroom to find him gone, the front door unlocked like an accusation.
When he came back an hour later, he looked at me with something I’d never seen before.
Not anger, not disappointment, but horror.
Like he was seeing me clearly for the first time and didn’t like what he found.
Or maybe like he was seeing himself clearly and was appalled by the reflection.
I pull the comforter over my head, trying to block out the world, but it doesn’t help. I can’t escape the crushing weight of knowing that I’ve destroyed the one good thing in my life through my own desperation and stupidity.
I thought I knew what I wanted. Thought I had it all figured out. Nicky’s insistence that we take things slow had seemed so sweet, so endearing, but also unnecessary. I was ready, wasn’t I? I wanted him to touch me, to claim me, to make me his in every way that mattered.
But the moment he barely touched me, just pinned me against the wall in a moment of panic and fear, I fell apart completely. Became something pathetic and broken, begging for things I didn’t really understand, pushing him toward a line neither of us should have crossed.
What does that say about me? About my chances of ever being normal, ever being the kind of person who can have a healthy relationship with someone I love?
The pills seemed like such a simple solution in that moment. Not a cry for help, not manipulation, just... an end to the constant noise in my head. An end to being the person who destroys everything good through the sheer force of being too damaged to deserve love.
But I didn’t think about what it would do to Nicky. Didn’t consider how finding me with those pills would affect him, how it would feel like another abandonment, another betrayal of his trust.
I’m selfish. That’s what this comes down to. I’m so consumed by my own pain that I can’t see past it to the damage I’m causing to the people who try to help me.
The thought of Nicky’s face when he kicked down that bathroom door, the terror, the desperation, the way his hands shook as he forced me to throw up the pills I’d swallowed, makes my stomach clench with shame.
He saved my life today. Again. And instead of being grateful, instead of recognizing the gift he was trying to give me, I twisted it into something ugly and demanding.
Make me yours. Make me feel...
What was I even asking for? Make me feel better? Make me feel something? Make me feel safe? Make me feel like I matter?
All of the above, probably. All the things that can’t be fixed with sex or ownership or any of the twisted solutions my broken mind conjures up when the pain gets too overwhelming.
I want to make love to Nicky. God, I want that so badly it’s like a physical ache in my chest. I want to know what it feels like to be touched with gentleness instead of violence, to be desired instead of used, to give myself to someone because I choose to instead of because I have no other option.
But what if I can’t? What if I’m even more broken than I realized? What if the moment things get intimate, really intimate, I fall apart the way I did tonight?
What if prison didn’t just steal years of my life, but stole my ability to be physically close to another person without trauma taking over?
The thought terrifies me more than death, more than going back to Brixton, more than any of the nightmares that usually haunt my sleep.
Because if I can’t be intimate with Nicky, if I can’t give him that part of myself, can’t share that connection with him, then what am I to him? A charity case? A broken thing he’s too kind to abandon?
He says he loves me, and I believe him. But love without the possibility of a real relationship, without the hope of building something whole together... that’s not love. That’s pity dressed up in prettier clothes.
The tears come suddenly, silently, soaking into my pillow as I press my face into the fabric to muffle any sound. I don’t want Nicky to hear me crying. Don’t want to give him another reason to worry, another problem to solve, another burden to carry.
I’ve put him through enough.
The man who knocked Wayne unconscious without hesitation, who had him punished and dealt with like it was nothing, who commands respect and fear from dangerous people… that man almost broke tonight because of me. Because I pushed him past his limits, made him believe he had to hurt me to save me.
Made him think, for just a moment, that he was no better than the people who hurt me in prison.
That’s what haunts me most. Not what almost happened, but the look on his face when he realized what he’d almost done. The way he recoiled from me like I was contaminated, like touching me had infected him with something poisonous.
Maybe it has. Maybe that’s what I do to people. Slowly poison them with my damage until they become twisted versions of themselves, until the love they feel for me turns into something darker and more desperate.
Maybe the kindest thing I could do is leave. Pack what little I have and disappear before I destroy him completely. Let him find someone whole, someone who can love him back without dragging him into the darkness.
But even as I think it, I know I’m too selfish to follow through. Too weak to give up the one person who makes me feel human, even if being human means being broken.
I cry myself to sleep in a bed that smells like nothing, dreaming of sandalwood and safety and all the things I’ve lost through my own inability to be anything other than what prison made me.
Morning comes gray and unwelcome through the bedroom window. I lie in bed longer than I should, listening to Nicky moving around the apartment, putting off the moment when I’ll have to face him and pretend that everything is normal.
But eventually, the need for tea and the basic requirements of being alive force me out of bed and into yesterday’s clothes. My reflection in the mirror looks exactly like what I am. Someone who cried himself to sleep and woke up with no better understanding of how to fix the mess he’s made.
The kitchen smells of coffee, tea and toast, blessedly normal scents that almost mask the underlying tension that seems to permeate every corner of the apartment now.
Nicky is standing at the counter with his back to me, shoulders rigid with the kind of careful control that means he’s working hard to appear calm.
“Morning,” I say quietly, testing the waters.
“Morning.” He doesn’t turn around, but his voice is carefully neutral. Polite. The tone you’d use with a stranger whose mental state you weren’t sure about.
There’s a cup of tea waiting for me on the counter, made exactly the way I like it. The small kindness hits me harder than any harsh words could have.
I take my tea and sit at the kitchen table, watching him butter toast with mechanical precision.
We’re both pretending this is normal, that we haven’t crossed lines that can’t be uncrossed, that the broken bathroom door hanging askew on its hinges isn’t a constant reminder of how badly things went wrong.
The door is like a wound in the apartment’s carefully maintained perfection.
Splintered wood and damaged frame, a violation of the safe space we were trying to build together.
Every time I glance toward the hallway, I see it, and every time I see it, I’m reminded of the sound it made when Nicky kicked it down, the crack of wood giving way under desperate force.
He was that desperate to save me. That terrified of losing me.
And I repaid him by trying to manipulate him into something that would have destroyed us both.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally, because the silence is suffocating and someone has to break it.
He stills, butter knife frozen halfway to the toast. “For what?”
The question catches me off guard. For what? Where do I even start?
“For last night. For the pills. For...” I struggle to find words for the thing that’s sitting between us like a live grenade. “For what I asked you to do. For putting you in that position.”
“You were having a breakdown,” he says carefully, still not looking at me. “People don’t think clearly during breakdowns.”
It’s generous of him to frame it that way, but we both know it’s not the whole truth.
Yes, I was falling apart, but I also knew exactly what I was asking for.
I wanted him to hurt me, to use me, to do all the things that would confirm what Wayne and prison and five years of hell had taught me about what I was worth.
“I thought it would help,” I admit. “I thought if you... if we... it would make everything else stop mattering.”
He finally turns to look at me, and his expression is unreadable. “And now?”
“Now I don’t know anything.” The admission tastes like ash. “I thought I was ready for things I’m clearly not ready for. I thought I understood what I wanted, but I don’t think I understand anything.”
The toast sits forgotten on the counter between us, growing cold while we have this conversation that feels like defusing a bomb. One wrong word and everything explodes.
“Liam,” he says, and his voice is gentler now, more like the man who kissed me two nights ago. “What happened last night... that wasn’t your fault. You were hurting, and you asked for something that seemed like it would make the hurt stop. That’s human. That’s understandable.”
“But it’s not what you wanted.”
“No,” he says honestly. “It’s not. And if I’d done what you asked for, it would have destroyed both of us.”
The words hang between us like a confession. He’s admitting that he wanted to do it, at least in that moment. That some part of him was tempted by the idea of claiming me the way I begged him to.
And he’s admitting that he knows it would have been wrong.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper. “I don’t know how to be in a relationship without breaking everything.”
“Neither do I,” he says, and the admission surprises me. “I don’t know how to love someone as damaged as you are without becoming damaged myself. I don’t know how to protect you without controlling you, or how to give you what you need without giving you what you think you want.”
We stare at each other across the kitchen, two people who love each other desperately and have no idea how to do it safely.
The broken bathroom door looms in my peripheral vision, a reminder of how quickly everything can fall apart. How easily love can become something ugly when filtered through trauma and desperation and the basic human need to make pain stop at any cost.
“So where does that leave us?” I ask.
Nicky picks up his coffee, takes a sip, sets it down again. The simple actions seem to take enormous effort.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “But I know I’m not giving up on us. Even if I don’t know how to fix this, even if we both keep making mistakes, I’m not walking away.”
It’s not a declaration of undying love. It’s not a promise that everything will be okay. It’s just a commitment to keep trying, keep fighting, keep showing up even when showing up feels impossible.
Maybe that’s what love actually is. Not the grand gestures or perfect moments, but the stubborn refusal to quit even when quitting would be easier.
I look at the broken door, at Nicky’s tired eyes, at the drinks growing cold in both our cups. All evidence of how far we have to go, how much work it will take to build something healthy from the wreckage of our individual damage.
But he’s still here. Still making me tea the way I like it, still sitting at this table instead of running away from the mess I’ve made of both our lives.
Still choosing me, even when choosing me means choosing to stay in the hard work of healing.
“I’m not giving up either,” I tell him, and mean it.
It’s not much. But it’s a start.