Chapter 44 #2
“Then DJ joined the team, and she was so much like Nora,” Nico says.
“I was expecting her to get the hell out of there when she found out what I did, but when I worked up the courage to tell her who I was, all she did was give me this big…
hug? Bonnie recognized me from the news.
Benji figured it out immediately, but never approached me about it.
They all treated me like a person. Slowly, they became my family, and for the first time since Allison died, I felt like maybe I could have something good in my life again.
“I’d still get urges even after Billy was contained, but I knew what they were, so I learned how to ignore them,” Nico says.
“I still got the dreams, but this time, they were memories, and the guilt never went away. I’d run until I threw up or my legs gave out.
Until I was too exhausted to think about anything except putting one foot in front of the other.
I couldn’t… be around women. DJ convinced me to go out with her once.
To some club she likes to go dancing at.
I let her drag me there, but when this girl started talking to me, when she put her hand on my arm…
I panicked. Had to leave DJ there and run all the way home.
I accepted that some things would be off the table for me forever.
I didn’t deserve them, after all the pain I caused. ”
I’m aching with this need to wrap my arms around him and get rid of this ugly thing he’s been carrying around for all these years. I wish someone were there to protect him back then. I want so badly to protect him now.
Nico lets out a thin laugh. “That night you punched me, I was so shocked. I’m used to people being afraid of me.
Nobody on the team would ever admit it to my face, and I know they care about me, but even they’ve never dared so much as raise their voice at me—except when Griffin punched me a few days ago, I guess.
I think a part of them has always worried about what I’d do.
If, under the right pressure, I could go back to how I was when Billy was in control.
But you looked at me with no fear. I wasn’t expecting you to show up the next day, but Donny was sure you would.
And then you demanded answers from me. Everyone else on the team could sense something was wrong when they met me, but you stood in that parking lot, talking with me like I was normal.
I hadn’t felt normal in years. I thought I’d never see you again, so I let myself enjoy those few minutes.
“When Donny offered you the job, I panicked,” he continues.
“I knew if you came to live in the house, you’d figure out who I am, but more importantly, I was terrified of what I could do to you.
Yes, I’d tested things with Donny. But I hadn’t felt the things I did when talking to you since…
well, since high school. I got tongue-tied when I was around you.
My God, Eden, you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. ”
My insides feel like they’re filling with champagne, all bubbly and golden and impossibly light. I want to tell him how beautiful he is, but his words keep tumbling out.
“I was so scared of what that might trigger in me,” he says.
“You looked like the girls Billy made me kill.
Billy did that on purpose—targeted girls I was attracted to, to mess with my head, to make me think I was culpable.
He took just as much pleasure in ruining my life as he did with the murders.
But it was done, and my head was fucked up.
I had to stop myself from wanting things I had no right to, because I knew what horrible things could happen if I lost control.
“I tried to push you away, but you made it so hard, always trying to get to know me and asking me all these questions. I’d see your face fall when I shut you down, and it would kill me, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I never sleep well, but with you in the house, it got so much worse.
I dreamed about your throat under my hands.
I’d wake up in a cold sweat, able to smell your shampoo so vividly it felt like you’d been in my room.
I was so fucking scared. The dreams felt so real, like memories of something that hadn’t happened yet.
I didn’t know if they were coming from me or from some leftover piece of Billy in my head.
“I was going to tell you who I was, but Donny begged me not to, afraid you might turn me in. I genuinely thought you’d be safer far away from me, so I kept trying to get you to leave, or convince Donny to fire you, but you wouldn’t go, and fuck, Eden, I want you so bad it scares me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you.
I’d lie awake at night thinking about what it would be like to touch you in ways I’ve never touched anyone.
In ways I’ve never been allowed to. In ways I hadn’t allowed myself to want.
I’d always thought I could never let myself get close to anyone, but you made me want to try.
You made me think that maybe I could be something other than a monster.
That I could find a way to tell you the truth and, somehow, you wouldn’t run screaming.
But I kept returning to the same question: would my feelings for you be the thing that made me finally snap? ”
I can hear him crying, these broken sobs that echo off the distant walls. My ribcage feels like it’s being crushed and pried open at the same time. How has he survived this? How is he still here?
“I confronted Billy,” Nico says. “Demanded answers about why he chose me all those years ago. I knew I shouldn’t engage with him, especially since I’d had this conversation with him before and it went nowhere, but I was so desperate for answers that I didn’t care.
Billy played me perfectly. I left that basement angrier than I’d ever been in my life, and that’s exactly what Billy wanted, because the second I was gone, he called for you.
I was pacing around the kitchen like a caged animal when I heard the door creak and realized, in my rage, I’d accidentally left it open.
By the time I got back to the vault, you were already there, and the terror I felt in that moment…
Jesus, Eden, there aren’t words. I thought I was going to watch Billy destroy another girl I cared about, and this time, it really would be my fault.
“I’d run for hours, trying to exhaust myself enough that I could fall asleep without dreaming, but it never worked.
I’d hear you singing and laughing with DJ, and all I could picture was squeezing your throat until the sound cut off.
I’d see you coming in from your morning training, your face all flushed, and imagine touching your body when it was cold and still.
I wasn’t sleeping. Wasn’t eating. Couldn’t focus on anything except this constant, overwhelming fear that I was going to hurt you the way I’d hurt those other girls.
It felt inevitable, like I was barreling down this tunnel at ninety miles per hour toward a solid wall at the end.
“It got so bad that Donny called me into his office,” Nico presses on.
“Said he knew I had feelings for you. I denied it. I lied right to his face because I was so ashamed of what I was feeling. Donny said the things Billy forced me to do don’t define who I am, but how could I believe him when I wasn’t sure how much the possession had changed me? ”
Nico breathes a long sigh.
“Then you and Griffin were attacked,” he says.
“The fear I felt was so consuming that it scared me almost as much as you being in danger did. All I could focus on was getting to you, and then I got the ectoplasm on me…” I hear him swallow.
“I’d been up for hours going over the case because throwing myself into work was the only way I could stop thinking about you.
I was barely holding myself back from going upstairs and finding you.
Then you walked into the kitchen. You weren’t even trying to hide what you were feeling.
It was written all over your face—everything you feel is always written all over your face, it’s so fucking cute.
I knew you only felt that way because of the ectoplasm, but I was so tired of being cruel to you.
So tired of pretending I didn’t care. You asked me if I wanted you, and seven years of control were gone.
“I’d never felt so many things at once,” he says.
“But then a memory broke through, and I wasn’t in the kitchen with you anymore.
I was—and I couldn’t—I tried to push through.
Didn’t want to let Billy take another thing away from me.
But then I saw it.” He’s talking faster now, the words pouring out of him.
“Blood. Just a smudge in your hairline. Griffin’s.
I knew he’d been punching things until his knuckles bled.
I knew then you’d gone after him. That he’d be worse at controlling himself than me.
” I can only barely see him shake his head, and a hot, suffocating feeling crawls up my neck.
“I couldn’t stay there. I was so angry—not at you, never at you—but at myself, for thinking I could have something normal.
And above all, I was jealous. I was so jealous of Griffin.
How he could touch you without worrying what his hands would do. ”
“Griffin and I kissed,” I admit, and I’m glad he can’t see my face in the dark because it has never felt so hot. “I stopped it because he wasn’t you.”
“Oh.” Nico just says that one word, but it’s loaded.
There’s no time to unpack it all before he keeps talking.