Chapter 10
Nadya
THE WORST PART WASN’T writing it all down.
It was carrying the envelope through Brooklyn; every word inside like a splinter I could feel under my skin.
I kept it in my bag, then clutched it to my ribs, then shoved it back in the bag, then pulled it out again.
The manila edge went soft at the corners from my sweaty hands.
The coffee shop was smaller than I remembered. Too many tables, all jammed with people, so you had to squeeze between laptop zombies and stroller-wielding parents just to reach the back. It smelled like scorched espresso and burnt toast, which fit my mood perfectly.
Nick sat at a corner table with a view of both the entrance and the register.
He wore jeans and a gray crewneck but still looked like someone who could take down a terrorist cell with a ballpoint pen and a bad mood.
His hands dwarfed the paper cup he was holding as he watched me approach, but not in the way that made me self-conscious.
Maybe it had less to do with the way he looked at me and more to do with this strange melty feeling I got every time I saw him.
Having his undivided attention did things to me.
Would he still look at me this way after reading everything?
I thought about walking back out, but he had already seen me, so I’d only look like a coward if I tried to turn around now. So, I sat, dumped my bag on the chair next to me, and immediately realized I hadn’t ordered anything.
“I’ll go get—” I started.
“Already got you something,” Nick said, and slid a cup across the table. “It’s got, uh, two sugars and a shot of vanilla. Or so I instructed the guy at the counter.”
I blinked. “How did you know that’s my order?”
He shrugged. “I might’ve stalked you on social media.” He delivered the line with a perfectly straight face, but I saw the smirk in his eyes.
“Stalker,” I said, but the butterflies took flight at the idea that he wanted to know these things about me.
Nick nodded at the envelope, which I’d subconsciously placed between us like a loaded gun.
“So,” he said, “that the big reveal?”
“Yeah.” My voice was high and thin. Fuck.
I had felt so strong when I had called him and told him I wrote everything down, but now that he was about to read it, I wanted to snatch my written testimony back up and run.
He didn’t reach for it. “You want to do this here?”
Where else? The idea of a “private” place made my stomach do a reverse somersault. Here, in public, I had all these people to hide behind. I had to act normal and not become a neurotic mess. In private, I just might fall apart.
“Here’s fine.” Even though here or literally anywhere else wasn’t fine. Nothing about sharing what I had written was fine.
He nodded. “Okay.” Then he picked up the envelope but didn’t open it right away, just turned it over in his hands like he was checking for booby traps.
“Sorry if it’s... weird,” I said. “I tried to keep it, you know, factual.”
“You did fine,” he said, before he’d even looked at it. “I appreciate you writing this.”
God. He was making this so much worse by being decent about it.
He opened the clasp, slid out the papers—ten pages, maybe? I’d lost count after the third panic attack. He set the envelope aside and started reading.
I tried not to watch him, but I couldn’t help it.
I tracked every flick of his gaze, every muscle tick in his jaw.
At first he read fast, flipping through details like they were addresses or names.
But about halfway down the first page, he slowed.
I could see the shift. The calm and cool of “just the facts” fell away, replaced with a low-grade tension that made the lines around his mouth deeper, harsher.
I tried to drink the coffee—it tasted like vanilla and battery acid—but my hands weren’t steady enough to actually bring it to my lips without sloshing it, so I set it down.
Realistically, I knew the coffee was probably great. The battery acid came from inside me, as it often did when old ghosts popped their heads up. I’d need something stronger to silence them, but it would have to wait.
I waited for him to make a sound—a cough, a grunt, a curse—but he didn’t. Not once.
Finally, fucking finally, he finished the last page, then stacked the papers neatly, laid them flat on the table, and put both hands on either side.
He didn’t look at me right away. Instead, he stared at the papers, then at the ceiling, then let his eyes close for a second.
He looked older, more tired than when I’d walked in.
“That’s a lot.” He exhaled a long breath.
“Sorry?”
He shook his head, like he wanted to shake the word out of the air. “No. You did good. Most people don’t remember this much detail or write it down this clearly.”
He didn’t say “victims,” but I could hear it, anyway.
Nick drummed his fingers on the table, then looked at me. “I’m not gonna ask you to do anything you don’t want to. But there’s one thing I need, and you can say no.”
My shoulders hiked up. “What?”
He hesitated. Not like he was afraid to ask— more like he wanted to get the wording perfect. “Do you remember where the house was? The one he took you to. The, uh... the one with the blue door.”
A tiny spider ran up my spine. I had the urge to lie; to say I remembered nothing. But Nick had just read my entire soul and hadn’t flinched. I owed him the truth. No, I owed myself and every girl like me the truth.
I nodded, but my throat locked. “I don’t know if I can go back. Or, like, even get close to it. I can’t... Cars are...” Oh, hell, I was getting too worked up. I needed to calm the fuck down and just say it like a normal person. “I don’t like cars. Riding in them, I mean.”
“Okay. We don’t have to go by car. You’re good with public transportation, bikes, scooters, literally anything else on wheels?”
I nodded. “Everything else is fine.”
“Okay, then I can figure something out. Worse case, we’ll try finding it on a satellite.” He leaned in, elbows on the table, voice low. “Can I ask you a question? About cars?”
I tried to laugh, but it was brittle. My nerves were so shot that I couldn’t even laugh it off, the way I usually did.
“My biological parents didn’t have a car.
We walked or rode the bus everywhere in Ukraine.
My first car ride was the one that took me and my sisters from the orphanage to the airport.
Then, once we were adopted and living in the US, all the ‘special trips’ with George started, and—” I gestured at the stack of papers in front of Nick, “You know how those road trips ended.”
Nick’s jaw ticked, but his voice stayed calm. “That makes sense. When you grow up associating something with danger, it sticks.”
I nodded, heat prickling my ears. “I know it’s stupid, but that’s why I live in Brooklyn. The subway runs really well here.”
“It’s not stupid,” he said, and his tone was so flat and factual that I almost believed it. “It’s perfectly normal. We all have different aversions.”
He didn’t say “trauma” or “trigger,” and I was grateful for that. I hated the therapy-speak. It made everything sound like it came from a pamphlet.
“Yeah, we all have our own cockroaches in our heads,” I mumbled.
“Cockroaches in our heads?” He smirked. “Now, I’m concerned.”
“It’s just a figure of speech. Cockroaches are nasty pests that can survive a nuclear holocaust. All the insecurities, fears, and stuff like that are just as nasty and just as hard to kill.”
“That sounds like an accurate description,” Nick agreed. He slid the papers back into the envelope. “You want me to hold on to this? Or do you need to keep it for your therapist?”
I smiled, the first real one of the morning. “Are you kidding? I’m not traumatizing unsuspecting therapists with my bag of crazy.”
The smile he returned didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll keep it safe.”
A silence stretched between us. Not the bad kind, but not quite comfortable, either.
The clatter of the espresso machine brought me back to the coffee shop, and I noticed the table next to us was now occupied by a couple of women with identical strollers.
They looked at us, or maybe at Nick, and I got the sense they thought we were on the world’s worst date.
Nick must’ve picked up on it, too, because he said, “You want to walk?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little too fast.
Nick stood and let me go ahead. Except, I almost forgot my bag. Classic. He grabbed it, handed it to me, and we walked out together.
Outside, the air was warm and alive with the smell of rain and cigarettes. Fall wasn’t here quite yet but today hinted at its approach. I walked with my hands jammed in my pockets, and Nick kept at my side.
“Where to?” he asked.
I shrugged. “There’s a playground two blocks over. It’s mostly abandoned this early in the morning. If you want to look at the map and decide where we need to go and how we’ll get there, we can do it there.”
“Perfect,” he said.
We walked in silence until we reached the edge of the playground where I perched on the cold plastic of a swing. Nick sat on the next one over and pulled out his phone.
“Green Garden was the sign I always saw a few minutes before we’d get to the house,” I recalled. “Don’t know what state it was since we lived close to two state borders.”
It took Nick five minutes to track down the correct town. The neighborhood was harder since so much had changed, and satellite didn't provide the same exact view. That was the part we’d have to do in person.
“Looks like there’s a train going to a neighboring city every day. You think you can take a few days off to go with me?” Nick asked.
I nodded, knowing Lara would give me a vacation, especially if I told her why I needed it. My boss was a good friend who knew what I had survived, even if it was in broad strokes. “Yeah, I just have to let my boss know a few days ahead of time so she can adjust her own schedule.”
“Sounds good. I’ll look for a place we can stay that’s close enough,” Nick promised.
His steady presence, his reaction to my story, made me think this would all go smoothly. The panic at the idea of going back there didn’t even try to set in. But maybe it should’ve.