“Hey,” he says, sitting down across from me. “I heard about your accident. I’m really glad you’re okay.”
I nod in appreciation before reaching up and tucking a curl behind my ear. “Thanks. I should be good as new before Colin and I leave for college.”
With a smile, Kyle nods in Colin’s direction, who’s now watching us like a hawk. “Yeah, I heard about it. UNC-Chapel Hill, right? I’m excited for you.”
As nervous as I am to be in his presence, I don’t feel as uneasy as usual. The alcohol that was once a permanent smell that followed him everywhere he went last year has been replaced by a light, crisp cologne. His hair is combed, his smile is brighter and wider. He seems less haunted now. I’d like to think that my decision not to press charges against him had something to do with that. He’s almost the same Kyle he was before everything happened.
“Yeah, and I’ve been offered a full-time job at Vixen magazine. I’ll be a junior editor/creative consultant,” I tell him, although I don’t know why.
“That’s awesome, Nic. You’re going to do great. And congratulations on your engagement. The whole school’s been talking about it. The Grapevine has even started following you on Twitter and Facebook for updates. Who knew? All you had to do was get in a car accident to become popular.” The minute he says that, regret clouds his expression and he eyes me cautiously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just…you were popular, and then after what I did, you weren’t, and now you are again because you’re hurt and engaged, so I thought…” I raise my eyebrow at him. “I’m just going to stop talking now.”
“Good idea.”
He slides a note in front of me, and it’s sealed in an envelope with my name on it. I eye him cautiously, and he gives me a weak smile.
“I know you’d never let me sign your yearbook. Nor would you ever sign mine. I deserve that. But I wrote this letter to you last year, after your Support Day thing because… Well, because I just wanted you to know how I felt about everything.” He pauses. “Sorry. That’s how I feel. And I just want you to know I won’t be bothering you anymore.” He takes my hand and squeezes it gently. “Have a nice life, Nickayla Quinn.”
For some reason, watching him retreat does something to me. It’s ripped my heart out. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because, by giving me this letter, by wishing me well and letting me go, there’s a finality to our story. He’s sealed the fate of our friendship, and he’s walked away because now we both know there’s no saving it. And by him letting me go, he’s given me permission to let him go. That is the best thing he could ever do for either of us.
I quickly scan the room for Colin, and I find him standing by the DJ and talking to Brody. He gives me a light smile and wave before turning away from me. I decide that while he’s distracted, it’s the perfect time to read whatever it is that Kyle has to say to me.
Nickayla,
Words can’t explain what I feel right now. Regret. Anger. Fear. Guilt.
Pain, because every man you love, and every man who loves you just beat the living shit out of me.
Except Colin.
I kept waiting for him to. Kept waiting for him to hurt me as badly as I hurt you. For him to show me exactly what it is to love someone that you’d do anything to protect them.
I thought I loved you. But I couldn’t have, could I? You don’t hurt the ones you love. Not like that.
I watched Colin, you know? While you were up there telling all your loved ones what I did to you?
He didn’t seem fazed at all by my presence. In fact, even when you addressed me by name, he didn’t look at me. His eyes remained on you. He looked at you like you were the moon and the stars, like nothing or no one in the world could ever compare. And when you looked back at him, you looked at him the same exact way. I hated you today. I hated him. I hated him because when he looked at you that way, you smiled at him like he was the only person in the room who existed. I hated you because you used to look at me the way you now look at him.
After you told everyone, I could have slipped out the back door. I could have run and hid, could have put off the fact that I’d inevitably have to face your brothers and Brody. And Colin worst of all. But instead, I stayed behind. I convinced myself that if I let them hurt me, it would help you. Convinced myself that if someone hurt me in your honor, it would somehow make up for the damage I’d caused.
Clearly your Colin is smarter than I am. Because he didn’t touch me. He knew you better than I ever will. He knew that hurting me wouldn’t help you at all. It would only force you to witness more violence, and relive the pain you were working so hard to get past. I saw that in his eyes when he helped you break up the attack. I saw it when he looked like you’d kicked him in the jewels when you said you needed a moment alone with me.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, sorry.
Oh, yeah. That’s right. I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I fucked up, but I’m trying to be better.
My parents got me into a rehabilitation center. I’ll be there for the summer instead of at football camp. I met a girl named Lisa a few months ago, and I really like her. Things have been going well between us, but after today, I don’t want to be with her. Not like this. I want to be a whole person again, so that I don’t run the risk of hurting her, or any other girl the way that I hurt you.
I know that it’s too little, too late. I know that all the damage is already done. But I also know that I was wrong before. Me letting myself getting hurt won’t help you. I know that, now. But me getting help so that no one else has to suffer, that’ll help you. Because you did this to me. You brought me here. You forced me to see the error of my ways. I’m just sorry that it’s too late for you to benefit from it.
Anyway, I truly am sorry. For all the emotional pain I’ve caused you over the past year, and worst of all, for the physical pain I caused you. There’s no excuse for what I’ve done, so I won’t bother making any.
I really wish you all the best. But most of all, I wish you a lifetime of peace. I wish for you to never have to relive what I’ve done. Because you’re stronger than that. You’re stronger than to let someone as weak as me break you.
I do love you, Nickayla Quinn.
And it’s because I love you that I’m going to let you go.
Take care.
-K.
Tears are streaming down my face by the time I’m finished reading the letter, and when I look up, Kyle’s gone. Like, he’s nowhere to be seen. I try to force myself to believe that he wasn’t just here, that he didn’t just give me a letter that set all my demons free, that broke down the brick wall I’ve been building. But he was here. The evidence is in my hands, soaked with my tears.
I breathe, and really breathe for the first time in over a year. I feel free.
Thirty Five.
Colin
I know something is wrong immediately. I turn over to rest my head on Nickayla’s shoulder and hug her from behind, but there’s no shoulder to speak of. When I reach for her in her usual spot, she’s not even there.
At the startling realization, my eyes snap open and I jerk to a sitting position. Scanning the room, I gather that she’s not in our bedroom at all.
I leap out of bed, scared out of my mind. Every time she’s done this over the course of our relationship—which has been plenty, if I’m being honest with myself—she’s escaped to the lake house, so I always know that’s where I can find her. Under normal circumstances, that’d be fine, but not when it hurts her to laugh and she can’t stand for even a second without her crutches. No. These are circumstances that scare the shit out of me.
As I hurry to put on a pair of shoes and a hoodie, all that runs through my head are images of her keeled over due to pain in her ribs from overexerting herself, or her falling down the stairs and injuring her leg worse.
My pulse is racing just thinking about it.
Nickayla Quinn is the kind of girl who won’t take no for an answer. She’s the furthest from subm
issive I’ve ever met. She’s stubborn and free-willed and if she’s got something in her head, there isn’t anything or anyone in this world that can change her mind. If she had it in her head that she was going to the lake house, chances are, she’s going to be there and in a world of pain.
And my heart won’t be able to take that, not after all the pain I’ve put her through myself, already.
I snatch my keys from where I left them on the dresser and head out the bedroom, struggling to put my fear to rest.
Out in the living room, I’m headed out the door when I notice a dim light coming from somewhere on the couch. I wait for my eyes to adjust, but they don’t. So I amble over to the light switch by the door.
When I turn back to the couch, I’m stunned to find Nickayla there.
Her broken leg is elevated on one of our pillows, and the uninjured one is bent at the knee and pulled up to her chest as she leans forward to type on her laptop. Her curls are framing her face, and her chocolate eyes regard me cautiously.
“Hey,” she says, her voice small.
She’s looking at me like she didn’t just give me a fucking heart attack by getting out of bed in the middle of the night.
I shake my head, walking around the couch at the same time that she grabs her laptop and sets it on the coffee table. I sit on the couch, moving the pillow and, as gently as I can, placing her injured leg in my lap. I scoot toward her, trying to get as close to her as possible. I grab her face between my hands and her head lolls forward until her forehead rests against mine.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” I whisper. I’m too upset to gather the full strength of my voice, but I’m hoping she can hear my emotions. “I almost lost you twice. Twice, Nickayla. You don’t know the shit I was—the shit going through my head—I—. Fuck!”
She nods, sniffling, as tears pool in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have left, Colin. I’m not stupid.”
“I know that. But you have to understand, I thought you were going to die when you let go of my hand. And they said you flatlined in the ambulance—I just.” I cut myself, off, grabbing her face and closing my eyes as I inhale a ragged breath. “Goddamn it. I can’t go through that again. I can’t lose you. Not you. Please.”
She regards me, wide-eyed, as the tears that sprung spill over her thick lashes and down her cheeks. Her head falls so that it’s resting against my shoulder and she cries into the space there. I hug her, hoping that I don’t hurt her, because I can’t watch her cry and not do anything about it. Her breathing labors and I feel her wince in pain.
“I’m breaking, Colin,” she whispers against my neck, and I can hear all the pain that she’s held built up inside herself.
Her words burn through my like a white-hot branding iron straight to the heart.
“I know,” I tell her, because I do.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t!” She’s screaming at me, and it’s like deja vu, back to the day we fought after Belinda Moreno flirted with me and I didn’t stop her, when she said these exact words. “I’m a prisoner to my thoughts, Colin. My memories are holding me captive. You don’t know what it’s like to have a hole inside you so big, you can’t fill it, no matter how you try. You don’t know how hard it is to try to put a puzzle together but feel like there’s always a piece missing. You don’t know what it’s like to want to breathe, but you feel like there’s an elephant standing on your fucking chest! You don’t know what it’s like to go to sleep and never know if you’re going to dream of fairy tales or horror stories. Don’t tell me that you know, because you don’t! I’m breaking, Colin!” Her voice lowers after she chokes on a sob. “And I don’t know how to stop it from happening.”
I close my eyes, each word she says, each way she describes her emotional anguish hitting me like a two-by-four to the gut. I’m physically ill just imagining the pain she’s been in, both mentally and physically.
“You’re not the only one who’s broken,” I tell her through gritted teeth, because that’s the only way I know how to keep myself from breaking in front of her. Again. “My mistakes are killing me. They’re eating me alive, clawing at me from the inside out. That weight on your chest you say you feel? I wake up with that weight every day from the guilt, from the regret I have over hurting you. So please don’t tell me I don’t know.” I pause, watching as she pulls away from my embrace, her mouth wide open. “I’m breaking, too, because I know I’m the one who’s breaking you.”
Gasping, she brings a hand up to her mouth and continues to sob. I extend a hand to try and comfort her, but she smacks it away with her free one. She’s shaking her head and her eyes are wide, stricken with fear.
“Nickayla, talk to me,” I implore.
She continues to cover her mouth with her hand. “I keep dreaming about the accident,” she says through her fingers. “Some days, I dream that…that it’s you that’s trapped inside and I can’t get to you. Some days, I dream that I’m stuck inside and you can’t…can’t get me out. Some days, I dream it’s both of us and…and Mads is outside…watching us burst into flames. I just can’t…”
Her voice trails off and she starts to sob all over again, keeling forward and screaming. The fucked up part is, I don’t know if she’s screaming from the emotional pain from the nightmares she’s been suffering, or from her ribs still hurting her.
Jesus Christ.
…
Nickayla
After I’ve said what’s been hurting me, Colin gently pulls me into his lap. I rest my head against his neck. I can see the wariness in his gaze as he watches me.
I wasn’t going to go the lake house. Even though there’s an elevator and I’ve figured out how to drive the car with only my non-dominant leg, I wouldn’t leave him in the middle of the night and cause him any unnecessary worry. Me hobbling around on crutches in the middle of the night and upset beyond measure is a recipe for disaster. I know that.
Colin’s entire body is tense as it wraps around mine, holding me close. He’s being my shelter, taking care of me and shielding me from the storm that’s raging inside of me. He’s holding me the same way he does when he’s hurting…when he’s afraid of something. Today, though, he seems as though he’s afraid of me.
“Nickayla,” he groans. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. This is all my fault. I’m the reason you were in that car two weeks ago. I should have paid more attention. I’m sorry.”
His arms tighten around me, and he adjusts me so that somehow, I’m looking down at him and he’s looking up at me. His head falls forward so that it’s resting on my collarbone. I feel his lips against my skin and I coil myself around him—well, about as well as I can with injured ribs and a broken leg.
There’s no telling what he’s thinking. I can never tell anymore, because ever since he broke down at the hospital when seeing me for the first time, he’s been keeping his emotions locked in a tower, like he’s afraid to let me see that he’s hurt by it, too. I know how much he must be hurting, probably more than I am.
I don’t know many details about what happened in the wake of my accident, but what details I do know, I got them from Michele. He struggled to try and get me out of the car. He tried to keep me awake and held my hand the entire time, until my hand slipped from his and he thought that I was dead. I can’t imagine going through something like that, watching the life slip from his eyes and watching his hand fall from mine…that would be fucking unbearable.
All that I can say in the wake of what happened to me is that it’s given me a new perspective on life. Whereas before, I was eager to end my own life at the drop of a dime, now, everything’s different. I know now what it’s like to go all the way to the very edge, to have a brush with death. I know now what it looks like to feel like I’ve lost touch with my reality. I know now that I don’t want to die. I’m too young. I’ve too much going for me. I have people who love me and want me and need me to survive. And more than that, I w
ant to survive. I can. And I will.
“Are the nightmares the reason you get out of bed every night?” he asks, finally.
I can’t even deny it: I’m taken aback by the fact that he’s asking this question. Up until now, I didn’t know he knew about my nighttime excursions. I’ve been sneaking out of bed every now and then since Colin and I got back together, but that has increased a hundred fold since the accident. Now, I sneak out of bed every night once he’s finally fallen asleep. I hate that he knows about it now, because I know he’s beating himself up over it.
“Yes. Once you’re asleep, I either come out here or go to my girl cave. I’m afraid to go to sleep,” I admit. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for. I know after Support Day, I should have been better. You didn’t sign up for all this…all this darkness.”
I disentangle myself from him, and reaching for my crutches, I get to my feet. I hop out of the living room, and I’m headed into the girl cave to hide out until I figure out how to fix us. Tears are streaming down my face as I struggle to get the door open, and I press my forehead against the door in utter defeat.
“Nickayla.” Colin grabs the doorknob and pulls the door to make sure it’s shut. His hand comes up to rest against my lower back, and I turn my head marginally to meet his gaze. He grabs my waist and turns me toward him. I pivot on my good leg until I’m facing him, and my crutches fall to the floor as my arms come up to wrap around him. I hold onto him, balancing on one leg, wrapping and coiling myself around him until we’re one being—just extensions of one another. He holds me tightly and rests his head on my chest, like he needs me to breathe just as much as I need him. “I don’t care about the darkness, baby. I don’t need you to let go of your darkness to love me.” I gasp at his word choice, at how he’s wielding my own words against me. “I don’t even want you to. I just need you to let me be your light.”
I can’t help it. I gaze into his eyes and he gives me a tight smile. “You mean that?”
Almost Everything (Nickayla Quinn Trilogy Book 2) Page 30