“What’s going on…” a brunette peeks from behind Daniel in nothing but a bra and knickers.
Without sparing me a glance, Daniel grabs her by the throat and slams his lips to hers. His eyes meet mine as he drags her inside and slams the door in my face.
I crouch in the rain and let the tears I couldn’t shed earlier loose.
Everything is over.
And it hasn’t even started yet.
22
DANIEL
PRESENT
I’m going to punch a wall.
Or a door.
Or better yet, myself.
The only thing that stops me is the way Nicole is shaking and chanting, “Please don’t hurt me…don’t hurt me, Christopher.”
That lowlife Christopher.
The motherfucker that I should’ve nutted that first time I saw him hovering over her while she was pumped with E.
When I thought she meant to have sex with him.
Jesus fucking Christ.
What have I done?
I stare at Nicole’s tear-streaked face, at the tremor in her body and the glassy look in her light eyes. They appear lifeless. Dead.
She came back into herself earlier, cried the worst I’ve seen her, and fessed up everything as if she couldn’t stop. As if she waited her whole life to talk about that horrible experience. From the bits and pieces she told me just now, Christopher raped her in her pool house.
I told him to stop.
I begged him to stop.
That’s what she said. He hit her, too, and she recalled everything that happened to her afterward.
The pain.
The helplessness.
Everything.
All that took place when I was broken to fucking pieces after I heard from Astrid that she saw Nicole having sex with Christopher.
When, in fact, he was raping her.
When, in fact, she’d been silently screaming for help.
And because my ego is dick-shaped, I told Nicole she was nothing when she came to find me.
Just after she was brutalized by that fucking scum.
The small supply room’s walls close in on me, and I have to breathe deeply so as not to agitate her further. That’s what I do with clients with a fragile mental state—I become the anchor they can hold on to. The only difference is that I’m detached enough to do that with them.
I can’t be fucking detached with Nicole.
Not when her pain is bleeding in my fucking veins.
“Why didn’t you ask Astrid for help?” I ask, my jaw clenched so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t dislocate.
“I wasn’t sure I saw her. I think I had…a concussion, and uh…I don’t know, but I was bleeding after he was…done.”
“Did you go to the hospital?” My voice imitates the calmest monk while my insides roar with a burning fire.
She frantically shakes her head. “I got better after a few days on my own.”
“Fuck, Nicole, fuck! Why didn’t you file a report?”
“I couldn’t!” Now she’s the one who’s screaming while she sobs. “Mum would’ve been so disappointed in me.”
“Your mother was a fucking criminal. She had no bloody right to be disappointed in you.”
“She was my mother. I didn’t know anything about what she’d done at the time, and what did you expect me to say? I asked a boy over and he raped me? Who would’ve believed me?”
“They would’ve believed the medical rape kit the doctor would’ve made. You said you were fucking bleeding.”
“It wasn’t worth it.”
“What?”
“Dragging Mum and Uncle Henry’s names through the mud wasn’t worth it. Christopher was a deputy commissioner’s son. He would’ve gotten away with it. They would’ve said I asked for it.”
“But that’s not the case.”
“Maybe it was!” She pushes me away, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Maybe I was stupid and obsessed and was blind to invite a predator to my house. It happened, okay? It all happened, so what was the point of making a report?”
“Fucking justice, Nicole.”
“I didn’t need that.”
“Clearly. Judging by the way you have panic and anxiety attacks whenever you’re touched sexually.”
“Then stop touching me!” She turns around and flings the door open. “I was doing just fine before you came back into my life.”
And then she’s running outside.
I catch up to her in no time and practically pick her up and shove her into my car. I remind myself that I need to be more gentle. That she just shared a traumatic experience she never told anyone about.
She tried to tell you back then, too, but you rejected her like a sorry cunt.
Is there a way to reach out to eighteen-year-old me and choke him to death? To make him aware of who stood on his fucking doorstep that night?
It wasn’t only Nicole. It was Nicole in need of help. It was Nicole traumatized, vulnerable and weak, and the last thing I should’ve done was shut the door in her face.
The evening Astrid told me she saw Nicole and Christopher having sex, I remember seeing black. I remember it so well.
It’s the moment that shaped my arsehole self and turned me into a blonde-hater.
But as the world blew into smithereens in front of my eyes, I pretended nothing was wrong and even teased Astrid about her relationship with Levi.
I acted normally while my heart was bleeding on the floor.
I smiled while I was ripped open from the inside.
Then, when Astrid, my brother, and I got together to go bowling, I remember the doomsday-like feeling that crowded my spine.
I remember not hearing a word they were saying. The sounds and colors became gray and I was seconds away from snapping.
So I told them I was getting drinks. Instead, I drove straight to Astrid’s house. To Nicole.
I had to talk to her.
To ask her why the fuck she chose someone else.
Then I recalled that I’d flung girls in her face like they were shiny toys. I remembered that she often called me Astrid’s loser friend and looked down her aristocratic nose at me.
I recalled that I was nothing.
But I stood there like a creep for a whole hour, until I was sure one of the neighbors would call the police.
Then I went to the liquor store, got drunk on the cheapest whiskey available, and called the first girl on my contact list.
That’s when Nicole found me.
Drenched in the rain, her eyes deep and dark and a little lifeless, now that I think about it.
That’s how we ended.
When I told her she was nothing to me.
A few weeks later, her mother got arrested for killing Astrid’s mother and nearly murdering my best friend in that hit-and-run.
Nicole disappeared soon after.
And I left England the same calendar year.
“I never fucked that girl,” I say slowly as I drive.
Nicole, who’s leaning against the door with her knees pulled to her chest, flinches. “What girl?”
“The one you found me with that night. I kicked her out soon after you left.” I got drunk on more cheap whiskey and stared at the fucking snow globe she gave me all night long.
It was the first and last time I knew what a broken heart felt like. Excruciating pain, epic hangovers, and model-like blondes with vicious character.