Page 46 of My Best Friend Is Broken
The guilt doesn’t go away just because Nicky says it should. The shame doesn’t disappear because he holds me tight enough to keep the pieces together.
But maybe that’s okay. Maybe guilt and love can exist in the same space. Maybe shame and healing aren’t mutually exclusive.
Maybe I don’t have to choose between honoring Olivia’s memory and accepting that I deserve to be happy.
Maybe there’s a way to carry both, to live with the weight of what I’ve done while still believing that what I am now might be worth saving.
I don’t know how to find that balance yet. Don’t know how to reconcile the boy who made a terrible mistake with the man who wants desperately to heal.
But standing here in Nicky’s arms, listening to the Thames flow beneath us and feeling his heartbeat against my chest, I think maybe I’m willing to try.
Even if trying means accepting that some days I’ll laugh in coffee shops and some days I’ll stand on bridges. Even if it means learning to live with ghosts that will never stop haunting me.
Even if it means admitting that loving someone and being loved in return doesn’t erase the past, but might make the future worth fighting for anyway.
“Take me home,” I whisper, and this time it’s not a desperate plea but a choice.
A choice to keep fighting, keep trying, keep believing that maybe, just maybe, there’s a way to honor both the dead and the living without destroying either.
“Always,” Nicky whispers back, and we walk away from the bridge together, carrying our ghosts and our guilt and our stubborn, complicated love into whatever comes next.
Chapter fifteen
Nicky
Ican’t sleep.
It’s half-past two in the morning, and I’ve been lying here staring at the ceiling for hours, my mind replaying the same horrible sequence over and over like a broken record. Liam gripping those railings. The wind whipping his hair across his face as he stared down at the Thames. The way his knuckles went white against the metal, like he was holding on to the only thing standing between him and the water below.
Except he wasn’t holding on. He was letting go.
My chest tightens with the memory, that sick, falling sensation of watching someone you love contemplate stepping off the edge of the world. I’ve seen death before, I’ve caused it. But nothing prepared me for the particular horror of watching Liam’s face as he calculated whether his life was worth continuing.
Thank God for whatever instinct made me shift to command mode. Thank God he still responds to authority the way prison taught him to. Thank God I could pull him back from whatever dark place his mind had dragged him to.
But what happens next time? Because there will be a next time. I’m not naïve enough to think this was a one-off incident. The guilt he carries isn’t going anywhere.
How many more bridges will we have to walk away from?
Beside me, Liam is curled into a tight ball, his back pressed against my side. He’s been asleep for maybe an hour, exhausted by the emotional toll of the day, but it’s not peaceful sleep. Even unconscious, his body is tense, coiled like a spring waiting to snap.
I want to touch him, smooth the furrow between his brows, run my fingers through his hair the way I used to when we were teenagers and he’d fall asleep watching films at my house. But I’m afraid of waking him. Afraid of triggering whatever nightmares are already lurking behind his closed eyelids.
Instead, I lie here in the dark and try not to think about how close I came to losing him today. Try not to imagine what would have happened if I’d been a few seconds slower, a few words less convincing. Try not to picture myself standing alone on that bridge, watching the Thames carry away the only person I’ve ever truly loved.
The thought makes my stomach turn. I press my palm against my chest, feeling my heart hammering beneath my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
How do you love someone who’s constantly balanced on the knife’s edge between survival and surrender? How do you build a life with someone when you’re never sure if they’ll still be there tomorrow?
Liam shifts beside me, and the small movement pulls me from my spiral of anxiety. For a moment, I think he mightbe waking up naturally, maybe ready to talk about what happened or just needing comfort in the dark.
But then he makes a sound, low and choked and full of terror, and I realize this isn’t waking up at all.
“No,” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep and fear. “Please, no. I don’t... I can’t...”
His whole body jerks, muscles seizing like he’s been electrocuted. His hands fly up to his face, fingers clawing at something I can’t see, and he lets out a sound that’s half sob, half scream.
I fumble for the lamp on the bedside table and switch it on. Soft golden light floods the bedroom. But Liam is still lost in the shadows.
