"Nick Had A Plan"
(Five Years Later)
Dr. Elizabeth Rainer sat across from Adrian, her notebook resting on her lap, pen stilled between her fingers as Adrian shifted in his seat.
Dr. Rainer cleared her throat. "You've made excellent progress," she said, voice gentle but unyielding. "Physically, especially."
Adrian offered a small, clipped smile. "Progress is just another word for surviving without killing yourself."
Her lips twitched slightly. "Or killing others."
Adrian looked away. His jaw tightened.
The silence returned.
Dr. Rainer studied him for a moment, then reached beside her chair and retrieved a book, softcover, worn from handling. The title in bold serif: A Bad Education. A black-and-white photograph of Nick on the back, eyes half-shadowed, smile elusive.
Adrian noticed the book and exhaled sharply through his nose. "Of course," he said dryly. "I was wondering when you'd bring that up."
"It'd be hard not to," she replied, placing the book between them like a patient between doctors. "It's all over the shelves. The reviews, the interviews, academic panels. People are calling it a confession in disguise."
Adrian didn't touch the book. His gaze fell to the floor.
"Have you read it?"
He shook his head once. "I tried. The first page. Maybe the second. It felt like someone was cracking open my ribs with a spoon."
"You think it's about you?"
He hesitated. His voice dropped, quieter than it had been in weeks. "I know it is."
Dr. Rainer turned A Bad Education over in her hands again, tapping the cover with her thumb, a quiet rhythm of patience. Adrian, slouched in the leather armchair opposite her, stared not at the book, but at the grain of the hardwood floor beneath his polished shoes.
"I'd like to read a few passages," she said. "If that's alright."
Adrian gave a slight, bitter shrug. "Fine. What's a few more lines of indictment?"
Dr. Rainer didn't smile. She flipped open the book with care, pausing on a dog-eared page. She cleared her throat and began.
"There were years when I became less a person and more a room he passed through. He'd come in, leave his heat on the sheets, and vanish before the light. I loved him still. I loved him in the way a wound loves the saltwater that stings it: hopelessly, bitterly, and without reprieve."
She closed the book halfway, watching him.
Adrian didn't move.
"Did you ever notice how often he disappeared into himself around you?"
"I thought he was just...like that," Adrian muttered.
"Like what?"
"Quiet. Withholding. Moral to a fault."
Dr. Rainer tilted her head. "You make that sound like a defect."
"I was trying to draw him out," Adrian said defensively.
"And yet, in his version, he endured your affairs. Your lies. Your rage. And still made you coffee in the mornings."
Adrian's mouth tightened. "Don't sanctify him. He wasn't perfect."
"No one is. But I think what he wanted, what he was asking for, wasn't sainthood. Just basic decency."
Dr. Rainer turned a few pages forward, then read again.
"The worst part wasn't that he slept with others. It was that when I finally looked him in the eyes and asked, he blinked and said, 'Don't be dramatic.' As if I'd conjured the betrayal out of thin air."
Adrian flinched. For the first time, his composure cracked. "I didn't mean to make him feel crazy," he whispered.
"But you did," she said gently.
There was a silence. "I...needed him to be wrong," Adrian said after a while. "Because if he wasn't...then I was."
Dr. Rainer said nothing, waiting for the thread to unravel.
Adrian sat back, palms running down his thighs, as if trying to press the guilt out of his skin. His voice lowered. "You know, when I was a kid and my father would scream at me for things I didn't even understand, I used to pray I'd grow up faster. That if I could just survive long enough, I'd become the one in control." He looked up. "But when I finally had it, the love, the house, the life, I didn't know what to do with it except...burn it down."
Dr. Rainer flipped again.
"I sometimes wondered if he ever saw me as a person, or just as the reflection of the boy he couldn't save in himself. I gave him the best parts of me. He handed them back charred."
Adrian let out a sound, more breath than word. A strangled exhale of pain.
"I didn't know he was writing all this," he said, dazed. "Guess I'm the fucking villain."
"Do you feel like the villain?" she asked.
Adrian didn't answer.
"I think," she continued, "you've spent your life mastering the art of control so well, that letting yourself be seen as broken felt too dangerous."
Adrian leaned forward slightly, eyes flickering to the book. "Did he...say anything about the good moments?" he asked, barely above a whisper. "About when I...when we were happy?"
Dr. Rainer looked at him for a long time. She flipped to another passage. One she had marked in gold ink.
"There were mornings when he was stillness itself. His hand would slip over mine without a word. He'd rest his forehead on my chest, as if in apology, or maybe prayer. And in those moments, I loved him not because he needed saving, but because I did. And somehow, for a moment, it felt like we were saving each other."
Adrian's jaw trembled.
He turned away, suddenly overcome. His breath shuddered in his chest.
"You still miss him," Dr. Rainer said softly.
"Every goddamn day," Adrian replied, voice cracking.
Dr. Rainer paused. "Would you mind," she asked gently, "if I read you something?"
Adrian's eyes lifted to meet hers, glassy and defensive. He didn't answer.
Dr. Rainer read anyway.
"Some wrongs feel like mercy when love rots beyond recognition. Sometimes, it's not about justice. Not about redemption. It's about stopping the bleeding before it kills you both."
She let the silence settle. Adrian didn't move.
"I think this was the moment he made his choice," she said softly. "The moment the character, the husband, whichever version of it lives on these pages, crossed the line."
Adrian leaned back, the leather creaking beneath him. His fingers drummed on the cane, tapping an anxious rhythm.
"It's fiction," he muttered.
Dr. Rainer didn't flinch. "Is it?"
Adrian's face twitched. He turned toward the window, jaw clenched, eyes flickering with something. Rage? Shame? Fear?
"I think that passage speaks to intent," she continued, "to something Nick felt he had to do. Because he believed there was no other way."
Adrian's eyes narrowed, his breath shallow.
"Adrian," Dr. Rainer said carefully, "did he believe that because you convinced him he had no choice?"
A beat.
And then, Adrian stood abruptly, his cane scraping across the hardwood floor as he turned away. He didn't speak. He couldn't.
Dr. Rainer didn't stop him. She simply watched him, this tall, once unbreakable man who now seemed to be running from the very thing he had spent his life mastering: control.
She let him reach the door, her voice just a thread behind him. "We'll talk next week," she said.
Adrian hesitated, hand on the doorframe. "I'm not coming back."
Dr. Rainer leaned back, a soft, understated smirk on her lips.
"Yes, you are."
*
(Present Time)
Light crept through the blinds, sloping across the rumpled bed where Adrian stirred against the sheets. His body ached in its usual ways, a dull heaviness that never quite let up. He blinked, eyelids fluttering against the pressure of sleep, and turned his head slowly, the muscles of his neck stiff, uncooperative.
There, beside the bed. A figure, silent. Adrian's breath caught as he recognized the profile before the details had time to sharpen.
Bobby.
Sitting in the chair closest to the bed. Hoodie pulled halfway over his head. Elbows resting on his knees. Eyes steady, guarded.
Adrian blinked again. His mouth opened slightly. "Hey," he croaked, his voice still blurred from the sedatives. His lips trembled. "You're here…"
Bobby didn't answer right away. His expression didn't soften, didn't waver. If anything, it tightened, just slightly, around the mouth, as if the act of being there required more restraint than he'd anticipated.
"I came because he asked me to," Bobby said flatly. Adrian's faint hope shriveled in his chest like paper set to flame. "Honestly, I would've been fine never seeing you again," Bobby continued, his tone quiet but precise, honed like a blade kept just sharp enough to cut. "So...if you've got something to say," Bobby added, finally leaning forward, elbows on his knees, eyes locking on Adrian's. "...now would be a good time."
Adrian tried not to tremble as he began.
"I didn't think you'd come," he said, his voice rough but controlled, lips tugging up into a faint, unsure smile. "Although I figured Nick would ask. He always had this...romantic streak about people returning. Tying things up in bows."
Bobby said nothing.
"I've been going over it, you know. In my head. All of it. I try to trace the moment it got away from me. Or maybe it was never in my grasp to begin with. Maybe it was always too...much."
He paused, glancing toward the window.
"I wasn't built for fatherhood. That's not self-pity. That's honesty. I was given a son I never asked for, and I tried, god, I tried, to pretend I was someone else. Someone who could hug on command, listen without judgment, forgive. But I wasn't that man. I'm still not that man."
Still, Bobby didn't speak. He just watched Adrian, his mouth a flat line, his gaze unreadable.
"I...was angry," Adrian continued. "Not at you. At everything. At your mother. At Nick. At the world for handing me something I didn't want and daring me to love it anyway. I guess I...mistook proximity for connection. Mistook control for love. I thought that if I could shape you, own you...then maybe...I could fix myself."
Finally, Bobby shifted, and Adrian noticed it. He leaned a little back into the chair, crossing his arms tighter now, not in anger. More like self-preservation.
Adrian breathed, slow and shallow. The room echoed the sound. "I know what you're thinking," he said. "You're thinking I made you into someone you didn't want to be. I filled your world with my own shit and called it shelter."
A long silence passed between them. Adrian's fingers twitched slightly on the blanket, reaching as if for something not quite there. "I blamed Nick for things that were mine. Blamed you. Because I didn't have the courage to see myself for what I was. I still don't." His voice cracked. "But I...miss you."
That was when Bobby finally spoke, quiet but firm.
"You're really something," he chuckled sarcastically. "I fucking knew you would do this. Spin this shit to make yourself look like the victim."
Adrian froze.
"You don't know me. You never tried to," Bobby continued. "You saw what you wanted. You painted me in your own self-hatred and called it fatherhood. But I was just a hole for you to fuck," he added, lips tightening. Adrian's mouth parted slightly, but no words came out. "Every time I tried to pull away, you pulled harder. You weren't doing it out of love. You were scared shitless."
"Bobby...I..." Adrian began, but Bobby's sudden movement stopped him.
He stood, walking slowly toward the window, looking out but seeing nothing. "You said you weren't made to be a father," Bobby said. "Fine. Maybe that's true. But that didn't stop you from taking on the role like it was a performance. And I was just the prop. Something you could pose in front of your friends and your business partners. Something for you to say, 'Here, look how fucking normal I am'. Something to drag around when Nick was giving you a hard time. But when the doors closed, when the lights were off, do you remember what you did to me?"
He turned then, looking at Adrian, his jaw tight, his arms still crossed but now clenched.
"It wasn't just that you fucked. That was bad enough...but...you made me feel useless. Weak. You mocked how I dressed, how I walked, who I talked to. You said I was soft like her. And you made that sound like the worst thing a boy could be. You told me real men didn't cry. Real men didn't need affection. Real men didn't need anything."
Adrian's face had tightened, but he didn't speak.
"And the worst part? I believed you," Bobby went on. "I carried that shit for years. Every time someone got close to me, I pushed them away. Or I became someone else. I became loud, aggressive, cruel...just like you. Because that's what I learned. That to survive, you had to strike first. You had to burn people before they burned you."
He paused. His voice dropped, and the room seemed to lean in closer to him.
"I spent years thinking love was just another form of control. That affection was always conditional. That needing someone was a weakness. You taught me that. Not with lectures. With silence. With the way you looked through me instead of at me. With the way you praised me only when I reflected you."
Adrian's fingers twitched beneath the blanket.
"And now I'm scared," Bobby said. "I'm scared that everything you put in me, that...darkness, it's still there. That one day I'll wake up, and I'll talk to someone I love the way you talked to me. That I'll make someone feel like they're too much and never enough at the same time. That I'll lose them because I didn't know how to be good."
His voice cracked slightly, but he pushed through.
"You didn't just hurt me. You rewired me. You made me question every soft part of myself. Every time I laughed too loud, cried too long, held on too tight, I heard your voice in my head."
Bobby exhaled, as if something had left him.
"I'm trying to unlearn you."
The words hung in the air like ash.
"I didn't come here for closure. I'm not here to make you feel better. I'm here because I need to see you like this. Not to gloat. But to remind myself that your pain doesn't erase mine. That your sickness doesn't absolve your cruelty. That you can be broken and still be responsible."
Adrian had tears in his eyes now, though they did not fall.
"I don't hate you," Bobby said, finally. "But I'm done carrying you with me. I can't do it anymore. I won't."
He stood, quiet and sure.
"If you want redemption, earn it. But don't ask it from me," Bobby uttered. "I'm done," he said before walking to the door.
"Bobby...please," Adrian called.
Bobby stood there, hand holding the doorknob. Then he turned, watching Adrian's gaunt face crumple under the weight of his words. Adrian's hands trembled slightly on the blanket. His eyes searched Bobby's, desperately, hungrily, like a man drowning.
But Bobby didn't flinch. Not this time.
He stepped closer, just enough for Adrian to see the lines etched into his face, brushed by the faintest light creeping through the blinds.
"I want you to take a good look at me," Bobby said quietly. Adrian blinked, his lips parting. "I want you to know that this is it. This is the last moment you'll ever have of me." He leaned forward, voice trembling but clear. "Remember my face. The lines. The eyes. The mouth you used to kiss, to bite, to suck. Remember it."
Adrian opened his mouth again, but the words died in his throat. His hand reached out weakly.
Bobby stepped back, tears glinting at the corners of his eyes but refusing to fall. "Remember how I smell. The way my voice sounds. The way my skin felt under your hand when you were pinning me down while you fucked me. Because it's gone. All of it. You'll never smell it again. You'll never feel it." He straightened, his chest rising and falling with every word. "You'll never hear me laugh or cry or whisper that I forgive you."
And with that, Bobby turned and left.
Adrian's breath hitched.
His fingers clawed weakly at the sheets, but Bobby was already turning. Already gone. And all that remained was the echo of his final words, hanging like smoke in the silence.
"I will love myself enough to forget you."
*
The stairs creaked under Bobby's bare feet as he descended slowly, one hand trailing along the banister, his body still carrying the ponderousness of the conversation upstairs, but his face calm. Through the open patio doors, he spotted Nick in the kitchen, pouring water into a kettle. Nick looked up just as Bobby reached the last step.
"He should be here any minute," Nick said softly, nodding toward the window that faced the driveway.
Bobby didn't ask who. He already knew. The physiotherapist. The same one who'd been coming for the past few months. The same one who handled Adrian with patience and precision, and the same one Adrian both resented and relied on. Bobby gave a small nod but didn't respond.
Nick approached him, his tone tender. "Would you stay? After his bath, maybe we can...drive to town? Get some coffee before you leave?"
There was no pressure in his voice. No pleading. Just a gentle invitation.
Bobby hesitated, arms crossed, his weight shifting. "I don't know if that's a good idea," he murmured. But then his eyes caught Nick's, steady, patient, warm. Eventually, Bobby gave a small sigh and nodded. "I suppose I can...hang around for a bit."
Nick smiled, faint and grateful.
Bobby glanced past him, through the open sliding doors. His eyes landed on the deck, where August lay sprawled on the wood like a statue of peace and devotion. The old retriever's ears perked up as he spotted Bobby.
"I'll be outside," Bobby said, softer now.
Nick reached for him, just briefly, and their lips met in a quick, lingering kiss. Familiar, unspoken. A thread of something unbreakable, even as everything else frayed around them. Bobby gave Nick one last look, an exchange of silent words they didn't speak aloud, then turned and walked out onto the deck. August's tail thumped lazily in greeting.
"Hey, buddy," Bobby murmured, crouching beside the dog. August leaned into his touch, warm and solid beneath his fingers. Bobby buried his hand in the fur at the dog's neck, drawing quiet comfort from the moment.
Behind him, the kettle began to hum.
But Bobby stayed on the deck, his back to the house, eyes on the sea.
*
The sun had risen high.
Inside, Adrian's arms trembled against the resistance bands, his jaw clenched, a sheen of sweat catching in the hollow of his throat. The physiotherapist, Daniel, knelt beside him with calm precision, guiding the movement with a steady hand.
"Try to breathe through it," Daniel said, his voice gentle but firm. "Just a few more, Adrian. You're doing well."
Adrian snapped, "Don't patronize me."
Daniel didn't react. He'd heard worse. From Adrian, especially. But the tremble in Adrian's left hand told a deeper story than the words.
"I'm just trying to help."
"No, you're trying to get on my fucking nerves," Adrian spat.
"Adrian, we've been through this. You're not broken," Daniel said.
Adrian let the band go, his arm collapsing against the wheelchair's side. "Tell that to my legs."
Silence.
The room held its breath.
Adrian's chest heaved, rage and sorrow boiling under his skin. He gripped the wheels of his chair and tried to move, but it wasn't working. His hands slipped. His body tilted. A small loss of balance, then everything fell.
The sound was ugly.
The thud of bone against hardwood.
The way a man's pride can shatter louder than his body.
Daniel lunged, but Adrian was already writhing, crawling in fury. "Get away from me," he barked, fists slamming into the floor. "Don't fucking touch me!"
"Adrian..."
"I SAID DON'T TOUCH ME! GET THE FUCK OUT!" His voice cracked open, jagged and feral.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Nick burst into the doorway, eyes locking instantly on the scene: Adrian collapsed beside the chair, red-faced, breath ragged, and Daniel frozen, hands half-raised in surrender.
Nick's arms encircled Adrian with the precision of habit, a gesture so practiced it felt more like muscle memory than care. He held him the way one might hold a child in the throes of a nightmare, secure, steady, emotionless. Adrian was panting into his chest, face buried deep against Nick's collarbone, fingers clutching at the fabric of his shirt as if he were drowning and Nick were the shore.
"It's okay," Nick murmured. His voice was barely a vibration against Adrian's temple. "You're okay."
His hand moved in slow, practiced circles over Adrian's spine. It wasn't tenderness. It was routine. Worn, threadbare, mechanical. The kind of comfort honed over years of storms. The kind given long after love had gone quiet. Adrian's trembling began to soften. His body slowly stopped jerking with the silent sobs, the anger bleeding into helplessness. He didn't speak, but his eyes lifted. He looked up at Nick, his neck strained, jaw clenched, as if anchoring himself. As if Nick was the only proof left that he was still real.
He stared, long and hard, those once-sharp eyes now dull and wet, ringed with shadows. The gaze of someone lost in the long corridor of grief, for his body, his youth, his pride, his life.
Nick didn't meet it. "You're okay," he repeated, expression blank.
Adrian nodded once, almost imperceptibly. Then his voice, hoarse and broken, slipped between them like a blade.
"You're going to leave me."
Nick didn't flinch. Not visibly. But for a breath, one single breath, his hand stopped moving.
Behind them, Daniel stood quietly, respectful in his silence. Nick finally turned, still holding Adrian against his chest. "Help me get him back in the chair."
Together, they lifted Adrian. He was pliant now. Hollowed out. Like a puppet with the strings cut. Once seated, his head hung low. The sweat on his skin caught the light like oil.
Nick touched his shoulder, then turned to Daniel. "You can go."
Daniel looked between them, uncertain. But he nodded. "I'll come back in the morning."
He left, closing the door softly behind him. The room sank into silence. But both of them knew it was far from over. The soft click of the front door echoed like a gunshot in the quiet house.
And just like that, Adrian snapped.
"You smug fucking bastard," he spat, his voice raw, his breath still jagged from the breakdown. His knuckles whitened on the arms of the wheelchair. "You think I don't see what this is? You and Bobby, fucking in the shadows, creeping around like teenagers behind the bleachers...God, you're pathetic."
Nick didn't flinch. He simply stood there, hands resting in front of him, his face unreadable. A lighthouse unmoved by a storm.
But Adrian wasn't finished. "You hated me for years, and now you want to play saint? Savior? Did it feel good? Huh? Holding him? Replacing me in your bed with some broken version of me?"
Nick's brow flickered ever so slightly, but he said nothing.
"You cold, calculating son of a bitch," Adrian hissed. "Don't think I don't know what this is. You get off on this. You loved watching me fall apart, didn't you? You fed off it. You hovered around this fucking house and watched me crumble, and you did nothing but write your precious pages. Hiding behind your intellect, behind your noble silence like some high priest of fucking suffering."
He wheeled forward suddenly, jerking the chair until it scraped the wood. His eyes gleamed now with rage or maybe grief. It was always hard to tell with Adrian.
"You never loved me, Nick. You endured me. You pitied me. You slept beside me like I was some wretched stray you rescued out of moral duty. And now what? Now Bobby gets the warmth you could never give me? He gets the softness, the patience?"
He laughed, bitterly.
"Is it because I can't get my fuckin' dick hard? Huh? He's not even your type."
Silence.
A long, heavy silence, broken only by the sound of Adrian's breathing, wild, fractured, erratic. He was trembling again. But this time from fury. Fury born of loss, humiliation, impotence, and the irreversible truth that nothing he said would change a goddamn thing.
And still, Nick stood where he was.
Unmoved.
Steady.
The calm after a monsoon.
Adrian's voice cracked. One final crack, the breaking of something deep inside. "Say something, you fuck. Say something!"
And that's when Nick turned.
Slowly.
Quietly.
The stillness in his face was devastating.
His arms hung at his sides, loose, empty. He looked at Adrian for a long moment, not with contempt or fury, but with something far quieter. Something final.
"You want me to say something? Fine."
He walked past the edge of the bed and leaned against the windowsill. The breeze from the cracked pane ruffled his shirt, and he stared out at the sea, not looking at Adrian, at least, not at first.
"You always took up the air in the room. Always needed to be adored, feared, or obeyed. I let you. For years, I let you." He turned now, meeting Adrian's eyes. "Not because I was weak. But because I loved you. God help me, I loved you."
He didn't flinch at the word. He let it settle between them, not as a weapon, but as a relic, something that once meant everything and now meant nothing at all.
"I loved you through the nights you didn't come home. Through the men and women you thought I didn't notice. Through the lies you wrapped in charm, through the moods you blamed on your past like it was a license to be cruel." He tilted his head slightly, his voice softening, not with affection, but with sorrow. "And I stayed, Adrian. I cooked you dinner. I helped you up the stairs when you were drunk. I washed all those cum stained underwear you brought home without so much as a word. I answered every one of your silences with patience, every outburst with quiet. Because I thought...I thought if I loved you enough, you might learn how to love me back."
Nick pushed off the windowsill and walked a little closer, not much, just enough for his presence to be felt. His expression was unreadable, a man too tired for anger.
"But you didn't. You just took. And took...and took. And when I had nothing left to give, you looked at me like I had failed you."
He knelt, not out of deference, but from a need to say it plainly, directly.
"You're right about one thing: I did grow cold. I had to. Loving you felt like holding a match to my own skin. And the worst part?" He let out a breath, shaky and honest. "I would've kept doing it if you hadn't broken him too."
Nick stood.
"You want someone to blame? Look in the mirror. Not for the stroke, not for the chair, but for the emptiness you feel when no one's around. That didn't come from me. That was always yours."
Nick moved through the silence like a man wading into a cold tide.
"I was waiting for this, you know?" Nick said, his voice quiet, nearly flat. "The explosion. The venom. The same old goddamn theater."
He turned to the window again, out toward the sea, hands resting on the sill. He always seemed to seek distance when his truth was too sharp to deliver face-to-face. And yet, when he spoke, his words struck like flint against steel.
"You want to talk about betrayal?" he asked. "You want to point your finger at me and Bobby and make yourself the victim? Fine. But first, let's talk about what you did to him."
He turned now, fully, finally. His eyes were calm. Detached. But what lived behind them was anything but.
"You broke Bobby, Adrian." There was a pause, a slow beat of disbelief between them. "Not just with your hands. No. That would've been too honest for you. You did it with silence. With rejection. With years of neglect and emotional starvation. You made him believe love had to come with cruelty. That affection had to be earned. That tenderness was a trick."
He took a breath, shallow and trembling. Nick's jaw tensed. His voice didn't rise, but it became sharper now, more precise.
"How long do you think it took me to notice? The bruises. The rage. His self-loathing. How he walked around...all the time, thinking he deserved it." Nick shook his head, one hand running through his hair. "And you want to know the worst part? After all that, he still wanted your approval. Even after everything, he kept looking for scraps of love from you."
Nick's voice broke, just for a second. Then it steadied.
"That's when I knew. You weren't going to stop. You couldn't. You'd already hollowed out everything in me. It was only a matter of time before you did it to him, too.," Nick stated, pausing briefly. "I couldn't let that happen."
He stepped closer now, until there was nothing between them but air and the heaviness of the truth.
"So...I did something."
Adrian blinked, suddenly quiet.
Nick's eyes were unreadable.
"Aminocaproic acid."
It was said so gently it almost didn't register. Like a confession delivered across a deathbed.
"What?" Adrian muttered.
"I'd been putting it in your food for a while. But I mean...the booze, the weed...you were already pushing your body too far. I wasn't trying to kill you. And the stroke wasn't exactly what I intended...but it worked," Nick confessed, taking a deep breath. "I just needed you to be still."
Adrian's mouth fell slightly open, but no words came out.
"You forced my hand, Adrian," Nick said softly. "You made me choose between being your caretaker and being Bobby's protector. And I chose him." There was a long pause. "I know what I did. And I'll carry it. Every day. But if you want the truth, Adrian…" He stepped back. "You broke us long before I ever broke you."
Adrian stared at Nick, his face trembling with rage, disbelief, and desperation. "You fucking poisoned me," he said, voice low and guttural. "You admit that. You just stood there and admitted it."
Nick didn't flinch. He stood with the calm of a man who had already lived the punishment ten times in his mind. "Yes," he said. "I did."
Adrian's expression contorted into something almost feral. "I could go to the police. Press charges. Tell them what you did, what you tried to do to me."
Nick nodded slowly, thoughtfully, as if weighing the idea. Then, with disarming serenity, he replied. "You won't."
Adrian opened his mouth to respond, but the words caught in his throat. Nick continued.
"You won't because if you do, I'll tell them the truth." His voice was quiet, but each word landed like a calm sentence. "I'll tell them about the night you raped your own son and almost choked him to death with a belt."
Silence fell, dense and suffocating.
Adrian's mouth opened again, but nothing came out. It wasn't just fear now. It was the slow, sinking realization that he had finally lost control. The power he once wielded like a blade had dulled in his grasp.
Nick stepped back, just a little, his posture unchanging, but his eyes held the final blow. "I want a divorce."
Adrian laughed, hollow and sharp. "I won't accept that."
Nick didn't blink. "You don't have a say anymore."
Adrian's hands trembled where they lay uselessly in his lap. "Who's going to take care of me?" he spat, a note of panic creeping into his voice. "Who's going to help me bathe, get dressed, go to the toilet? You think you can just leave me here like this? After what you did?"
Nick walked to the window and looked out at the ocean for a moment before replying. "You're wealthy, Adrian. Your money will take care of you. You'll have the best nurses, the best therapists, the best care your name can buy. But you won't have me. Not anymore."
That was when Adrian cracked.
He started to shout, half-threats and half-sobs, his voice hoarse and shaking. "You think you can just abandon me? After everything? You think you can live with yourself? YOU FUCKING COWARD...don't you walk away from me!"
But Nick was already turning, already walking toward the door.
Adrian's shouts followed him down the stairs, swelling with every step he took. They echoed against the walls like ghosts unwilling to die. But Nick didn't look back.
"MOTHER FUCKIN' PIECE OF SHIT!"
He pushed open the door to the porch and stepped into the warm sea breeze. His legs gave out before he made it to the chair, and he collapsed into it with a long, shuddering breath.
Then he saw Bobby walking toward him. His face was cautious but steady, his brows furrowed against the sound of Adrian's screams reverberating behind the glass.
"NIIIICK! NICK YOU MOTHER FUCKER!"
Nick looked up at Bobby. His voice, when it came, was a whisper of exhausted finality.
"Get your stuff," he said. "We're leaving."
Bobby didn't ask questions.
He just nodded.
Inside, the sound of Adrian's voice rose higher, but it was no longer the roar of a tyrant. It was a wounded animal's cry, piercing, impotent, and hollow.
"DON'T FUCKING LEAVE ME, YOU FUCKER...I...I can't...Nick...come back..."
Nick closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, he let the emptiness inside him bloom.
*
The front door shut behind them.
No slamming, no hurried words, just the creak of old hinges surrendering to stillness. Nick locked the door, then hesitated for a beat, his fingers resting on the key. Behind him, Bobby was already walking toward the car, duffel slung over one shoulder.
The house stood behind them, once a refuge, once a battleground.
Now, it was simply still.
Nick climbed into the driver's seat. Bobby settled into the passenger side. Neither spoke.
The engine sputtered to life, steady and soft, like a breath drawn in the dark. They pulled away, the beach house growing smaller in the rearview mirror until it was swallowed by dunes and the whispering curve of the coast road. Inside the car, silence stretched long between them, but it wasn't empty. It was full.
Bobby stared out the window, one knee curled against the seat, fingers absently tracing the shape of the wind on the glass. His face was calm, the curve of his mouth relaxed. There was something boyish in his quiet, the kind of peace that came not from answers, but from letting go of the questions. He was changed, but he was whole. In that silence, he was allowing himself to dream again. You could see it in the way his shoulders no longer curled inward. In the way he leaned slightly toward the light.
Nick, by contrast, held the wheel with both hands. Eyes on the road, posture straight, jaw locked in that quiet way of his. He'd barely looked at Bobby since they'd pulled away. His face harbored the stillness of someone who'd burned out every emotion. Grief had drained him, love had hollowed him, and what was left was something quieter. Sadder. But clearer, too.
Their bodies moved together with the motion of the car, sometimes leaning into the curves, sometimes bouncing gently over the uneven road. Two men molded by years of tension and survival, now finally exiting the chapter that had written them in fire and guilt and longing.
Bobby eventually turned his head, eyes falling on Nick's profile. He didn't ask where they were going. He didn't care. They drove for miles in silence. The sea disappeared behind them. The trees grew taller. The world grew louder. And still, they didn't speak.
Eventually, Bobby reached across the gearshift and placed his hand over Nick's.
Just once.
Just for a moment.
Nick didn't look at him.
But he didn't pull away either.
*
(Hours Later)
The diner was quiet, the kind of hush that settled thick around cheap coffee. Outside, dusk fell in slow, syrupy folds across the cracked concrete of the gas station. Inside, Bobby was talking something about housing in New York, the subway lines he liked best, professors he'd researched. His voice carried a softness laced with hope, each word carefully laid out like bricks of a future he was just beginning to believe in.
"So, the dorm is right off Amsterdam Avenue," he said, a flicker of excitement in his voice. "Close enough to Columbia, but not too close. You'd love the bookstore on the corner. It has that juicy smell of old paper."
Nick gave a faint nod, his eyes fixed somewhere past Bobby's shoulder.
Bobby chuckled to himself. "I was thinking…maybe we could do weekends. I come down for a few days, or you come up. I mean, I know it's not ideal, but...hell, it's a start, right?"
Still, Nick said nothing. A flicker of a smile, hollow at the corners.
Bobby's voice softened, searching now. "Nick?"
Nick blinked, turned back toward him. "Yeah," he murmured. "Just…tired."
"Tired," Bobby repeated, quiet. He sat back slightly, studying the man across from him. There was a distance in Nick's gaze, like his body was there but something had long since left the room.
Bobby swallowed. "You've been quiet since we left. Are we okay?"
Nick looked down at his coffee. "Yeah. Of course."
There was no conviction in his voice. Just weariness.
"I…" Bobby hesitated, then forced a smile. "I'm gonna hit the bathroom. Be right back."
Nick nodded, and Bobby stood slowly, glancing back at him once before walking away. And as he disappeared down the tiled hallway, the silence returned, loud, stifling, aching.
He sat there for a long moment, his back straight but his hands trembling slightly. His eyes moved, once to the hallway, then to the windows, then to the parked car just beyond the glass. The car seemed to call to him. A silent offering.
And then, suddenly, he moved.
He stood, not in a rush, but with the unperceptive certainty of a man who had made a decision a long time ago but had only just found the courage to act on it. He left a twenty on the table, more than enough for coffee, and walked toward the door.
Outside, the car greeted him with stillness. Nick opened the door, slid into the driver's seat, and closed it behind him. The sound was soft. He didn't start the engine. Not at first. His hands clutched the wheel, white-knuckled. His eyes burned. The world blurred at the edges.
And then it broke.
The sob came out raw, stripped of dignity, primal and wordless. It clawed its way from his chest like something caged too long. He gasped, hands trembling, shoulders shaking. His whole body convulsed with it.
Years of betrayal.
Of biting his tongue.
Of covering bruises of the soul.
Of shielding Bobby.
Of saving Adrian only to be hollowed out.
It all spilled over, a deluge of pain he had never let himself feel until now.
His forehead dropped to the steering wheel. Tears ran down his cheeks like rain on glass. He whispered through broken breaths, "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…"
He didn't know if it was meant for Bobby.
For Adrian.
Or for himself.
The car pulled away slowly.
In the rearview mirror, the diner diminished, slow at first. Then, faster and faster, until it became a mere blur, a distant, almost surreal memory fading from perception.
(To be concluded...)
Casual Wanderer © 2025
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