I wrapped her in my arms immediately, a tingling sensation in the pit of my stomach.
“Thank you,” she said and moved away, my body cold, and missing her already. “Goodnight.”
I stood in the hallway until they disappeared at the top of the stairs. Nick patted my back, gesturing toward the leaving room.
“You want a drink?”
“No.” No amount of alcohol could numb my messed-up mind. I plopped on the couch. “How are you holding up?”
“Me?” he scoffed, pouring whiskey into a crystal glass. “I haven’t felt so detached since my father died. I can’t wrap my head around this. I hate what Adrian did; I hate that she was afraid to tell me; and I hate that I hadn’t figured it out sooner. There’s no way I would’ve let her go back there…”
He sat in the wing chair, placed a glass on a side table and pulled on his hair, his face pale. He stared at the floor, gathering his thoughts for a long time before he looked back to me.
“I think I’m doing better than you, mate,” he pointed to my hands. “You haven’t stopped shaking since Ty called.”
Shaking was just the visual representation of the madness happening inside my every cell, and Nick knew that. I didn’t need to spell it out for him. His sister was still the centre of my world, even though I tried to chase the feelings away.
“You should call him.”
I closed the living room door so the girls wouldn’t hear the conversation. Nick dialled Ty’s number, put the loudspeaker on and laid the phone on the coffee table.
“You got her?” Ty answered, his voice tense.
“Yeah. I should break your fucking neck,” Nick hissed. “How could you keep it a secret?! You should’ve told me!”
Should have, would have, could have…
It was too late for this shit. The damage was done. We had to help Nadia deal with the trauma, instead of screaming and placing the blame on ourselves, Ty, Adrian, karma and fate.
“I know,” Ty sighed, “I’m sorry. I wanted to call you, believe me. I tried so many times, but at some point, I gave up. I hated being the one to trigger her panic attacks.”
Nick rubbed his face, gulping the last of his whiskey.
“Now’s your chance to talk. I want to know what it looked like, because all Nadia does if defend that piece of shit. I want the truth, Ty.”
I changed my mind about drinking the moment Ty started to speak, filling my head with sick images.
“At first we were both stupid,” he began. “We tried to help Adrian quit, but it soon became clear that wouldn’t work, and all I tried to do was to separate them,” he scoffed. “That girl is reckless, Nick. Honest to God. Every time he got high, the abuse got worse, but she still made excuses for him,” he spat out sounding exhausted and reproachful. “She ran to me in tears, inpainso many times, but there was no reasoning with her. Adrian waltzed in the next morning, begging, crying and apologising. I watched Nadia hide the bruises and forgive him every time he made a punching bag out of her.”
I sat there, sickened, disconnected from reality. The shit spewing from Ty’s mouth was like a gruesome movie scenario. None of it sounded real. There was no fucking way it happened to the girl I loved.
Millions of women suffer domestic violence on daily basis, but it doesn’t register with us until it hits home.
Nadia was my home. For a short while, she was my everything. Knowing what Adrian dragged her through, I considered it a miracle she was still getting out of bed in morning. The strength of her character was undeniable, but so was the extent of her naivety.
“She told us it started in January,” I began, throwing more vodka at the back of my throat. “She said it all came down to his jealousy.”
“Thomas, right?” Ty asked, but didn’t wait for confirmation. “She told me about you. Whatever you think you know about her, scratch that. You want to know why she stayed with Adrian for so long despite the abuse? She was scared to bewithouthim. In all the madness, he kept her in check and took control of her life, mood and feelings. She gave up control because when your father died, Nick, she lost her way. Adrian became her guide.”
Ty cleared his throat and a small, desperate chuckle left his lips. “I don’t know what you did, Thomas, or how you did it, but when she flew back to New York four months ago, she wasn’t the same girl I knew. She wasn’t lost anymore. She found herself and didn’t need Adrian to guide her. She was still the selfless, naïve Nadia, but she realised Adrian’s ways of keeping her sane weren’t doing her any good.”
My vocal cords tied. I felt as if I stood in a giant, cosmic toilet, and God just flushed it. Ty’s words struck the most sensitive parts of me. There was no recovering after hearing that.
How was I supposed to go about my life without her when I learnt I pieced her back together without even knowing? Without fucking trying! I wasn’t sure if I was proud or scared of the effect I had on her.
Since day one, I knew she was helpless and fragile, but there was also so much strength in her petite body that it was baffling. I hadn’t once considered that the strength was only there when I was or that I taught her, by accident, how to live her life without anyone’s help.
Nick clanked his glass to mine in a gesture of appreciation.