Nicholas Grey Must Not Die | ✓

14 | News

"No river is too wide or too deep for me to swim to you. Come whatever I'll be the shelter that won't let the rain come through" 

~ Remedy (25) 

    (THE WORD RAPE IS MENTIONED A FEW TIMES IN THIS CHAPTER, BUT NO DETAILS ARE USED AND NO DESCRIPTIONS ARE WRITTEN)        

My heart was shattered. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. But I forced myself out of bed every day, not wanting my parents to worry. They still don't know about Nick and I-or at least what we were-but I think my mom has figured out I was seeing someone. She's been looking at me with a sad smile lately, surely after seeing my red swollen eyes every day. And if she knew, my dad must know as well since they tell each other almost everything. It was a miracle they were trying to give me space because if they brought anything up, I would surely break and have a meltdown. 

Today marks two weeks since Nick discovered the part I played in his case. At first, I thought that he really did need time to thoroughly think about everything and come to terms with it. I thought he would eventually come back to me and I would be more than ready to apologize again. But it has been two weeks, two weeks. Slowly but surely, I began to realize that maybe he was just trying to let me down easy. Perhaps, he never intended on coming back to me. Perhaps, that had been his goodbye. 

I started believing this almost a week ago and that was when I actually started to cry myself to sleep. Before, I never understood when people talked about their hearts being broken into a million unrecognizable pieces, but now, I more than understood. 

I still cry myself to sleep. Sometimes, he'll pop into my head in the middle of the day and I have to rush to the restroom to avoid crying in public. I can feel the broken pieces of my heart, the devastated parts of my soul, and my disappointed mind before I open my eyes every morning. 

But I was trying. I was trying to do as he wished. I wanted him to be happy, to be at peace. 

The day the story about the girls' false accusations came out, everything seemed to go back to normal. However, that had been the calm before the storm, because the next day, hell broke loose. Articles came out over and over and over again claiming that the charges were dropped because Nick was a prospective athlete and that the girls were being forced into silence. I'd wanted to reach out to Nick then, to try and console him. It must've been devastating to go through this again even though his name had already been cleared. In the end, I didn't do anything, because I was afraid he would reject me again. I was too broken to handle any more pain. So, I left him to deal with the cruelty of the world that was trying to take him for everything he had. 

It's been almost a week and a half since the story broke and everything just seemed to get worse and worse for Nick. It got so bad that I just started tuning everything out; I couldn't bear it anymore. People's horrible gossip, their badmouthing, their hatred, their damn hypocrisy was infuriating. I felt like I was going to pop someone's head off if I kept on paying attention to their crap. So, I closed everything off and just focused on school.

Today was a Wednesday, a school day. Like every other day for the past two weeks, I woke up, showered, and dressed plainly. I went downstairs looking like a robot with no human-like qualities. My mom was looking at me in that way again as she watched me take one of the seats that were around the dining table, which was right next to the island. She plated a couple of waffles and dressed them the way I like before setting them down before me with a cup of coffee. 

She leaned down and kissed my cheek, her blonde hair brushing my face as she moved away to smile at me. "Good morning, sweetheart."

I gave her a tight smile. "Hey, mom. Thanks."