~ Nick
Dear Nick,
I know this is going to be hard for you to understand and I wish there was some other way to do this, to explain it, to make things better. But there’s not.
I can’t breathe, Nick. I can’t breathe because I’m drowning under the nightmare of what happened, of what he did to me, of what he took from me. And as much as I want to wake up from this nightmare, I can’t.
I can’t.
I want you to know that I love you. I’ve loved you my whole life. You are my best friend and I am so lucky to have been your sister. Please don’t blame yourself for any of this, just understand that this is the only way I can see out, the only way I can be free.
I love you, more than anything. Keep our bar alive and take care of Oscar for me.
More than anything though, please forgive me for doing this to you.
Amy x
The tears hit the paper, one landing on her name, blurring it. Emma takes the letter from my hands, puts it on the coffee table and then pulls me against her where I completely break down and sob like a fucking baby.
I feel her arms tightening around me as though she’s trying to hold me together. She says nothing though, and I’m grateful, because there are no words that can be said. Instead, she simply holds me against her and lets me fall apart in her arms.
I don’t know how long we sit here for, but eventually the tears stop. I pull back, running a hand through my hair, unable to look at her. Emma reaches over, her fingers brushing away the tears on my cheeks before she turns me so I’m facing her.
“Can I get you anything?” she whispers.
I shake my head, exhausted. “Just stay with me,” I whisper, pulling her close as we sink back into the couch. My head is pounding, a throbbing pain that’s mirroring the ache inside my chest.
It hurts. Hurts far more than when it first happened, far more than I expected it would. To think she was in that much pain, that there was no other way out for her, that she could think I would hold any of it against her.
Fuck, how could she ever think that?
Oscar jumps up onto the couch, watching me as he walks towards us. I drop a hand to his head; pat him as rubs against me, as though he knows what’s happened. He curls up against us both, his warm body pressed against my leg.
“He’s a smart cat,” Emma whispers, reaching over to stroke him.
I half laugh. “Amy used to say the same thing.”
“Smart girl,” Emma says, pulling back a little so we’re facing each other. She gives me a small smile, leaning in to press a kiss to my lips.
“Did you read it?” I ask. She nods and I’m glad. “I can’t believe things were that bad for her,” I whisper, the tears threatening to come back. “That killing herself was the only way out for her.”
Emma’s fingers brush my cheek. “It’s difficult to understand,” she says. “I think that’s one of the hardest parts of losing someone this way. Trying to understand how they reached this point.”
“But how could I not know, Em?” I ask. “She was my twin sister. I should’ve known, should’ve been able to tell she was thinking about it.”
“Nick,” Emma says gently. “Don’t do this,” she adds. “Don’t blame yourself because you couldn’t see what things were like for her.”
“She’d already tried it once,” I say, knowing Emma knows this. “She pretended it was an accident,” I add. “That she never meant to take that many pills and I fucking believed her.”
“Of course you did,” she says, her fingers brushing over my arm. “No one ever wants to think that someone is in that much pain that suicide is the only way out for them. But you can’t blame yourself for that, just like you can’t blame her for doing what she did either.”
My eyes close, remembering back to Adrian’s office earlier. I’ve never really thought about whether I blamed Amy for any of this. How could I after everything that had happened to her? Everything I’d done?
But the more Adrian pushed, the more I started to realise that some of this anger and guilt I carried around with me was directed at her. As shitty as that realisation was, it didn’t change the fact that it was true either.
Yes, I blamed her for leaving me. But I also blamed her for the fact that I blamed myself because I wasn’t able to save her.
“I never thought I did,” I eventually say, glancing down at the tattoo on my arm.
“And now?”
I look up, see Emma watching me, concern in her eyes. “Maybe a part of me does,” I whisper.
Emma nods, relief washing over her. Her fingers slide over my forearm, tracing the ink that’s tattooed into my skin. “You’re allowed to be angry at her, Nick,” she whispers. “But you need to forgive her too.”
“I know,” I say, swallowing hard. “I know I do.”
She leans in to kiss me now and I slide a hand into her hair, holding her too me as I kiss her once, twice, three times.
“You’re allowed to forgive yourself too, you know,” she says, brushing her fingers across my cheek. I shrug, knowing that’s a lot easier said than done. “This will get easier,” she whispers, resting her forehead against mine. “I know you don’t believe that, but I promise you, with time, it will get easier.”
It feels strange to want to believe in these words she’s telling me. To ever think there will come a time when I do forgive myself for everything that happened. As it stands, there are just so many ‘what if’ moments that I know I could’ve done differently, that would’ve changed how everything turned out. It feels wrong to just accept that they happened and to let all of them go. I’ve always felt like I needed to be reminded of it, that I deserved to remember how much I fucked things up.
It’s why I got the tattoo in the first place and why I’ve never been able to let any of it go despite the fact that I never talk about what happened.
“Maybe I should get rid of it.”
“What?” she asks, pulling back.
My eyes flick to my arm, then back to her. “The tattoo.”
Now it’s Emma’s eyes that turn to my arm. I watch as she moves her fingers gently over it, almost as though she’s caressing it. Tiny shivers move through my skin, following the path of the ink up and over my shoulder and straight to my heart.
“I don’t know,” she says, her eyes still on my arm.
I tuck her hair behind her ear, watching her as she stares at my arm, her fingers still tracing the lines. “You don’t think I should?”
Emma looks back at me, her bottom lip between her teeth. She shrugs, places a hand against my chest. “It’s a part of you,” she says. “I get why you got it, but I’d get why you’d want to remove it too.”
I stare back at her, wondering how despite my many fuck ups, that we somehow managed to find each other in all of this. How a woman like her could walk into my bar and find a way into my life, just like Amy once told me she would.
As shit as everything has been these past few months, I honestly can’t imagine my life without Emma in it. It’s why I’ve needed her to stay, why I want her to stay forever.
I don’t ever want to lose her.
“You don’t need to decide tonight,” she says. “Think about it for a while.”
“I love you.”
I watch as surprise crosses her face now, a tiny blush creeping up her cheeks as she smiles, almost shyly at me.
“I’ve loved you from the second you walked into my life, Emma,” I tell her. “And I’ll love you for the rest of it.”
Now it’s Emma who’s crying. She’s smiling though, even as silent tears fall down her cheeks. I lean in, kiss them away before brushing my lips against hers.
“I love you.”