COMPLICATED.

CHAPTER 43

THE AWAKENING

The darkness enveloping me is not empty; it is a dense mass, kneaded with distorted sounds and scents I cannot decipher. My eyelids are glued shut, heavy as lead plates, yet the outside world does not wait for me to regain lucidity. Voices arrive in waves, bouncing off the walls of what I recognize—from the muffled noises and the scent of paper and resin—as my room at the Academy.
“You’ve been irresponsible! Complete idiots!”
Amanda’s voice cuts through the air like a whip. It’s that tone she uses when she’s on the verge of exploding, a mix of pure rage and white-knuckle terror. I hear the sound of her nervous footsteps on the wooden floor, back and forth, an obsessive rhythm hammering at my temples and heightening the nausea tightening my stomach.
“What were you thinking?” she continues, a tremor of disdain in her voice. “Bringing her to a place like that? Look at her! She’s a wreck. You knew perfectly well that Emma isn’t like you. You can’t drag her into your filth just because you’re bored! She... she’s more like me, damn it! You knew she wouldn’t handle that place! You only went out to celebrate her admission; it was supposed to be a happy evening!”
She stops abruptly, and I hear her ragged breathing overpowering the guilty silence of Adam and Aria.
“I felt it,” Amanda hisses, her voice trembling with remorse this time. “I felt that I should have been there. If I hadn't had that commitment, if I had come with you, I would have avoided this bullshit. Your usual bullshit, Aria! You just wanted to get high and didn't think about her!”
I try to open my eyes, but the light is a needle stabbing straight into my brain. I close them immediately, letting out an involuntary moan. I want to answer, I want to tell Amanda not to scream, but my tongue is a dry piece of wood in my mouth. Whatever I took or drank last night still has control over me. My thoughts are like old, burnt slides passing too quickly: green neon lights, the bitter taste of something at the bottom of a glass, the body of someone pushing me... and then the cold display of the phone. That news. Nick.
“Be quiet. She’s waking up.”
The voice pronouncing these words isn't shrill. It’s low, firm, but charged with a vibration of exhaustion that makes my heart squeeze. I feel something cold and damp on my forehead. A cloth. Someone presses it with extreme gentleness, trying to mitigate the heat radiating from my skin. I feel burning hot, as if the fever were fighting the residues of that crazy night.
I reopen my eyes, one millimeter at a time. The room is immersed in a luxurious twilight, but the light from the desk lamp is still too much. At the foot of my bed, Amanda, Aria, and Adam are arranged in an unnatural circle. Amanda’s face is drawn and her eyes are glossy; she hastens to reach me, sitting on the edge of the bed. Aria takes an uncertain step forward, attempting to touch my hand with trembling fingers, but Nick doesn't allow it. He extends an arm—a sharp movement that freezes her in place.
But it is what I feel next to me that takes my breath away. Nick is lying beside me, occupying almost the entire space of my single bed. I feel the contact of his skin against mine, and that is where reality hits me. He is no longer wearing the elegant clothes from the meeting. He wears only the same dark trousers from last night, which I still feel slightly damp to the touch against my legs—a brutal reminder of how long he stayed out in the freezing cold for me. His chest is bare, solid, an anchor of heat in my sea of shivers. His hair is partly dry, but the ends are still stuck to his neck, dark and wet from the torrential rain.
“Where... where am I?” I manage to whisper. My head throbs so hard that I struggle to focus on their faces.
“You’re in your room, piccola,” Nick murmurs. The word vibrates against my skin, triggering a deep shiver.
His hands take my face, forcing me to look at him. His turquoise eyes are glossy, heavy with a suffering I’ve never seen on him. I see Nick clench his jaw in that way I know well. He’s trying to raise that steel shield his father taught him to carry, that coldness that should make him untouchable, but I see he is struggling immensely. He doesn't want to snap at my friends, he doesn't want to be the monster society pushes him to be, but he is so terrified that anger is the only armor he has left to keep from collapsing in front of them.
“It’s... it’s not their fault,” I croak, trying to defend them. Every word is a superhuman effort. “I did everything... all by myself. I just wanted... to be a new version of me. Someone I don’t know yet... I wanted to experiment, Nick. I just wanted to feel free for once, not the usual Emma who’s afraid of everything.”
I see his gaze fracture. That wall of ice melts for an instant as he listens to me.
“Then I realized...” I continue, as tears begin to fall. “Despite being sick, despite everything spinning and remembering nothing of the party... I saw that news on Aria’s phone. I realized you were in danger. I ran here... I just wanted to know if you were alive. I wanted to save you, this time.”
I place my hand on his bare skin, feeling his muscles tense like violin strings. Despite the fog in my head, my mind returns forcefully to yesterday’s meeting, to that office, to how the London operations were nearly destroyed. But looking at his reaction—that desperation going beyond simple economic failure—I realize there’s more.
“Nick...” I murmur, seeking his eyes. “Was there something else? Besides London, besides what we saw yesterday... did something worse happen and get said in that meeting, didn't it?”
He doesn't answer the question. He lets out a choked sound and squeezes me harder, trying to wedge my body against his. He rests his head on my shoulder, and I feel his warm breath on the bare skin of my neck. It’s a desperate intimacy, almost painful. His lips brush the line of my jaw, a chaste kiss but imbued with a hunger for absolute protection.
For a moment, I forget the nausea and the others still there. It’s just us, his arms surrounding me and the sensation of his chest rising and falling against mine. I feel safe. I feel his hand slip through my hair, stroking me with a vulnerability that takes my breath away.
But just as I try to pull closer to kiss him, he withdraws. It’s a slow, almost reluctant movement. He detaches himself from me and sits upright on the edge of the mattress, turning his back to the room. I see the muscles in his back contract as he tries to regain control, to put back on that leader’s mask his father demanded.
“Leave,” he says to the others. His voice isn't harsh; it’s just exhausted, laden with a fear he can no longer hide. “Leave now. Please. I need to be alone with her.”
Amanda casts one last worried glance but understands there is no more room for them. Adam and Aria head for the door in silence, as if walking on eggshells. The door closes with a sharp click.
The silence following the closing of the door is almost worse than the din from before. Nick remains seated on the edge of the bed with his back to me, his bare back looking like an expanse of taut marble under the dim light of the lamp. I look at him and feel a lump tighten in my throat. I’ve seen Nicholas face inhuman pressures over the last few years; I’ve seen him prepare to take his father’s place with a coldness that was frightening, his shield raised to let nothing leak out. But this... this is different. It’s not the usual mask of command. It’s something deeper, more visceral. It’s an open wound that cannot heal.
“I’m sorry. Nick...” I murmur, my voice sounding like a broken whisper.
He doesn't move. He doesn't even turn. My fingers tremble as I try to focus my thoughts. My head continues to spin, a bothersome buzz preventing me from being lucid, but he is more important than this malaise. He is all that matters now.
Suddenly, a name flashes through my mind like a cold bolt of lightning: Elisa. His mother. I remember the fragments of headlines I glimpsed, the words "threats" and "family." My heart leaps in my chest, accelerating the sense of nausea.
“Nick, look at me, please,” I insist, trying to push myself up on my elbows. “Your mother... Elisa. The threats in the papers... are they directed at her? Is that why you’re like this? Does someone want to hurt her?”
He lets out a sound halfway between a broken breath and a growl of pain. He lunges off the bed as if he can no longer stand the contact with the sheets and begins to pace the few square meters of my room. He brings his hands to his temples, pressing his fingers against the skin so hard his knuckles turn white.
“Not just her, Emma,” he finally replies, his voice sounding as if it came from a deep cavern. “It’s not just her. It’s everything... it’s all a goddamn mess. You have no idea what they brought up in that meeting. You have no idea how much filth they’re ready to spread.”
Seeing him like this, so lost and furious, pushes me beyond the limit of my physical endurance. I can’t just watch. I have to touch him. I have to make him understand I’m here.
“Come here...” I say, and without thinking of the consequences, I try to get out of bed.
But as soon as my feet touch the floor, the world decides to tilt. The ceiling and floor swap places, my vision blurs into a cloud of dark spots, and I feel my knees give way. I let out a small gasp of surprise, a muffled "oh," as my balance abandons me completely.
In a heartbeat, he is there. He spins around; his reaction is so immediate I don't even have time to understand how he reached me. His arms wrap around me before I can hit the ground, strong and secure, though they are still trembling.
“Emma! What the fuck are you doing?” he growls, but there is no malice, only pure terror choking his throat.
He lifts me up as if I were made of paper and puts me back on the bed with a gentleness that contrasts violently with his distraught expression. He tucks me in almost with annoyance, but his hands linger on my face, caressing me with a mute desperation.
“You have to stay still,” he orders, his face inches from mine. His turquoise eyes are a storm of guilt. “Don't you see how you are? Don't you see you can't even stand up? Do you want to drive me completely insane?”
“I just wanted... to be near you,” I whisper, trying to grab his hand. “You seem so far away, Nick. Even though you’re here, I feel you closing yourself in a place I can’t reach. Talk to me. Tell me what is destroying you, besides London.”
He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against mine, breathing my same oxygen. I feel a solitary tear slide from his cheek and wet mine.
“Not now, piccola,” he murmurs against my lips. “Right now you just need to close your eyes and try to erase this night. The rest... I’ll handle the rest. I have to think about everything, as always.”
He stays there, pinned to me, while outside the rain continues to beat savagely, as if it wanted to knock down the Academy walls and sweep us away.
The silence becomes heavy again, broken only by the crackling of the rain. I wanted to tell him about her. About that woman, Emerald, the only image that has remained sharp and fixed in my mind despite the fog of alcohol and exhaustion. Her gaze, the way she pronounced my surname... it’s an obsession pressing against my temples. But I look at Nick, I see the shadows under his eyes and the way he torments his fingers, and I realize it’s not the time. I cannot add another ghost to his night.
“I need water, Nick. A lot,” I whisper, trying to clear my throat which feels full of sand.
He snaps into action immediately, as if he had only been waiting for an order from me to feel useful. He grabs the bottle on the desk and pours me a glass, supporting the back of my neck with one hand while I drink greedily. The cold water gives me a jolt of reality. I drink a second, then a third, while he observes me with almost clinical meticulousness.
“How... how did you find me? How did you bring me here?” I ask, resting my head on the pillow.
Nick sighs, sitting near me again, but without touching me this time. “I wanted to take you straight to the emergency room, Emma. I was out of my mind. When I saw you fainted, with the rain beating on your face and that breath so short... I thought your heart was going to stop.”
He pauses, and a strange expression crosses his face, a mixture of disbelief and residual annoyance.
“It was Adam and Aria who stopped me. They said they knew exactly what to do, that they were ‘experts’ in this kind of recovery. God, I wanted to punch them.”
He makes a half-gesture with his hand, clumsily imitating my friends. “Adam pulled some kind of survival kit from the trunk: sachets of foul-smelling mineral salts and an absurd technique they call ‘the lemon and ice method.’ They said if I took you to the hospital someone would have to file a report and it would be a disaster for the Academy, for your parents, and everyone else. Aria kept repeating that it was enough to keep you warm and make you drink liters of some secret mixture of hers, of water and I don't know what other deviltry...”
As I listen to him describe the absurd and almost grotesque ways my friends convinced him not to call the ambulance—talking about Adam trying to measure my pulse with a phone app that didn't work and Aria wanting to soak my feet in ice-cold water—I feel a weak, almost imperceptible smile stretch my lips. It’s an involuntary reflex, a glimmer of that old normalcy made of idiocy and friendship.
Nick stops abruptly. He stares at me, noticing that small movement of my mouth I tried to hide under the sheets. His reaction is conflicting: for a moment his eyes light up, relieved to see a sign of life, but then they darken again, laden with a worry that cannot vanish.
“You’re laughing? Really, Em? I was dying inside and you find those two reckless fools funny?” he reproaches me, but his tone lacks its former strength. It’s only the reflection of his anxiety. “I only trusted them because I was too worked up to think clearly and because I knew that, deep down, they frequent those places more than I frequent my office. But never do it again. Never again. Please.”
He reaches out and strokes my cheekbone, his thumb lingering on my warm skin. In that touch, I feel the full weight of his protection, a love that sometimes feels like a prison, but tonight is the only wall separating me from a total collapse.
“Now rest,” he whispers, getting up to turn off the desk lamp and leaving us in only the glow of what remains of the moon filtering through the clouds. “I’m staying here. I won't close an eye until I’m sure every trace of that party has left your system.”
He lies down on top of the covers, next to me, remaining vigilant like a sentinel in the dark. I feel his scent mix with that of the rain, and as sleep finally begins to claim me, the thought of Emerald returns to knock, silent and lethal.