Nicholas Grey Must Not Die | ✓

12 | Madness

"We walk together into the light and my love will be your armor tonight. We are lionhearts. And we stand together, facing a war, and our love is gonna conquer it all"

~ Lionheart (Confident)

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

Now that I've gotten what I needed from the girls, there was no point in hiding my relationship with Nick anymore. For some reason, though, I was afraid to bring it up to him. I didn't know how to tell him that I wanted to go public with our relationship now. What would be my reasoning since nothing has changed from his perspective? I was also afraid of coming clean about my involvement in his downfall. I didn't want him to resent me. 

God, I am a complete mess.

Besides, things continued to get worse with the public as the weeks passed. Local news got wind of the story and they decided to plaster it all over the newspapers, online articles, and on TV. They brought it up every damn five minutes on air and it hurt to watch it all. It didn't take long for the story to go national. Soon enough, people all over social media were pressuring the school to expel Nick. They ridiculed the school officials for protecting a rapist. Support for the "victims" grew every day. There were multiple viral tweets about it every day. I feared the school would buckle under the pressure soon.

All of it made me sick. I didn't know how to protect Nick from any of it. I felt awful. He always seemed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. His confidence had evaporated. He was always staring out into space, deep in thought. He wasn't even eating anymore. I had to forcefully remind him to take care of himself. Sometimes I had to feed him myself. The pain in his eyes brought me to tears every time I looked into them. 

He told me the news was getting to his family as well. The stress wasn't good for his dad's fragile heart. We still haven't told our parents about us so I could only comfort him. When he told me about how his mom cried every day when she thought she was alone absolutely broke my heart. She was already scared to lose her husband...and now, her son as well. His family believed him, that I was sure of, but they were still being dragged through hell anyway. I hated this. I wanted to comfort them all. I wanted Nick to smile again. I wanted the pain in his eyes washed away. I wanted his family to be okay again, for his dad to not have stressors in his life such as this that could result in something terribly ugly. 

So, I did what I thought was best. I got the name of Nick's lawyer, Seth Davidson, from the news and got his phone number from his firm's website. After calling over and over and over again, I finally got through to him. When I told him that I was Nick's secret girlfriend, he almost hung up on me. Before he could, though, I blurted out that I had proof that could exonerate Nick. He stopped shortly then, telling me to go on. I told him it was something I needed to show him in person rather than say over the phone. Reluctantly, he agreed. 

And that's the reason I'm sitting in his office now with my hands fidgeting in nervousness as he finished a call not relating to Nick's case. 

My heart was beating way too fast, my hands were sweaty, and my stomach hurt. I was so nervous that I kept contemplating on running out of his office to escape. My laptop was in my bag, weighing heavily down on my lap even though it actually barely weighed a pound. It held the video file I'd transferred on there from my camera.

"Iris Ronan, right?" Seth spoke up. His voice was deep and stern, almost commanding.

I about sunk in fear but forced myself to sit up straighter and project confidence I didn't have. "Yeah, it is."