Chapter 7 - The Kiss We Didn’t Take
By March, Nicholas could walk short distances with a cane.
He hated the cane.
Elena threatened to decorate it with glitter if he continued leaving it against walls.
He started using it more consistently.
I considered that excellent nursing, despite no longer being his nurse.
Spring arrived reluctantly in Chicago.
Dirty snow shrank beside curbs. The river looked gray instead of frozen. People stepped outside wearing jackets too light for the weather because hope sometimes overruled common sense.
Nicholas invited me to lunch.
I said no.
He accepted it.
That irritated me more than it should have.
Three days later, I called him.
“You didn’t ask why.”
“You said no.”
“Yes.”
“I’m practicing hearing it.”
I sat on my apartment floor and laughed.
Then I explained.
His criminal case remained open. My connection to him had already placed my family under scrutiny. I had only recently stopped dreaming about the envelope in my locker.
And beneath all that sat a truth I hadn’t said aloud.
I wanted to go.
Wanting made everything more complicated.
“I can wait,” he said.
“You shouldn’t build a life around waiting for me.”
“I’m trying to build one you wouldn’t have to disappear into.”
I didn’t answer.
A week later, I suggested coffee in a public place.
He arrived without a suit.
That almost unsettled me more than the guards.
He wore a dark sweater and moved carefully, his cane tapping against the sidewalk.
Victor stayed outside.
Inside, nobody stood when Nicholas entered.
Nobody lowered their voice.
A barista asked him to repeat his name.
I watched him blink.
Then smile.
“Nicholas.”
“Like Saint Nicholas?”
“Less generous.”
I stared at him.
He looked at me over the counter.
“Elena says I need better jokes.”
“She’s right.”
We sat near the window.
For an hour, we talked about things that weren’t crimes or medical charts.
My childhood.
His mother’s garden.
Lucy’s terrible driving.
The fact that he had never learned to cook anything more complicated than eggs.
“You’re thirty-eight.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“That’s not a defense against pasta.”
He smiled.
Then, unexpectedly, he told me about being fifteen when his father first asked him to frighten a man.
Not hurt him.
Just frighten him.
“He called it learning responsibility.”
I stirred my coffee.
“What do you call it now?”
“The beginning.”
I looked up.
Of what, he didn’t say.
He didn’t need to.
When we left, rain had started.
He held an umbrella while we walked slowly toward my car.
At the driver’s door, we stopped too close.
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
My heart became suddenly unreasonable.
“Clara.”
I wanted him to kiss me.
I also wanted a future that didn’t begin by ignoring every warning I had earned.
So I stepped back.
“Not yet.”
He nodded.
No persuasion.
No wounded pride.
Just a breath he let out carefully.
“All right.”
That was the moment I began to believe wanting him might not require losing myself.
In April, the independent review of the warehouse fire was released.
The findings confirmed ignored safety warnings and failures in the company’s response afterward.
Families received individual meetings with their own representatives.
Nicholas established restitution through a process he couldn’t privately control.
My mother chose to participate.
She also chose not to thank him.
Nobody asked her to.
At work, I started training newer nurses.
I enrolled in the advanced course I had postponed for two years.
My life kept growing in directions that had nothing to do with Nicholas.
He encouraged every one.
Then Miriam called.
“The prosecutors have offered terms.”
I sat down.
“Will he go to prison?”
“That remains likely.”
The word landed with a weight I had kept pretending not to feel.
That evening, Nicholas came to my apartment with Elena driving.
He stayed by the door.
“I won’t ask you to wait.”
I hated that sentence.
Not because it was unfair.
Because it gave me a choice I could no longer avoid.
“How long?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
I looked at the book lying on my coffee table.
The same novel I had read in Room 412.
May you like
For months, our lives had been measured by whether he would wake up.
Now we had to decide what being awake would demand.
