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He huffed and pulled out his phone, texting me the address

"Thank you," I said as I ran out the door

I took a deep breath and tried to gatherthe brownstone The front door was open, but you had to get buzzed in to enter the second door I pressed the button for Unit Six

A woh static "Hello?"

"Hi, this is Jake I know Nina is staying with you and doesn’t want to see me, but please, I need to talk to her Can I come up?"

Silence

It felt like it went on for an eternity Then, came more static "I’m sorry, Jake She doesn’t want to see you Please leave"

I pressed the buzzer again but no response This went on for about fifteenme

I went back outside and walked around to the back of the building to see if there were any s A fire escape led up to the sixth floor If I could get up there and knock on a , maybe they would see how serious I was and let ht if I had to

I began to crawl up the fire escape, unsure of whether the apartot to the sixth level, I looked in theat a dark, e whoever lived there to let ht of her nearly knocked the wind out of me Nina closed the door and sat down on the bed She didn’t seehair covered her face as she cried into her hands, her shoulders shaking up and down Then, she looked up at the ceiling andto herself I felt like I was about to suffocate as I watched her suffering because ofthe person I lovedme apart I didn’t want to scare her, but I needed to do solass Her hand over her heart, she turned and noticed h the

"Nina…letup and down

"Letaway You have to let ain for the first time since I met her

"Please…I love you," I said

It pained ht I was a horrible person as using her

I decided to atteh the , but low and behold, it opened right up I crawled through and closed it behind ainst the wall on the opposite side of the room I didn’t want to upset her, so I kept my distance

"Nina…it’s not what you think"

A tear fell froht to it This story needed to be told froht I sat down on the bed and took a deep breath, looking away frohteen when I met Ivy She was like no one I had ever encountered before…so full of life and vibrant The first ti in the middle of a torrential rainstorm I walked up to her and ht She was a guitarist, played sos and I went to see her perforuess it was infatuation We beca About six ht, and she decided that it would be a brilliant idea to hop the next flight to Vegas and get er with a hot girlfriend and figured it would ot ht I loved her enough to spend the rest of e her reaction, and she was looking down at the ground

"That Vegas trip was just about ether after that My fa My sister didn’t talk to ht she was a bad influence But I was still in the honeyht About six e She started calling in sick a lot to work and stopped going to her classes We were fighting all the ti et ho affairs all day Then, the next day, she would tellher I was trying to kill her and that she’d better kill herself before I got to her At first, I thought it was just stress, because she had recently lost her mother to a heart attack She had no other fa different The erratic behavior went on for months One day, she showed up at my job and in front ofto poison her That hen I took her to the hospital for the first tinosed with schizophrenia"

I turned to look at Nina, as now looking back at me

"A lot of people can live very nored withworked They call her condition ‘treatment-resistant’ now She was in and out of hospitals, and I just couldn’t take care of her anymore I orried she’d kill herself while I was at work So, about a year after she got the diagnosis, I reached roup hoot a job offer I couldn’t refuse in New York with the kind of benefits I needed to help take care of her She made me proo, and I’ve kept that pro for a few seconds to let her process what I had told her so far She finally whispered, "Jake…I--"

"Please…don’t say anything yet I need to finish this"

She nodded

"I was scared shitless those first couple of years, but over time, it just became my normal The way I saw it, I had made my bed, and I had to lie in it I convinced myself that I could handle it I was just a 20-year-old Twenty fking years old and I was taking care of my mentally ill wife After those first two years, our relationship changed It became less like husband and wife and more like brother and sister We haven’t been intio Even in the months before that, it was almost non-existent, and when it happened, it didn’t even feel right any ti out wos I had needs, and I was so fking lonely"

"Women like Desiree," she whispered

I nodded

"I had accepted that fate My life was all planned out, and that was it I’d stay legally married to Ivy so she could have my benefits and so I could look out for her, and the rest of my life would be separate I was basically dead inside…until you"

She turned to o to Boston?"

"They thought she tried to kill herself They found her on the roof No one knohat really happened"

Nina closed her eyes as ifto tellto tell you everything and hope that by some miracle, you’d still want to be with me"

She walked over and sat next to me on the bed I inhaled her vanilla scent I wanted to hold her so badly and bury s stood She reached for my hand and squeezed it and my body relaxed We just sat like that forwith each second that passed The silence was killing me "Nina, talk to me," I finally said, my voice hoarse

"I don’t knohat to say, Jake I aht now I spent the past few hours filled with hate toward you I thought you were sneaking around on your ith ain And now…I don’t knohat to feel This was a lot to take in"

I shooka brick I don’t knohat other kind of reaction I expected

What I wanted to say was, "you said you’d never leave me" What I actually said was, "I know this is a shock and can only iine how you feel You need to kno edto stay married to her?"

"I never planned to divorce her because I never planned to fall in love with soally hts I’d have when it came to her care I still have to do a lot of research before I cut those ties legally I would never be able to abandon her, Nina She’s always going to be a part ofwith you, then I aht here and now that I will do it"<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>