Page 19 of Infamous

The sobs came again. Ugly. Honest. Years of grief spilling out.

I didn’t know who he was or why he followed me here. I only knew he didn’t turn away. He didn’t speak. He didn’t leave.

He just stood there, listening.

And somehow, that hurt more than if he’d walked away.

12

NADIA

My head pounded, every heartbeat thudding against my skull like a cruel punishment. The air in my apartment was stale and sour, clinging to my skin until even breathing hurt.

It wasn’t just grief this time. It was last night.

The memories came in pieces. The stranger’s face, the grave, the sound of my own voice breaking.

Piercing blue eyes watching while I confessed everything I’d buried for four years. I didn’t even know his name. But I remembered every ugly thing that came out of my mouth.

“I told him everything,” I whispered to no one. My voice cracked, hoarse from crying. I pressed my palms against my eyes until colors flared behind them, desperate to block it all out. But nothing stopped it and the reel kept playing.

Why him? Why a stranger? Why did silence make me unravel like that?

He hadn’t touched me. He hadn’t comforted me. He’d just stood there, quiet, still, like the world stopped spinning while I broke open for him.

I splashed cold water on my face until my skin stung but itdidn’t help. The guilt stayed; it was a living thing coiled in my chest. When I looked up, the mirror gave me a stranger back: pale, red-rimmed eyes, hair tangled, mouth trembling.

“Pathetic,” I muttered.

I left the bathroom and drifted through my apartment, the silence too loud, the floor creaking like it resented my weight. My body felt heavy, my chest hollow.

Because I knew what I did. And worse, what I didn’t.

I could still hear the sound of Billie hitting the pavement. It wasn’t just noise. It was final. The air split open, and everything good in me bled out with her.

I ran to her that night, dropped to my knees in her blood, begged her to breathe. Her body was twisted wrong, her eyes open but empty. I screamed her name until my throat tore, until Stacy and Rita pulled me away.

She never came back. And I never forgave myself.

I should’ve stopped it before it began. Should’ve dragged her out when Stacy started circling like a vulture. Should’ve fought. Screamed. Anything. Instead, I walked out, convinced it would make them stop. But it didn’t.

Now I carried that mistake in my bones. The guilt never dulled; it just learned how to breathe beside me.

A knock broke through the silence. Soft. Polite. Out of place.

My body froze. No one knocked on my door. I didn’t have visitors. I didn’t keep friends. I’d built my life small and simple. Online bills, no deliveries, no neighbors, no noise. Grief had stripped my world down to its bones, and I’d stayed there because it was safe.

The knock came again.

My pulse stuttered as I walked to the door, slow and reluctant, each step like walking into something I couldn’t undo.

When I opened it, he was there.

Tall. Calm. A paper bag in one hand, a coffee tray in the other.

The man from the café. The man from the cemetery. Recognition hit hard and cold.

He stepped inside before I could speak, like he already knew I’d let him. He moved with quiet purpose. No rush, without hesitation, as though he’d always belonged here.