Chapter four : Rock Bottom

Nicole Garcia.

The alcohol burned my throat as I finished downing the second bottle and moving on to the third. I just lost him. I just lost Damian. The only person who genuinely cared about me in this life. I just...

I was on my third bottle when Maria found me.

She must have heard the bottle clinking on the tiles from the kitchen. Or maybe she smelled the whiskey from down the hall. Either way, she appeared in the doorway of the living room with wide eyes and a trembling hand over her mouth.

"Ma'am… please, you need to stop."

I didn't look at her. I just tipped the bottle again and let liquid rush down my throat, without stopping to wince or notice that I wasn't tasting it anymore. I just wanted to numb the pain I was feeling now. His back to me... Disappearing with his car into the night...

"Ma'am." The maid took a step closer. "Please... you're going to hurt yourself."

"Please, Maria." My voice cracked, more pleading than sharp. "Just... leave me alone. Please. I can't— not right now."

"You've been drinking for hours. Let me call someone. Let me call Mr. Damian... Or your moth—"

The mention of Damian's name sent a fresh wave of pain into my chest, so much that the whiskey's job was dulled.

"Please don't call anyone," I said, my voice breaking apart on the words, and I set the bottle down harder than I meant to, some of it splashing over my hand. "I just want to be alone. Please, Maria. I'm begging you."

She hesitated, wringing her hands. "Ma'am—"

"Please," I said again, quieter this time, tears slipping down my face. "I'm not angry at you. I just need to be alone."

Maria lingered a moment longer, clearly torn, before she finally nodded and backed out of the room slowly, throwing worried glances over her shoulder as she went. I heard her footsteps fade down the hallway, then the soft click of the staff quarters door.

I picked up the fourth bottle. Or maybe it was the fifth. I didn't know anymore. The room was spinning, but I kept drinking because it was better than all the memories that were hunting me.

Damian's face when Allison twisted the truth about the baby...

Damian's hand signing the divorce papers...

Damian walking out the front door...

He believed her. He actually believed her. And I hadn't been fast enough, hadn't been convincing enough, to stop it...

I drank until I didn't know when everything faded to black.

My eyes opened slightly when I felt someone shaking my shoulders really hard. I blinked over and over again, but I was barely able to keep my eyes open for even a second. The alcohol must still be messing with my mind because I heard the voice I was yearning for.

"Nicole! Nicole, wake up!" He sounded angry, scared, and really familiar to me.

It was just hallucination. There was no way he could be here, or even back for me. I tried to open my eyes, but everything was blurry. Two faces swam above me. No, one face— Damian's face. His hands were on my shoulders, shaking me like a rag doll.

"Can you hear me? What did you take? How much did you drink?"

He was really here. He had come back. Did Maria call him? Did he come back for me? Did he accept my apology?

I tried to answer, but my tongue was thick and useless. "D'ami… 'm sorry…"

He swore under his breath and then hooked his arms under mine, and lifted me off the floor. My head lolled against his chest and I craved the scent of his cologne for the first time in three years as I burrowed my nose into her body.

"…stupid, so stupid…" he was muttering. "…could have died…"

"Sorry…" I slurred again. Tears were running down my face, but I didn't know when I started crying. "Sorry… sorry…"

"Stop saying that." He was carrying me now, through the living room, because I could at least hear him kicking the bottles away to find his way out of the house. The cold air hit my face when we were outside, but I barely felt it.

"Mean it… this time…" I hiccupped. "I mean it, D'ami…"

"You're drunk. You don't mean anything."

The car door opened and he dumped me into the passenger seat and buckled the seatbelt around me. I tried to grab his arm, but my fingers were so weak to even have a grip on him.

"Don' leave… please… don' leave…"

But he was gone, and he slammed the door and got into the driver's side.

"I'm not leaving," he said, his voice tight. "I'm taking you to the hospital. Again."

The only thing I remembered during the drive was that I kept crying and apologizing, but Damian hadn't uttered a single word.

At the emergency room, after the nurses did their thing and I slowly came back to my consciousness, Damian and I were alone in the ward.

"If you ever do something this stupid again to get my attention," his face was hard and serious, "I will leave you to die. Do you understand me?"

I nodded, but my head was pounding too hard to speak.

"I mean it, Nicole. I'm done with you. We're done with each other!"

He pulled out his phone immediately and dialled until the person on the other end picked, and my heart dropped.

"Mrs. Garcia? It's Damian. Your daughter is in the hospital. Alcohol poisoning." He paused. "No, she's not dying. But I think you should come. I've signed the divorce papers. It's over. She's your problem now."

He hung up and looked at me before walking out of the door. "Your mother will be here in an hour."

The door opened two hours later. My mother swept into the VIP ward, her face clouded with fury as her heels clicked on the tiles floor. She stood at the foot of my bed and stared at me with eyes that could freeze fire.

"Alcohol poisoning," she said, tapping her feet on the ground relentlessly as she folded her arms across her chest. "Do you have any idea how humiliating this is?"

I tried to sit up, but the room spun slightly, and I quietly went back to lying down. "Mom—"

She pressed her fingers to her temples in frustration. "Do you know what you've done? Damian's father died saving your father's life. He pushed him out of the way of a car and took the impact himself, and he died three days later."

"What?" I felt my blood freeze in my system.

"His mother invested every penny she had to keep our family's company from collapsing. Every. Single. Penny." Her voice rose. "And you? You spent three years distant from him. Never letting him in. And now he's gone."

"Mom, I didn't know—"

"Of course you didn't know. Because you never asked. Because no one ever told you, and you never thought to wonder why the marriage happened the way it did."

Tears spilled down my cheeks and I didn't wipe them away.

"The marriage wasn't a punishment, Nicole. It was a debt. A debt we thought you would understand one day, and be grateful to repay." She shook her head. "Instead, you drove him away. And now he has filed for divorce."

"Mom, please—" the lump in my throat was back again.

"I am ashamed of how this has all fallen apart." Her voice cracked, but she didn't cry. "Your father can't even say your name right now. Don't call me until you've fixed this. If you ever can."

She turned and walked out in anger and the door clicked shut behind her. I lay there in the dark, the machines beeping around me, the IV tugging at my arm.

Damian's father died for mine.

His mother saved our company.

And no one had ever told me until it was already falling apart.

I was just so stupid.