Drowning

As the hours kept ticking by, Hannah kept roaming London and all it had to offer. She even visited places she’s never been, looking at all the unfamiliar signs and stores. People on the sidewalks stared at her, and Hannah knew it was because of her complexion, not because she looked like a tourist.

She was very aware of her of how she looked. She may have not seen it up close, but the tears were all dried up and probably left mascara marks running down her cheeks. The crying still hadn’t stopped, and she didn’t have a clue when it will. She was back to feeling like she was at the lowest point in her life again. Everybody stared, and they did nothing.

Most of her day was wasted by aimlessly walking and stopping in a coffee shop to get something in her system. By that time, it was four in the afternoon and even then, she didn’t have an appetite. She only took two bites out of her sandwich and the cup of tea was halfway finished. The food gave her a nauseous feeling, especially when the phone calls kept coming. She knew she was worrying everyone once her mother started calling.

Her journey back home was slow, awaiting the remarks that would be spurting out of Marisa’s mouth. Or she could assume the worse: Niall would be waiting on the sofa upon her return.

Hannah shut the door quietly, but she should have expected Marisa to be in the kitchen at this hour. The spatula slammed on the counter, and Hannah reluctantly looked at her best friend. She resembled a mother, standing with a hand on her hip, other on the counter, and her lips pressed into a thin line.

“What did you do to him, Hannah?”

This was exactly what she wanted to avoid. Her gaze didn’t last long on Marisa and she headed to her bedroom.

“You are scaring the shit out of this poor boy! One of these days, you’re going to have to tell him!”

Hannah sat on her bed after she took off her coat. Marisa’s words hung in the air for Hannah to ponder. The envelope sat on her dresser, taunting her. As much as she would love to spill out her whole life story, she just didn’t think she could handle it. She didn’t think Niall could handle it.


All three calls went straight to voicemail just like the rest did days prior. The damn automatic lady got on his last nerve, but no matter how much he told himself to give up on contacting her, he just couldn’t. He was way too involved in her life and on the border of cracking this mystery.

Niall was a bit angry that she didn’t bother to call him at all, especially since she knew he was going under major surgery for his knee. She never bothered to come by to say goodbye before he left for America. There were no messages asking for updates on how he’s been or how the recovery was going. He received plenty of messages about that, but Hannah was the one he most wanted to hear from.

Currently, his life consisted of sitting on his sofa, flipping through the channels on the television, being bored out of his mind since he couldn’t do anything else. He called his family to update them on his recovery. The boys had made a stop by to see him when they were available. Other than that, the only human contact was his physical therapist, who worked with him day by day to get knee close to one hundred percent before the tour starts up in April.

He prohibited himself from even thinking about calling Hannah. It only took three days for him to reconsider. Enough anger had built up inside of him that he was ready to be firm with her. He was sick of unanswered questions and neglect.

“Hi.” She said wearily.

Niall had to hold back a sigh of relief. He cleared his throat before speaking. “It’s nice to finally here from you, Hannah.”

“I know, Niall, I’m sorry-”

“Please, don’t do that. I don’t want your apologies at the moment. I want your explanations. You have left me in the most embarrassing way, not even offering to check up on me after my surgery. I, at least, deserve a little something from you.”

“Okay.” She whispered over the phone. Her agreement was quicker than he imagined. He hated the way he had to get through to her, but he was glad it worked. “Do you want me to come by today?”

“The sooner, the better.”

Hannah sighed shakily.

“The door will be unlocked. Just walk in.” Niall told her.

“Okay.”


He knew to expect some emotion out of her, but never did he predict a makeup-free face, bloodshot eyes, and an envelope to be clenched between her fingers. The girl was an absolute wreck. A part of him hoped it was due to the night at the club, but another part want to sit her on his lap and tell her that she was his world.

This surgery was going to be the longest recovery of his life.

They stared at each other for a while, neither knowing what to say or who should talk first. Niall was too stunned for words to even be angry. Hannah looked as though her life was crumbling around her, which Niall didn’t even know the half of it.

“I, uh-” Hannah stuttered, playing with the envelope in her hands. “I want to let you know that I regret everything I did that night. This-” She waved the envelope in the air before handing it to him. “This is the reason why.”

Niall watched her, waiting for a signal that he could open it. The paper was slowly removed from the envelope, ends unfolded, and he began to read the words. At first, he didn’t understand it. The words sounded kind, but nothing changed the tone of the letter quite like reading who it was actually signed by.



“Bradley was sentenced to five years in jail for drug charges and domestic violence.”

Niall sat up on the sofa, leaning his elbows on his thighs, letter dangling in his left hand. Of all things, he didn’t anticipate her story to be this dark. Drugs and violence was an awful mix, and just from that piece of information, Niall could suddenly see why she was the way she was.

“Hannah, you could come sit down.”

An arm was out wide for her to crawl into. She took the offer, coming close and laying her head between his neck and shoulder. She wiped a few tears away while Niall grabbed the blanket that was luckily next to him and laid it over her.

“Everything was perfect when I knew nothing. Even now, I wish I was still a naïve sixteen year-old just trying to work my way on getting into a university. Knowing that he was a friend of Corey’s, I should have stayed away. Corey was nothing, but trouble at that age, and I fell in love with the ringmaster of them all.

“I was invited out to a party over the summer by one of my classmates. A friend of mine at the time attended it with me. My life didn’t change until two hours later when a guy friend of mine told me somebody wanted to dance with me, and I didn’t have enough time to protest because I already felt his hands at my waist. I was too blind to read all the warnings early in our relationship. He was too good to me, too overprotective, too nosey. I thought he cared, but he took caring about me to an extreme. He was my first boyfriend, so that was my only example of how love was.

“Obviously, I was going to listen to everything he said. I thought he loved me. My mom kicked my dad out for abusing drugs and I haven’t seen him since. My brother ran away a couple years after that, so all that there was left was my mother, sister, and I. I didn’t even have a grandfather to look up to. Brad was my only hope for restoring my faith in men, but little did I know that it was going to backfire on me.”


Month five rolled around of them officially being together. They had their ups and downs over the course of their relationship, but they’ve always been able to overcome them. By the end of the day, Hannah could say her life was absolutely perfect.

“Who was that?”

The voice startled her, jumping at the sudden question. An arm appeared around her shoulder as she looked up at Bradley, who was staring down her coworker. Their shift had just ended, and it wasn’t a surprise that he already showed up.

“He’s just a friend of mine from work.”

“What’s his name?”

“Will.”

“Oh.” With that comment, he took Hannah by the arm, escorting her to his car.

It wasn’t even a couple days later that the questioning started up again. At first, it was all about Will after work, wondering about what they were talking about or why it looked like Hannah was hiding something. She laughed off his concerns, telling him it was never anything important, but he never bought it. His simple nods were enough to drop the conversation, but it always left Bradley in a bad mood for the rest of the night.

Then, Will wasn’t even a threat anymore once Bradley started to accuse her of flirting with her guy friend from the party. He read through her text messages without permission, getting enraged from seeing conversations that were irrelevant. Messages had to be deleted so he couldn’t see anymore, but just as she thought she was in the clear, Bradley’s friends came into view. And if she wasn’t naïve, she would have known that the guys’ presence were going to get her into trouble.

“Get the fuck out.”

A friend had been waiting for Bradley to get back from work. Hannah happened to be over that day and invited him in. She had brought Bradley’s nightmares to life.

“What? Brad, I came-”

“I don’t give a shit. Get out of my home, now.”

Hannah sat wide-eyed on the sofa, seeing the fear in his friend’s eyes as he grabbed his coat and left the flat. It was just them two left in the room with Bradley pacing back as forth and Hannah not moving an inch.

“What’s with you having my friends in my home when I’m not here?”

“He couldn’t have been here longer than five minutes.” She said. “I gave him a cup of water and-”

“I don’t care what you gave him!” He shouted, bringing Hannah back to being silent. “Why the hell did you let him in?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind. He came looking for you after all…” Her sentences came out piece by piece, afraid of another outburst.

“I bet you just love flirting with every guy you see, don’t you?” He smirked. “Just when I’m out of sight, you take every opportunity you can to go behind my back.”

Hannah removed herself from the sofa, daring to go over to her boyfriend in attempt to comfort him. “Brad, that’s crazy talk. I would never-”

The slap came so fast, she didn’t see it coming. She stumbled quite a bit due to the force of his hand, and Brad took it as a chance to shove her to the floor. The intensity of that shove was enough to send her flying to the wall.

“Crazy?” He stalked over to her, taking his boot and crushing her forearms with it. She screeched in pain, but it was like he didn’t even care. “You think I’m crazy? I’d think twice before you decide to speak, but hear me out. You are not to be inviting anybody over when I’m not around, got it?” He chuckled menacingly like he was enjoying torturing his girlfriend. “You don’t even want to know the consequences to that.”

Finally, his boot was removed from her arms, and she was able to take a deep breath. Hannah looked at him with tears in her eyes as her fingers delicately ran over her bruised arms. She had never been so terrified in her entire life.

“Cover up your face. You look disgusting.”

His expression never faltered, lips still pressed in a thin line while his eyes shot daggers into her own. It was too frightening to look away, which is why Hannah was frozen in her position. Soon enough, his boots stomped away and she was left to scan her arm since the color of the bruises were beginning to show.


“I had to lie my mom on several occasions for the next year and a half. Bradley has no family, so I’m going to spend all day with him. He’s extremely ill, so I’m going to take care of him. In the winter, I said I got these bruises from slipping on ice or when we went ice skating, which we never actually went. In the summer, I tripped on the asphalt or I haven’t gotten much sleep, so I’ve been running into doors. She didn’t take me for a fool, but she never questioned me, not until I started to come home crying, telling her that he was mean to me.”

Niall didn’t even know what to say about all of this. There was nothing he could say or do to make her feel better. For everything she had told him, he started to retrace all of his conversations and actions to Hannah, wondering if he ever triggered anything to make her feel this way.

He could recall clearly the day they thought in the library, and she shoved the book cart into his knee. He knew he swore since he was in pain, but nothing hurt more than seeing the pained expression Hannah wore. She feared there would be a punishment coming for her actions. She literally was fearing for her life.

“Hannah, just stop.” Niall told her while she was continuing her stories. She peered up at him. “I can’t listen to anymore.”

“I’m sorry it’s a lot.” She said. “I know I owed it to you. I’ve just been so terrible to you about the topic that…it actually felt good to get it off of my chest.”

Niall had an arm around body when she laid her head back down on his shoulders. A hand rubbed up and down her arm as an attempt to calm himself. He was typically a fidgety person, but he just didn’t know what to do. The information he was given was a lot to take in.

“You went through that for two years?”

Hannah nodded. “I would-”

“God, you’re absolutely incredible. Did you know that? So much has happened to, and all you manage to do is hate the male population. That must have taken a lot to get to where you are today.”

“It wasn’t simple.” She smiled, still taking in the compliments Niall gave her. It meant so much. “I had to switch therapists because I wouldn’t talk to my first one. He was male. It was so hard opening up to someone who knew nothing about me, but eventually, she got through to me. Well, she did enough to where I could go out and do the things I enjoyed. She told me to take a break from relationships for a while, so I just took a break from men.”

“Do you still see her?”

“Lately I have.” Hannah sat up on the sofa and looked Niall straight in the eye. “Ever since I started to get feelings for you.”

Despite her impulsive decisions she’s made, Niall was proud of who she was becoming. She looked like she was trying so hard to be normal, trying to get back in the swing of things even though her past will haunt her for the rest of her life.

“I’m just so scared, Niall.” Hannah spoke up when Niall said nothing. “What if, when he gets out, he’ll come find me? I constantly worry what he might do to you if he finds us together because then it’ll be all my fault if you’re hurt. And you just had surgery, so it’s just-”

“Relax.” He brought her close to kiss her on the cheek. “Don’t worry about me. It’s not like he knows where I live. You can stay here for a little while. Everything will work out. Nobody is going to get hurt, I promise you.”