I don’t care about being healthy anymore. I stuff my face with sugar and sweets and anything that will make my pain go away, even if it’s only for a little bit.

I keep thinking about Nicholas.

Where is he?

Did he get into a fight?

Did someone hurt him?

Everything that I don’t know makes me sick to my stomach. How much more of this can I take?

But what other alternative is there?

I pull the car over and park in a sprawling parking lot of some big box store and I let myself cry.

And in this moment of weakness is when I start to wonder if maybe I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough to fight for someone who is behind bars and wait for them to get out.

There are many women who can do this, even for those men who have committed the crimes that they are accused and convicted of, but am I one of them?

But what’s the alternative, I think to myself.

Do I just leave him there?

Do I just leave him there, knowing that he’s innocent and unable to do anything from the inside?

But what can I do on the outside?

This whole time, I thought I’d done a lot but now everything is falling apart.

Meredith has been fired for being too involved and too much on the defense’s side. Luckily, they have still not found out about the preliminary DNA testing, but that makes convincing the DA’s office to test the DNA that much harder. Keenan knows that Owen should be a suspect but, for some reason, he is fighting against it.

I drive home with a heavy heart. I feel stuck and out of control. I love Nicholas and I will never leave him but I also feel like everything that I’m doing has no purpose and no end.

The future seems bleak and dark and without a single hope. With the evidence they have against him now, things will only get worse.

They will take his case to trial and find him guilty. His sentence will be life without the possibility of parole.

There will be endless appeals but the chances of winning one of them are slim.

What happens to us?

Can we spend a lifetime together separated by bars?

Never speaking to each other in private?

Never holding hands?

Never touching each other?

I open the door to my apartment hoping that Sydney is not there. All I want to do is be alone right now. I want to have a cup of tea and curl up in bed and hope that this has all been a terrible dream.

“Olive,” a man says when I walk into the kitchen.

Leaning against the counter, he tilts his head slightly down as his piercing eyes look deeply into mine.