Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Sage
Idon't know how I ended up here on my knees in the grass. But when I ran, this was the only place that made sense to come.
Nicholas's headstone is big and imposing. As it should be for the space he took up in life and in my heart. The flowers I last left here are decaying. I admittedly haven't been back to this spot in a long time. Not since I really started to take my death promise with Alexei seriously.
I run my fingers over the top of his grave, letting the tears roll down my cheek as I brush away the rotting bouquet.
"Nicholas," I say, whispering his name and saying it out loud for the first time in over a year. Shame and panic wash over me as I let his name fall from my mouth. I can't believe I let his name go unsaid for so long. I can't believe I let myself dishonor his memory by never speaking it.
I groan as I drop my head in my lap, letting my onslaught of tears wet my knees and clutching my hand to my gaping heart.
"I'm sorry," I sob. "I should've said it."
I gasp and weep, verging on hyperventilating, feeling so guilty that I didn't think more of him and say more about him over this last year.
"Things have become such a mess, Nic," I say, biting at my lip. "I wish you were here to help me through it."
I gasp for air as I calm my breathing and try to get myself back under control. My sobs become more even as I wipe my tears, but nothing makes the panic and shame go away. It simply sits there behind my throat. A warm breeze runs over my face and I clutch it to my cheek as if it were Nic's hand.
"Dad's awake," I tell him, whispering like I fear the trees will overhear us.
"I... just, didn't know what to say. They told me Dad was awake, and I've been waiting for that moment for so long now.
To make what I did to him right. But all I could think about when they said it was that he was going to wake up to a world that you're not in.
How was I going to explain to him that you're not here?
How was I going to see the look on his face, oh God-," I stop as my voice chokes.
I clutch my hands to my ribs, as if that could stop the full force of sadness.
"How was I supposed to watch him be told you're not here anymore? I couldn't see it," I say.
The cemetery remains quiet and peaceful, the sky overcast, while I sit in Nic's presence and allow myself to feel it all even if I don't want to.
"You never should have stopped that bullet for me," I say, my voice a whisper again. "You're the one who should be in this world, alive. Not me." I mean it when I say it. It should've been me, and if I could, I'd swap places with him.
Did he know he was going to die? What did it feel like to live those last moments knowing it all ended there? I mourn every day that he was meant to have on this earth and didn't. Every dream that was meant to be his but was stolen from him as viciously as his life was taken.
I sit back and wipe the tears from my eyes.
The sobs are dissipating now, and I'm no longer on the verge of panic, but I do feel the grief settle deep in my chest and I just know that's where it's going to live for the rest of my life.
I look at the name Nicholas Prince on the headstone and let it eat into my soul.
For all the times I let his name go unsaid. All the times I tried to shove it out of my mind. I regret them all now as every memory of him that I tried to suppress comes running back at me in full speed.
Letting him in and saying his name aloud tells me something I've always known but never admitted.
There was always a part of me that thought Alexei would kill me.
Burying these memories of Nic... never saying his name.
I thought I would never have to deal with it.
Because Alexei would get the better of me, and I'd never have to resurrect this feeling.
Yet here it sits. Staring at me. Consuming me. Knowing that things were always far more complicated than I thought, but shocked in the proof of seeing it with my own eyes. Shocked in the proof that with a knife in my hand and hatred in my mind, I still could not finish what I had promised I would.
There's a shuffle of footsteps behind me, and I suppose I've been found now. I didn't think I'd get away with running from Dad for long. But this has to be a new record. I turn over my shoulder, and find the least likely and yet most expected person possible standing behind me.
Alexei watches from a few feet away, his eyes going between me and the headstone.
I twist away and wipe the last of the tears from my eyes. As if I'm still trying to hide from him. Even though I know he knew what it would do to me. That's why he said Nicholas's name to me.
"Princess," Alexei says, stopping next to me.
From this angle I can only see his expensive leather shoes and black pants.
Until he crouches down in the grass next to me and my eyes meet his stormy gray ones.
Like always, I'm electrocuted when I'm trapped in his gaze, and that revelation only serves to make my heart hurt even more.
"Why you?" I say, sighing and cursing my luck. "Why always you?"
"I'll always know how to find you, princess."
"Just my luck," I say, shuffling onto my butt and crossing my legs over one another. Alexei follows the movement, even though it looks like it pains him when he sits down on the wet grass beside me.
"You ran away," Alexei says, how very observant of him. "Your dad's awake and you ran. Why?"
"It was a bit fucking overwhelming," I say. "Not what I was expecting when I got up this morning."
Alexei lets out a cruel scoff. "Yeah. Finding out that the leader of the DeMarco Family Mafia is alive was not on my fucking list of things to do today," he says, shaking his head. "Especially when I'm now his rival leader. He wasn't too happy to see my smiling face at the end of his bed."
"You saw him?" I say, frowning. "Did he ask about..." I let the question trail off even as my eyes shift towards Nicholas's grave. Alexei picks up on this, nodding gently.
"What did-"
"I didn't exactly want to stick around for the reveal, princess," Alexei says. "I've already got one DeMarco hunting me down for it, I'd rather not see if your father draws the same conclusion about who's fault this all was."
I nod. Because that's fair enough, really. I'd expect nothing less of my dad than to want Alexei's head. And probably mine right after that for being stupid enough to make a death promise in the first place.
"Why did you come here then?" I ask, looking back at him as the wind gently ruffles his strong black hair.
He takes a deep breath through his nose before he answers me. "I knew you'd be here."
Letting that sit for too long feels uncomfortable. Alexei doesn't look at me. Just up into the sky like he is at peace sitting here. I, too, close my eyes and look up into the sky. Letting the wind run past me and just being.
It is wild to me that I can safely and comfortably close my eyes with my worst enemy sitting right next to me. But that is exactly what's happening.
When I open my eyes again, they are sticky with tears yet to dry. I blink slowly to clear them before looking back at Alexei who has now found his way to staring at me. Intense as always, but comforting too.
"Do you ever think about that day?" I ask. "About what happened?"
"Yes," he answers quickly. "Every day. For more reason than one."
I sniff and when I start to shiver I remember I'm still in my pajamas, having run away straight from bed. Straight from Alexei's bed. Fucking hell. I groan as I rub my forehead.
Alexei's shrugs off his jacket and places it around my shoulders. I don't want to, but I sink into it easily, letting his warmth secure me and his scent surround me.
He sits next to me now only in his black silk shirt, but he still looks comfortable.
"I... blame myself," he says, unexpectedly.
"What?" I say, the words coming out slowly and with all the incredulity I can muster.
He's got enough courage to meet my eyes, but not enough to hold them. Like he either can't bare what he's about to say or can't face me when he says it.
"My brother. He died in there. I left him to die. Sometimes I wonder... if all this with you was just a way to absolve myself of my guilt. For the fact that I should have been there for my brother, but I wasn't."
My heart breaks all over again. For both of us. I know that feeling all too well. If all this wasn't to absolve my own guilt for what happened to Nicholas... because he stopped that bullet for me... then it was to punish myself for letting something happen to Nicholas in the first place.
This... is one big accident. One big misunderstanding.
And now I feel us both, Alexei and I, trapped in the loop of blame and guilt, suffering against each other but also alongside one another with the weight of everything that happened.
Perhaps of all the people we look to lean on, it's really only us that can understand each other.
What does that make us? Maybe, in the end...
I push that thought away. I know deep down I'm not ready to let go of any guilt just yet. If I ever will be.
"When it really came down to it," Alexei says, his jaw hardening on the last part. "I chose you." Alexei looks at Nicholas's obnoxiously large grave stone. "And this motherfucker," he says, almost laughing as he scoffs. "I fucking hated him. I hate him irrationally. And yet, I owe him everything."
For this part, Alexei does look back at me, and the electric pulses return to my body as I find my eyes locked with this. "He stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life."
My heart doubles in time. Beating through my chest with a hammer. Nicholas took his bullet for me. Nicholas stopped Alexei from... hurting me. Is he saying that all along, trying to hurt me, was a mis-
"Come on, princess," Alexei says, standing up and walking away without even gathering my reaction. "Enough moping, you need to go back and see your father."