Chapter 11 #2
“I didn’t end anything.” She slashed a hand through the air.
“I begged you to try. I was willing to do what it took to make this work.” Her hand whipped back and forth in the space between them.
The way her fingers slashed through the air it was like she was cutting final frayed strings that connected them.
His shoulder muscles bunched from the effort of holding still. He wanted to grab her hands, stop her from severing those invisible ties.
He looked from her hands to her face and for the first time tonight, their gazes met. Her eyes were a deep blue that at times seemed almost green, like the Baltic Sea in Heiligendamm. But there was darkness in the depths. Pain that he’d put there.
The mist turned into a drizzle, but he didn’t move, and neither did she.
Her voice lowered, almost broke. “I begged, Eric. I begged you to love me enough to try.”
Rain wet her face, and he couldn’t tell if she was crying. He wasn’t sure if he was crying.
Eric had been brought to his knees many times in his life, but somehow this was more desolate than the others. Before the blows that laid him low were towering and obvious—the death of his wives, of Josephine.
The look on Nikolett’s face in this moment hit him the same way. A different kind of death was written in her expression.
“I knew what you were going to do before you did. I knew once I found out you used marriage to force Mateo out of the Spartan Guard what your emergency plan to deal with me would be.”
He couldn’t deny it. He stood there like the horrible fool he was, shivering not from the cold but from the dread that was winding its way through him.
“I should have kept our interactions formal and professional after the first time you kissed me. Our jobs alone are enough to make us a bad match because we’re both too stubborn to give up—”
“I’ll give it up,” he rasped out. “I never wanted to be fleet admiral. I’ll step down and—”
She laughed, a bitter sound. “Noble words, and easy to say, because you know you can’t simply step down. The admirals would have to agree and find a replacement. We’re barely recovered from what Petro did. They’ll fight to keep you in your place.”
He waited for her to tell him it was possible.
That she’d figured out a clever way for him to step down.
The only one that had occurred to him was for her to become fleet admiral and he could be her supportive spouse.
Yes, that brought up echoes of disquiet because of what had happened to Dahlia, who’d been murdered while she was admiral of Kalmar, but the thought didn’t cripple him with fear the way it would have before Elijah and his light bar.
It was raining in truth, and Nikolett shivered, her hair dark now that it was wet. He reached for her on instinct, needing to protect her from the cold, but she pulled back, stepping out of reach.
“Why are you here, Eric?”
“To apologize.” He wished he had more, but her words had scraped him raw and he needed a minute to pull himself together. “I hurt you.”
“You’ve been hurting me for a long time.” Her voice was almost a whisper and hard to hear over the soft sound of an equally soft rain. “And I’ve been complicit. I could have, should have, walked away a long time ago.”
“You deserve better. You deserve a man who—”
“It’s not about what someone deserves. It’s about what they want. And I wanted you.”
“Wanted. Past tense.”
Her eyes narrowed with frustration. “We’ve already had this conversation. Why are you here?”
“To apologize for hurting you—”
“You said that already.”
“—and for the way I implied I got to decide when and if our relationship ended.”
“Bullshit.”
Frustration surged past the regret and heartbreak that had gripped him and rendered him nearly mute. “What do you mean bullshit? That’s why I’m here.”
“You could have sent another ridiculous middle-of-the-night text. There was no reason to fly to Paris.” She shook her head. “You’re here because you don’t trust anyone—my people, Victoire’s people.”
“I trust you, Nikolett. I trust you more than you’ll ever understand.” He’d shown her parts of himself that he’d never dared expose to anyone else.
“You’re here because you don’t like that they’re using me as bait and you think you and the—”
There was a screeching noise in Eric’s head, almost identical to the sound tires made against the road when you stood on the brake.
He grabbed her by the upper arms, forcing her to face him. “Bait?”
Nikolett’s eyes went wide and she licked her lips. “You know the plan for the Spaniard.” The sentence rose slightly at the end, almost a question.
He did not know the plan for the Spaniard, and later, he was going to have words with someone as to why he didn’t know. Then he was going to have choice words for whoever’s monumentally stupid idea it was to use Nikolett as bait.
“You’re here as fucking bait?”
Nikolett arched a brow, the expression clearly saying, “Yes, and I don’t want to hear your opinion on the matter.”
Slowly, Eric turned his head to glare at everyone in the suite. Grigoris and Maxim were both right up against the glass, Maxim’s hand on the door. They took an alarmed step back in unison when he focused on them.
Good. They were aware he was going to kill them.
This might be why they didn’t tell you.
“You aren’t bait,” he ground out.
“It was my idea.”
“Of course it was.” He shook her, just a little, as if he could shake some sense into her.
She didn’t pull back or shrug off his hands. Somehow that made it worse.
Fight me, Nikolett. Show me you still care enough to fight with me.
“We have a good plan for capturing the Spaniard, and it involved me being seen in Paris. Assuming your arrival, and the fact that we didn’t know it was you and reacted accordingly thereby exposing the extent of our security measures, didn’t screw it up.”
Eric jerked her forward, just enough so she had to brace her hands on his chest to avoid tipping into him.
“You’re going—”
“I’m going wherever the fuck I want, Eric. My safety isn’t your responsibility. It never has been.” Now, she pushed against his chest.
Eric released her, masking his relief. She blinked a few times, and he didn’t think it was only because of the raindrops that clung to her lashes. She was surprised he’d let go.
Eric took several steps back, pulling out a bistro chair and sinking into it, wincing as water soaked the ass of his pants. He wanted to show her that he could, he would, respect her desires and choices. If she didn’t want him touching her, he’d stop.
At least until the next time she said something stupid and he tried to shake some sense into her.
“You really didn’t know the plan?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t. I don’t like it but I need to trust that even if you have no fucking sense of self-preservation…”
“You were doing so well there for a moment.”
He looked up, glaring, as her lips twitched in an irritating smile.
“You may not have any sense,” he shot back, making her eyes narrow, “but you’re smart enough to have people around you who do.”
“You don’t trust me to look after myself, but you trust me to pick knights and security officers who will make up for my idiocy?”
“Exactly.”
Nikolett called him several rude names in Hungarian—he’d been learning the language, and started by learning the insults, figuring those were the ones he’d hear most often. And he was right.
“Eric,” she snapped, “you still haven’t answered. Why are you really here?”
“I told you—”
“That’s bullshit. You came to interfere.”
“I didn’t even know about this asinine plan until you told me five fucking seconds ago!”
“Then what are you here to interfere with? My life in general?”
“No. I’ve acknowledged that you ended our personal relationship and I’m respecting—”
“Don’t you dare put this on me!”
“I’m not putting anything on you, I’m trying to tell you I—”
Her expression shifted. “You found out about the bachelorette game in Hungary.”
Eric closed his mouth, opened it. “What?”
Something almost cruel sparked in her eyes. “Is that why you’re here, Eric? You found out I’m actively looking for my spouses?”
His whole body flushed cold then hot. “You’re what?”
“There’s a board, like on a gameshow, with their pictures. And in the end, I’ll be married.” She all but purred the words. “To people I choose.”
He ground his teeth, swallowing the urge to remind her that as fleet admiral, he could veto her marriage. Him using his authority as fleet admiral to control their personal relationship was one of the main reasons they’d ended up here. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it again.
“I didn’t know that.”
“In fact, I met a nice man in a coffee shop. He gave me a cookie—”
“He gave you a cookie?” Was that slang for something?
“—and I might recruit him just so I can marry him.”
If Nikolett could see the inside of his head right now, the jealousy, rage, and fear that were tinting his thoughts burgundy, she’d have Maxim shoot him.
He held onto his control with both hands, trying to stammer out something that didn’t make him sound like a possessive, asshole brute.
What he wanted to say was:
“You’re not going to marry anyone but me, because even though you deserve better, no one could ever love you like I do.
I’ve been an asshole to you but I promise to spend the rest of my life loving you.
Also, I’ll kill anyone who touches you, because you’re mine, and I’m yours.”
What came out of his mouth was: “That’s… You…”
“You really didn’t know.” Nikolett laughed, then shook her head, a slight line appearing between her brows.
“If you aren’t here to interfere—at least any more than you already have—in our plan to catch the Spaniard, or to say something dramatic and emotionally confusing about my search for spouses, then why are you here? ”
She snapped the repeated question like an accusation.
“To ask you to dinner!” he snapped back.
Nikolett stood perfectly still. “What?”
“I came to ask you if you wanted to go to dinner with me. I had flowers…” Shit. He forgot the flowers. “I think I left them in the car when I chased Iacob.”
“Dinner.” She blinked.
“Yes, dinner.” The world around them was glossy and wet. He shoved his hair back from his face, hating that the rain formed a transparent curtain between them, obscuring her features just enough he wasn’t sure what she was thinking or feeling.
He could only pray that his words could pull her to the place he was. A place filled with a fragile hope and determination to make the best of this one exquisite life they had.
“What we were doing had to stop. Our relationship up to now is over. Dead. Because we both want, and need, it that way. Now we can try again. Grow something new.” Eric rose, needing to stand for this part.
“If you give me a chance, Nikki, I will love the way you deserve to be loved.”
She said nothing, but he thought she might be crying, her silence terribly loud. It wasn’t really silent, not with the sound of the rain, but the white noise of it swelled until it felt like he was suffocating.
He took a half step, realized he hadn’t actually asked her the question, and cleared his throat. “Nikki, would you go out to dinner with me?”
She stared at him, still silent as rain and maybe tears slid down her cheeks.
Maybe she thought he was using the dinner invitation to manipulate and interfere with her plans. “I know you’re in the middle of something—” Something stupid and dangerous that’s going to cause me to have a heart attack. “—but I’m, uh, available next week?”
Finally, she spoke. “You’re asking me out on a…date?”
“Yes.” He had no idea if he was doing a good job. Danes didn’t really date; plus, he’d known from the time he was in university that he’d have an arranged marriage. He based this mostly on what he saw in TV and movies.
Nikolett’s eyes softened, and for a moment, he thought it was going to work out. That they’d be okay.
“No.”
Eric froze, the start of a smile fading away. “No?”
“No, Eric.” She took a shaky breath. “Because you don’t mean it.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. And even if you did want to love…” She took an uneven breath. “Even if you did want to date me, you don’t want a future with me.”
He opened his mouth to tell her about Future Nikolett, about all the work he’d done with Elijah.
But she took an awkward step, and the sight of her hurt, limping, made it hard to breathe, let alone speak.
Nikolett took another step toward the door and Grigoris opened it from inside, rushing out to put a supportive arm around her. Just before she crossed into the warm, dry light of the hotel suite she looked back. “I’m not masochistic enough to let you break my heart a second time.”