39. Nikola
NIKOLA
M y eyes burned when they finally opened, and it took several seconds for my vision to clear. The first thing I saw was Skye, her usually sparkling eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot and her cheeks puffy. She stared out the window with a thoughtful and determined expression.
I lifted my hand and put it over hers to get her attention, the gesture taking more out of me than it should.
“You better not have been crying.” My voice was hoarse and somewhat groggy.
She jolted upright, her wide eyes meeting mine, and then ran to the door, only to come back to the bed.
“ You’re awake .” She signed so fast, her hands were a blur.
But it didn’t matter, because she kissed me. My lips, my cheeks, my nose. Her lips were all over my face, and I smiled.
“You better watch it, I see your papa glaring at me,” I warned her, but she didn’t care, and frankly, neither did I at this moment.
She flashed me a blinding smile as she signed, “ Papa’s happy for us. He approves of us and has already told Marchetti to go to hell. ”
I chuckled, not having the energy to tell her that we’d already come to a similar understanding before all hell broke loose. “I guess it only took me getting shot to get his approval.”
She winced but didn’t get to say anything else before my parents entered. She took a step back, allowing them space, but I snatched her hand and dragged her back.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I signed while rasping the words at the same time.
She settled in, and a myriad of emotions rippled through me along with a sense of peace I’d never felt before. It felt more right than anything else I’d ever experienced.
I scanned my body. I had a few bruises and scratches and my legs were wrapped in braces, but pain was absent, so it couldn’t be anything serious.
“How are you feeling, son?” Dad came around to my other side, Mom tucked under his arm protectively. He looked relieved, but she didn’t. There were unfamiliar emotions carved into her face, and they projected through the hospital room.
Maybe the drugs they’d pumped into my system were making me slow.
“I’m good,” I answered. “I’ll be up in no time.”
An emotion flickered in Dad’s eyes, but it was gone as fast as it appeared. “Good, good. That’s… good.”
I tried to sit up, but I barely moved when all three of them jumped to assist me. I chuckled, the sound coming out forced. “I can move, you know.”
“I know, son.” Mom’s eyes flitted to Dad before they locked on me. “Just let us help you.”
Once they helped me into an upright position, I glanced between the three of them, then to the window where more people lurked. Branka, Marietta, Skye’s mother—each of whom looked like they’d been crying a river—Uncle Sasha, and Dante Leone.
The expression in the latter two made me the most uneasy. There was an approval there, but also… pity?
“Okay, out with it,” I grumbled, pinning the three people in the hospital room with a hard stare. “What are you not telling me?”
Dad answered too quickly, “Nothing.”
“Nothing to worry about now,” Mom amended.
Skye didn’t move, her eyes filled with relief and adoration.
Something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
“Skye, you’ll tell me.” Her gaze flitted to my parents before returning to me. “We won’t start our life by lying to each other.”
She took her bottom lip between her lips, chewing on it, but she didn’t move.
“Mom, Dad,” I said sternly, “give us some privacy.”
“Umm, I don’t?—”
I didn’t let my mom finish. “Now, Mother.”
“Son—”
“Don’t, Vasili.” Dad glared at me, but before he could continue, Mom tugged at his arm. “Let’s give them privacy.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry for my sharp tone.”
“Don’t sweat it, sweetheart.”
“Can you draw the window curtains, please? I don’t need them all looking in here,” I asked her, my eyes locked on Skye, who was growing more uncomfortable with each passing second. “I kind of feel like an animal in a zoo.”
“Of course.”
I waited until the curtains were pulled and the door clicked shut, cocooning us in privacy. I tugged Skye onto the hospital bed and kissed her hard. She always smelled and tasted like the most delicious thing, but I could never pinpoint anything on earth to compare it to.
When I broke the kiss, she watched me through a half-lidded, lustful stare. My heartbeat sped up at the love staring at me from her deep blue eyes, and I couldn’t remember when I’d ever felt happier.
Despite the fact we were in the hospital and I was recovering from a bullet wound.
“Now, tell me. Why is everyone acting so strangely?”
Skye
Nikola’s gaze was locked on me, that familiar gleam in his eyes making my heart stutter, then come to a screeching halt with his next question.
“Now, tell me. Why is everyone acting so strangely?”
His hand held mine, allowing me to answer with my free hand.
He laced his fingers with mine, and for several heartbeats, I watched his inked fingers holding my own, my name tattooed on his and his on mine.
I could lie, but I didn’t want to. I needed him to know that it didn’t matter.
So I shifted, then signed slowly, “ The bullet hit your knee and shattered it. ”
His eyes shifted down the length of his body, but half of his leg was hidden behind the cast and layers of blankets.
“Okay.” His gaze returned to me. “And?”
“ I know just bits and pieces ,” I admitted. “ Your mom was talking to the doctors, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to read lips. ”
“Tell me what you know.” I’d come to know Nikola as playful. A reckless boy turned into a slightly unhinged man. But the somber expression on his face was new to me.
I swallowed.
“ You might not be able to walk on that leg. Your mom was exploring reconstructive knee options, but the surgeon disagreed. ” I sensed him more than felt him withdrawing. “ You’ll be in a wheelchair for a bit, maybe crutches eventually, until the doctors know more. ”
He pulled his hand from mine, and in that agonizing moment, I felt a fissure split open inside me—sharp and brutal, like the crack of a mirror shattering.
If I could hear it, I knew it would sound like splintering glass, each jagged piece slicing deeper into my chest. My breath hitched, a raw, wounded sound that barely escaped my lips, and I pressed my trembling fingers to the empty space where his touch had just been.
“ What are you doing ?” I asked, trying to take his hand back in mine, but he refused my touch.
“Did they say whether I’ll ever walk again?”
My eyebrows furrowed. “ Of course you’ll walk. You have your other leg .”
“Will I ever run again?” I stared at him, but he must have thought he read the answer in my eyes, because he shook his head, pain erupting in his expression and staining his face. “Never?”
“ I don’t… ”
“I’ll never run again.” The words tumbled from his lips, matching the hollow expression on his face. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore. I couldn’t comprehend what had changed as I watched him stare at his leg, almost as if he was willing it to get better.
“Nikola!” My voice, his name on my lips, finally snatched his attention back to me, and I stroked his face. “ You’ll get better. We just have to take it one step at a time. Your knee will heal, and your mom is exploring options .”
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “ Don’t be sorry. Everything will be okay. We’ll get through this. ”
His expression didn’t change, etched with despair and something else I didn’t want to identify.
“What did the doctor say is the best-case scenario?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, unsure if I should answer that one. It was still too early, and Vasili was busy calling in the best specialists in the world.
“ I don’t know ,” I lied, but Nikola knew me too well. We’d known each other almost our whole lives, and while it was a great basis for our future together, it was detrimental when it came to deceit.
“ Zayka , don’t lie. Not to me.”
Every fiber of my being warned against being honest, yet I opted for the truth. “ Best-case scenario is needing crutches or a cane .”
“And worst case?”
He knew the answer, but like a masochist intent on self-inflicting pain, he needed to hear it. Or in my case, see it. “ Wheelchair .”
“A wheelchair,” he repeated slowly.
“ But that won’t happen ,” I signed with more assurance than I had any business giving.
He watched me with a sardonic expression. “But crutches will.”
“ So what ?” He was looking at this all wrong. “ You’re alive. Cane or crutches… it’ll just be an extension of you. ”
I was willing to try anything and everything, as long as we were together.
“Can’t you see, Skye?”
“ See what ?” I demanded, panic slowly growing inside me. “ There's nothing to see. You’re alive, and you’ll recover. That’s the only thing that matters here. ”
“No, it’s not the only thing,” he claimed stubbornly. “I’ll be handicapped and will need constant help and care. What are you going to do? Lift me into the wheelchair every morning and then get me into bed every night?”
“ Yes, if I must. But you’re exaggerating. You’ll walk again, and you’ll be able to do all those things yourself .”
He shook his head. “But I’ll always be handicapped.”
“ For Christ’s sake, Nikola. Stop saying it that way. We’ll figure out what works and what doesn't, then go from there .”
He dragged in a heavy breath. I could see his mind flashing through various scenarios, none of which were good.
I could actually sense him—mentally and physically—pulling away from me, and it both terrified and infuriated me.
Finally, on a long exhale, he announced, “I can’t marry you.
I would never forgive myself for trapping you into?—”
“No,” I cut him off with my voice. “No, Nikola.” There was something bittersweet about using my voice in this moment. “Don’t you fucking dare push me away . ”
Fresh tears flowed out of my eyes and his hand reached out to cup my face. “Don’t cry, Skye.”
“ How can I not ?”
“I have to let you go.” I shook my head in disbelief. How could he cut me off, just like that? We’d finally gotten everyone’s approval.
“ Why ?”
“Can’t you see?”
“ No, I can’t. ” I closed my eyes for a moment before I opened them to find him staring at that fucking leg again. I forced him to look at me. “ Explain it to me, because I don’t understand what’s preventing us from being together. ”
Feeling enraged, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I couldn’t sit still anymore. So I jumped to my feet and put my hands on my hips, glaring at him and waiting for an explanation.
His lips curled in disgust. “How in the fuck will I protect you while in a wheelchair, zayka ? Or stumbling around on crutches?”
“ I don’t need your protection. In fact, I don’t want it .” I waved my hands like a lunatic, unable to get them to focus enough to finish my thought.
“Imagine the two of us being cornered by an enemy. Would I ask them to move slower so that I could shoot them first?” He practically sneered at me.
“ You can beat them with the crutches , ” I shot back. “ Or shoot them. Hell, I’m a good shot. Maybe I’ll shoot them !”
He scoffed. “That would only put you in more danger.”
I shook my head frantically, hoping to get through to him. “ I can protect myself. And I can protect you too. ”
“No.”
“ Don’t you say no to me, Nikola Nikolaev. ”
“You’ll thank me one day.” His eyes hardened into blue diamonds. Was he insane? There wasn’t a single scenario in which I’d thank him for breaking off what we had. “Besides, fucking you vanilla doesn’t do it for me.”
His words had me reeling back. “ What ?”
“I tried to change myself, go easy on you since you freak out being handcuffed, but that’s not who I am. It’s best we end it now before we both make a mistake. Fucking you just doesn’t do it for me.”
I let out a shaky, frustrated breath, the pain slicing through my chest like a jagged blade, and tears burned hot behind my eyes. I loved him—God, I loved him so much that the mere thought of living without him felt like being stripped of air, drowning in a world that no longer made sense.
And yet, he spat hurtful words at me. He was ready to give me up—just like that. Like I was something he could walk away from, something disposable.
That hurt more than anything—more than any bullet tearing through flesh, more than the threat of any enemy lurking in the shadows. This betrayal, this willingness to let me go, carved deeper wounds than violence ever could.
“ Remember when you told me you’d clip my wings ?”
He exhaled a tired breath, and a sliver of guilt snaked through me. I should have waited to start this conversation; he was still so weak.
“How could I forget?”
“ The part you didn’t know is that I let you clip my wings because I never wanted to fly away when it came to you. You’re my forever, Nikola, even if I’m no longer yours. ”
Nikola looked more distraught than I’d ever seen him—like I was tearing him apart piece by piece, gutting him alive right there in the sterile hospital room.
His hands curled and uncurled, knuckles turning white, the dark ink of his tattoos stark and striking against the crisp, pale sheets.
His jaw clenched, muscles straining as if he were fighting to keep himself from shattering completely.
“Goodbye, Skye.” The words, uttered with a hard gleam in those pale blue eyes, were my undoing.
That’s it? Just like that?
I closed my eyes briefly before opening them again, focusing them on his face, his body. I would use the image of him lying there as fuel for the journey ahead. I wouldn’t give him up. “ You haven’t seen or heard the last of me. ”
I turned on my heel and strode out of his room, past our family, down the sterile hallway, and out into the bright sunlight, my head held high.
He didn’t get to decide our future, not when I could be strong enough for the both of us.