Chapter 27
C H A P T E R
THE SPELL CAST IN THE ROOM EARLIER THAT NEARLY MADE THEM KISS WAS GONE.
Immediately after Rheagan left, Honey grabbed her things, ready to storm out herself.
Nikos shoved his fingers through his hair.
He had fucked up. He had been so angry seeing Rheagan at his place again asking for money that he had completely forgotten that Honey was there.
He hadn’t wanted her to hear those things.
But it was too late to live in regret now.
The damage had already been done. Honey tried to breeze past him, but on instinct, his arm shot out to grab hers.
“Wait, Honey,” Nikos said.
He didn’t want the night to end like this.
Not after they had had such a good day together.
He didn’t want it to all be ruined because of a mistake on his part.
He hadn’t wanted her to see that version of himself.
The version of himself that he had been running away from ever since he came to America.
He wasn’t proud of what had happened between himself and Rheagan.
And, to be quite honest, he was still ashamed of it.
“What do you want?” Honey asked tersely. She was clearly angry, but he didn’t want her to leave tonight feeling that way about him.
“Please, don’t leave like this,” Nikos said. He was afraid their relationship would change after this. He didn’t want their relationship to be like it had been before. He didn’t want to lose the friendship they had.
“It’s late, and I have to go,” Honey said stubbornly.
“Please,” Nikos said, and he was surprised by his own pleas. Honey finally looked at him again, eyeing him with suspicion.
“Just hear me out,” Nikos said. It was quiet as they stood there for a moment until Honey finally sighed.
“Okay,” she relented.
She sat on his couch, and Nikos went into his kitchen, grabbing two glasses and a bottle of wine.
He returned to the living room and poured himself and her a glass.
Honey took it even though there was still a frown on her face.
They quietly drank together until Nikos finally gathered the courage to speak about something he had been avoiding since he came to New York.
“I know that everyone at the club is wondering how I know Rheagan. I know her because I dated her older sister,” Nikos admitted.
“I’ve gathered that much,” Honey snarked, and Nikos chuckled.
It seemed that she had been eavesdropping on everything, though he couldn’t blame her.
He hadn’t exactly been using his inside voice, and already, he regretted speaking so harshly to Rheagan.
He didn’t regret his words, but he did regret his tone.
“About a year ago, when I was at a club, I met Rheagan’s sister, Raelyn.
She stood out in the club, and all I could see was her,” Nikos admitted before he laughed when he thought about their first interaction.
“Her friend wanted to talk to me, but the entire night I did whatever I could to talk to her.”
Honey snorted.
“It almost sounds like you had to chase after her,” Honey said, “which couldn’t be possible with the charming, flirtatious, handsome guy you are.”
There was clearly sarcasm in there, but Nikos could only focus on one thing.
“You think I’m handsome?” Nikos asked, amused.
“I can go,” Honey said as she attempted to stand, but Nikos quickly grabbed her arm, stopping her.
“I’m kidding. I’m kidding,” Nikos said, and Honey rolled her eyes before getting comfortable on the couch again as she took another sip of her wine.
“I did have to chase after Raelyn because she didn’t want me,” Nikos admitted. “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but that was a first for me, and besides yourself, Raelyn is the only other woman to turn me down.”
Honey looked surprised, but it was the truth. It had never been hard to get women. Even women who said he wasn’t their type would fall for him. But with Raelyn and Honey, it had been different.
“At the time, I just thought I wasn’t her type. I didn’t realize the real reason she had turned me down until later,” Nikos said, and Honey looked intrigued.
“I spent months with Raelyn, and we had become close instantly. I had never been that way with another woman before. I even introduced her to my family because that’s how crazy I was about her.
I felt like Raelyn understood me, and it’s hard to come across that, someone who truly understands me,” Nikos said.
“When most people find out who my father is, they think I love being Giannis Drakos’s son.
But all I’ve ever wanted to do was run and fly from it, and Raelyn understood that.
I knew that Raelyn saw me, and I thought we would have a future together until I found out the truth. ”
Being with Raelyn had been a breath of fresh air. She was unlike any woman he had ever met before, and immediately, he felt a close connection to her. He thought they had something special, but everything came crumbling down when he learned the truth from her best friend.
“As long as I’ve known, my family has been at war with another family, the Petrakis family,” Nikos said, and Honey arched her brow with confusion, but she didn’t say anything.
He couldn’t blame her. Most normal people couldn’t say their family was at war with another family.
But his life had never been normal. The moment he was born as Giannis Drakos’s son, it made it so that he could never have a normal life.
And because he couldn’t have a normal life, he couldn’t even have a normal relationship, but, at the time, he had thought he would be able to have that with Raelyn until he realized that nothing in his life had been untouched by the war, even the woman he had fallen for.
“To end the war between our families, my brother was supposed to marry one of the daughters from the Petrakis family. We were going to create a pact so the war could end. No more bloodshed, no more death. We would finally be at peace. But unfortunately, my brother fell in love, and the arranged marriage couldn’t go through.
So we tried it again with my second oldest brother, but, of course, Pierce made everything turn to shit when one of their daughters committed suicide because of him,” Nikos said, shaking his head as he thought about it.
At times, he really did blame Pierce for all of this.
If he hadn’t been such an asshole, the entire situation with Raelyn, Leonidas, and Rheagan would have never happened.
But he should have known that there could never possibly be a marriage between Pierce and Tatiana Petraki.
That had been the first mistake, and unfortunately, Tatiana died because of it.
“I thought I had been far removed from everything happening in the war. I thought nothing would happen to me if I didn’t participate in it.
It was wishful thinking, but I had really hoped I could stay out of it so I could live my life in peace.
But I got strung along in it without me even realizing it,” Nikos said.
“Leonidas, the son of my father’s enemy, had sent Raelyn to seduce me,” Nikos admitted, and Honey’s eyes widened with shock.
“So, wait a minute. Does that mean that your relationship wasn’t…” She didn’t say the rest of her words, and it almost felt like she was trying to spare him. But Nikos could already tell what the rest of her words would be.
“I’m sorry,” Honey said sympathetically.
“I had fallen in love with Raelyn, planned a future with her where we could be safe together away from everything happening with the war, away from everything happening with my father, without even knowing who she truly was,” Nikos said bitterly as he poured himself another drink.
“It pissed me off and made me angry. All I did was drink for months, unable to move on until I wanted to get even.”
After learning about the truth, it had been a bitter pill to swallow.
He had been in a constant state of rage, thinking about how foolish he had been to not have realized who she was.
He had brought her home to his family. He had trusted her, and when he realized everything had been a lie, he couldn’t get past it.
“I wanted to hurt Leonidas and Raelyn, and so I decided to hurt them both in the worst way possible,” Nikos said before he chuckled, the wine making his tongue and thoughts loose as he reminisced on the past. “And while I was trying to hurt her, so she could feel the pain I felt, I nearly got swept into it all over again. That’s how much I liked her, that even after I had learned everything, even after I had planned to hurt her, I was going to forgive her so we could start over again.
But then I realized who she truly was, and I couldn’t blame it on that snake Leonidas anymore. ”
“You took revenge on her by sleeping with her sister,” Honey said.
“More than that,” Nikos said guiltily.
He had done way more than that. Sleeping with her sister hadn’t even been the tip of the iceberg. That was how much he had wanted to hurt her, and he had. But he couldn’t tell that to Honey. He didn’t want to tell her everything he had done.
“I should have felt good about it. Getting even is something I’ve always done, and I never felt bad about it before.
But when I saw the pain in Raelyn’s eyes, and I learned later everything that happened to her that night and all of the people that betrayed her in a single night, all I could do was regret it,” Nikos admitted.
He could still remember the dead, blank stare she had given him that night. Her eyes had been cold, and immediately, all thoughts of revenge had faded away. He had felt like the biggest asshole in the world, even worse than his brother Pierce, and that was saying something.