Dark Side of the Moon (The Lost Royals Saga Book 2)

by Rachel Jonas

  “I’m good,” I answered. “We’re good,” I corrected, gesturing my head toward Beth.

  He caught the hint and didn’t make moves to come in like I was sure he would have if I’d been alone. Instead, he took a step back. “Well, just … holler if you need anything. I’m only a couple doors down.”

  Biting the side of my lip as I scanned him from head to toe, I nodded. “Will do.”

  When he walked off, I slowly closed the door. Before I could even get it latched, Beth was already starting.

  “So, is he an old friend or a bodyguard,” she joked, plopping down on the foot of my bed as I turned to face her. She was knee-deep in that chocolate bar, so she didn’t bother with eye contact.

  “Eh … old friend,” I replied. “Very old.”

  She nodded. “He’s an instructor, I’m assuming? I mean, he doesn’t look a whole lot older than us, but he definitely doesn’t look like a student.”

  “Yeah, an instructor,” I sighed, taking my seat again.

  “Cool. Maybe he’ll give us both an automatic passing grade because he knows you.” She smiled playfully, sucking caramel from her fingers before tossing the wrapper in the trashcan a foot away.

  I didn’t respond, but perhaps I should have, because my lack of an answer had Beth’s attention.

  “Uh oh … did I step on a landmine?” Her shoulders shifted toward me and I didn’t necessarily want the attention she was giving.

  I had to tread lightly. Beth was my closest friend since moving to Seaton Falls, and even more so now that I was positive all the ones I had before no longer remembered me. However, before she was my friend, she was Nick’s, and I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea about Liam. Like I said, we were nothing more than friends. I wasn’t to blame for the connection we had beyond that. That was, apparently, the result of something I’d done to us in my past life. Something that couldn’t be undone.

  Speaking of landmines, there were so many potential ones moving forward, I wasn’t sure of what to say.

  Beth’s brow lifted as she stared. I had to say something.

  “Things with Liam are … complicated. Were complicated,” I clarified.

  A look of sudden awareness came over her. “Ohhh … He’s an ex.”

  I cringed a bit at that word because it didn’t really fit. “No, not an ex. We’ve just got a complicated history,” I shared. “But all we are is friends. He knows how I feel about Nick.”

  She nodded then, and I was glad to see she didn’t appear to be reading more into it than necessary.

  “Understood,” she replied. “However, fair warning, friend to friend: I’m not sure how Nick’s gonna feel about him dropping in on you like he just did,” she added thoughtfully. “Might be a good idea to set some ground rules sooner rather than later.”

  Ground rules. While, I knew she had a point, it was easier said than done. I didn’t like the idea of hurting either of the guys’ feelings, which was partly the reason I shot down Liam’s offer for space when he mentioned it. I meant what I said about us not going out of our way to avoid one another here, but maybe it was equally as important not to go out of our way to be around each other either.

  Beth chuckled and I turned toward her again. “So, he knows about Nick, but does Nick know about him? That’s where things could get sticky.”

  Sticky wasn’t even the word for how that first and only meeting between them had gone.

  “He does,” I shared. “I was honest with him. Honest with both.”

  She nodded and I could tell she respected that answer. It hadn’t been easy being forthcoming with the truth when Nick asked if Liam and I were ‘close’ in my past, but I didn’t want to lie to him. The truth was that Liam and I were close before, but that was then. I wanted to build something new with Nick, and if he’d still have me, I was ready to move forward. No matter how difficult a task, I had every intention to fight the pull toward Liam.

  A third knock had me rolling my eyes as I got up again. It was either Beth’s bed or our belongings being delivered, I was sure. In the time it took me to walk to the door, I went over new ways we could layout our room to accommodate for the loss of space. I didn’t bother with the security screen this time, instead just opening up.

  And when I did, shock nearly knocked me right off my feet as I laid eyes on the last person I expected it to be. A blue gaze met mine and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Nick stood there, both hands braced against the doorframe, looking like it’d taken everything in him to come to my room. Or maybe that was wrong. Maybe it was the other way around and this was the look of a guy who’d been fighting himself to stay away.

  Where did he come from? Where had he been? Where did his absence leave us?

  I almost questioned how he found me, but then remembered. My heart. He probably heard it beating from a mile away. The very aspect of who and what he was that had just led him to me, was the thing about him I was supposed to fear most.

  Only, I didn’t.

  I believed it when he said he loved me. And, from my experience, love was the one thing with the power to change everything.

  “Nick…” His name tumbled from my lips as I watched him, wondering if I imagined him standing here. Part of me believed he wouldn’t show, or that, when he did, he would avoid me completely.

  But here he stood.

  I still had no idea if we were in the clear, what conclusions he reached while he was away, but … he was here. That had to count for something, right?

  “And that would be my cue to get lost,” Beth announced quietly, vacating our room the next second.

  When it was just us, Nick’s eyes hesitantly landed on mine as he asked, “Can I come in?”

  I stepped aside to let him know he was welcome, and then closed the door behind him. For some reason, a chill followed him inside. Not literally. It was more so something I sensed in my heart. This visit hadn’t come with a warm greeting—a hug, a smile.

  Nothing.

  Instead, he stood before me with tension in his shoulders, dark circles beneath his eyes. From the looks of it, he hadn’t slept much while he was away. I could only imagine why—the thoughts he must have had while no one was around, the lies I was sure he was beginning to believe about himself.

  Despite the uncertainty making my stomach swim, for the first time in days, I had a bit of peace, simply knowing he was safe. But there was everything else to contend with now—how standoffish he was being, how he could hardly look me in my eyes, how he stayed close to the door as though he didn’t plan to be here long.

  I noticed it all.

  He let out a deep breath, and I held mine in when he spoke. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me,” were the words he exhaled, the first he’d uttered to me in days.

  My fingers fluttered through the side of my hair and I tried not to seem nervous, but I was.

  “Of course I wanted to see you. I’ve been so worried. I called, I texted … I just wanted to know you were okay.”

  I wasn’t the only one going through a ton of changes. Nick’s world had been flipped upside down too, with the explanation of what he was, what it meant for us. I wouldn’t hold it against him that he ran off. I might’ve done the same thing if I were in his shoes. My only concern had been that he came back.

  Things got so crazy the other day. Emotions were running high on all fronts with the mutts, with news of Maddox falling victim to one of them, with Liam and Nick meeting for the first time. So many factors were at play and I believed the drama colored all our vision. It made things seem worse than they really were; worse than they had to be. I, for one, had hope that extended beyond some out-of-date myth. I believed in Nick and I. Even if he no longer did.

  When he ran off, a part of my heart went away with him. I understood and believed the legend of what he was meant to become, respected the weight of the words Liam spoke. However, I knew Nick’s heart.

  From what I’d been told, the last Liberator came out of nowhere.
It wasn’t someone I knew, wasn’t someone close to me. Therefore, circumstances had changed this time around. It was quite possible that what Nick and I shared, what we felt, was enough to rewrite our course.

  When he finally focused on me, I wanted so badly for him to believe it too. My hand pressed to his cheek and he leaned into it, closing his eyes. He exhaled softly, as though the contact relieved him in some way.

  There were still clear signs of resistance—like he wished he’d been strong enough to push me away, but didn’t. I wasn’t completely sure what fueled the traces of anger I sensed emanating from him toward me, but I could only guess it was because of what he experienced, what he felt, when he saw me with Liam. If that was the case, I couldn’t fault him for that.

  The connection was weird. And on top of that, it was powerful. So much so, it didn’t surprise me that Nick sensed it too. But I intended to explain it all to him because I wanted to be transparent, wanted him to understand that being tethered to Liam was something out of my control, wasn’t something I embraced.

  It just was.

  “Where have you been?” I finally found the courage to ask.

  Nick blinked and lowered his gaze to the floor. “At first? Nowhere,” he answered. “In the beginning, I just wandered around. Did that for hours, trying to figure things out, trying to understand how it all got so messed up.”

  My eyes lowered too, when he said that.

  “After a while, I followed my gut and went to my grandfather’s place.”

  My brow twitched. He’d never mentioned a grandparent before now. Especially not one residing in Seaton Falls.

  “He passed a long time ago, but we never got rid of his estate,” he shared. “He owned quite a bit of property on the other side of the woods, so I holed up at his house while I got my thoughts together.”

  I chewed the side of my lip, unsure if it was okay to ask this next question. “And … did you?” I inquired. “Get your thoughts together?”

  My heart pounded and I knew he heard it.

  It wasn’t lost on me how his expression tensed either. “Yes and no.”

  What did that mean?

  “The time alone mostly gave me a chance to let a few things sink in,” he explained. “Everything that guy said about me, about what I am … I believe him.”

  I wouldn’t argue with him about the validity of Liam’s accusations, but I would, however, fight Nick tooth and nail if he tried to imply that it doomed us.

  “And?”

  His eyes lifted to meet mine. “And … I think we have a lot to figure out.” Exasperated, he shared another thought. “For all I know it’s not even safe for us to be here, in this place, together.”

  “Nick—”

  “Evie, listen,” he cut in—stern, cold. He sounded so unlike himself. “I already know what you’re gonna say and, the fact of the matter is, if something happens to you … If I—”

  When his statement ended there, I realized I shouldn’t have gotten so excited, thinking his return meant something for us it might not. It all depended on what he said next. There was something behind his eyes that told me he was holding back, and would hold back until he trusted himself.

  Which might be never.

  “If I ever hurt you, even if it was out of my control … I’d never be able to live with myself.”

  “But that’s the thing; you won’t.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t know that for sure. None of us do.”

  I took a step back the moment I felt the disconnection between us. I was foolish for filling my heart with false hope. We weren’t okay. It took a minute for me to figure it out, but I knew that now.

  Nick watched as I took a seat on the edge of my bed, leaving him where he stood beside the door. I said nothing as I let the reality of our circumstances settle.

  He stepped closer, but kept a fair amount of distance between us. My feelings were all out of whack. I went from thinking we still had a chance, to watching our undefined relationship being snuffed out like a smothered flame.

  “I think we need time, Evie. Time to sort things out. Time to find ourselves. Time to figure out what we want.”

  The last portion of his statement felt loaded, but I was too jarred by the rest to cut through the bull and fully grasp what he meant—‘time to figure out what we want’.

  “I did some soul searching,” Nick added. “It dawned on me while I was there; I don’t know myself anymore. And I think that’s part of the problem.” He paused to get his thoughts together and I felt a strange stirring of anger swell in my chest. “I’ve changed so much in such a short time that I look into the mirror some days and … I have no idea what the person staring back at me is even capable of.”

  When my head whipped toward him, wetness fell from my eyes, touching my cheeks.

  “And you think you’re the only one going through things, Nick? You think you’re the only one trying to hold on to some semblance of who you were despite your body screaming at you every day that you’re not who you think you are?”

  I didn’t expect to sound so angry, but there was no hiding it. “Why the heck do you think they snatched us from our homes and brought us here? Any of us?”

  He lowered his head and I didn’t regret raising my voice. A deep breath puffed from his nostrils and I fought the urge to explode on him again.

  “I didn’t come here to argue,” he said calmly. So calmly it did nothing but piss me off even more. How convenient that he’d had days to reach this conclusion, only to dump it on me in the span of five minutes…

  “No, you came here to give up on us,” I seethed.

  I could see in his expression that my words cut deep, but he ignored them, finishing his original thought.

  “I came here to tell you I think it’d do us both some good to get to know our new selves better before we try to move forward together. I think we both know we stand to make a huge mess of things if we don’t start there.”

  I felt like there was more he wanted to say, but held back for some reason.

  I stood again. “What’s this really about, Nick. Because, just a few days ago, you were on board with starting over, taking things slower. Not talking about going our separate ways.”

  He was absolutely silent.

  “I mean, that’s what this is, right? You’re saying you want to be alone, aren’t you?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know what’s best for us right now. And, if that means we back off of … whatever we were … then I think we owe it to ourselves to have our personal baggage out the way before we make our next move.”

  I shook my head at his wording. “We?” I scoffed. “We … didn’t make this decision, Nick. You did. All by yourself. You disappear on me for days and this is what you come back with?”

  His once serene, blue eyes were even cold now as a hard glare settled on me. I’d never seen it there before.

  “Doesn’t feel great, does it?” His words cut like a knife. “I seem to recall nearly a week of radio silence when you decided to run off in the woods not so long ago. But I guess it was okay then, right?”

  I said nothing, knowing exactly what scenario he referenced—when I first shifted and went on hiatus because, at the time, I thought I was alone. Thought I was some kind of freak who’d catch fire and hurt someone, hurt him. I didn’t bother explaining myself to him now, though. His impression of me was already tainted.

  Slowly but surely, I was beginning to see our problems were bigger than I realized. And we were both at fault. The secrets between us had become a breeding ground for distrust and doubt. While we held them in, thinking we were protecting the other from our truths, we were mostly protecting ourselves. It’d gotten us nowhere.

  Nick took another breath and I knew he was gearing up to say more, something heavier than everything else, so I braced myself.

  “And let’s be honest, I’m not the only one who has some soul searching to do.”

  My brow tensed when the accusatory tone o
f his voice touched my ears. There was a darkness to him that made my skin crawl and, honestly? It made me wish he’d leave.

  “I’m not blind, Evie. Or … deaf, for that matter.” He paused and, in the time it took him to finish, I didn’t breathe. “I saw how you were around Liam; heard every time your heart skipped a beat when he got close to you.”

  I was shaking my head before he even finished. “That was nerves. I wasn’t sure how it would go with you two meeting for the first time, and—”

  “It was nerves, but … mostly, you were afraid I’d see it.” He stopped there and my heart thundered. “You were afraid I’d see what you feel for him.”

  My stomach twisted in knots and I felt weak in the knees. Being under his heavy stare as I searched my thoughts for a response was reminiscent of being interrogated. And the fact that I knew he heard my heart racing a mile a minute right now wasn’t helping my case any.

  There was so much he didn’t know, so much he didn’t understand. But that was my fault too. He didn’t understand because I hadn’t trusted him enough to share. Now, it seemed like a moot point, but I decided to try anyway. If ever there was a time to grasp at straws, it was now, at the moment I felt Nick slipping away.

  I was fidgeting with my nails and I hated how insecure I must’ve looked, shoving my hands in my back pockets before explaining.

  “I told you Liam and I knew each other in my past life, but that was all I told you,” I began.

  Nick stared with no judgement at all behind his eyes. He was simply listening. A good sign.

  “He’s told me a lot about who I was, or … am. And, part of who I am was tethered to him a long time ago.”

  Confusion filled Nick’s expression. “What’s that mean? Tethered?”

  I took a deep breath and prayed this wasn’t doing more harm than good. What I wanted him to understand was that he wasn’t imagining the connection with Liam, but he was, perhaps, misinterpreting it.

  “I don’t even fully understand it myself, but I know it’s something I did to us in the past, linked him to me so we’d never lose one another.”