“What?” I snapped, tugging my arm down in an attempt to free myself. He didn’t release me. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realise it was going to be …”
“Going to be what?” He tightened his grip on my wrist until it was painful. “Do you have any idea what you just saw?”
“No! I don’t—”
“Good.” He dropped my wrist. “Keep it that way. If you go through my crap again, you’d better be ready to tell me why.”
“Only if you tell me why you refuse to treat me like a student, or a patient, or a human being with plenty of free will—or however you’re supposed to be treating me.” I forced my arms up into the space between us, folding them over my chest so that we were separated.
He leaned further into me, pressing on my arms until the weight against my chest made it hard to breathe and I was starting to lean back over his desk.
“This miserable world of ours is divided into three groups of people,” he said, his voice dangerously soft. “Those who need help, those who can help, and those who don’t care; and these groups are divided by lines. Lines of separation, lines of taboo, lines of instruction, lines of legislation; the polite lines of polite society. This way, no person can really touch the life of another person, and we can separate ourselves from their mistakes. My mother was a psychologist; did you find that out in your research?”
Dumbly, I shook my head.
My back was starting to ache, but he didn’t let up the pressure. His arms moved to either side of me, his hands gripping the desk on either side of my thighs.
“She was,” Nicholai told me. “She was one of the best in her field, and she worked hard to get there. She was so good that nobody noticed her fucking her favourite patient every Friday in her home office. She was so good that she didn’t notice what else was happening under that roof.” His eyes cooled, his whole face sharpening with fury and hurt, and goosebumps broke out all over my skin. He took a deep breath, his eyes flicking between mine. “When her patient killed himself, she was ruined. She didn’t understand. She had done everything right … except all the things that she was doing wrong. She had put him on the right schedule of medication, she had worked tirelessly in weekly cognitive behavioural sessions for years and years … so can you tell me why he did it? Why he killed himself?”
He actually needed a response from me. My throat was working, trying to form the words, but in that moment I was terrified of him. He was giving me a glimpse at the person behind the nonsensical mood-swings, at the man behind the empty offices. I had expected him to be messy. Convoluted. But I was already in over my head, and he was only shaving off the surface.
“Because …” My voice sounded squeaky, so I cleared my throat, trying again. “Because she didn’t care.”
He smiled, the gesture cold. “What makes you say that?”
“She fucked her patient.”
“And fucked him over,” he finished, backing off me. “What did I tell you about my rule? About the one line I won’t cross with you?”
I didn’t want to reply to the question. I quickly moved away from the desk now that he had given me space, making my way to the door. I got it, I did. He was trying to tell me that he cared. That he wasn’t like his mother. That he wasn’t going to put me on a medication schedule and give me therapy sessions just because it was what he was supposed to do, while turning around and refusing to be my friend—to care about me past what was required of him.
“Why me?” I made it to the door, but I made no attempts to open it. It felt like I was always running to the door when I was in a room alone with him.
“You remind me of someone.” His tone was back to mild. I still had my back turned, but I knew, somehow, that his expression would also be back to neutral.
“You did everything you were supposed to do with her?” I prompted. “And it didn’t work?”
“I didn’t even realise,” he admitted, growing quieter by the second. “I had no idea. Not until after she was dead.”
I reached out for the door handle, but I missed it, my shaking fingers barely scraping the metal. I had goosebumps again, and a chill running down my spine. I felt bad for him, but I didn’t want to feel at all. I didn’t want to be his redemption; and I hated that he was attempting to deny me my future just to satisfy his past. It didn’t matter if my future held nothing but pain, misery, and death. It was mine, and he couldn’t change it just to calm his demons.
I wasn’t his.
Not his to order around.
Not his to change.
Not his to save.
“It’ll never work.” I finally managed to grab the door, yanking it open and spinning to face him. “What you’re trying to do. Fixing me won’t make it better. I refuse to be fixed, and she will still be dead.”
I slammed the door behind me, walking down the hallway toward the stairs. I was still aching everywhere, but the adrenaline of my encounter with him was rushing through me like a drug, numbing the pain and the reality. Maybe I was a heartless bitch. I had said something only a heartless bitch would say. He had opened his chest and revealed to me the knife that was still wedged in there, and all I had done was reach out and twist it further. I was a terrible person and a heartless bitch, but Nicholai was stubbornly on a path toward vindication and I was heading in the opposite direction, so it was better for me to separate myself from him while I still could.
He was in my way, and if a little twisting of the knife was required to get him to move, then that was what I was going to do. I was smart enough to know that he wouldn’t want to help me forever. He would be there, obsessive-compulsive and all-encompassing, until the minute I declared myself magically healed, and then he would disappear. Off to save the next person. Because that’s what people did: they waited until you could stand without falling, and then they handed you an empty RV and a bank-account of estate money before disappearing from your life.
A car pulled up behind Nicholai’s truck as I was walking away from the building and I watched the guy climb out, a bag of takeout in his arms. I approached him, tapping him on the shoulder as he passed me, staring down at a little slip of paper.
“Order for Nicholai Fell?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah.” The guy turned, his eyes fixing on my face before flicking quickly lower, and then back up again. “Yeah. You Nicholai?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flushed. He looked down at the little slip of paper in accusation, as though it were the paper’s fault.
“Sure. I’m Nicholai. I can take that from you.”
He handed me the bag and rushed back to his car, his head tucked down, but he was only halfway there before he jerked to a stop and came back, holding out the slip of paper and a pen. He was even redder than before.
“Sign down at the bottom. Thanks—I mean please. Please.”
I took the paper and signed Asshole Fell, handing it back and walking away with the bag in my arms. I heard his car start up just as another rolled in. Probably another social worker arriving early to get some paperwork done. I was tempted to turn around and commit their appearance to memory; to remind myself that Nicholai wasn’t normal. I wanted to see a mousy-haired woman with spectacles, sucking at a thermos of coffee the size of her head. I wanted to see a man in tan slacks, with tired lines beneath his eyes. I wanted to turn around and see the signs of strain, because Nicholai was starting to scare me with his outward perfection. People as damaged as he was were supposed to show it.
I walked down the road, the bag of food tucked beneath my arm, refusing to turn back. I was gaining strength back into my muscles by the minute, but I was losing cohesion from my brain. Whatever they had given me at the hospital had helped with my pain, but it seemed as though my mind simply didn’t want to function anymore. Without the stimulus that Nicholai presented, it was trying to shut me down. My eyelids drooped, and I stumbled on the sidewalk, almost dropping the bag.
That wasn’t a good sign.
I glanced arou
nd, trying to figure out what road I was on. My only choices were to walk back to the hospital, or to walk back home, and I didn’t want to do either. I wasn’t sure that I could do either. Just as it occurred to me that I was stuck, a truck pulled up beside me. The reflection of my face in the dusty black paint made me wince as the window rolled down.
“Get in.” Nicholai’s voice. Not that I had expected anyone else.
“Leave me alone,” I growled, using what little strength I had to hurl the bag through the open window.
He caught it deftly, reaching behind his seat to store it somewhere. I mostly just hadn’t wanted to carry it anymore, but it felt good to fake the tantrum. The look of answering anger on his face also felt good.
“You have two choices,” he snapped back. “I can take you home myself, or I can call your friend’s mom to take you home. Either way, you don’t get to be alone right now. Choose.”
Why wouldn’t he just give up?
I pulled on the handle, swinging open the door of his truck. “Fine,” I spat, climbing up into the passenger seat. “You want to take me home. Take me home.”
He focussed on me, and I returned his stare without flinching. He didn’t put the truck back into drive. He was suspicious. Maybe he could read the bad intention on my face. I slid against the seat, drawing closer to the centre console. His hand was wrapped around the emergency brake; I dropped my fingers lightly over his. I saw his entire body stiffen at the contact, but his eyes didn’t shift from mine.
“What are you doing?” he asked, as I gently pulled his hand to my lap.
“I’m talking to you about my problems.” I made it sound like an obvious statement. “Someone touched me without my permission yesterday. Do you want to know where?”
“What?” His voice was cutting and too-soft all at once, rolling over me with that frightening intensity from before.
I ignored the goosebumps on my legs, laying his hand over my knee. He didn’t grip me, but he allowed me to place his hand there without drawing it away.
“Here,” I muttered, laying my hand over his again and applying enough pressure to draw it up.
His eyes began to darken, the blue fading behind a smokescreen of swirling emotion. I turned away, focussing on the image of his hand against my skin. He still wasn’t fighting me, but he wasn’t participating either. He was probably trying to figure out how to turn this around, but I wasn’t going to let him. Not this time. This time, he would break.
I wasn’t going to stop until he did.
“And here,” I continued, pulling his hand higher.
The hem of my dress was bunched now, our hands half-hidden beneath the material as it dragged slowly up with the movement. A deep rumbling sound vibrated out of him—something caught between a growl and a reprimand. I closed my eyes, trying to block him out even more. I didn’t want him affecting me. I didn’t want to show a reaction to him. This was about him. Not me.
“He—the boy who touched me,” I said, “was talking … telling me some song lyrics. I don’t remember them now. It’s not like it mattered. He was just playing with me. Like you do … but in a different way.”
His fingers curled inward suddenly, digging into my skin and forcing our hands to a stop. I blinked my eyes open, allowing my head to fall to the side so that I could look at him.
“Keep going,” I taunted. “He didn’t stop there.”
“Careful, Mika.” Nicholai’s grip tightened even further, and I could see the muscle ticking in his jaw now, the slight movement telling me that he was grinding his teeth.
I planted my hands on the edge of the seat, pulling myself up and leaning into him. His face was only a breath away and his hand was now caught between my thighs as I twisted my body to the side to reach him. There was something inside me that liked the stricken look on his face, the hint of violence that hovered around the edges of his person. It shot electricity right through my body, tugging at something low in my stomach.
“Still want to take me home, Nicholai?” I whispered, my words falling right over his mouth.
The hand between my legs twitched, and before I realised what I was doing, I had inched my thighs open, pulling myself up even further until my knees were planted against the seat. His hand moved, but it didn’t continue up the way I needed it to. It brushed along the outside of my thigh before gripping the edge of my hip.
“You picked the wrong game.” His voice was gravelly and hard as his fingers turned bruising, pushing me back into my seat. “You have no experience in this.”
“Are you telling me to go out and get some experience?” I arched a brow at him, pretending that I was as unaffected as I wanted to be.
Not that it would work. He wouldn’t believe my act for a second. He had felt the heat of my body. He had barely even touched me, and I had burned up for him in a way I hadn’t even thought possible.
“You can’t blackmail me,” he warned. “You think this is all a big game, but it’s not, and I’m not going to play.”
“No.” I laughed, dry and soft, before dropping my hand onto his thigh. “It’s not a game. It’s my life, and I want you to get the fuck out of it.”
“Go ahead.” His eyes had narrowed, the blue almost black now, glittering furiously at me. “Push me. See what happens.”
I slid my hand over until I was barely brushing the hardness pushing up against the zipper of his pants. I was surprised, despite everything. I had expected to make him uncomfortable. Angry. Furious. I had expected him to toss me out of the truck and drive away.
I definitely didn’t expect …
I flicked my eyes to my hand, and back to his face, but I didn’t get to see the expression he wore because he had grabbed my jaw and was forcing my mouth to his.
Every single molecule of my body seemed to be hyper-sensitive to the fact that Nicholai Fell was kissing me, and it took me a few moments to work around the shock. In that time, he had captured my hand, jerking it away from his lap and pulling it behind my back as he half-dragged me over the console. His chest was suddenly pressed against mine, rumbling with a groan as I started to respond. It felt like my first kiss, because I was suddenly unsure about what to do. With Duke, I had simply acted. I had processed what was required of me, and had delivered on the requirement. Now, my heart was beating too ferociously for coherent thought. When Nicholai began to press harder against my mouth, I parted my lips, allowing his tongue to slip inside, deepening the kiss. There were lights flashing behind my closed eyelids and heat rising through my whole body, and then …
Then there was pain.
His hand had twisted into my hair, edging my head back from his. I could taste copper on my lips. Maybe he had bitten me, or I had bitten myself. The vicious look on his face had me wondering.
“Me and you …” he growled, his eyes travelling back to my lips, his chest expanding, his pupils dilating, “it isn’t going to happen.”
He released me, and I slumped back into the seat, the world around me spinning. This was all my fault, but I still wanted to be angry at him. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. Because he had been right—again.
I had picked the wrong game.
This game … only Nicholai could win.
12
Consequences
I curled into my seat, fighting the whirlwind of violent urges that were currently bubbling uncomfortably beneath my skin. My body was no longer accustomed to feeling such strong emotion, so it made me shift around awkwardly while Nicholai took all the right turns to get to Summer Estate.
Of course he knew where I lived.
That should have been creepy, but really, nothing he did was creepy. I mean, sure, he tossed me into the ocean. That definitely wasn’t normal, but it wasn’t creepy. He had a whole bucket of loose screws rattling around his brain, but I was the creepy one in the truck. I was the one who had touched him inappropriately. I had pushed him. With any normal girl, that kiss would have meant something different, but with me … Nicholai had k
nown, somehow, that it would stop things from going too far. It would frighten me. Force me to back down.
God, I hated him.
“I could get you fired for that,” I said, conversationally.
“Go ahead,” he muttered back, barely even giving my threat a second of consideration.
“I’m serious.” I stared blankly out of the front windshield, blinking against the rage-fuelled tears that were threatening to spill from my eyes.
I wouldn’t cry in front of him. No way in hell. Not about this.
“I always knew there was a risk of that,” he admitted tonelessly. “I told you that, didn’t I? I’m willing to accept the consequences for everything that I do. That’s the difference between me and you, Mika. I take full responsibility, and you just turn your head. You pretend.”
I didn’t reply. He didn’t deserve a reply. Instead, I gripped the handle of the passenger door, my knuckles turning white with strain, and as soon as the truck pulled into the visitor’s lot at the front of Summer Estate, I jumped out and slammed the door on him.
I strode away, the slightest limp in my walk, refusing to look back. His engine remained idling, the sound following me, mocking me, until I finally passed through one of the tree-lined paths and the noise faded into the distance. I wasn’t paying any attention to my surroundings, my head locked-up in thoughts of Nicholai and the kiss, and how badly I wanted to punish him for punishing me … so I missed the woman standing right in front of me—just outside my front door—until I was directly before her.
“Hello,” I muttered reflexively, stepping back with a wince and carrying my eyes up to her face.
Alicia.
Shit.
“Hello, Grey. Can I come in?” She had a guarded look on her face. A hint of coldness, but also a hint of concern. She also looked tired—which was hardly a surprise, since she must have been awake most of the night.
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