Rumblin' Knights Boxed Set

by Bella Jewel

  The way her hips are moving, her body, her long dark hair. She’s gorgeous. Perfect. The worst part? They have history. A long-winded history, a history where she was with him.

  My heart feels like it drops out of my chest. My stomach clenches. Jealous and insecurity and hurt, horrible, disgusting hurt, fill my body. I’m so angry at him, so angry because I defended him even when everyone told me I was wrong, that he’d hurt me. I didn’t believe them, I looked at them all and told them no, he wouldn’t do that, we were different. Yet here he is, watching Yana as she strips for him.

  On his birthday.

  That was supposed to be me up there, but now I realize, nothing can even come close to comparing.

  I’d never compare.

  I turn to rush out just as Yana looks over to me, a huge grin breaking out on her face. Nicolai turns, but I’m already running. God, I run so fast I stumble twice on the stairs. Twice. I grab the railing, fighting back the tears, and get the hell out of there. I rush past the bouncer, who looks at me confused, and then shove my way through the people in the club. The moment the outside air touches my face, I start to cry.

  Stupid, embarrassed, ugly tears.

  I run to my car and unlock it just as I hear Nicolai yell my name.

  No.

  No.

  I don’t want to hear whatever pathetic excuse he’s got for this. I don’t want to fucking hear it. I get into the car and start it, pulling out before he can try to stop me. I glance in my rearview mirror, and I see him standing on the sidewalk, staring at my car, pulling out his phone. A minute later mine rings. I don’t answer it. I don’t care to hear how he’s going to try and explain that one away.

  There simply is no explaining it away.

  How do you give your girlfriend a good reason as to why you were watching another woman dance? A woman you swore you had no interaction with? A woman who you have a history with? A woman who has caused problems.

  No.

  You don’t give her a good reason, because there isn’t a good reason.

  There just isn’t.

  I hate that my chest is heaving with sobs right now.

  I hate that I’m crying.

  Crying over a damned man of all things.

  I’m the strong one, the one who doesn’t cry or chase or demand, and yet here I am, devastated by the fact that the person everyone warned me against turned out to be exactly what they said he would be.

  Disappointment crushes me.

  Hurt, mostly.

  I don’t know where to go, I don’t know who to talk to.

  Shania will say I told you so.

  Damon will say I told you so.

  Erin will be nice, but she’ll be thinking I told you so.

  I feel like I have no one.

  So, I pick the best out of three.

  I go to my best friend.

  I’ll have to accept his I told you so.

  Because I need him right now.

  ~*~*~*~

  I stand on Damon’s doorstep, tears still rolling down my face.

  He’s never seen me like this. No, he’s never witnessed me at my darkest points.

  Tonight he will, and I don’t honestly care. I really don’t.

  I need someone, and I need someone who won’t be cruel.

  I’m not entirely sure Damon is that person after today, but he did call and leave a bunch of messages trying to contact me after what he said, so I’m guessing he was sorry, and he’s probably my best option.

  He opens the door, shirtless, wearing a pair of boxers, hair messed up. He was sleeping. I woke him from his sleep.

  I should care, but I don’t.

  “Lucy?” he asks, narrowing his eyes and locking in on my tears. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  “You were right,” I cry. “You were all right. He’s a dick. A horrible human being. I got what was coming, just like you all warned.”

  Damon exhales, but it’s not because he doesn’t want me here, it’s because he feels sorry for me, I can see it written all over his face—that only makes it worse. I don’t blame him, though, I probably look as pathetic as I feel right about now.

  “Come inside.”

  I don’t hesitate. I walk inside and straight over to his sofa, where I’ve sat so many times before. It starts to rain outside, big heavy drops hitting the house and making a loud sound. I love the rain, but right now I want to scream because it’s only making me feel worse. The ache in my heart, it’s a feeling I’ve not experienced before. Utter hurt. The kind of hurt that doesn’t just go away. The kind of hurt that digs deeper, burrows further, and makes everything feel like it’ll never be okay again. Now, now I understand why people avoid love.

  It’s because they never want to feel what I feel right now.

  Love.

  Did I just think of love?

  Is that how I feel about Nicolai?

  Is that why this hurts so damned much?

  Damon sits down across from me, staring over, fully awake now. He doesn’t seem pissed that I woke him up, thankfully; I’d be pretty upset if he did. Especially after today. I know he was right, believe me, but it doesn’t mean he needed to be so hurtful about it.

  “What happened?” Damon asks. “It must be bad, because honestly, I’ve tried to picture what you’d be like crying, like really crying, but have never come up with a clear one, because, well, you’re not the crying type. Even with Shania, I only ever saw you show so much pain. Whatever he did, it must be bad for you to look the way you look right now.”

  I nod, taking a deep breath, but it stutters, cutting in and out, which only makes me look worse than I already do right now. “I went in to see him at the club, like I said I was going to. I was all dressed up, as you can see, and I was so nervous, but excited. I was sure he’d love it, you know? It took a lot for me to even get to that point, because I’m usually not overly confident when it comes to that stuff.”

  Damon nods. “What did you see?”

  I recall opening that door and seeing Yana. Perfect Yana. Dancing. For him. My Nicolai. Everything that I’ve been fighting for. Sitting back on the couch, her in front of him, looking the way she looks, and me looking the way I look.

  It hurt.

  So damned much.

  The thought makes me start crying again, and dammit, why can’t I make it stop? Why won’t my tears go away? Why does it feel like I’m being crushed with every passing second, a heavy weight on my chest, dragging me down?

  “He was with Yana,” I croak out between tears.

  I start sobbing now, the memory making me want to scream and claw my own eyes out, mostly because it’s affecting me so much, and I’m letting it affect me so much. I hate it. I hate how weak I am right now.

  “Jesus,” Damon mutters, standing and coming to sit beside me.

  He grabs me and pulls me into him, hugging me tight, and I’m grateful, so freaking grateful, because I need something, anything, to make me feel better right now. I need a friend. I need someone to make this horrible feeling go away. I need it all just to be … gone.

  Damon’s chest is firm, muscled, and warm. I keep my cheek against it as he hugs me tightly for a few moments, then he pulls back and tells me to wait a moment. He disappears and comes back with a bottle of vodka, a tissue box, and a shirt of his.

  “Get out of that coat and put this on, then take a few big sips of that vodka, wipe your face, and we’ll talk. You have to calm down. It hurts, but you need to breathe and get through it. You’re strong, Lucy. Show me that girl.”

  I nod, taking a shaky breath. I stand and do as he asks. I go into the bathroom and remove the coat, looking at the sexy outfit I’m wearing underneath. The lack of panties. All of it. I feel so incredibly stupid. When I look at my face in the mirror, I feel worse. Puffy red eyes, tear-stained cheeks, red blotchy face. I look terrible. I’m embarrassed at how I look right now, that I’ve let myself become so fragile around this man.

  I wash my face, put Damon’s shirt o
n, and say a little prayer that it’s long enough to cover my body and go down to my knees, and then I walk back out, sit on the sofa again and do as he asks, I take a big drink. The vodka burns my throat the whole way down, like acid riding down my throat, but I don’t complain. I take a few more big sips, cough, and then put it down.

  I feel warmer already.

  Calmer.

  I can see now how easy it would be for someone to turn to alcohol and for it to become a problem. Right now, it feels great, incredible even. It makes me feel like I’m back in control for a few moments. There’s a fine line, really. You drink too much and you have no control over your emotions, same goes if you drink none at all. The middle ground is where it’s at.

  That feels good.

  For a tiny little while, anyway.

  “Now, tell me what exactly you saw,” Damon says, cup of coffee in hand.

  Poor guy. I feel bad that I woke him.

  “I opened his office door,” I begin, hating the memory, feeling the sickness in my stomach rising up again, “and Yana was there. Mostly naked. Dancing in front of him. He was sitting on the sofa, facing her, and she was …. She’s so perfect, Damon. She was dancing, and it was so sexy, so fucking sexy, and it made it that much worse. I mean, what am I in comparison? He would have probably laughed at my pathetic show.”

  “First of all,” Damon says, “Yana is not fuckin’ sexy. Yana is a stripper. We watch her, we pull our cocks, then we never think of her fuckin’ face again. You, Lucy, you’re a woman. You’re the one to capture a heart. You have the power to break a heart. You’re the kind of thing a man never forgets. In comparison, it is Yana who comes out on the lower end of the scale.”

  God dammit.

  I won’t cry over that.

  I won’t cry over how fucking nice those words are.

  How much they mean to me right now.

  “Thank you for saying that,” I croak. “Anyway, she saw me and smiled, but I turned and ran. She smiled, Damon, like she knew exactly what that was going to do to me, like it made her very year to see the hurt look on my face. Nicolai, he chased me the whole way out, but I got into my car and disappeared. I couldn’t speak to him. There was nothing to say.”

  Damon nods, pondering it for a moment, then he says to me, “Are you sure what you saw is actually what you saw?”

  I shake my head. “Of course it was, she was dancing in front of him, in his office.”

  “Maybe she had to do that?”

  I shake my head. “Bullshit, I call bullshit. No, he promised me no Yana. He told me he doesn’t even work on the nights she’s working, so he lied to me. I promise if I didn’t catch him in there tonight, then he wouldn’t have told me. He would have acted like nothing had ever happened. I just know it.”

  Damon nods. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. You don’t deserve this crap.”

  “What am I going to do?” I whisper. “Damon, it hurts so much.”

  He looks at me, eyes strong. “You’re going to move on. You’re going to hold your head up, and you’re going to get better, be better, do better. You don’t need him, Lucy. You’re a beautiful woman, you’re funny and you’re smart. He is the one missing out. You will not chase him. Or beg. You’ll move forward. If you have to cry, you cry, but you don’t let him see what he’s done to you.”

  The thought of that, of not being with Nicolai, it hurts so much I can’t fathom it. Now I also see why women go back to men that are no good for them, if they love them, because the very thought of living without them, hurts so damned much.

  “I don’t know if I can be that strong. I didn’t even think I’d ever see myself like this, but here I am.”

  Damon leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Of course you’re strong enough. I’ll be here with you, the whole way.”

  “Do you think I should talk to him?” I say, my voice low, scared of the answer.

  “Do you think you should talk to him?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, what if you’re right, what if there was a good reason? But even then, I don’t know if it was the fact that he was watching her dancing, or if it’s more that it was Yana. The girl he promised he had nothing to do with. I think that honestly hurts the most.”

  Damon nods. “Yeah, he’d want to have a really good excuse for that. A really good one.”

  “You don’t think he will …”

  Damon shakes his head. “No, Luce, I don’t think he will.”

  I hang my head, hurt, but I know he’s right. I know it. I just don’t want to accept it. The fact of the matter is, there are very very few good reasons as to why Nicolai had Yana in his office, when he made a promise to stay away from her. Very few.

  No, Nicolai isn’t going to get out of this one.

  Which means I’m going to lose him.

  I just don’t know if I’m okay with that.

  14

  NOW – LUCY

  A loud knock vibrates Damon’s door.

  We were just about to go to sleep for the night. He told me I can stay on the sofa if I didn’t feel like going home. I didn’t, so I happily agreed. I was just saying goodnight when the knock came.

  Damon looks to me, and my heart starts racing. There is only one person who would be knocking on Damon’s door this time of the night and that’s Nicolai.

  I don’t even know how he got Damon’s address.

  “I’ll deal with this,” Damon says, standing and walking over to the door.

  I stay seated, legs stuck to the ground, not really sure where to go from here. I want to go, every part of me wants to go, yet my body has other ideas and keeps me firmly planted in this seat.

  I can’t see, but I can hear.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ here?” Damon growls.

  “Here to see Lucy,” Nicolai says. “I know she’s here.”

  “She doesn’t want to see you. You can’t honestly think she would after what you did.”

  “First of all, Damon,” Nicolai hisses, “you know fuck all about what I did. So does she, if I’m being honest. I’m not going to play games, nor will I fight with you. I want to see her, talk to her, and then I’ll leave.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “You underestimate me,” Nicolai warns. “I’ll sit out here until she comes out. I have all fuckin’ night. Either you get her, or I find a spot and wait.”

  “Enjoy your long, cold night then,” Damon throws back.

  “Fuck,” Nicolai growls. “Just let me talk to her.”

  “She doesn’t want to fuckin’ talk to you, or she would be here talkin’ to you. Now leave.”

  “I’m not leaving. Not until she hears me out. She thinks she knows what she saw, but she doesn’t. Let me in, or I’ll come in.”

  “Try it.”

  This is going to end badly, I know it. Both of these men aren’t the type to back down, which means they’ll get into a fight and I’m not really in the right place to deal with them breaking out into a fist fight that’ll only end bad.

  I take a deep breath and stand, walking over to the door and slipping in beside Damon.

  Nicolai’s eyes swing down to me, and god damn, he looks incredible. I hate that my whole body goes warm and I want to throw myself into his arms. I hold my ground though, not letting him know what I’m feeling, even though everything inside of me is aching for him.

  “It’s okay,” I say softly to Damon. “He can say what he has to say.”

  Damon looks down to me. “Not a good idea.”

  “I’d rather him say it and leave then to sit out there all night. I’ll be five minutes,” I nod, and Damon growls, but retreats inside.

  I close the door and step outside, the rain still pounding down hard onto the grass around us. I cross my arms, from both the cold and the hurt swirling around my body right now.

  I don’t look at Nicolai.

  I look at the ground.

  “Lucy, look at me,” he demands, his voice softer now, not as
harsh.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Now,” he orders.

  “You either say what you have to say, or you leave, I don’t care either way how it goes. I’m going back inside if you don’t start speaking.”

  He makes an exasperated sound, followed by a growl, but he starts talking. “She was showing me a dance. A new move. That was it. All my dancers run new routines by me, Yana is no different. How it looked to you, is far from how it was for me.”

  I look up now, holding his eyes, angry at his pathetic attempt at an excuse. “Firstly, Nicolai, if that’s the case you would have told me about that. You know I come into that club, you would have warned me. Secondly, you promised no Yana. You told me you have nothing to do with her, not just for my sake, but for Shania and Tommy’s. You’re lying. That’s the worst part.”

  “I’m not fuckin’ lying,” he growls, angry.

  “You are!” I snap. “If I didn’t see you tonight, would you have told me that happened?”

  “No, fuckin’ no way. Not with how you react.”

  I shake my head, angry. So fucking angry.

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  I turn to walk back inside, but he grabs my arm, spinning me back toward him. My hand lashes out and I slap him across the face, so hard his head whips to the side. I shock myself at my reaction and quickly drop my hand, horrified.

  “I didn’t …”

  “You know what?” he growls. “I deserve fuckin’ better than this.”

  He turns and walks down the stairs, and my heart explodes, reacting before I can think. I run after him, into the rain, getting soaking wet before I even make it to his car. “Nicolai, wait!”

  He turns to face me. “You don’t trust me. You’re not willing to hear what I have to say. Why the fuck would I bother? You’ve never believed in me. Not for a single fuckin’ second. Not one second. The whole time you’ve doubted me, because everyone else fuckin’ doubts me. You’ve always assumed the worst, and always reacted accordingly.”

  That hits me like a punch to the face, because he’s right.

  I do that.

  I always assume the worst when it comes to him.

  Always assume he doesn’t care, is heartless and cold, or is doing something awful.