Chapter 39 Coward
POV: Carly
She locked the door behind her.
Niko was already in the middle of the room with his back to her and his hands at his sides and she could see the tension running through him from his shoulders down to his jaw even from behind.
She set her bag down.
"You called what we did a mistake." He said. Still not turning around.
"I never used that word." She said.
He turned then. "You may as well have."
She held her ground. "I said it shouldn't have happened. That's different."
"Is it." He said. Flat. Not a question.
She crossed her arms. "I tried to reach you all weekend. You didn't reply to anything."
"So now I'm the problem." He said.
"I'm not saying that." She said. "I'm saying we both avoided this and you don't get to make it entirely my fault."
He laughed. Short and dark. "Oh, I should applaud you then. Supreme leader Carly McPherson sent a few texts. What an effort."
"Niko." She said.
"No." He said. "You don't get to show up here and play concerned when it suits you and then go back to Lancaster's arms the moment this conversation gets uncomfortable. That's not how this works."
She felt the heat rising in her chest. "You want to talk about how this works? You skipped class. You punched a wall. You made a scene in front of the entire lounge and then walked out and I came after you because I was genuinely worried and you're standing there acting like I'm the villain of this entire story."
"Aren't you?" He said quietly.
That landed harder than she expected.
She uncrossed her arms. "That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." He said. "None of this has been fair from the beginning. You knew what was happening between us and you let it keep going and then when it became real you panicked and said whatever you had to say to make it stop."
She opened her mouth.
"Including." He stepped forward. "Calling me a conquest. In the same breath as telling me our kiss meant nothing."
She felt the guilt move through her cleanly. "I shouldn't have said that. I know I shouldn't have said that."
"But you did." He said.
"I know." She said. "I'm sorry. I mean that."
He looked at her for a long moment.
The anger was still there but it had shifted slightly. Like something underneath it was tired.
"You're a coward." He said. Quiet and certain.
Her chin came up. "Excuse me."
"I mean it." He said. "You're the most capable person I've met in a very long time and you spend all of it performing a version of yourself that everyone around you is comfortable with. You run the moment something real shows up that doesn't fit the plan." He looked at her steadily. "That's cowardice Carly. You can call it loyalty or principle but that's what it is."
"You don't get to stand there and tell me who I am." She said.
"Somebody should." He said. "Because the people in your life aren't doing it."
She felt the anger sharpen into something cleaner.
"You want to know what I think." She said. "I think you've been alone so long that the moment someone was willing to actually see you it terrified you just as much as it terrified me. The difference is you're making me the villain for being honest about it."
He went still.
She kept going.
"You talk about not running like you've conquered it but you flash out of every conversation that gets too close. You won't talk about your family. You won't talk about what's actually in that sketchbook. You push people away and then get angry when they don't fight hard enough to stay." She held his gaze. "So don't call me a coward when you invented the whole playbook."
The room was very quiet.
He was looking at her like she had said something that hit somewhere he hadn't expected.
Then slowly the expression shifted.
He stepped toward her.
She held her ground.
Another step.
Her back found the door without her moving toward it.
His hands stayed at his sides. He was close enough that she could see the green rim around his irises and feel the cold that came off him and smell the clean soap of him that she had catalogued without meaning to.
"You want me." He said. Quiet. Not cruel. Just certain.
"Don't." She said.
"You want me and you're scared to say it." He said. "Not because of Lancaster. Not because of your coven. Because admitting it means everything you thought you knew about yourself needs to change and that terrifies you more than any of the rest of it."
Her breathing had gone shallow and she hated that. She hated that he could do that to her with proximity alone.
"Tell me I'm wrong." He said. "Tell me these past few weeks meant nothing. Tell me you don't feel this."
She said nothing.
Because she couldn't.
And he knew it.
His forehead dropped toward hers and she felt it coming and felt herself leaning into it and felt every single alarm going off in her body and ignored all of them.
"If you don't stop me." He said against her skin. "I'm going to kiss you."
She closed her eyes.
She wanted him to.
She wanted him to so badly she could feel it everywhere and the wanting was the problem because wanting this specific thing from this specific person had a cost she had not finished calculating and she was standing here with her back against a door and his forehead against hers and she could not find a single good reason to push him away.
Tommy.
She pressed both hands flat against his chest.
He stopped immediately.
She pushed gently and he stepped back and gave her the space and she took a breath and looked at the floor.
"This is ridiculous." She said. Hearing how it sounded. Hating how it sounded.
"Is it." He said. His voice had gone flat again.
"We can't." She said. "That's just the truth. Whatever either of us feels it doesn't change what we are or what our worlds are or what this would cost both of us."
"You keep saying that." He said. "Like if you say it enough times it becomes more true."
"It is true." She said. "You're a vampire and I'm a witch and those aren't just labels. They're everything. My coven. My family. My mother." She took a breath. "And I have a boyfriend who is a good person and doesn't deserve what I'm already doing to him just by being your friend."
He was quiet.
She looked up at him.
She should have kept looking at the floor.
His face was doing the thing she could not handle. That open unguarded expression that only appeared in the dark or in empty rooms. The hurt that he was not performing.
She felt her own throat tighten.
She made herself keep going.
"I want him okay." She said. Each word costing her. "He's good for me. He's safe and he's consistent and he's right for my life in ways you can never be." She heard her own voice and felt sick. "Tommy being a werewolf still makes him more compatible with my world than a vampire ever could be."
The words sat in the room between them like something physical.
She watched them land on him one by one.
His face did not collapse. It went very still. Which was worse.
He nodded slowly.
"Well." He said. His voice was hoarse. "I guess that's clear."
She felt the tears forming and blinked hard.
She could not cry in front of him right now. She did not have the right to cry in front of him right now after what she had just said.
She twisted the door handle.
"Carly." He said.
She opened the door and walked out and pulled it closed behind her.
She pressed her back against it and stood in the empty corridor with her hands shaking and her eyes burning and her mouth still tasting like the lies she had just told him and the truth she had swallowed back down.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.
This was the right thing.
She kept saying it.
It had to be the right thing.
Author's Note:
She told him Tommy was more compatible than he could ever be and she did not believe a single word of it and they both knew it and I genuinely need a minute. The way he went still instead of breaking. The way she held it together until the door closed. I cannot. Drop a like and tell me in the comments, are you okay? Because I am not even slightly okay.