Chapter 55 Enough
POV: Carly
The slow clapping echoed off the building wall.
She turned around.
Niko stepped out of the shadow near the corner with that expression. The one that was not quite anger yet. The one that lived just before it.
She swallowed. "How much did you hear."
"Enough." He said. Flat and cold and nothing like the voice that had said I got you into her hair this morning.
She took one step toward him. "It wasn't how it looks."
He laughed once. Short and dark. "It never is with you."
"I was going to tell him." She said. "I had it all planned and then he started saying all those things and I just."
"But you didn't." He said.
She felt the tears threatening already and blinked hard against them. "I couldn't hurt him like that. Not after everything he said."
"But you have it in you to hurt me." He said. "Is that it."
"That's not what I meant."
"No." He took a step toward her. "What you meant was that when Lancaster says a few pretty words after months of being an egotistical prick you fold immediately. What you meant was that everything this morning meant nothing the second you were standing in front of him."
"I never said that." She snapped.
"You didn't have to." He said. "He still thinks you're together. That says it for you."
She felt the heat rising in her chest. "You want to talk about saying things? Fine. Have you told your friends about us? Did you tell Deacon this morning or did he have to catch us at your door? Have you told Aurora?"
His jaw tightened.
"Because last I checked I'm not the only one hiding this." She said. "You keep pushing me to blow up my entire life but I don't see you doing the same."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
She pressed forward. "You can't demand things from me that you're not willing to do yourself. That's not fair and you know it."
He ran both hands through his hair and started pacing in that small circle that meant he was fighting to stay level.
"Fine." He said. "You made your point."
"Did I." She said.
"Yes." He stopped pacing and looked at her. "You want to know what I think? I think maybe last night was just a moment for you. A post-orgasmic haze where I seemed like what you wanted and now you've come back to your senses."
She gasped. "You cannot be serious."
"Can't I." He said.
"I have never done anything like that with anyone before." Her voice dropped. The anger still there but something more honest underneath it. "I trusted you with my body for the first time. So when you reduce it to some kind of itch I couldn't scratch it doesn't just hurt me Niko. It makes me feel like you never actually saw what it meant."
He went quiet.
His jaw worked slowly.
She could see it landing on him. The way his face shifted when something hit somewhere real.
She took a breath. "I didn't want to fight with you today. That was the opposite of what I planned."
"Well." He said quietly. "Not everything goes according to Carly McPherson's plans."
"You are such an ass." She said without heat.
He almost smiled. "You know your insults used to be more creative."
She pressed her lips together.
He looked at the ground. "I didn't want to fight with you either." He said. "I thought I didn't have anything to worry about after this morning. Then I turned the corner."
He stopped.
She watched him pull something back. Put the wall up the way he always did when the real thing was too close to the surface.
He stepped toward her.
She held her ground.
He stopped when they were close enough that she could see the faint green rim around his irises and the way his jaw was still tight and working.
He cupped one side of her face.
She felt her whole body exhale against her will.
His thumb moved across her cheekbone and his eyes moved over her face with that expression she had never seen him aim at anyone else.
He spoke quietly. Just for her. A passage she recognized from somewhere. A writer she had read late at night alone with her grimoire pushed aside and her notebook open. About a man who held himself back from the person he wanted. Who told himself that half of her was enough. Who waited and hoped and called it a beautiful game while knowing some part of him was always a fool for playing it.
He said it slowly. Each word carrying the specific weight of someone who had been feeling it for longer than they were admitting.
His voice cracked on the last line.
The tear at the corner of his eye was barely there. Just the beginning of one. Gone almost before she saw it.
She felt her own tears break free before she could stop them.
His thumb did not catch a single one.
Because in a blink he was gone.
She stood alone in the quad with the tears running down her face and the echo of his voice still sitting in her chest and absolutely no idea what she was going to do next.
POV: Niko
He walked until he found a corner of the campus that nobody was currently occupying and stopped.
He pressed his back against the east building wall and looked at the sky.
Grey. The Black River Falls grey that never fully lifted. The fog still sitting low along the fence line even in the afternoon. He had lived in this town for five years and it had never once shown him a properly blue sky and he had stopped expecting one.
He breathed.
In and out. Unnecessary. Habit.
He had not planned to say the passage. It had come out of him before he made the decision to say it and once the first line was out there was no pulling back without making it worse so he had finished it and felt every word of it on the way out and was not going to examine how much that had cost him.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
He was not angry at her.
He was angry at the situation and he had aimed it at her because she was there and because he was not good at separating those two things yet and he knew that about himself and was not proud of it.
She had been right about Aurora.
She had been right about all of it actually. He had been pushing her to blow up her life while quietly managing his own side of things and that was not fair and he knew it was not fair even as he was doing it.
He dropped his hands.
He thought about this morning. The specific feeling of waking up and finding her still there. The way she had been running her fingers through his hair before she knew he was awake. The sketchbook. The record player. The shower. All of it.
He thought about her saying I trusted you with my body for the first time.
He pressed his lips together.
Tonight he was talking to Aurora.
Not because Carly had called him out on it. Because it needed to happen and he had already known that and he was done delaying things that needed to happen.
He pushed off the wall.
He had a class in twenty minutes.
He had a pep rally to get through after that because Reba had asked him four times in the last two weeks to come to one and he had run out of reasons to say no.
He pulled out his phone.
He stared at it for a moment.
Then he typed.
Niko: I'm sorry for what I said. About last night. I didn't mean it.
He sent it before he could reconsider.
He put his phone in his pocket and walked toward the main building and told himself the rest could wait until after the rally.
It could all wait until after the rally.
Author's Note:
He sent the apology before he talked himself out of it and I need everyone to understand what that means for a person who has spent two centuries not apologizing for anything. And that passage he recited with a tear in the corner of his eye that he did not let fall. I cannot. Drop a like and tell me in the comments what you think.