Everlance Academy

Chapter 26

Well, save to say that that did not go exactly as I planned.

Who am I kidding? I am a hypocrite. All this talk about knowing your self-worth and not forgiving Nikolai unless he has one hell of an explanation—all it took for me to forget it was simply setting foot into his room.

It's not like I didn't mean what I said, just because I'm here doesn't mean that I've forgiven him. I'm still furious.

But at the same time, the past few weeks have been so, so lonely.

Just this once, I tell myself, just this once I will give in. And then, afterwards, I can go back to how it was. This won't change anything. I won't let it.

That's all that goes through my mind when my lips connect with Nikolais. This doesn't mean anything. Not to me, and most certainly not to him.

My hands are in his hair, buried deeply, and I'm pulling and tugging at it, hating how familiar it feels. How comforting.

His fingers graze over my skin, and if I didn't know better, I would think that they were shaking. He's touching me everywhere, all at once, and it makes my head spin.

My wrists connect with his chest when I start fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, but my hands are trembling so hard, I can't seem to get them open.

I'm not quite sure why I'm shaking so much. It must be the anger I'm feeling. The anger that has been eating me up from the inside is finally breaking free.

In a very unexpected way, I must admit.

I get frustrated, trying to open his shirt properly, so I ball my hands into fists around the cotton and rip it apart. Buttons fly everywhere, along with his shirt, which I pull off swiftly and toss over my head.

"Hey. I liked that shirt", he protests weakly.

"I liked my pride, and that didn't seem to matter." I don't care if I sound bitter. My all-too-cherished pride went flying along with his shirt.

Ripping it wasn't even difficult, and that makes me feel confident. Bold, all of a sudden. I feel in charge, like I'm in control now.

When I shove Nikolai towards his bed, I half expect him to protest. He doesn't seem like the type of person who likes to be pushed around.

However, I seem to have misjudged him. The next second, he's lying on his back, barely breathing. He's looking at me like I'm the most beautiful person he's ever seen.

I can't handle it.

I follow him onto the bed and start kissing his neck and chest, just so I don't have to look him in the eyes. Because that facial expression made me feel like maybe he's not the coldhearted liar I make him out to be.

I despise him for that. How dare he make me question something that was so crystal clear an hour ago?
It frustrates me so badly.

"I hate you," I whisper against his skin.

"Repeat that love, would you?", he asks breathlessly, and the fact that he keeps calling me by that stupid nickname enrages me even further.

"I hate you.", I repeat, not even feeling guilty about the harsh words, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."

"I find that hard to believe with your lips on my neck."

Asshole.

"I hate what you did to me."

He swallows hard at those words and grips me tighter.

My lips trail further down, and suddenly, I can feel his hands in my hair. At first, they just rest there, but the lower I get, the tighter he grips the strands.

Just when I reach the hem of his pants, he makes a low sound from the back of his throat and pulls me upwards, which makes me wince, even though it barely hurts.

His entire body tenses. "Are you okay? I'm sorry, love. I'm so sorry."

That stupid fucking nickname.

"You have so many things to be sorry for, but that is not one of them."

I kiss him again, just so he will stop apologizing and thus remind me that he is perfectly capable of doing so if he wants to. I kiss and kiss and kiss, as if it would shut my mind up, and I think at some point I accidentally bit down on his lip.

He turns us around so fast that I don't even realize what is happening until my back lands in his sheets and he is on top of me.

His fingers curl around the hem of my shirt, tugging it upward. I lift my upper back from the mattress so he can free me from the fabric separating us.

Nikolai kisses my neck frantically, as if he were a dying man and I were the only salvation available.

Now I'm starting to think in shitty metaphors. Great. Just great. I have officially begun to go insane.

"Getting desperate now, are we Nikolai?", I ask. It's supposed to come out as a joke, but my voice is about an octave too high for that.

His breath hitches.

"Say that again."

Does he think I'm his jukebox?

"What?", I mumble.

"My name. Say it again. Please, love," he urges.

I almost laugh.

It's funny for no apparent reason. That he likes the way I say his name. For a moment, I am tempted to refuse. I think about what it would be like to just get up and go now, leaving him here.

But I don't. Instead, I do what he asks for. "Nikolai.", I say, quietly at first but louder each time, "Nikolai. Nikolai. Nikolai."

His lips are on my stomach while his hands travel up and down my legs, and they're on my knees first, then my thigh, then my inner thigh...

My hands grip the sheets so tightly that I'm afraid they might rip. "Nikolai," I say again, more urgent this time, my head falling back into his pillows.

"Yes?", he asks.

I try to articulate myself, but all I get out is a pitiful: "I... you... That..."

"I'd appreciate a proper sentence, love."

Asshole. Arrogant, cocky, incredibly good kissing asshole.

"Shut up," I snap, my chest rising and falling heavily.

That seems to amuse him for some reason.
"I thought you liked me talking?", he almost grins.

I want to reply something equally witty, but just as I open my mouth, I feel the tips of his fingers under the hem of my skirt, and I forget every single word of the English language.

I hear his voice, deep and breathless, but it takes me a while to understand what he's saying. When I do, it almost sends me into delirium.

"Have I ever told you how amazing you feel?", he asks between two kisses on my lower stomach, "or how beautiful you are? I am the luckiest fucking person on earth. To see you in my bed, in my sheets... it's unbelievable. I want everything to stay like this forever."

He's lying, my one remaining braincell tells me.

Go fuck yourself, I the rest of me answers.

Praising kink? Developed.
God complex? On the fucking roof.

My heart feels so warm, all of a sudden. He makes me feel so wanted, so good about myself. I love this. This moment feels so intimate, so whole, so perfect.

And then he says, "I missed you so much, you know? I couldn't even handle the last few weeks."

Everything shatters.

For the past few minutes, I have been able to forget that he treated me the way he did. I had pushed the memories aside. Now, they come flooding through. I remember how shitty he made me feel about myself.

That hits me in the face like a bucket of ice-cold water.

My hands stop gripping the sheets, and my whole body tenses. He notices the change immediately and looks up to me. I see regret in his eyes, like he knew exactly that he said the wrong thing.

For a moment, we just stare at each other, neither of us uttering a single word, even though there are so many that need to be said.

He grabs my wrist at the exact same moment I sit up to leave.

"Please don't go," he whispers. "Please, June."

And then something happens—something that I had been afraid of for the past few weeks.

The bright, burning anger that had been living inside of me, that kept me going when nothing else did, crumbles. Shatters to pieces. Dissolves.

I feel empty all of a sudden. Empty. Sad. And tired. So tired.

Nikolai wraps his arms around me, pulling me close, and I hide my face in the croak of his neck. He caresses my back, trying to comfort me but I barely even feel it.

"What are we doing?", I say so quietly, I'm not even sure he heard it. "What are you doing to me, Nikolai?"

He swallows hard. Mumbles: "I'm sorry, love. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
As if he just had to say it often enough and it would make a difference.

I draw back so I can see his face when I ask, "Where were you? What happened to you?"

He turns his head in an effort to avoid my gaze, but I grab his chin and rotate it back, so he's forced to look at me.

"I don't want to tell you."

That stings. Badly.

"Why?", I ask.

He closes his eyes for a second. "Because I don't want to put that burden upon you. I don't want you to worry about me."

I laugh a hysteric laugh, even though it's not even a little bit funny.
"You don't want me to worry about you? Are you serious? I am worried sick, Nikolai. The way you're acting... it's scaring the shit out of me, more than anything you could possibly tell me!"

He lowers his eyes, as if he were ashamed of something.

I let go of his chin. "Look, if you don't want to tell me, fine. I won't push you. But I will leave. For good. You can't expect me to simply forgive and forget just because you said sorry. I deserve an explanation."

"I know. I know you do."
He ruffles a hand through his hair, sighing. Then he falls into the pillows, back first. I take that as my cue to leave, but then he starts speaking again.

"I told you about my aunt from Bolivia, right?"

I'm beyond confused about what she has to do with anything, but I decided to play along anyway. "You told me that she is your father's sister and that you barely ever talk to her. Nothing more."

He closes his eyes again, not opening them as he speaks. "Well. Yeah. We went to her will reading. That's why I was pulled out of school."

I open my mouth to say something pretentious, like sorry for your loss, but he doesn't give me the chance to. Instead, he continues talking.

"When my grandparents died—that was shortly after I was born—they left both my father and my aunt a huge amount of money. And when I say huge, I mean huge.

They each got an equal share. The rest went to charity.
My aunt is one of those people who doesn't believe in money. I mean, she kept it, but it stayed in her bank account, untouched. My father used to always tell me how he thought that was a waste."

I sit there silently, listening closely, even though I have no idea how that is supposed to connect to our relationship problems.

Nikolai continues: "A couple of weeks ago, my aunt passed away. She didn't have a funeral because no one organized one. Or maybe she did, but we weren't invited. And my father didn't care to organize one himself."

Finally, he opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. "I mean, how sad is that? She was his sister, and he couldn't be bothered to say a proper goodbye.

Anyway, so we went to South America for the will reading. It was just my father and me. Her lawyer told us that she had written a testament exactly one hour before she died. One hour. Do you know what people write a new testament exactly one hour before they pass away?"

I feel sick to my stomach. "People that know that they will die."

Nikolai sits up abruptly. "Exactly. People who know the exact moment they will die. And do you know what people know about the exact time that they will die?"

My voice is barely a whisper. "People who commit suicide."

"Precisely," Nikolai mumbles, "my aunt killed herself right after handing her lawyer an updated version of her testament. That was weird to me. I mean, I don't know how mentally stable my aunt was but whenever I visited her, she seemed perfectly fine. It made me wonder, what happened? What pushed her over the edge?

Her house had not been cleaned of her personal belongings yet, so right before the will reading, I went there. Did some digging. And I found..."

He takes a ragged breath, and I look back at him instead of out of the window like the second before. It is only then that I notice that he's crying.

You wouldn't believe it since his voice sounded so normal, and there are no tears streaming down his face either. The only giveaway are his red-lined eyes, which make such a huge contrast to the green of his irises.

"Nikolai, you don't have to—", I start, but he ignores me. It's like he's been waiting to say these words for so long, and now that he's started, he can't stop until they're all out.

"I found letters," he whispers, "letters from my father, addressed to her. My aunt didn't have a cellphone, so that's how they communicated. About six months before her death, he had started writing to her.

He asked her to transfer her share of the heritage because she didn't use it anyway. Of course, I couldn't read her answer letters, but I'm guessing that she refused because, in his next letters, he kept trying to convince her.

He was gentle at first. Diplomatic. He told her that he needed it to support me if I go to university." He laughs a humorless laugh. "My aunt must've known that that was a load of bullshit. My father could pay for three Ivy League schools at once.

Whatever, she kept refusing, so he... he changed tactics. He started... threatening her. With lawyers at first. He wanted to go to court, for whatever reason. When that didn't work, he said... He started talking about how easy it would be for him to get someone to set her girlfriend's house on fire."

I almost choke on air. What the hell?

"He...", Nikolais voice is unnaturally high, "he told her how he would not hesitate to ruin her life to get what he wants. How no one would be safe from him and that it would be selfish of her to choose the money over her friends.

He then started to accuse her of being the reason for my mother's death. Apparently the two of them were supposed to be on vacation when the fire happened, but my aunt cancelled at the last minute. He started telling her that it was her fault. That if she hadn't cancelled the vacation, my mother would still be alive.

And then... he wrote about how the earth would be a better place if she wasn't on it. That her friends would be safer, happier. That I could go to university. That my mother would've survived. He told her that everyone would be better off if she just disappeared.

It seems like she believed him."

A single tear rolls down his cheek, and he wipes it away with the back of his hand immediately, turning his head so I won't see him crying.

I want to say something, tell him that it is okay, that he doesn't have to keep talking if he doesn't want to, and that I'm here for him, but my throat is dry. I am so stunned, I can't even form a single word.

"When I had connected the dots, I went to the reading.", Nikolai continues, "straight to my father. Told him that it was his fault. That he was the reason she committed suicide. I even showed him the letters. Do you know what he did?"

He looks at me directly again, his whole body trembling. "Do you know what he did? He laughed in my face. Ripped the letters apart. He made fun of me for being so dramatic about it. He told me that it was for the best. Her death had simply been an unavoidable inconvenience. He seemed almost proud of what he did!"

His voice is barely a whisper when he says, "My father pressured my aunt into killing herself so he could get ahold of her money, and he doesn't feel an ounce of remorse."

I can't listen to this. It's too much for me to handle—too sick, too twisted, too cruel. Still, I ask, "What happened then?"
Because I know that can't be the end of the story.

"His plan went to shambles."

I think I'm holding my breath. "What do you mean?"

"My father thought that since he was her brother, he would automatically inherit the fortune. He hadn't thought about how she could just change her will before taking her life. But that's exactly what she did. She rewrote her testament.

She did not give my father anything. Instead, she left it all to me.

I think it was her last kiss my ass to him. That he had gone through all the trouble of getting her out of the way and yet didn't get a single dime.

She probably thought she was doing me a favor. She gave me the recourses to leave my father behind the second I turn eighteen without having to rely on his money. I'm grateful for that, I truly am. But she didn't help at all. She made everything worse.

When my father found out that he was not in the will and that I got everything instead, he was furious. He knows he can't touch the money. It's on a bank account and will be transferred to mine as soon as I am no longer a minor.
Which means right now, neither of us can do anything with the money."

It's like a light bulb in my head switches on. All of a sudden, the pieces of a puzzle come together and reveal a horrible, horrible picture.

"But once you're of age, you could hypothetically transfer the money to him. And you were scared that he would do the same thing to you that he did to your aunt," I guess.

Slowly, very slowly, Nikolai nods.

"I can handle accusations from my father," he mumbles. "I don't care how he insults me. It can't get much worse than what he already said. But what I couldn't handle is if he came after you. Or my friends.

The second he would threaten to harm any of you, the second he would ask me to choose between your well-being and the money... I would choose you in a heartbeat. It's not even a question."

"So you thought if you broke off contact with me, Noah, and everyone else, your father would have no one to blackmail you with?", My voice sounds weird to my ears.

"Yes," he breathes. "I thought if you had nothing to do with me anymore, you'd be safe. I thought... I thought you'd be happier without me."

His voice breaks.
My heart breaks with it.

I wrap my arms around him and pull him as closely as possible, and he hides his face in the croak of my neck.

"Nikolai.", I whisper in his hair, "Oh Nikolai. You kept that to yourself the entire time?"

He nods. "I wanted to tell you, really. I wanted to explain everything, and I wanted to break up with you properly. But when I came back and saw you in the dining hall... you seemed so happy. So free. And I thought, How much of a selfish monster would I have to be to put the weight of my family issues upon you?"

I close my eyes to keep the tears inside. The seventeen-year-old in front of me had to keep the secret that his father basically killed his aunt. He isolated himself because he thought the weight of his life would be too heavy for anyone to carry. So he carried it himself, all alone.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, "I'm so sorry you had to live with that and thought you couldn't tell anyone. I understand, okay? I understand."

He looks up to me, and the hopeful expression in his eyes makes my heart ache. "You do?"

"Yes", I assure him, "yes, I do. If the roles had been reversed, I would've done the same thing."

I think he's not breathing. "So you forgive me?", he asks quietly.

It would be funny if it wasn't so unbelievably sad. He tried to protect me from his murderous father, and he's worried I won't forgive him for that.

"You didn't do anything wrong.", I repeat, "I wish you would've talked to me so we could've found a solution together, yes, but I understand why you didn't. You were trying to do the right thing. How could I be mad at you for that?"

He lets out a long breath and closes his eyes, his entire body relaxing. "Okay," he mumbles, "okay."

"But you need to promise me something, alright?", I say carefully.

He opens his eyes. "Yes, love. Anything. Whatever you want."

"Our relationship can't work if we don't trust each other."

"It wasn't because I didn't trust you-", he interjects, but I keep talking.

"I know you were trying to do the right thing. And I love that about you, Nikolai. But I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything. I won't tell a soul. You need to tell me if something is wrong so I can at least try to help you.

So promise me this: Never ever think you'd be alone with something like that again. Whatever happens, I'm on your side. We're a team. Don't forget that, okay?"

He nods. Looks me in the eyes deeply. "I promise."

I know he's sincere. My heart feels about one hundred pounds lighter. My boyfriend doesn't hate me after all. He simply has a savior complex.

"So... what does this mean now? For us?", he asks after a while.

"It means that I'm not scared of your father. I don't want you to be, either. He can't hurt either of us, it's just empty threats. He didn't set your aunt's girlfriend's house on fire after all, did he?"

"No," Nikolai says quietly.

"See? We'll continue as we have, keeping it a secret. At least for now. You'll turn eighteen soon, and then you can do whatever you want with the money. You can cut off your father if that's what you wish. He won't have any power over you ever again."

Nikolai smiles a little—a shy smile. "That sounds like a great plan."

"Of course it does. It's mine, after all," I joke, and lie down next to him on the bed.

"Oh, and there's something else," I add.
He raises his eyebrows questioningly.

"You will have to change your English and Chemistry classes again."

He laughs wholeheartedly, and my heart swells in my chest. I missed that sound.
"I'm serious!", I say, hitting his arm playfully. "You couldn't even sit next to me in class? What a coward you are!"

"Look around. It took two minutes of you being in my room before I threw myself at you."

He kisses the top of my head, still grinning widely. "I could barely hold it together in the dining hall, love. You are overestimating my ability to resist you. Do you know how adorable you look when you focus in class? You furrow your eyebrows together and stick your tongue in one cheek, and it makes me feral."

My cheeks heat up in an instant, and he laughs again. I hide my face against his chest, and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me close.

"Oh", he says, "by the way. Did I tell you that Amy gave me the talk?"

My mouth falls open. "She did what?"

"When I went to give her the key to the storage room back, she told me she hopes we're being careful when we pray together."

I hide my face behind my hands, horrified, and Nikolai laughs at my reaction.

"But hey", he pushes two of my fingers apart so I am looking at him with one eye, "she promised to keep the room unlocked."