Nikolas

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

TW: SA

...

"Who was it?" I jump, startled, as I hear his low voice behind me. 

I stop walking, my heart beating out of my chest as I turn around. He looks as beautiful as ever standing there, his brows furrowed in an angry stare and his eyes burning into my soul. He should look terrifying, but I can't help but see him as an angel. Someone should slap the shit out of me. Just wake me up from my own stupidity. 

But the way he's just there, looking at me with his beautiful dark eyes, I can't help it. Is this what love was? To be able to forgive and forget. I hate it. It makes me feel helpless vulnerable, everything that I was most afraid of becoming. 

But I'm so confused. Why the hell is he suddenly talking to me after he admitted to me that he'll never love me? Is he purposefully trying to torture me? If that was his goal, he achieved it. 

"What?" I don't mean to sound stupid, but I'm sure I do. His fists clench beside him and he takes a step closer to me so that he's only a few inches away from me. My eyes widen as all of my senses stop working and I can't see, feel or smell anything other than him. 

He reaches up suddenly making me flinch and his eyes flash with the one emotion I've been accustomed seeing on him. Anger. It burned bright as he gently ran his fingers over my cheek and my heart starts thumping. Or maybe it just never stopped. 

I sometimes wonder if it's even healthy for my heart to be beating this fast this often. If I died, blame it on him. It's like I've just run a marathon whenever I see him. It's getting to the point where it pounds in my ear and I can barely focus on the things around me. I can only see him.

When everything was normal and I didn't get my heart crushed by him, my stomach would be assaulted by butterflies. Just looking at him made me want to smile. But now it felt like someone landed a punch on my gut. It's hard keeping tears out of my eyes as he stands there in front of me. Filling me with unfamiliar emotions that scare me. 

He doesn't say anything for a few beats too long, making me want to just run but when he does open his mouth I can feel the delusional thoughts forming in my head. 

"Just give me their name, I'll make sure they never lay a hand on you ever again," his voice is so gruff, it tickles a spot in my brain. And his words make me wonder if the whole incident at McDonald's was a nightmare. One that only happened to me. Does he not remember what happened? Was that his twin that I don't know about? 

I'm actually going crazy. 

I open my mouth to make another stupid excuse, something I've been getting better at, but he beats me to it. 

"Don't even fucking try giving me that 'my sister is a bitch' bullshit," he warns. I want to tell him that I didn't say that Summer was a bitch. I only said she was scary, but I know that's irrelevent so I keep my mouth shut. Instead I shake my head out of his grasp. 

"That's not any of your business," I tell him, getting ready to spare my heart from breaking again by walking away. Lilah once told me that walking away is always the best solution. Obviously I'd argued with her that walking away was a pussy move, but in the end, she won, convincing me that I indeed need to walk away from my problems. 

Though Nikolas isn't my biggest problem, since there's a child-rapist living with me that takes that trophy, I keep in mind that Lilah did say to start small. 

I see him furrow his brows as if what I said was the craziest thing he's ever heard in his life. Whcih only fuels the need to walk away. He stops me though, his hand firmly gripping my upper arm. Not enough to bruise me but enough to keep me from leaving. I think Jonas needs to take some lessons from him.