MEGAN

Chapter 20

Megan

Megan sat in the chair next to Nik's bed, keeping her eyes on him constantly, afraid to even blink as if he would disappear if Megan did so.

Nik was asleep at the moment, although he had protested having to stay at the hospital at all, making Megan breathe for the first time since realizing Nik had been shot as she watched him argue with Nate. But the argument had tired him out since he had lost some blood, and he soon fell asleep.

Nate was the one to treat Nik as soon as the ambulance brought him in and had later told Megan that Nik had been lucky since the bullet had just grazed his stomach, not hitting any of the major organs and besides losing a bit of blood and having to get some stitches he would be fine in a week or two.

Megan had almost started to cry there and then, as a weight lifted from her chest at hearing that Nik would be fine.

Her hands were still shaking as every time she closed her eyes, she saw Nik lying on the floor of her room, his eyes wide and blood pooling beneath him. She had thought that she had lost him, especially when Nik lost consciousness once the adrenalin pumping through his veins from the fight ran its course.

Megan stood up, stretching her back, which was pretty sore from spending the night in the sturdy hospital chair, before walking toward the window and looking into the early morning.

Before they had broken up, Nik had asked her to make a decision, and last night, as Megan sat beside him on the floor, her hands bloody as she tried to stop the bleeding, she finally realized that she had made a mistake.

She loved him. She was in love with Niklas Krüger, and as she prayed to all the deities to save him, she knew she was okay with it. The fear, the sick feeling, all but disappeared as genuine fear, a terrifying force that clutched her throat and suffocated her little by little, made itself known.

Nik could die; he could die without ever hearing that Megan loved him. And that was it, really. There were no grand revelations, no journeys of self-discovery, just a woman realizing she loved a man almost too late.

"Meg?" she heard someone calling her name and turned around to see William standing at the doorway of Nik's hospital room.

"Hey," Megan said, a small smile spreading through her face at seeing her brother.

"Are you alright? Fuck, Megan." William said as he entered the room, dragging her into a hug and squeezing the living daylights out of her.

"I'm fine, bro. Nik's the one who got shot," she said as she motioned with her head toward the bed with the sleeping man.

"I know. Is he alright?"

"Yeah, just a surface wound, but Nate wants to keep him for another day."

"Do you need anything?" William asked.

"No. I was actually going to go home and bring us some clothes, but Nate had beaten me to it. So, we have everything, and he'll be released tomorrow."

And go home, she thought as she looked back to the man sleeping peacefully in the bed.

∞

"This is not the way to my hotel," Nik said as he turned to look at Megan. Megan hummed but said nothing as she turned left on the road to her house. Nik had been released earlier that day, and Megan was there to pick him up.

Though she had forgotten to mention that she wouldn't be taking him to his hotel like Nik had been thinking, but to her own house. She refused to let him go back to that place, especially once Nate had told her what he had found when he went to get Nik some clothes.