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Chapter Four
Daria wasn’t talking. The moment she regained her balance, she stepped back and looked at him, her beautiful face unusually devoid of expression except for a hint of fear in her stormy gray eyes.
His fists clenched against his sides. She was scared of him. She was scared he would hurt her again.
“I had a feeling you’d look for me.” It took him a moment to realize Daria was the one speaking. The huskiness of her voice was gone, replaced by something thin, high, and...broken.
“But I tried my best to be careful.” She spoke to him with her gaze centered somewhere in his chest. “So...where did I go wrong?”
She looked so damn high-strung, he was torn between giving her more space and pulling her into his arms to tell her he was never going to hurt her again. “You did everything right.” His voice was uneven. “None of my investigators found you, but I knew you wouldn’t be able to stop drawing.” At her frown, he explained slowly, “I’m Bella.”
She jerked at the name.
“I used a friend’s photo, but the whole time, it was me. Just me. The only time the investigators were involved was when I needed to give them your IP address so I could find you.”
“And so now you found me.” Her voice was toneless. She looked up at him then. He expected her to ask why. He was ready to tell her. But instead she said one thing he had never imagined she would say.
“Please.” Her whisper was painful to hear, but despite the noise of the crowd around them, he heard her, and the word sliced him open. So much damn pain, so much fear in that single word, and Nik knew he was the reason for it.
“Please.” She remembered the last time they had been together – of Nik throwing her out even though he knew she had only been pretending to leave.
Her voice caught. “Please, could you just please...forgive me? How long are you going to make me pay?”
Nik’s face became ashen as he realized what she was saying. “Daria.” His voice was hoarse. “Daria, I—-” But he couldn’t continue. How could he keep speaking when each word he uttered seem to hurt her more?
“I’m just so tired,” she said dully. “I know I lied, but I’m so tired of paying—-”
“I’m not here to make you pay.” Unable to keep himself apart from Daria any longer, Nik reached for her, and the way she flinched sliced a deeper wound inside him because he knew he deserved it. “Listen to me,” he said rawly. “I know the truth now, everything—-”
She shook her head, not wanting to hear a thing. “Please stop—-” He was just telling her all of this because he wanted her back. He wanted to make her pay again.
“Everything, Daria, everything.” Desperation made him want to shake her until she looked up and saw the truth in his eyes. “I talked to your mom, and just talking to her...I’m sorry for what I said about her because I see it now. How you see her, how beautiful she is inside and out—-”
“How could you stoop so low?” she cried out. “Using my mom—-”
“I talked to your mom, and she made me realize how much I love you, how goddamn lucky I am that God chose me—-”
A moan escaped her. “You know,” she said, stricken. “You know about the bottle, don’t you? You went through my things?” She started to laugh, and it was exactly as she had feared. She couldn’t stop laughing. “That’s why you’re here? You realize that the oh-so-experienced whore finally fell, and you can take your revenge—-”
“No,” he rejected violently. The volume of his voice caught everyone’s attention, and Nik did his best to control himself. “Listen to me, Daria. Look at me.” The moment their eyes met, he said, “I love you—-”
She couldn’t believe he could be so cruel. “How can you do this?” she whispered. He knew, God, he knew how badly she wanted to hear those words. And that was the plan, wasn’t it? Make her believe he loved her so he could hurt her again and again and again—-
“I told you I’m sorry,” she choked out. “So what more do you want?”
“I want your love—-”
“You don’t believe that I love—-”
“I believe you now. I believed you the moment I talked to your mother. I believed even before I saw the bottle. The cake. The calendar.”
She wanted to sink to her knees at his words. Oh God, he knew everything. Every stupid little thing she had done because she loved him so much she had accepted being a cunt to him, for the sake of love.
Even Magnolia hadn’t sunk that low.
She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Please,” she choked out. “I don’t want to hear—-”
“Listen to me.” This time, Nik did shake her. He could feel her slipping away from him even as she stayed in his arms, and he knew he had to make her listen now or she would be forever lost to him. “I believed you even before I got hold of the CCTV footage in my hotel. I saw you ask for Housekeeping to change the bed sheets with your blood in it.” His tone became driven. “I believed you even before I met every one of those twenty-eight frogs who were lucky enough to have you in their lives. I made sure they understood how much they had to lose if they ever spoke about you again.” He grimaced. “I also couldn’t use my hands for an entire week because of them.” But if he had hoped his joke would make her smile, he was disappointed, Daria only staring at him with a wan look in her eyes.
