With each word Nik spoke, Daria could feel herself shrinking smaller and smaller. When he was done, she said bitterly, “Thanks for making me feel like an idiot—-”
“You brought it on yourself,” he snapped. “So stop it with the lies for once—-”
How could she when it was so much easier to lie? There and then, she remembered her friends’ warnings, the way they pleaded her to simply tell the truth, and everything became clear now.
Lies allowed her to protect herself while the truth exposed her to more pain.
But if she really loved Nik, shouldn’t she find the courage to speak the truth – to keep speaking it until he believed her?
She made herself look at Nik, and this time she didn’t try to hide anything from him. “Nik,” she whispered. She didn’t give a damn anymore about the crowd. She only cared about making Nik see the truth.
“Please believe me when I say I only lied once—-” She had imagined him reacting in various ways to her words, but she never thought she would see such contempt in his eyes, and she had to swallow back a sob at the sight of it.
“How the fuck can you have the gall to say that?” Nik gritted out. “How can you look like that and be a fucking liar—-” And how the fuck couldn’t he stop loving her even with her unable to stop lying?
Daria valiantly fought against crying at the way Nik was gazing at her. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You don’t deserve to cry just yet. She tried again, her voice shaking. “Nik, j-just let me explain. I m-mean it. I only lied to you once—-”
“That’s another fucking lie right there, dammit!” His lip curled. “Do you think I don’t know about what you told Miranda?”
Daria shook her head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about—-”
Disgusted at the way lie after lie kept coming out of her mouth, he turned away. He was sick and tired of the way Daria kept turning their lives into a public spectacle, even more tired and sicker at the way he seemed powerless against her.
“I’m not doing this here,” he bit out. “Either you come back to the apartment—-”
“Daria, babe, is that you?”
Nik’s head snapped up, and he saw one of the men who had come out of the elevator heading towards Daria. Nik recognized the man instantly from the background report he had ordered on Daria.
It was Daria’s most recent lover, the one who came right before Nik.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Nik muttered. “Do you have a guy in every fucking state?” First, there was Victor the pussy in Teleios, and now the ex-MMA fighter here in the city. This was how life was going to be, Nik thought savagely, as long as he couldn’t exorcise Daria from his heart.
Flinching at the way Nik was looking at her, Daria started to speak when Colton suddenly appeared at her side. She fell silent, shock and shame mingling inside her as she remembered the last minutes she had spent with him.
Just remembering made her mute with self-hatred, and she couldn’t believe she had sunk that low. No wonder, she thought dully, the sight of her could make Nik feel sick.
Colton appeared oblivious to the undercurrents between Nik and Daria, his smile purely lascivious as he studied her. “Gotta say, babe, you broke my heart when you left me like that.”
“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, terrified that Colton would describe exactly what they had done. He always had a penchant to kiss and tell.
“Was it because my size frightened you?”
Daria struggled to keep her voice even. “No.” God, how dirty she was. So damn dirty for someone to think that he could treat her this way. No wonder, no wonder Nik couldn’t make himself trust her.
Her skin crawled as Colton reached for her, and she stepped back, unaware of the way her body stiffened as if it was ready to be attacked.
But before he could touch her, Nik had placed himself between them, pushing Daria behind him. “I don’t believe she wants to talk to you,” Nik said coldly.
Daria was stunned that Nik would get himself involved. But she also knew how he hated scenes like this, and she tugged on the back of his jacket, pleading, “Nik, I can handle this—-”
In front of them, Colton was red-faced. “Who the hell do you think you are, man? That’s my ex-girlfriend—-”
“And she’s my mistress.”
Colton stared. “What the fuck?” His jaw took on an aggressive slant. “That means she’s better off with me.” He moved as if to shove Nik off, but he had only lifted his hands when Nik’s security team came down on him in full force, preventing him from reaching Nik.
Even as Colton shouted invectives at him, Nik acted as if he didn’t hear a thing, turning to Daria and asking levelly, “Now, may we please go back to the apartment?”