by Lola StVil
“Could you maybe talk to her later?” Lucas asks.
I try to think of an excuse, some reason to get out of this conversation. Any reason really.
“I really need to talk to you, Summit.”
I can hear the vulnerability in his voice. He thinks I’m going to shoot him down. He’s expecting a full-on meltdown. Well he’s out of luck, because I don’t have the energy for either.
I sit down heavily and try not to wince at the pain that shoots through me. I nod at the chair beside me, and Lucas sits down, his relief palpable.
“I called you,” Lucas says.
Thank yooooou, Captain Obvious.
I don’t have the energy to fight with Lucas, but I’m as sure as Hell not going to make this easy for him. I want him to feel the pain I can feel. I want him to know how much he has hurt me.
“I was busy,” I say.
“Okay,” Lucas says.
He doesn’t seem to know what to say next.
“Is that it?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“I…I don’t know. I don’t know what to say to make any of this better.”
He reaches for my hand and I pull away.
“I need you to hear me,” he says, looking directly at me, searching my face for something.
“Fine,” I say. “Talk.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you I was married,” he starts.
“Okay, no worries,” I say.
No worries? No worries? Seriously, that’s the best line I could come up with?
That does it. I can’t do this. Not now, not here. Maybe not ever, maybe not anywhere.
I stand up so quickly the chair slams against the wall behind me. I don’t even glance back. I just walk. Away from the hospital. Away from Nikki. Away from Lucas.
I hear Lucas coming up behind me. I quicken my pace, but I’m not fast enough. I feel him catch hold of my arm and spin me around to face him. I want to shrug him off, but my ribs are already screaming, so I allow him to hold me in position.
“Just don’t,” I snap at him.
My default emotion rises back to the surface. Anger.
My anger is catching.
“This isn’t exactly an everyday situation, Summit. I’m trying to deal with it the best I can,” Lucas snaps back.
That does it. How dare he be angry? How dare he act like I’m the one in the wrong here?
“What do you think I’m trying to do, Lucas? Huh? While you sit in there playing happy family, I have real problems to deal with. Stuff that matters. Stuff that I don’t even know how to begin to deal with on my own. Because I am on my own now, aren’t I?”
“What stuff? What happened?” Lucas asks, concern replacing his anger.
I feel my own anger burn away as I look at his concerned face. I can see the stress eating him, and I want to reach out and touch his face. I want to hold him in my arms. But I don’t.
“Nothing. Forget it,” I sigh.
“Look, I know this whole thing is crazy. But we can figure it out,” Lucas says.
Can we? I’m not so sure.
I ask the one thing that’s been eating at me since all of this started.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Lucas? Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me you were married?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I knew I could trust you. I know I still can. I wanted to tell you, but at first, I was so afraid of losing you. After everything we went through to be together, I didn’t want to risk spoiling things. Then when I realized it wouldn’t spoil things, that I could talk to you about anything, I…”
He trails off. I feel like I should say something, but I don’t know what.
“Thinking about Nikki and I putting our Rahs in that mountain, and then what happened to her. It was too painful to think about. So, I pushed it away,” he finishes.
His eyes beg me to understand and his voice breaks a little on his last words. I can’t help it. I reach up and lightly stroke his cheek. He presses his face against my hand and I feel the softness of his skin against mine.
I’m reminded of that night. A night that feels like forever ago. I remember how I felt with every part of his skin pressed against mine. How I’d never felt closer to anyone in my life. How I trusted him completely.
His eyes meet mine and he leans towards me. I want him to kiss me. I want to feel the warmth of his lips on mine. I want to taste the saltiness of our unshed tears. I want to feel his arms around me, holding me, protecting me from everything else that I have to deal with.
At the last moment, I stop myself. I can’t do this. He’s Nikki’s.
I step back, bringing my hand back to hang awkwardly at my side.
“You’re taken,” I say quietly.
“I didn’t know she was alive,” he says.
“But now you do. So, where does this leave us?”
My mouth has gone dry, and every muscle in my body is tense. I couldn’t be any more anxious if a group of demons had just appeared and started trying to tear me limb from limb.
I feel like I want to run and never look back. I feel like I want to fight some unseen enemy and use up all of this anxious energy that’s pouring through me. My mouth tastes like copper, and I can feel my eyes darting around. Looking at anything but him.
I feel as if I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff, almost as if my whole life depends on this moment. On Lucas’s answer.
Where does that leave us?
That’s what I’ve just asked him, and although I want to know the truth, the thought of his answer terrifies me. It sends my thoughts into a spin and my emotions into a whirling, chaotic mess.
I didn’t mean to say it. I just blurted it out. I want him to say he loves me. That we’ll be together no matter what. That he’ll tell Nikki it’s over between them and convince her to give him his Rah back.
I’ve seen the way he still looks at me. I know he loves me. But I’ve also seen the way he looks at her. He loves her too. I know it, and he knows it. Hell, everyone knows it.
But what none of us know is where we all go from here. What happens next?
Lucas opens his mouth to speak after what feels like an eternity. Did it take him so long because he was trying to figure out how to let me down gently, or because he feels like crap saying he wants to be with me when his wife is lying in a hospital bed?
I take the fact he almost kissed me without me getting hurled across the room as a good sign, but maybe this is different. Maybe we’re the exception because we did stuff when the power of the Rah bond was weakened.
“I…” Lucas starts.
Part of me wants him to hurry up and spit it out, but a larger part of me wants to shake my head and scream at him to stop. I want to be able to take the question back. At least if he doesn’t say the words, I have hope.
“Lucas? There you are. Nikki needs you,” Parker says, unaware of what she’s interrupting.
After she’s spoken, she seems to sense the tension between us. She realizes she’s interrupted something important.
“I…Um…I’ll tell her you’ll be a minute,” she says, turning back towards Nikki’s room.
“It’s okay, this can wait,” I hear myself say.
Can it? I don’t know, but the words are out before I can stop them. It feels like I’ve bought myself a reprieve and who knows how much more torment.
I glance at Lucas, and he smiles sadly at me. I can’t stop myself from looking deep into his eyes, and I know his expression is mirrored on my face. He reaches out and tucks a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, his fingers caressing my face as he does. He leaves his hand there a second too long, but I make no move to push him away.
I’m sort of conscious of Parker beside us, shifting uncomfortably, but I don’t care. When Lucas touches me that way, there could be a million people around us and it would feel like we were alone in the world.
Am I about to lose that? Will it ever go away, even if he chooses Nikki?
I
have so many questions and no answers. I hate this. I hate it.
Lucas finally drops his hand and nods at Parker. She leads the way to Nikki’s room, and the three of us shuffle in.
“There you are. I thought you’d gotten lost out there,” Nikki says as Lucas enters.
Her face lights up when she sees him. If it were anyone but Lucas who produced that reaction in her, it would be adorable. I can actually see the love she has for him pouring out of her.
An awful thought hits me. Do I love him as much as she does? A million other questions flood my mind, my chest tightens with doubt, and there’s a lump in my throat I can’t quite swallow.
What if I don’t love him enough?
What if he ends things with Nikki for me and I don’t love him as much as she does?
What if I make him miserable?
And how can I be the one responsible for forever taking away that look from Nikki’s face?
I think I do. Love him as much as Nikki does, I mean.
Another thought comes from nowhere.
Does Nikki know about Lucas and me?
What if she can see it on my face as clearly as I can see it on hers?
I feel myself blush as I pull up a seat beside Ryder. He sees my embarrassment and frowns at me questioningly. I shake my head slightly. He raises an eyebrow and throws a subtle glance in Lucas’s direction.
I shake my head again, more forcefully this time. I can’t believe how harshly I judged Ryder when I first learned he was seeing Sabrina. What I’m doing is so much worse.
I mean sure, I thought Nikki was dead when Lucas and I got together, but now I know she’s alive and they’re married, and my feelings haven’t changed. That moment in the corridor with Lucas has shown me something.
I’m not ready to give him up without a fight. I really believed I could be the bigger person and stand gracefully aside, but I know now I can’t. Lucas is mine now, and I have no intention of letting him go.
The decision made, I suddenly feel a bit better. Not fantastic, but better. At least now I know what I want.
The group have all been chatting with Nikki, and I force myself to pay attention just as she says my name. She looks over at me with a shy smile.
“Summit, you asked me what happened to me. I wasn’t ready to tell my story then, but now I am. Are you guys ready to hear it?”
I nod along with the group, but I’m not so sure any of us are really ready to hear how that girl suffered.
But there’s no going back, and Nikki begins her story:
It was the day of our anniversary. Lucas was taking me somewhere special, and I was waiting for him outside of the training center. I was a bit early, but it was a nice day, so I sat down on the curb to wait.
I was distracted from my surroundings. I was posting a picture of Lucas and I to Instagram. I was excited about where he would be taking me, and yeah, I guess a part of me wanted to show off our perfect relationship.
I heard something behind me, I turned around, and there was nothing there, until I looked above my head. I was too late to do much. Two Bitters stood behind me.
You know they are like the demon version of bats—harmless to humans but lethal to any being with powers, as their beams can drain your powers, and once your powers are gone, they focus on draining your soul. They normally don’t stop until their target is dead.
I jumped up and turned to fully face them. I knew I had to take them down quickly, but they had a head start on me, and before I knew it, their beams were fixed on me and my powers were rendered useless.
I have no idea if someone sent them to take my powers on purpose, or if I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Their beams kept draining me until I was too weak to move. Then it was like, all of a sudden, something spooked them and they flew off. I was sure Lucas had shown up and used their distraction to sneak up on them. So, I lay there trying to regain some kind of strength. I was shaken up and more than a little angry at myself for becoming so distracted that they could sneak up on me. All I could think was Lucas would be back soon and we would spend our anniversary with a healer. I was a little disappointed, but I figured we could just reschedule our date.
I felt relieved when I realized the Bitters would have killed me, but thanks to Lucas showing up, they didn’t get the chance to finish the job. I thought I’d gotten pretty lucky really.
At the time, I was grateful. Now, I’m not so sure.
I soon found out it wasn’t Lucas that scared them off. It was something worse than the Bitters themselves.
A Blind beast showed up snarling and drooling. They can only sense inner thoughts. It’s trained to look for hope. The kind that comes when you think you’ve escaped the clutches of evil. It finds you and destroys you and your hope. The only way to get away is to lie down and think sorrowful thoughts until it decides to go away.
The Grinn came stalking around the corner. I swear it was like demon central there that evening. It obviously sniffed out the hope I felt at escaping alive from the Bitters, and the fact that Lucas was going to save me. I had no powers, no strength, and no idea what to do. Of course, in theory, I knew what I had to do, but it’s so hard to just give up all hope, isn’t it?
I lay still and tried to convince myself I was going to die. It didn’t work. I tried to convince myself it was hopeless. I could feel them feeding off what little life force I had left, and still, I couldn’t crush the last bit of hope. Because I knew Lucas should be almost there by now. I knew he would never let me down.
And then I felt my cell phone vibrating against my leg. I heard my text message alert. The special one I used for Lucas, and just like that, I knew I was alone.
I didn’t have to pretend anymore. Any bit of hope I had was crushed. I felt so utterly desolate. I was going to die there, alone, on the sidewalk.
I could feel the essence of my life force being sucked out of me, when just like that, it stopped. I realized what had happened. I had lost all hope, and the Grinn lost interest in me. It couldn’t sense me once I had no hope left.
I lay there for a good while after it left. I didn’t dare move in case it came back. I guess my situation was still pretty hopeless, because it didn’t come back.
But something else came. Something worse. I almost wished the Grinn had returned. At least that would have been quick…
I sit there, rapt, hanging off Nikki’s every word. It’s an awful story. A story of bad luck, bad timing, and sheer unfairness, but it’s gripping. I’m not the only one. The whole team are on the edge of their seats, staring intently at Nikki, listening to her story.
The silence is broken only by the odd gasp from the team.
“So, Bitters I understand,” Parker says.
Nikki looks at her with a sad smile.
“But Grinns? I thought they only existed in Difi?” she continues.
I look over at her, confused.
“Oh, sorry, Difi is how we refer to Hell.”
I nod my head and wait for them to continue.
“Grinns haven’t been in Difi since the first evil was slayed. When Difi went into Chaos, everything changed—demons, creatures, and even certain souls escaped and now walk on Earth. Most of them have been hunted and returned by the Omari, but that’s a lot of evil and lot of war between then and now,” Milo says, stunning everyone.
He shrugs it off until he realizes everyone is staring, even RJ, who is also smiling at him. He blushes and says, “When you’re in charge of keeping Sunny safe, it doesn’t hurt to know a little about what you could be up against.”
I hold his hand and give him a grateful smile. I try to imagine how it would feel being powerless, physically and mentally. I can’t even begin to imagine how Nikki must have felt lying on that sidewalk knowing Lucas wasn’t coming to her.
How would she feel if she found out he didn’t come to her because of me?
“Nikki, I…” Lucas interrupts her, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I can see
the pain on his face, and I hurt for him.
Nikki turns to him and smiles.
She reaches out and takes one of his hands in hers.
“I’ve made my peace with it, Lucas. I know you would have been there if you could. I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. I’m just telling you all what happened to me.”
Lucas looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. Nikki gently pulls her hands back into her lap, not letting go of his hand, like somehow, she’s using it as a shield to guard against her memories. She closes her eyes and goes on.
“Where was I?
Oh yes. The Grinn had been gone for I don’t know how long. It felt like a long time, but time has little meaning when you’re lying on the floor with your eyes screwed shut, afraid to even open them.
I heard footsteps approaching me, and I finally worked up the strength to sit up, thinking it was Lucas. I felt something hit the back of my head, and everything went dark.
I woke up in a cold, bare concrete room. A cell I guess you’d call it. I was alone, and for a while there, I had no idea where I was or what had happened.
My memories slowly came back to me. I remembered everything except how I got to be in that cell. I discovered my necklace was gone, and again, all of my hope died. I could see Lucas arriving late to meet up with me. I imagined him finding the necklace in a pool of blood left by the Bitters and possibly from the whack to my head.
My cell phone was gone too, of course, so I had no way of letting anyone know I was alive. I walked around the concrete room searching for a way out. I screamed, yelled, and banged until my voice was gone. After about an hour I sat on the cold stone floor and sobbed.
I didn’t know how long had passed, whether it was days or hours, but I finally heard footsteps. I peered through the small barred window on my steel cell door. A large man appeared out of the shadows. He wore a hood that covered his face. He unlocked my door and grabbed me roughly by my arm. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong.
He didn’t say anything, he just dragged me along. He took me up a flight of stairs and into what I guess you’d call his lounge. He ushered me into a metal cage. It was all bars so he could watch me.
