Wariness settled over Aria. She picked up her mug of tea and took a fortifying sip. “What?”
“Like I said, Nik is a dick… but…”
“I don’t like that but, Jen.”
“But, you really like him. And he loves you.”
Aria shook her head jerkily. “No. He doesn’t. He—he lied to me—”
“I’m not saying you should trust him, but let’s just pretend—for argument’s sake—that everything he’s told you is true. If you look at it that way, the story goes something like this: raging man-slut with zero relationship experience falls in love at first sight, doesn’t know how to cope with his feelings, and cooks up a desperate plot to keep the object of his affections in his life. Gives her ridiculous amounts of money and takes her on a truly excellent holiday. Makes her happy, treats her well, bestows many orgasms, admits he loves her and comes clean about everything.” Jen paused. “I don’t know, Ari. Does he sound like a dick? Yes. Completely. Does he sound like an evil, manipulative scumbag? Not exactly.”
“So, the best-case scenario,” Aria said frostily, “is that he’s a non-evil, slightly manipulative dick.”
“Do you think he manipulated you into liking him?”
“Yes!”
“How?”
Aria stared at her friend. Jen was usually so smart, and yet, all of a sudden, she had become unbelievably ditsy. “He lied to me so I’d spend a week pretending to be his girlfriend.”
“Okay. But if that whole fake-girlfriend thing had been legit, do you think you’d have fallen for him anyway?”
“I—yes? I don’t know. Probably? Well, fuck, yes, definitely. But it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t legit.”
“Right. He manipulated you into being around him. The thing is, though, it doesn’t sound like he manipulated you into liking him. Unless you think he was fake the whole time—like, he put on some act to make you fall for him. Or he hid some fundamental part of himself that would’ve changed everything.”
Aria forced hot tea past her cold lips. It landed with a sickening slosh in her belly. “No. No. I don’t think he did that.”
“Okay,” Jen said softly. “So, however you feel about him, or felt, before he told you the truth… that’s real. And if you really did care about him, maybe—maybe—you should consider giving him a chance to make it up to you.”
Aria thought about that for a second. She really, really did. But her mind threw up a single answer, undeniable as a brick wall. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
Jen gave her a sad smile. “Okay, honey. That’s okay. It was a rather big lie.”
But it wasn’t Nik’s lie that kept Aria awake that night, her stomach roiling and tears rolling down her cheeks. She barely thought about the lie at all.
Two images kept her up, flashing back and forth in her mind until they seemed to blur together. The look on Nik’s face, when she’d told him she was leaving—as if his heart had broken and his world had ended.
And the look on Simon’s, when he’d put a gun to her best friend’s head.
Chapter Nineteen
“What the fuck did you do to Aria?”
The sound of that name, even in Keynes’s clipped tones, forced a flutter out of Nik’s miserable heart. Clearly, his heart didn’t quite understand the situation they were in. Everything is fucked. We are doomed. And Aria doesn’t care if you flutter for her. So chill the fuck out.
“I fell in love with her,” he said dully, staring up at the night sky. Nik should be with his friends on the last night out of the week—or at least in bed, getting ready to leave tomorrow. Instead, he’d brushed off Varo and Kieran’s concern, ignored G’s pointed questions, and spent the night alone in the garden, lying in the grass.
The bugs were eating him alive, but he didn’t really give a shit right now.
“You fell in love with her,” Keynes snorted. “Right. Okay. What country will you be in tomorrow?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“I’d like to know your general location so I can fly over and beat the shit out of you.”
“I’ll text you hourly updates.”
“Thanks.” Keynes sighed. “Nik, what the fuck? I never would’ve let you pull this weird fake girlfriend thing if I thought you’d hurt Aria. I told her you were an okay guy!”
“Well, you were wrong. I’m a piece of shit.”
“Will you stop talking bollocks and say something that actually makes sense? What the hell happened?”
Nik ran a hand over his face. He’d never been so fucking tired in his life.
And yet, he knew he wouldn’t sleep if he tried.
“That night at the hotel,” he said. “When I kissed her. I… fuck, Keynes, I don’t know what happened. I just knew I needed her. Forever. But then I found her the next morning, and she didn’t want anything to do with me.” He laughed. “I didn’t ask her out. It hadn’t occurred to her that I was going to. She thought I wanted her to get rid of people for me, like she did with Melissa. So, I went along with it.”
“You hired her,” Keynes said slowly. “To be your fake girlfriend. Because you wanted—”
“A chance. That’s all. I wanted us to get to know each other, but things just happened. And then we were actually together—”
“Aria doesn’t date anymore.”
“Yeah, I know. She said something about that. But I guess she changed her mind. So, I told her I love her.”
Keynes gave a derisive snort. “Nice one, Romeo. How’d that go?”
“It was fine. She was dealing with it. But then I told her the rest.”
There was a pause. Then Keynes said flatly, “You tricked her into faking a relationship with you, made that relationship real, told her you love her, then revealed that, surprise! The whole thing was built on your aforementioned machinations.”
Well, fuck. That sounded almost as bad as the way Aria had put it. “I know the whole thing was reckless and ridiculous and selfish—”
“Did you tell her that?”
Nik winced. “Not exactly. I froze. I knew she was going to leave me, and I froze.”
“Of course you did,” Keynes drawled. “You spoiled man-baby.”
Nik supposed he should protest that statement, only it felt pretty accurate.
“You know what? Don’t bother texting updates. I don’t need to hit you. Because if you’re actually in love with Aria, you’re going to be hurting for a very long time.”
Even though Nik had thought as much, those words turned his stomach to lead. “You don’t think she’ll forgive me?”
“No,” Keynes said grimly. “I don’t.”
The next few days didn’t go so well for Nik.
Actually, that was an outrageous understatement. The next few days were hell.
It took him precisely one night of wallowing to remember that he was Nikolas Christou and giving up was not in his vocabulary. There was no way—absolutely none—that he was letting the love of his life just walk away from him. Even if he was the one who’d pushed her.
Of course, after that invigorating realisation, he hit a wall. The problem was, Nik couldn’t see any way to reach out that wouldn’t make things a thousand times worse.
Aria had told him pretty fucking clearly that she didn’t want to be near him. She hadn’t even let him drive her to the airport. She’d almost seemed afraid of him. And he could see now, after looking at the situation from angles other than his own self-centred, lovesick perspective, that she’d be well within her rights to think of him as a manipulative creep.
Manipulative creeps generally did not endear themselves via further harassment.
Over the days that followed their separation, Nik went home—not back to La Christou, where his family would demand to know what the hell was wrong with him, but to his flat in England. There, he spent his time thinking about Aria, mooning over Aria, and fantasising about accidentally bumping into Aria in the local Tesco (which was impossible, since he knew she lived miles awa
y). All he wanted was to speak to her, to see her, to get on his knees and tell her he’d do anything to regain her trust. But if he came within fifty feet of her without permission, she might just call the police. And Nik believed that would be counterproductive to his aim.
He was making breakfast on the third day—buttering a bagel because it somehow reminded him of her—when the idea struck. It was obvious, really, wasn’t it? He couldn’t go to her, but he could make it as easy as possible for her to come to him.
She’s not going to come to you. She hates you. She’ll never forgive you.
Nik flicked that voice away like the gnat it was. He hadn’t studied sports psychology for years just to let negative thoughts colonise his thinking and fuck up his game.
If he gave Aria everything she’d need to get in touch, and maybe apologised again—in a way that didn’t put any pressure on her—she’d have time to work through her feelings. She could decide if she wanted to see him. And if she did, she would. And if she didn’t…
Well, if she didn’t, he’d have to leave her the fuck alone, wouldn’t he? Even if the thought cast a film of grey over his life, his future, his everything. He couldn’t push her; he’d already pushed her enough. He’d pushed their entire relationship into being, as if she were some kind of doll and he was the puppet master. And that wasn’t how he wanted them to be. It wasn’t who he wanted to be.
So, he’d wait. He’d wait for her. Even if it took a fucking century. Even if she never came at all.
Abandoning his bagel, Nik found his phone and brought up Keynes’s number.
I need you to send this to Aria. Please send exactly this? Okay? Please. It’s important.
I’m sorry. I’d find you and tell you exactly how sorry I am, but I don’t think you’d want me to do that. I won’t contact you again—directly or indirectly—unless you ask me to. If you don’t want to now, but you do later, that’s cool. Even if ‘later’ winds up being 2067.
If you need to talk, or you just fancy sending me a bag of dog shit, here’s my address. Also the hotel’s address, in case you want to tell my mother what a dick I am. That would be excellent revenge, because she would beat me with a spoon, and those things hurt. While we’re at it, here’s my number, my email (which you already have) and every social media account I’ve ever made. I will check those every day, just in case. Even if it halves my productivity and makes me want to claw my eyes out simultaneously.
I know I fucked up. I know I lied. But everything else between us, from the first email I sent you to this message, is 100% real to me. I wasn’t trying to trick you into something you didn’t want to give. I didn’t expect things to happen the way they did. I just loved you. I love you now. I wanted to be around you and I was incredibly selfish about it. I’m sorry. I will never be sorry enough. But I am sorry.
Nik.
A few moments later, his phone buzzed.
Keynes: Good luck mate.
Aria thought she’d finally gotten the tears out of her system when she woke up to a text message from Keynes. Or rather, from Nik. Whatever she called it, its effect was the same.
She sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her phone and cried some more.
God, she was so bored of crying. But at least her outbursts remained varied and exciting, right? Over the past few days, she’d cried over betrayal; then bagels; then her tan lines, which reminded her of things best forgotten; and finally, her sox, which was forever ruined. And not just because she’d sat on it.
Now she was crying over Nik’s message. Because, as she read the words, she could hear his voice—all cockiness gone, his tone soft and hesitant, the way it got when he was nervous.
He’d been nervous, sometimes. With her.
And once she remembered that, she remembered a thousand other things too, all of them jostling for attention, desperate to be the main cause of today’s tears. Nik’s smile, sometimes sweet, sometimes wicked, always provoking. Nik’s constant humour, his warm, easy affection and his recklessness. She threw the phone onto the bed and slapped her hands over her eyes as if that would stop the memories, but of course it didn’t.
She loved him. She loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone. She didn’t know what to do with all this love. She was drowning in it, but the only thing that scared her about that was…
Well. Nik wasn’t there to drown in it with her.
Aria stared at her hands for a moment and realised they were shaking. Then she crawled across the bed, picked up the phone she’d thrown, and called Jen.
“Hey, love. What’s up?”
“Do you trust me?” The question sounded abrupt and slightly rough, a little too urgent, but that was okay. It reflected the way she felt right now.
There was a slight pause before Jen laughed, “Well, good morning! Of course I trust you.”
“Even though I…” No. Aria stopped, shaking her head. She wasn’t going to ask about Simon. Jen had told her the answer often enough, and it was time to start believing in it.
Even if she had to fake it before she genuinely reached that point.
“Okay. Okay.” Aria took a deep breath. “Because I don’t know if I should trust myself. Like, if I should believe in my own feelings or—or be wary.”
“Oh, honey,” Jen sighed. “I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Well, there were a lot of times, with Theo, when I wondered if I was making bad decisions. I mean, when we got together, he was my boss.”
Aria nodded. At the time, she’d kind of thought Jen was making bad decisions too. Obviously she hadn’t said anything—but she’d been suspicious of the older, wealthy guy who held so much power over her best friend. She’d expected everything to end in tears.
And now they were married. Sometimes, she supposed, things did work out. Sometimes, people really just wanted to love you.
“Even when he proposed,” Jen was saying, “I kind of wondered what the fuck I was thinking. All I knew was that I loved him, and I believed in us. And sometimes I wondered if love was a trustworthy emotion. But you know what? I think it’s worth the risk.”
Aria nodded slowly as her mind worked through those words. “Okay. Um… thank you.”
“Do you want to talk about anything?”
“No, no. I think I’m good.”
“Okay, love.”
Aria put down the phone and let her messy thoughts sit for a while. Or tried to. She went about her day, looking into properties for the tattoo shop—which, yes, she was still going to do. She supposed some women might send back all that money as a point of principle. Frankly, the mere idea made Aria hysterical with laughter. She felt more inclined to demand a bonus for the way he’d fucked her over, but she wouldn’t push her luck.
That thought made her imagine Nik’s reaction, though. He’d laugh and argue just for the sake of it, that teasing smile on his face—but in the end he’d agree anyway, because he had this weird idea that she was smarter than him.
By the time night fell and Aria was back in bed, she’d made her decision. She opened up the thread of emails they’d begun weeks ago and sent another.
I still don’t trust you.
Then she rolled over and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty
The next day Aria woke up to a reply that had arrived exactly three minutes after her email.
It’s a weird feeling, to be this upset over a message but this fucking ecstatic that it came at all. I know you don’t trust me, and I understand why. Can I try my best to fix it?
Aria’s tongue snuck out to toy with her lip ring as she considered her response. Finally, she typed out:
You can send me shitty Vines, if you want. And anything else that will make me laugh. I don’t think I can deal with heavy conversations.
She didn’t know how he’d respond to that. After all, she hadn’t really answered his question. She hadn’t given him a chance to do or get what he wanted. And yet, she was bar
ely surprised when he replied with exactly what she’d asked for. No further questions, no probing remarks, just a series of videos that made her laugh. He kept it up throughout the day, even though she didn’t reply; one at lunch, another around dinner, another just before she went to bed.
And then he did it the next day. And the next day. And the next.
By the fifth day, the urge to reply was so strong that she stopped trying to fight it. What was the point, after all? Why was she denying herself the great luxury of a fucking email exchange?
For the first time since she’d asked him to make her laugh, Aria typed out a message to Nik.
“Well, then.” Lila Jones, British footballing legend, looked around the table of suits. “I don’t know about all of you, but I think we definitely have space for Mr. Christou within the foundation.”
The swell of pleasure in Nik’s chest was muted, like a lot of his feelings recently—but it was undeniably there. And it grew in intensity as the rest of the room nodded, murmuring their agreement and flashing welcoming smiles. Satisfaction bloomed. He’d decided that since he had enough money—more than enough—he didn’t need to look for work as a coach or a manager. Instead, he wanted to focus on philanthropic pursuits. To help people. He’d be working with Lila’s charity, but it had occurred to him that, when he knew enough, he could start one of his own back home.
He remembered Aria telling him that he could do anything. Would it be too much to let her know that he was doing this? Probably. He was excited, and she was the person he wanted to blurt out all his excitement to, but it wouldn’t make her laugh. He was supposed to be making her laugh.
Maybe he’d get the chance to tell her eventually.
It was that maybe, on top of his success at the meeting, that had Nik leaving the foundation’s offices with a grin on his face and a bounce in his step. He pulled out his phone to text Varo.
And saw a notification he hadn’t expected but desperately wanted. One that took his tentative happiness, strapped a rocket to it, and sent it soaring across the sky like a comet.
Sweet on the Greek_An Interracial Romance Page 16
