“I’m sorry for the text as well.”
Now she turned to face him. “You didn’t mean what you said?”
“The apology? I meant every word. I’ve been an asshole to you.”
“That was never really in question.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately, I seem to be unable to walk away from the poor treatment.”
That broke him. “Fuck, Nikki.” He braced both hands on the rail and bent at the waist, exhaling hard. “You didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I should have dealt with my shit, my fear, and not let it spill over onto you.”
There was a pregnant silence. He rocked forward, looking out over the balcony. At the red awning under them and below that, the street. It was darker now, heavy clouds having rolled in just in the few minutes they’d been talking.
“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For the apology.”
A kernel of hope blossomed in him, and Eric straightened to look at her. “And I’m sorry for what I said about our relationship ending. That wasn’t my decision to make.”
She looked surprised. He vowed never to admit that Juliette had to explain it to him.
“You, very clearly, ended our relationship, and I should have acknowledged that,” he finished.
“I ended it?” Nikolett’s eyes widened as a fine mist started to fall.
“Yes. You made it clear that?—”
“You forced me to marry your brother!”
Eric winced.
“I didn’t end anything.” She slashed a hand through the air. “I begged you to try. I was willing to do what it took to make this work.” Her hand whipped back and forth in the space between them. The way her fingers slashed through the air it was like she was cutting final frayed strings that connected them.
His shoulder muscles bunched from the effort of holding still. He wanted to grab her hands, stop her from severing those invisible ties.
He looked from her hands to her face and for the first time tonight, their gazes met. Her eyes were a deep blue that at times seemed almost green, like the Baltic Sea in Heiligendamm. But there was darkness in the depths. Pain that he’d put there.
The mist turned into a drizzle, but he didn’t move, and neither did she.
Her voice lowered, almost broke. “I begged, Eric. I begged you to love me enough to try.”
Rain wet her face, and he couldn’t tell if she was crying. He wasn’t sure if he was crying.
Eric had been brought to his knees many times in his life, but somehow this was more desolate than the others. Before the blows that laid him low were towering and obvious—the death of his wives, of Josephine.
The look on Nikolett’s face in this moment hit him the same way. A different kind of death was written in her expression.
“I knew what you were going to do before you did. I knew once I found out you used marriage to force Mateo out of the Spartan Guard what your emergency plan to deal with me would be.”
He couldn’t deny it. He stood there like the horrible fool he was, shivering not from the cold but from the dread that was winding its way through him.
“I should have kept our interactions formal and professional after the first time you kissed me. Our jobs alone are enough to make us a bad match because we’re both too stubborn to give up?—”
“I’ll give it up,” he rasped out. “I never wanted to be fleet admiral. I’ll step down and?—”
She laughed, a bitter sound. “Noble words, and easy to say, because you know you can’t simply step down. The admirals would have to agree and find a replacement. We’re barely recovered from what Petro did. They’ll fight to keep you in your place.”
He waited for her to tell him it was possible. That she’d figured out a clever way for him to step down. The only one that had occurred to him was for her to become fleet admiral and hecould be her supportive spouse. Yes, that brought up echoes of disquiet because of what had happened to Dahlia, who’d been murdered while she was admiral of Kalmar, but the thought didn’t cripple him with fear the way it would have before Elijah and his light bar.
It was raining in truth, and Nikolett shivered, her hair dark now that it was wet. He reached for her on instinct, needing to protect her from the cold, but she pulled back, stepping out of reach.
“Why are you here, Eric?”
