I stand, afraid that if I don’t get out of there fast, I will back down. And I can’t risk destroying Damien. Not when I’m the one who can save him. “I need to go. I—I’m sorry.”

I turn and hurry toward the elevator, but he doesn’t let me get away. He grabs my elbow to stop me, and I jerk it back. “Dammit, Damien, let me go.”

“We are going to talk about this.” The veneer of shock that had been all over him only moments before has changed to something brash and volatile. I see the anger building in his eyes, about to explode out past the pain, the hurt, the confusion.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Everything is a secret with you. Everything is a challenge. Everything is a game. This stuff about Sofia. That crap you pulled with Lisa.” It is both easy and hard to say these words. Easy, because they are true. Hard, because though his secrets and shadows drive me nuts, I have accepted them as part of the man that I love. And now I am turning that around, bastardizing it in order to create an escape route.

But I have to. I just need to remember that I have to.

“Goddammit, Nikki, do not come in here and dump this on me and expect me to shrug it off and be done with you. I love you. I am not letting you walk out of this room.” His wounded eyes are scanning my face, and I know I have to get out. Have to run before he sees the truth under this mountain of lies.

“I love you, too,” I say, because it is the only truly honest thing I’ve said since I walked in this room. “But sometimes love isn’t enough.”

I see the shock on his face, and I turn and hurry again toward the elevator. This time, he doesn’t follow, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or brokenhearted.

I step on, keeping my chin high and my eyes wide and dry. Then, as the elevator doors snick shut, I see Damien fall to his knees, his face a mask of pain and horror and loss.

I slide down the polished wall and, finally, lose myself to the violent shaking of my sobs.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I keep Sofia’s scalpels, and every time Damien calls I squeeze my hand tight around the cylindrical handle of the largest one as I force myself not to answer the call. As I tell myself I cannot call him back no matter how much I crave his voice, his touch. And then, in the silence when the ringing stops, I stare at the gleaming blade and wonder why I don’t do it. Why I don’t just use this blade and set free all of this shit that’s boiling inside me, vile and violent.

I fight it back, though. I force myself not to cut.

But I no longer know what I’m fighting for, and I’m desperately afraid that my strength will give out, and one day I will press that blade against my skin, that I will feel the tug of yielding flesh, and that I will finally succumb. I am afraid that I will have to, because there is no other way to live without Damien.

I have not gone to my office for over two weeks now. At first, Damien called me five times each day. Then he dropped to four daily calls for a few days, then three. Now the calls have stopped altogether and the lure of the blade is even more potent.

I know that Jamie and Ollie are worried about me. That doesn’t take a great intellectual leap to figure out because they have both flat out said as much.

“You need to get out,” Jamie says one afternoon as I am on my bed, staring blankly at all the newspaper clippings and bits of memorabilia I was going to use for Damien’s scrapbook. “Just to the corner. Just for a drink.”

I shake my head.

“Dammit, Nicholas, I’m worried about you.”

I lift my head to look at her, and when I do, I see my reflection. My face is gray and there are circles under my eyes. My unwashed hair hangs limp around my face. I do not recognize myself. “I’m worried about me, too,” I say.

“Jesus, Nik.” I hear fear in her voice, and she comes to sit on the bed beside me. “You’re really scaring me. I don’t know what to do here. Tell me what you need.”

But I can’t. Because what I need I can’t have.

What I need is Damien.

“You did the right thing,” she says gently. I have told her and Ollie the truth about what I did and why I broke it off. I couldn’t keep the secret any longer. I have not told Evelyn that we broke up, but she heard the news anyway. I have not taken her calls; I’m too afraid of what she will say.

“But, Nik,” Jamie continues, “now it’s time to let yourself heal.”

“I just need time,” I manage to say. “Time heals, right?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I thought so, but now I just don’t know.”

I don’t know how many days have passed when Ollie shows up in my bedroom, his expression grim. “Come on,” he says, taking my arm and tugging me to my feet.

“What the—”

“We’re taking a walk.”

“No.” I jerk my arm back.

“Goddammit, yes.” He grabs a baseball cap from the shelf in my closet, crams it onto my head, then tugs me toward the door. “Corner store. Ice cream. And I’ll fucking carry you there if I have to.”

I’m standing now, and I nod. I don’t want to go out into the world, but I also don’t want to fight. And maybe it will help, though I don’t really believe it.

“You fucked up, Nikki,” he says once we’re on the sidewalk.

I don’t look at him. I don’t want to hear this. I know I did the right thing; that knowledge is as true to me as the sun that now beats down upon us. That truth is the only thing that’s helped me survive.

“I’ve seen him, you know.”

That gets my attention.

“I went with Maynard to the apartment yesterday. He’s missed too many appointments, and there was stuff that had to be handled. Signed. Life and business moving on. But, Nikki, Damien’s not moving on. He’s wrecked. Shit, I think he’s worse than you.”

I keep my head down and keep walking, but every step hurts me. Every second that I am hurting Damien hurts me. “I don’t want to hear this,” I whisper.

“Just talk to him. Go see him. Jesus, Nikki, fight for it.”

That makes me stop. Makes me turn to him. Makes the anger rise enough that it pushes back the pain. “Goddammit, Ollie, don’t you get it? I am fighting. I’m fighting every day not to run back to him. I’m fighting because I love him. And because I do, I can’t see him ripped to shreds. You saw how he was in Germany, and that was just a few people who saw those pictures. If those photos get out in the world, it will completely destroy him.”