Page 101 of Nikola

Fresh tears flowed out of my eyes and his hand reached out to cup my face. “Don’t cry, Skye.”

“How can I not?”

“I have to let you go.” I shook my head in disbelief. How could he cut me off, just like that? We’d finally gotten everyone’s approval.

“Why?”

“Can’t you see?”

“No, I can’t.” I closed my eyes for a moment before I opened them to find him staring at that fucking leg again. I forced him to look at me. “Explain it to me, because I don’t understand what’s preventing us from being together.”

Feeling enraged, adrenaline pumping through my veins, I couldn’t sit still anymore. So I jumped to my feet and put my hands on my hips, glaring at him and waiting for an explanation.

His lips curled in disgust. “How in the fuck will I protect you while in a wheelchair,zayka? Or stumbling around on crutches?”

“I don’t need your protection. In fact, I don’t want it.” I waved my hands like a lunatic, unable to get them to focus enough to finish my thought.

“Imagine the two of us being cornered by an enemy. Would I ask them to move slower so that I could shoot them first?” He practically sneered at me.

“You can beat them with the crutches,”I shot back. “Or shoot them. Hell, I’m a good shot. Maybe I’ll shoot them!”

He scoffed. “That would only put you in more danger.”

I shook my head frantically, hoping to get through to him. “I can protect myself. And I can protect you too.”

“No.”

“Don’t you say no to me, Nikola Nikolaev.”

“You’ll thank me one day.” His eyes hardened into blue diamonds. Was he insane? There wasn’t a single scenario in which I’d thank him for breaking off what we had. “Besides, fucking you vanilla doesn’t do it for me.”

His words had me reeling back. “What?”

“I tried to change myself, go easy on you since you freak out being handcuffed, but that’s not who I am. It’s best we end it now before we both make a mistake. Fucking you just doesn’t do it for me.”

I let out a shaky, frustrated breath, the pain slicing through my chest like a jagged blade, and tears burned hot behind my eyes. I loved him—God, I loved him so much that the mere thought of living without him felt like being stripped of air, drowning in a world that no longer made sense.

And yet, he spat hurtful words at me. He was ready to give me up—just like that. Like I was something he could walk away from, something disposable.

That hurt more than anything—more than any bullet tearing through flesh, more than the threat of any enemy lurking inthe shadows. This betrayal, this willingness to let me go, carved deeper wounds than violence ever could.

“Remember when you told me you’d clip my wings?”

He exhaled a tired breath, and a sliver of guilt snaked through me. I should have waited to start this conversation; he was still so weak.

“How could I forget?”

“The part you didn’t know is that I let you clip my wings because I never wanted to fly away when it came to you. You’re my forever, Nikola, even if I’m no longer yours.”

Nikola looked more distraught than I’d ever seen him—like I was tearing him apart piece by piece, gutting him alive right there in the sterile hospital room. His hands curled and uncurled, knuckles turning white, the dark ink of his tattoos stark and striking against the crisp, pale sheets. His jaw clenched, muscles straining as if he were fighting to keep himself from shattering completely.

“Goodbye, Skye.” The words, uttered with a hard gleam in those pale blue eyes, were my undoing.

That’s it? Just like that?

I closed my eyes briefly before opening them again, focusing them on his face, his body. I would use the image of him lying there as fuel for the journey ahead. I wouldn’t give him up. “You haven’t seen or heard the last of me.”

I turned on my heel and strode out of his room, past our family, down the sterile hallway, and out into the bright sunlight, my head held high.