“I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you’d find me weak and revolting. The idea of you seeing me differently haunts me, Nikolai. I don’t want to lose you.”
“But you’re okay with me losing you? I’m a shell without you, Bran.” He drags my hand to him and slams it against his chest. “This thing only beats for you and because of you. I used to live an aimless life where adrenaline was my god, but you came along and tamed my demons. You balance me. You complete me. You’re fucking in me. So seeing you bleeding out on the floor was no different than watching myself die. No, it was worse. I’ve never felt so scared for my life, but you…you’re my everything. How could you do that to me? To us?”
“I’m so sorry. The last thing I want is to hurt you.”
“Don’t apologize. Tell me you won’t do it again. Promise me.”
“I promise, Niko. Never again. I’ll do everything in my capacity to get better. I’ll go to therapy and pick myself apart to be strong enough to deserve you. Just don’t leave me, please.”
“Not even if you beg for it. I love you, lotus flower, and that means I’ll be by your side during all of your battles with your demons. I’ll kill them for you if you let me. I’ll listen to them if you want me to. But I’ll never leave you, so you’re stuck with me.”
I stroke his cheek over the stubble and try to stop my heart from bursting into flames. “You’re the one who’s stuck with me. There’s no one on this earth who’s able to understand and love me like you do. It’s why I gravitated toward you without even noticing. Falling for you was effortless and final. I thought I was unworthy of you, I fought myself to be with you, but it was pointless. I never loved myself the way I love you, baby.”
That beautiful grin breaks through the pain and I can feel my heart soaring. “Does that mean you’re mine now?”
“I think I always have been.”
“Thank you for coming back to me, baby.”
“Thank you for never giving up on me, Niko.”
And then I let him feel how grateful I am by pressing my lips to his.
The first kiss of our new life together.
EPILOGUE 1—BRANDON
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Stay still,” I chastise, pushing Nikolai’s hand off my waist.
He groans and his palm lands back on my hip like a rubber band. “This is fucking torture.”
I flick my brush over the ridge of his pectoral muscle, careful not to get red paint on the lotus flower.
My thin strokes slowly transform into the image of his necklace, painting the bullet on his skin, then drawing the chain so it’s wrapped around it in the shape of a lotus flower.
And just to mess with him, I make shallow strokes over his nipple. The sexy rumble beneath my fingers has me biting my lower lip to suppress my own noises of pleasure.
He’s effortlessly the most attractive specimen to ever walk the earth, beautiful in his confidence, loud in his assertiveness, and absolutely hotheaded in his loyalty.
Every day, I wake up to his stunning face and thank all gods and religions for putting him in my path. I never believed in fate until this mountain of a man flipped my world upside down and made me love every second of it.
Our journey hasn’t been easy. Far from it. But he’s stood with me every step of the way.
He was there when Dad broke the news that Grace committed suicide in her bath and left a note in which she confessed what she did and asked Mum and me for forgiveness.
My mother replied to that by having her disgraced in the art circuit and permanently removed from the art council’s Hall of Fame. She was also stripped of her peer title.
A part of me was happy for that outcome. At least that meant justice took place without having to drag myself into court.
Though I never really wanted her to die, I’m not mourning her, either. I mourned myself. Which is why the next difficult part was finally getting help.
Therapy is good, but it’s hard. The most important part is that it’s working, but I’m not deluded enough to think I could’ve done this on my own.
I’m lucky to have the most loving and understanding parents, friends who lift me up, an adorably supportive sister, and even Lan. My twin brother is finally my twin again after eight years of playing hide-and-seek with each other.
He’ll never be mushy or emotional, but he’ll always be my brother. A part of him, as he often reminds me. We finally have each other as ‘Other Half’ on our contacts.
However, the process wouldn’t have been possible without the man standing in front of me. The way he held me through it all while dealing with his own issues made the entire thing worth it.
Nikolai lets me see him on his bad days. The days where he can’t stay still, where he paces and chain-smokes and is unable to sleep, but that’s not much different from when he’s on a violent spree. And the best part, he really, really wears me out during those days. Physically, not emotionally. He can’t keep his hands off me and pulls me into dark corners so we can do filthy things to each other.
Not that I’m complaining. I love it when he gets rough.
He says I calm his demons down, and that’s the best compliment he can give me, especially since he’s the main reason I’m able to battle my own demons.
Other times, when he thinks his mind gets too out of control, he takes the pills and they’re…well, I don’t like them. They kill the light in his eyes and turn him into a lethargic zombie who moves like a robot, talks with no intonation, and refuses to leave the house. He doesn’t smile, not even at me, and looks fucking depressed.
I immediately took his dad’s side on that and told him to ditch them. But Nikolai is seriously creeped out about the prospect of hurting me—which has never happened.
“Once is enough, baby,” he told me with that wretched expression. “I’d never be able live with myself if I even accidentally hurt you, touched you too hard, or pushed you too much. I’d rather slash my own soul in half than do that to you.”
The fear in his gaze back then broke my heart. Possibly because that was coming from Nikolai, who, according to his dad, refused the very notion of the pills early on.
But he embraced them for me.
We spoke to his doctor, and he said there’s a possibility of a new medicine that’s able to put the manic episodes under control without murdering his soul in the process. We’re in the testing stage and he’s only used them once, but I like them much better.
At least they enable him to look at me without looking through me. He’s just less playful, which is something I can live with once in a while. And really, in the last six months, he’s had episodes exactly four times. One was a fuck fest, the second and third were zombie-like due to the ludicrous pills, but the fourth was a mixture of both, and I’m good with that. He was also happy about it and came down from his high in the span of two days.
In the beginning, when he felt himself spiraling, he’d send me a text.
My mind is turning up in volume. I’m getting bad. Maybe you should visit your parents for a week or so. Just stay away from me, baby.