Page 31 of Breakdown
Chapter Six
NIK OFFERED TO DRIVEand, for once, Peter didn’t fight him for the privilege. He’d spent the better part of four hours in the office trying to figure out tomorrow’s job as Nik had patiently puttered around the garage. Each hypothetical played out worse than the last, until he didn’t much trust himself to not just point the Mustang north and never look back. Northridge was a ghost-town as Nik guided them through the dark, quiet, early-morning streets. Peter felt a little like a ghost himself, insubstantial and disembodied.
He never really believed in the concept of ‘closure.’ That touchy-feely bullshit was for the kind of people who liked to pretend that the past could ever really be past. You couldn’t really close the book on the things that happened to you and declare that it was all resolved. Everything Peter had done wrong, every hurt he had nurtured was a part of him. You didn’t just get to say it was done and move on. The past had its hooks in a lot deeper than that.
Tonight though, the reunion with his mother, the confirmation that he didn’t make her leave...he’d been playing that scene over in his head for years. The ultimate pardon: “It wasn’t your fault.” And the implication behind it: “You are enough to make someone you love stay.” In his fantasy, hearing his mother say those words was absolution.
But all tonight had left him was hollowed out.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be fixed. Some cars were just beyond repair and Peter supposed people weren’t so different. And Nik, fucking perfect, beautiful, stubborn Nik, trying his damnedest to repair Peter because the guy didn’t know how to give up on a lost cause even when it was staring him in the face.
Sticking around here was just going to get him in trouble, no matter how hard Nik insisted on staying. Between Olivia, Volkov, Matty Giannopoulos, and Peter’s father, there were so many ways the next twenty-four hours could break bad that Peter realized with increasing dread that he couldn’t imagine a scenario where they both ended up okay.
So maybe it was enough if just Nik ended up okay.
If Peter ended up alone or in jail or dead just like Stavros, it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it. He’d done enough unforgivable, shitty things in his life.
What he didn’t deserve was the happy ending, and meeting with Cynthia had made that abundantly clear. All he’d been doing was fooling himself for the past year and a half, and Nik didn’t need to be burdened with that anymore.
Nik just needed a little shove in the right direction to realize that.
Peter asked the question as offhandedly as he could manage. “So, you’re packing a gun now, huh?”
Nik wouldn’t look at him, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he righted the steering wheel. “Nina suggested it when I refused to go with her.” Peter’s heart spasmed in his chest even as Nik continued, painfully failing to keep his tone light. “‘Suggested’ is perhaps the wrong word. The choice offered was that I would take the gun or she would shoot me with it.”
“I’m just saying that’s a pretty big 180 for you.” Peter plowed on with brutal intensity, doggedly determined to set fire to the last good thing in his life no matter how badly it burned him. “I mean, what would Helena think?”
Peter could see in excruciating detail the way the muscles in Nik’s neck corded tight. His jaw worked furiously, lips moving soundlessly over clenched teeth.
“Do not do this,” Nik said finally, with a heart-breaking resignation.
“Do what, Nik?”
“Push me away as hard as you can, because you think I am going to leave and you want to be in control when that happens.”
Peter shrugged and pressed on. “Hey look, if you don’t want to be here anymore, that’s on you—”
“Just stop.” There was no anger in Nik, just a long-suffering weariness that made Peter’s insides writhe. “I do not know what is more insulting. That you think that I do not know you well enough to see what you are doing or that you think I can be scared away so easily.
“Back in our shop, thatthing...” Nik swallowed so hard it looked painful. “That is something you know that I can never, ever condone using. I could not have taken it. I could have left with Nina. But I did not. And I did so because of you. Because I need you and I cannot imagine my life without you.
“I love you. And I will not ask for things in return for it like your sister. I will not run away without you like you mother. And I will never, ever hurt you like your father. But we promised each other: we do this together. You cannot shut me out. Not now. Not after everything.” He placed his calloused hand on Peter’s knee, firm and resolute. “So please, for me, I am asking you to stop this.”
Peter reached out for him and then withdrew just as suddenly. You could be killing him right now, he told himself. He could die because you love him and you aren’t strong enough to push him away.
