Page 186 of Reign
Oh.
God help me, he’s nervous.
The realization almost undoes me. I curl my fingers more securely through his, and his grip tightens once in answer. We keep walking, and for a little while, neither of us ruins it with speech.
Then Nikolaj stops abruptly.
The sudden stillness pulls me half a step back because he still has my hand. I turn toward him at once, heart kicking hard for no rational reason.
His gaze is fixed on me, strange and intent, his face unreadable in the way that has become dangerous to me now. Once, that expression would have made me curious. Aroused, probably. Ready for a fight or a kiss, whichever one he decided to weaponize first.
Now, after the month, after the beach, after two weeks of learning which silences are safe and which are not, something inside me closes before I can stop it.
I’ve done something wrong.
The thought arrives with such speed it humiliates me. My hand tightens once in his, then loosens, ready to be released if that is what he wants. My spine straightens, and my face becomes careful.
I hate that he sees it happen, but I cannot stop the instinct quickly enough. This is the damage now; not only his, but mine.
My body has learned to anticipate the cost of hurting him before he speaks. Every pause can become judgment. Every strange look can become the moment he decides the grief outweighs the love.
I know he hasn’t said that. I know he has stayed. I know his hand is in mine. But guilt has its own logic, and it is not kind.
Nikolaj sees me closing up, and the effect on him is immediate. His expression shifts from whatever private thought had stopped him to something stricken and angry, though not at me.
I see it clearly enough that he hates himself for having that effect on me, for teaching my body to brace under the weight of his silence, for being hurt badly enough that I now prepare for punishment even when he has only stopped walking.
“Vincenzo,” Nikolaj says. “You did that again.”
I frown. “Did what?”
His jaw flexes. “You disappeared behind your face.”
The accuracy of it lands with unpleasant force. I look away toward the water, but his fingers tighten around mine, not enough to hurt, only enough to ask me to stay in the moment.
“I thought something was wrong,” I say.
“Somethingiswrong,” Nikolaj says, his voice roughening. “But not with you.”
That almost makes me laugh. “That’s not a very reassuring sentence.”
“I know,” he says, then immediately catches himself and grimaces like he’s stepped on broken glass. “Fuck. I hear how that sounds.”
The correction should not make my eyes sting. It does anyway.
He lets out a slow breath and turns fully toward me. “I hate that I made you do that.”
“You didn’t make me,” I say.
His eyes sharpen. “Don’t.”
I close my mouth, and he steps closer, our joined hands between us, the last light catching along the hard lines of his face.
He looks younger in sunset somehow, though not softened. Nikolaj is never soft in the simple way. He is brutal even in tenderness, all of him too intense to make comfort look easy. But there is something exposed in him tonight, something that has been building quietly for days without my noticing the full shape.
“You came back after a month of me mourning you. I have been angry, and I’ve made sure you knew that.”
“I deserved—”
