Page 72 of Dangerous Promises

My heart breaks all over again. For both of us. I know that feeling all too well. If all this wasn't to absolve my own guilt for what happened to Nicholas... because he stopped that bullet forme... then it was to punish myself for letting something happen to Nicholas in the first place.

This... is one big accident. One big misunderstanding. And now I feel us both, Alexei and I, trapped in the loop of blame and guilt, suffering against each other but also alongside one another with the weight of everything that happened. Perhaps of all the people we look to lean on, it's really only us that can understand each other. What does that make us? Maybe, in the end...

I push that thought away. I know deep down I'm not ready to let go of any guilt just yet. If I ever will be.

"When it really came down to it," Alexei says, his jaw hardening on the last part. "I chose you." Alexei looks at Nicholas's obnoxiously large grave stone. "And this motherfucker," he says, almost laughing as he scoffs. "I fucking hated him. I hate him irrationally. And yet, I owe him everything."

For this part, Alexei does look back at me, and the electric pulses return to my body as I find my eyes locked with this. "He stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life."

My heart doubles in time. Beating through my chest with a hammer. Nicholas took his bullet for me. Nicholas stoppedAlexei from... hurting me. Is he saying that all along, trying to hurt me, was a mis-

"Come on, princess," Alexei says, standing up and walking away without even gathering my reaction. "Enough moping, you need to go back and see your father."

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

Sage

Walking through the front gates of my home estate next to Alexei Rushkoff feels strange. Strange in the way that it doesn't. In the way that as unnatural as it should feel, it just isn't.

For the first time, it feels like this truce between us might actually be real.

Will we kill each other one day? Maybe. But not today.

I take a deep breath as we walk up the gravel driveway. I forget all about what I'm going to say to my dad. I look into Alexei's eyes and he looks into mine.

We hate each other.

We don't.

"In you go, princess," Alexei says. He urges me towards the front door, but my feet stop in place. I'm terrified to face my father. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have ran.

I have prayed for this exact moment more times than I can count. Every time I snuck away to hold his hand, to talk to him and beg him to wake up. I love him more than anything in the world, and yet I can't handle my wish coming true now that I am faced with it.

As I'm staring at the front doors, they open. Freddie stops in his tracks as he sees us both.

"See you found the runaway," Freddie says, smirking at Alexei. The awkward tension between everyone seems to be gone now as Freddie looks over at Alexei. "Come on,bella. Your dad can't wait to see you."

"Really?" I say, sniffling and wiping my nose on Alexei's coat. To which I hear a groan in the background.

"Really," Freddie smiles. "It's you he's been asking for."

Freddie holds the door open for me and I cautiously head inside and go up the stairs. I'm halfway up the stairs when I freeze.

I hear it. I hear his voice.

Dad.

My eyes well up and for a moment I feel like I'm hallucinating, because it sounds so incrediblyhim. Something I'd almost forgot and thought I would never hear again. In his deep baritone and the grunt of his words as he argues with whoever is in the room with him.

I take further steps and gently push the door open, taking it in before he sees me. He sits at the edge of the bed, t-shirt on, and struggling to fasten his belt over the dress pants he's put on as Anton and our nurse try to force him back into bed.

"Get your hands off me Anton, I will get out of this bed," Dad grunts.

"You need to rest Dim," Anton says.

"I've had two years of sleep apparently, back off and let me out of here."