The apartment is dark when I step inside.
The city glows faintly through the floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing everything in a silver-blue haze. The lights are off. No sound. No movement.
“Nico?” I call out softly.
No answer.
I kick off my shoes and start to walk deeper into the apartment.
Then I see him, sitting utterly still in a chair in the living room—hands clasped between his knees, head bowed, staring at the floor.
“Nico?”
He doesn’t look up.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my pulse quickening and my voice echoing in the quiet.
He stands slowly, his eyes not meeting mine. Suddenly, he drops to one knee.
Woah.
For half a second, my brain actually thinks he’s going to fucking propose.
My lips part. My breath stops. But then he lifts his face to mine, and I realize I’m wrong.
His eyes are haggard. His jaw is tight. His entire body is stiff with tension, and his strong, deep voice cracks when he speaks.
“Please forgive me.”
I stare at him, confused. He’s still on one knee.
Not moving, not blinking, like even breathing is painful.
“Nico…” I whisper. “What—what are you talking about?”
His hand lifts slightly, reaching for mine. Then it drops again, like he doesn’t want to touch me.
Like he can’t.
“I didn’t know,” he chokes out. “Fuck, Naomi. I thought…”
He trails off, shaking his head like he’s trying to dislodge something from his brain.
I take a step back. Pain flickers across his face.
“Please,” he rasps. “Please. Just—fucking say something. Scream at me. Fucking hit me.”
“Nico,” I say again, more slowly. “I don’t understand what you’re apologizing for.”
He drags a trembling hand through his hair.
“I watched the video,” he finally says hoarsely. “The one of…you.”
The words hit like a gunshot. The floor turns liquid. I feel like I’ve stepped into thin air, and I don’t know where the ground is anymore.
“You…” My voice cracks.
“For the first time,” he adds, choking.
Something inside me winces, like I’ve been punched.
“You…you just watched it now?”
“I watched the first part before—just the very beginning. But I couldn’t—I couldn’t go further. I thought I knew what it was. I thought it was…”
Suddenly, I feel nauseous.
Shattered.
Cold.
“You never watched it before.”
My voice reminds me of crumpled crepe paper as it rattles dryly from my throat.
Nico’s eyes lance into mine, a haunted, broken darkness in them.
“You…” I slowly shake my head from side to side, my pulse thudding. “You thought I’d made a fucking porn,” I rasp, staring at him. “You blackmailed me with it. Threatened me with it.”
His face twists.
“I didn’t know,” he says again, softer now.
“You didn’t want to know,” I snap.
It comes out more sharply than I meant it to, but I don’t take it back.
Because it’s true.
Something in me breaks and shatters.
It’s just now hitting me that the entire basis for all of this—for all our twisted power games—was predicated on an idea he had of me in his head.
That I was a cheap whore who made porn.
“You thought I was a slut,” I whisper, and my voice wavers.
Not with grief. With rage.
“That’s why you thought you could control me. Why you dragged me into this twisted, fucked-up thing with you! You thought I’d already belonged to someone else, so…what?” I bark. “That meant I’d be easy to own?!”
His jaw sets. “Naomi, I didn’t—”
“You figured I was used, so I’d let you use me too?”
“Nao—”
“Fuck you!” I scream, my whole body shaking as I gasp for air. “FUCK. YOU!”
He takes a step toward me.
I take one back.
“You didn’t dominate me because you saw something in me,” I say, my voice cracking. “You thought I was something I’m not. You saw easy fucking prey. You saw a fucking pawn to toy with!”
His face crumples.
And still, I don’t stop.
“I gave you pieces of me I didn’t even know I had,” I seethe. “I told you things I never told anyone. I thought—” I choke. “I thought you fucking SAW ME!”
He moves, as if to take me in his arms. Tell me it’s going to be okay. Kiss me until I believe it. But I put out a hand, stopping him cold.
“Don’t.”
His arms fall to his sides.
The man who once looked like he could destroy the world and feel nothing now looks destroyed himself.
“All that submission,” I say quietly, shaking my head and backing away. “All that power you thought you had over me wasn’t real. This toxic fucking power imbalance was based on bullshit!”
My whole body begins to shudder, my vision swimming as I back away from him, my heart breaking.
“You held my own assault over my head and used it to turn me into your little plaything!” I scream.
He flinches like I hit him.
“Naomi—”
I bark out a cold laugh as I whirl away from him and storm to the door.
“Dammit, Naomi!”
I hear him start after me. But before he can reach me I bolt, heading for his jacket by the door, jamming my hand behind it and wrapping my fingers around the cold metal of the gun he keeps in a shoulder holster there.
He stops cold when I whirl on him, gun raised.
“Baby—”
“Do not fucking call me that!” I snarl.
His eyes capture mine, still fierce and throbbing with dark energy even as I keep him at bay.
“I’m walking out that door, Nico.”
He takes a tentative step toward me. “If you think for a second I’m letting—”
He flinches when I squeeze the trigger. Nico jerks to the side and ducks as two of the whiskey bottles on the bar cart behind him explode in a hail of shattered glass.
The whole scene freezes.
My hand trembles, but I don’t lower the gun.
“I said I’m walking out that door.”
His chest rises and falls. But this time, he doesn’t make a move toward me. Maybe he finally understands this isn’t about power anymore, but about me.
I back toward the door, caught somewhere between grief and rage.
I fumble behind me for the knob, open it and step through, still facing him, still holding the gun.
Nico watches me with something raw in his eyes, not sure if I just walked away from him or everything all this bullshit never gave us the chance to be.
I don’t know which it is, either. Maybe both.
I close the door, leave the gun on the ground, and walk away.
I’m done.
