I sat back now, pressing my lips together as the wrenching of my heart that inevitably accompanied this memory stabbed me straight in the chest. "Ansel... I..."

At that time, I had lied by omission – I had let him think the worst of Nik, all because I had wanted someone on my side for once. And now, three years later... How could I bring myself to tell him the truth? How could I tell him that so much of our recent friendship had been built on a lie?

"Don't," Ansel said, in a sharp tone he almost never used on me. "Don't try to make excuses for him."

Try as I might, I found that I could no longer look Ansel in the eye. I lowered my gaze, choosing instead to look down at my hands in my lap. My fingers were gripping each other tightly, so tightly that they looked to be locked together. I ought to tell him, I thought. But a part of me – the part that had kept my mouth sealed shut for all these years – was happy that he had stopped me. If I told him this... If I told him now... There would be no one left on my side.

And Ansel... I couldn't lose Ansel. Not now, not like this – and not when Nik had just returned and it was becoming more and more obvious that everyone else had chosen him over me. Everyone was on Nik's side – didn't I deserve Ansel, at the very least?

My hands were shaking from the force I was exerting on them. I could never tell Ansel the truth, not now. It would be too little, too late – and he would see it as a betrayal. A lie. And yet – he was my friend. I hesitated to use the term 'best friend' these days, but if I had to place someone under that label, there was no contest – it would've been him. And as my closest friend, as the only one who had stood at my side all these years... Didn't he deserve to know the truth?

Still, if he found out... Everything he had done for me, comforted me for, would seem like a sham. Our entire friendship would seem like a sham.

No – I could never tell him.

But...

"What if," I hesitated, then plowed on, "it was a misunderstanding... What if it's not what you think?"

My question was met with silence.

I turned to Ansel, to gauge his reaction, and met hard brown eyes – eyes that softened just a smidge as he looked at me. "You're too soft-hearted, Tamy," he said, the fondness brimming his eyes like a special brand of poison that went straight to my gut. "Especially when it comes to him. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve your empathy; your forgiveness."

Unable to stop myself, I reached over and grabbed his hand. I had to blink furiously to stop the tears pressing at my eyelids from leaking out, but there was nothing I could do about the heavy weight pressing against my chest. I couldn't say anything more – I could barely even breathe properly. Even when Ansel squeezed my hand encouragingly, offering what he thought was support, it felt like he had simultaneously squeezed all the air out of my lungs.

No. He was wrong. It wasn't Nik – far from it.

I was the one who didn't deserve forgiveness.

***

If I could go back in time – relive that very moment – would I have done the same thing? Would I have lied to Ansel? The worst part of it was – I didn't know. At that time, I had wanted – needed – a friend. Someone on my side, someone who wouldn't side with Nik. And – a part of me could admit it now – I had wanted revenge on Nik. What better way to do it other than to take his best friend from him?

It had been a despicable act. I had been despicable. Maybe I still was, by continuing to lie to Ansel by omission.

This reminder of what I had done, so many years later, still had to power to make me close my eyes, to try to hide from myself. I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have said it, but it was too late now. Now – Ansel was all I had left, and if I lost him too...

I could never tell him this.

And yet – how could I not?

This dilemma plagued me for the rest of the week. Every time I found myself left to my own devices, it was the one thought that kept swimming to the forefront. It was never far from my mind – in class, at home... even when I was doing mundane things like getting the groceries.

Especially when I was doing mundane things like getting the groceries. And especially on Wednesday afternoon, when I ran into Wolf at the metro station on my way home from the supermarket.

There was something wrong with the world, I thought to myself, when a shadow fell over me and I instinctively turned my head to be met with the sight of Wolf standing a little more than an arm's length to my right. It couldn't be fate, exactly, but all these coincidences were too much. Why in the world – after three years of a complete lack of contact – was I running into them all of a sudden?

Clenching my jaw, I turned away and pretended I hadn't seen him there. But I was all too aware of his presence beside me as I stood on the platform, struggling to hold onto the pack of toilet rolls with one hand, while the straps of my grocery bag dug into my shoulder. Why had he come to stand beside me? He could have avoided this awkwardness by going to stand at the opposite end of the platform when he had caught sight of me from afar. It was what I would've done. It wasn't like we had parted on the best of terms that last time.

I saw a quick movement out of the corner of my eye as he turned to look at me. Then I heard him ask, "Grocery shopping?"

"Yeah," I said shortly. Was he trying to make conversation? Whatever for? We weren't friends anymore – we could barely even be considered acquaintances now.

He fell silent after my non-answer, and the two of us stood in complete silence for a while. Then he spoke again. "We should probably have a housewarming party for Ansel soon."

"Huh?" But Ansel had already had a housewarming party, back in December when he'd just moved in. I had been there – as had a bunch of his colleagues. It had been the single most awkward night of my life – up until the night Nik had returned, that was.

"That night when Nik got back," Wolf said. "He got suspicious when Lux missed the turn, so I said none of us had been there and that the housewarming party would be soon."

I blinked. So he had. I had forgotten completely. It had been such a casual remark – one invented on the spot to appease Nik. It was a wonder Wolf had remembered.

The mark of a good liar, I thought – you had to remember all your lies. Frankly, Wolf scared me sometimes.

"I don't care," I said. "It's your lie – you deal with it."

"Still as selfish as ever, I see."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Who are you calling selfish?"

"You," said Wolf, without a shade of discomfiture. His tone was matter-of-fact, and that kindled the embers of my rising temper even more.

"What right do you have to call me selfish?" I snapped, even as I tried to keep my voice down. I didn't want a rehash of the public argument with Lux back then. "As if the rest of you are bloody martyrs." He didn't respond, or even look at me, focusing instead on the rails below the platform. I barrelled on then, "I'm sick of all your hypocrisy – the lot of you picked sides to suit your own needs. You chose to believe Nadine's little story, because it was what suited you best to believe. If that isn't selfish, I don't know what is."

"You don't know what I believe," Wolf said, his own voice getting a little sharp.

I scoffed. "As if that hasn't been obvious, with the way you suddenly dropped out of my life when Nik and I broke up."

"Maybe I stopped contacting you because you started treating me like the enemy first – did you ever think about that?"

"If I did, it was only because you chose Nik over me."

"You're the only one who sees this as a competition between you and Nik," Wolf said. "Nobody else is as preoccupied about 'sides' as you are."

"Maybe that's because nobody else is being ganged up on," I said, just a hint of snark creeping into my tone. I was sick and tired of everyone acting like they were objective bystanders, when they were a bunch of the most prejudiced people I had ever met.

Wolf stared at me for a long minute. Then he gave an abrupt shake of his head –  a gesture that looked like he was trying to dislodge an unwanted thought stuck in his head. "You've always liked playing the victim."

"Do you and Lux discuss what to say to me? You both say the same old things."

"Don't you think," said Wolf, "that if different people tell you the same things, there might be some truth to it?"

"Just because the whole world is blind," I challenged, "doesn't mean colours don't exist."

"Maybe," Wolf said quietly now, "you're the one who is refusing to open your eyes to see the truth."

I splayed my hands open and laughed, almost dropping the pack of toilet rolls I had been holding. I fumbled to catch it before I spoke again. "Truth? What would you – any of you – know about the truth? All you know is what you've heard from Nadine, and newsflash – things get twisted and changed around when you hear it from an outside source... a biased source."

"And who would be an 'unbiased source'? Everyone is biased." Wolf fixed steel grey eyes on me. "And you're probably the most biased one of all."

"You would say that," I shot back. "You're on Nik's side."

Wolf shook his head. "It's like we're both speaking the same language, but you're still not understanding what I'm saying."

I fought the urge the roll my eyes. "You haven't changed either," I said. "Always so patronising. Do you think just because you're the quiet one, the observant one of the group, that you know best about what is going on, even more than the rest of us?"

"I don't think that," Wolf said, but for the first time, his voice sounded stilted. I had hit a nerve. He fell silent after, and this time, he didn't speak again. He moved away from me, and when the train came minutes after, he boarded the next carriage.

And that was the problem with Wolf. He didn't like to be wrong. He was observant – I'll give him that – but he was also too proud of it. I'd always felt as if he thought he was a little above the rest of us, with the way he saw everything that was happening without getting too involved. But he was wrong. He liked to sit on his high horse and judge the rest of us, but he didn't know everything. He couldn't. When you held yourself apart like this, when you looked at a storm from afar... There were things you missed. Things that you couldn't possibly know, unless you were right smack in the middle of it all. The role of the observer only gave you the illusion of knowing everything, of seeing everything objectively. But that was just it – an illusion.

Wolf... He thought he knew everything. He thought he'd seen it all. But he didn't know a thing about what mattered. He didn't know what had really happened between Nik and me. Between Nik and Ansel. Between Ansel and me.

And he didn't know a thing about me.

***

I returned to the scene of the crime on Friday. All right – so there hadn't been a crime; nothing had happened between me and Ansel. Yet... Something about it still bothered me. It had been a long time since I'd had to face the fact that I had been the one to indirectly break up Nik and Ansel's friendship... and that incident had brought it all back.

I had lied, years ago, to Ansel. And now, Nik – after seeing Ansel half on top of me earlier this week... He likely thought I had lied to him as well.

After letting myself into the apartment with Ansel's spare key, I sat on the couch and stared at the TV for a moment. Nobody was home – I had come far too early. Ansel sometimes didn't get off work until later, but Nik...

What would I do, if Nik came home before Ansel did?

A week ago, this thought alone would have been enough to make me leave. I could text Ansel, ask him if he wanted to eat out. I didn't need to wait for him here.

But now...

Before I could finish that thought, I heard the scraping noise of a key being inserted into the keyhole. Someone was back. I craned my head to look in the direction of the front door, almost holding my breath.

Would it be Ansel? Or...

The door swung open and a tall figure stepped in. My eyes clashed with a pair of familiar blue ones, before he quickly looked away.

Nik.

And then I was getting to my feet, walking towards him. It wasn't a conscious action – it was just something I found myself doing without thinking. My lips parted in preparation of the words that didn't come. What did I have to say to him? Hi? How was your day?

"Um," was what came out of my mouth.

Nik took a long time to turn around, fiddling with the lock like his life depended on avoiding me. When he was done with that, he brushed past me without a glance. "I'm going to bed," he said brusquely, eyes carefully lowered. I stared after him as he walked down the corridor. His statement had sounded ludicrous. Before I realised it, I found myself following in his footsteps.

"At six?" In his room, I stopped and let my eyes rove over him. There was more of a slump in his shoulders, like he'd had a difficult day, but other than that, he looked fine. "Are you... are you sick?" Then I frowned and pressed my lips together. I hadn't meant to ask that.

"No," he said, rubbing at his face with one hand. He closed his eyes briefly, before opening them again and turning to look fully at me. "Just tired. I haven't exactly recovered from the jetlag."

"Oh."

We stood staring at each other for a long, drawn-out moment. I observed the tiredness etched into the corners of his eyes, wondering. Had he gotten used to life back here? Was he having trouble sleeping at night, what with the time difference?

Then I shook my head. All of that was none of my business.

Nik was standing at the end of his bed, watching me think. "Why are you here, Tamy?" he asked finally. His tone was bland; not overly friendly, but not particularly unfriendly either. It was a simple question.

One I couldn't answer.

Why had I followed him into his room? That was right – I had only wanted to see if he had gotten the wrong idea about me and Ansel. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea – not for myself, but for Nik and Ansel. I had ripped open their friendship enough – I couldn't in good conscience let any other misunderstandings pile up.

"I..." I didn't know how to broach the topic. "What you saw on Monday. Ansel and I – there really is nothing between us. We're just friends."

"So you've said."

I blinked at his dispassionate response. "Oh. I thought you..."

"What?" he prompted, when I trailed off.

"I thought that you'd gotten the wrong idea."

"Why didn't you explain on Monday then?" Nik asked, and I suddenly had the feeling that he had gotten the wrong idea. He had been angry that day, I could've sworn it. And he had wanted me to come after him to explain. And I almost had – but Ansel had stopped me.

"I don't have to tell you anything," I said, "I don't owe you anything." But it came out in a mumble. I couldn't summon up enough of the defiance that had always bubbled up when it came to him before this. I didn't want to challenge him anymore. I was tired. If I couldn't erase him completely from my life, I wanted us to peacefully coexist. I no longer wanted to treat him as the enemy. He was no longer the enemy. When had that changed?

"I guess you don't," Nik's easy agreement surprised me. "So why are you explaining now?"

"I..." I didn't have an answer to that. "I don't know." I glanced at me feet, then back up. "I just wanted to... I don't want you to think that Ansel–"

"I don't think about Ansel," Nik said, his eyes narrowing. "I don't give a flying fuck about Ansel."

"And yet you're living in his apartment," I heard Ansel say from the doorway. The glacial tone he had used could've given the polar ice caps in the North Pole a run for their money. At least even they were slowly melting. He must've come home without either of us noticing, and come over to check out the voices in Nik's room.

"Don't worry," Nik countered in an equally icy voice, "not for much longer."

"Good riddance," Ansel replied, in a rare show of direct hostility.

I opened my mouth, but couldn't find the words. What could I say? I'm sorry, it's my fault you hate each other now...

I couldn't admit to that.

"Why are you here, Tamy? Were you looking for me?" Ansel's attention was directed towards me now. He probably thought Nik had tricked me into entering his room. He was giving me a way out.

But I...

My gaze flew to Nik's of its own accord. Nik was staring back at me, blue eyes fixed on mine, but he didn't say anything. He wasn't going to stop me if I decided to leave, I knew. Maybe he even wanted me to leave. He was in a mood today. But I bit my lip, feeling strangely reluctant to pick up Ansel's cue. "I–"

When I turned back to look at Ansel, I saw that his expression had hardened. "Suit yourself." Without another word, he turned and left, not even bothering to close the door behind him. That was his way of still looking out for me. He had left the door open, so that I would have an escape route should I choose to take it. But Ansel's good intentions were thwarted when Nik strode over, placed the flat of his palm against the wooden surface and shoved the door shut.

Then he turned back to look at me, and I found my gaze drawn to his once again. His irises were so, so blue. Too mesmerising.

I hated them.

There was something... Even now, there was something about them that drew me in, that prevented me from looking away. When he looked at me like this... I couldn't look away. Not even if I wanted to.

"Why are you here, Tamy?" Nik repeated, in a softer tone this time.

"I..." I didn't know. I should have left with Ansel. I should have left Nik to rest – he did look like he needed the sleep.

But still, my feet stayed rooted to the floor.

"Ansel cares a lot about you," Nik said, watching me like a hawk. There seemed to be something of a storm in his gaze as he said this.

"We're friends. Good friends." Nothing more, I barely refrained from adding. I'd already reiterated that point far too much – it was Nik's problem, if he chose not to believe me.

"Good friends sometimes turn into more," Nik said. I knew what he was thinking. We had started out that way.

I looked away. "Not with Ansel and me."

"Yeah?" He took a step forward. There was still more than half a foot of space in between us, but I swallowed. "Then why...?"

I met his eyes, and I knew what he was asking.

"I don't know why you see Ansel as an obstacle between us," I said. "That's not true at all." We had so many issues between us, but Ansel wasn't one of them.

"I know he's not the only one, yes," Nik began, but I broke in with a furious interjection.

"He's not one at all!"

Nik raised an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah?" he asked, sweeping a hand in the direction of the door, as if it was meant to represent Ansel, "Were you not here just a few minutes ago?"

I bit my lip. "He's just looking out for me."

"No," Nik said quietly, even though his voice was stone-hard, "he's trying to protect you from me, like I'm the villain and he's the hero."

This was the most fanciful simile I had ever heard him come up with. "What am I, then," I muttered, "the rare dragon egg you two are fighting over?"

I saw Nik's lips quirk. "Most girls would've compared themselves to a princess, in this situation."

"Yeah, well," I stared at the floor, "I know I'm not a princess. You've only made that clear enough."

There was a beat of silence. I watched Nik's eyes darken as he digested my statement.

"Would it have been better?" he asked quietly. "Would you have been happier with me if I had given you flowers, written you sappy poetry, said all sorts of corny, mushy lines that you found romantic?"

"At that time, probably," I answered honestly.

"And now?"

I cut my gaze away. "It's not going to happen, so... that's a moot point."

There was a minute's silence, before Nik said, lowly, "If I had to do them now, I would."

Instinctively, I looked up at him, only to see that he was the one with his gaze trained on the floor now. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets as he stood, a little hunched into himself, like a hedgehog protecting itself against a potential predator.

"These things... They're not me. But for you, I would do them now," he repeated, sighing a little bit at the end. He lifted his head and looked at me. I knew there was an unspoken caveat at the end of his sentence.

"That..." I had to swallow twice to get the dryness out of my mouth. "That's not the point. These things don't mean anything if they aren't done willingly."

"But I would be doing them willingly."

"I mean–" What did I mean? How did I explain that it would be different, now that he knew I needed these romantic gestures. That, back then, I had wanted him to think of doing these things all on his own. "It's different now," I said finally, lamely.

"Why? Why is it different?"

"It just is." I looked down at my feet, not wanting to meet his eyes. "And anyway – the past is in the past. We've been over a long time. You left–"

"I came back," he said, with unnatural emphasis on each word. "I came back. For you. Only for you."

"Maybe then you should have stayed in Asia," I bit out.

He shot me a half-angry, half-wounded look. "Those three years... I missed you like hell."

"Funny," I said drily, "you missed me more when we were broken up than you ever did when we were together?"

"I–" He clenched his jaw for a moment before forging ahead, "I missed you during those first nine months, too."

"It didn't seem like it."

The vulnerable hedgehog look had vanished, leaving a full-grown, pissed off male in its place. "Nothing I do is ever enough for you, is it?"

His words sparked my temper. "You talk like you did so much."

"I did as much as I could, under the circumstances."

I pressed my lips together. Maybe he had, but at that time, it hadn't felt like he had been trying. Then again... It must have been hard, trying to deal with my demands from a seven-hour time difference and a continent away. I could appreciate that now. I should have appreciated it more back then.

Taking my silence to mean disagreement on my part, Nik added, "I was so far away... in a new, foreign place. I did the best I could at that time. It wasn't like I could be right here beside you all the time, the way Ansel was."

"Why are you so hung up about Ansel?" I was getting exasperated now. Ansel had nothing to do with what had happened between us. "We were just friends. We are just friends."

"Yeah? You got so close to him after I left. Nadi even thought there was something going on between the two of you."

At the mention of Nadine, my blood boiled. She was a snake, pure and simple. She had given me so much grief over my break-up with Nik and my friendship with Ansel when she had been the one with the inappropriate friendship. "Of course," I said cuttingly, "because what darling Nadi tells you must be true, isn't that right?"

"I never said I believed her," Nik said in a level voice, even though there was a tick growing near his temple that belied his calmness.

"Oh, please." Why wouldn't he have believed his simpering, eager-to-please best friend? He had always had a closer relationship to her than he had to me. And unlike how he'd tried to detach himself from me in the second half of our relationship, he had never tried to distance himself from her. "Like you would ever pick trusting in me over Nadine. That's what you always did anyway, even before you left."

"God!" Nik's expression iced over forbiddingly. "Are we back to this again? When have I ever picked Nadi over you? I've only ever seen her as a friend!"

"Nik and Nadi, Nadi and Nik." My voice rose as the memories hit me all over again. The jealousy, the insecurity – from all those years ago. "She was your closest female friend – don't even deny it. She knew more about how you felt about our relationship than I did. How do you think that made me feel?"

Nik leaned in close until our noses were almost touching. His eyes were burning with a blue fire – the kind that they said burned the hottest. "Ansel and Tamy, Tamy and Ansel," he mocked. "Every time I talked to anyone from back home, all they would talk about was how you two were getting so damned close, while I was on the other side of the world. How do you think that made me feel?"

His outburst had stunned me. I gaped at him for a long minute. In all the time that we had dated, not even in those disastrous last nine months, had he ever said a word about my friendship with Ansel. I had never guessed.

He swung away from me now, rubbing at his face with both hands. "Damn it," he muttered.

I pressed the edge of my palm, hard, against my lips so that I wouldn't cry.

In the silence that dragged on, I saw his Adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed. "Whatever," he said finally, visibly controlling the emotions bubbling beneath the surface. A muscle twitched at the side of his face as he clenched his jaw. "That was a long time ago."

"See," I said, wrapping my arms around myself, "this is why we broke up. We can't even be in the same room for ten minutes without arguing."

"No," he shot back, "we broke up because–" Then his brain must have caught up with his mouth, because he cut himself off abruptly.

I took a challenging step towards him. "Go on," I taunted. "Say it."

He squeezed his eyes shut like the memory pained him. "That night... I..."

But I suddenly didn't want to hear it. "You know... When you told me about getting drunk, falling asleep with some other girl... Even when I'd thought, at first, that you'd cheated on me... I wasn't surprised."

Nik's eyes flew open. "What's that supposed to mean?" His voice had a dangerous growl to it.

I turned the question over in my mind for a bit, wondering how to put it in a way that wouldn't offend. "I guess I was always waiting for something like that to happen."

"You were always waiting for me to cheat on you?" He asked incredulously. Judging from the scowl on his face, he had taken offence anyway.

I flinched at his blunt words. "Well... Yeah. But I always thought it would be with Nadine when the time came."

"Nadi?" His voice rose. From his tone, one would think it had never crossed his mind to be sexually attracted to his female best friend.

"Oh, come off it," I said in exasperation. "You two have always had that something."

"You're going to have to enlighten me," he said flatly, "since it appears that you know more about my friendship with Nadi than I do."

"You have to know she was in love with you," I said baldly. After a moment's thought, I added, "Might still be, in fact."

Nik shook his head at that. "No," he said firmly, "she has a boyfriend now."

That came as news to me.

"Really?" I was distracted for a moment. "What's his name? How long have they been together?"

"Hans, I think," Nik said, frowning. He was looking up, towards the ceiling, the way he always did when trying to recall bits of information. "And... I have no idea. Probably a year or so."

"I never knew that," I murmured, frowning myself.

"You don't know anything about the others," Nik pointed out. "I don't know how you all thought you could pretend things hadn't changed... It's so obvious you're not friends anymore."

My lip curled. "Well, that's not my fault." Nadine ought to be grateful I had even tried to play along.

Nik shook his head. "Nothing is ever your fault, is it?"

If it had been any of the other three saying it – Lux, Nadine, or Wolf – I would've gotten offended. But this was Nik. And he had a point. I hadn't exactly been blameless in all of this.

"I never said that," I mumbled, looking away from him. "But I wasn't the one who split the group apart. Nobody told them to choose sides."

"Yeah," Nik said. His voice had dipped in volume as well. "There was no need for sides. There shouldn't have been sides."

"Tell that to Nadine," I muttered.

"What's this grudge you have against Nadi? What did she ever do to you?"

"She made me into the villain," I said sharply, "even when you were the one who–" At that, I broke off.

"I didn't cheat on you," Nik grated out, knowing exactly what I was referring to.

"You know," My voice was barely audible now. "I wasn't surprised. Even when I thought you'd cheated on me, I wasn't surprised. I just thought it would've happened sooner."

He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, apparently at the end of his patience with me. "Were you really that insecure," he said, "to have been always waiting for me to cheat on you in the whole two years that we were together?"

"Maybe it was insecure of me," I said quietly, "but that doesn't change the fact that I could have been right."

His lips flattened. "I didn't cheat," he repeated fiercely – just as fiercely as he had done that night, three years ago – "Nothing happened, Tamy." He came back over to stand in front of me, waiting until I finally looked at him before he grabbed my hands. "I admit, we were such a mess at that time... But nothing happened. We only talked and drank... and we fell asleep on separate sides of the room. Nothing happened. I wouldn't do that to you."

"It doesn't matter," I mumbled. I tried to pull my hands away but he held on tight. I gave up eventually, a sob wrenching itself from my throat as the hurt from three years ago hit me all over again.

Three years ago, when I had looked into his tight-lipped face on my computer monitor and he'd begun, "I was with a girl tonight..." and I had felt my already cracked heart fully shatter.

Damn him. Damn him for bringing this all up again. Damn him for coming back, years after he had left. Years after all of this should have been dead and buried.

"It does matter," he said, in that same fierce, driven tone, like he had to tell me or die trying. "If that night hadn't happened..."

"We would still have broken up eventually," I sighed. This was the undeniable truth. In hindsight, we should have ended it the moment he had decided he wanted to leave. I hadn't been enough for him to stay – that should have said it all.

"No," Nik denied, "things would've gotten better. If it hadn't been for that night, we would have gotten better, once I'd sorted out my issues. But, Tamy – that night... It meant nothing. I was just blowing off some steam. I never told her anything about us–"

"No, you still don't get it," I said, cringing at the sob in my voice that I couldn't quite hide. "It doesn't matter what you told her. It's that you were over there, getting drunk with some other girl – pouring your heart out to her – while I was back here, missing you..."

"I–"

"I don't blame you," I cut right over what he was going to say. "We were a disaster at that point. But... oh God, Nik, you broke my heart." My voice cracked on the last word.

He looked at me with eyes full of regret. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

The tears blurring my sight now, I let his arms slide around my waist and pulled my body flush up against his. He had been the one to hurt me – so much more than anyone had ever done – but now he felt warm, comforting. I buried my face into his chest, my hands slowly coming up to grip his shoulders. His hold around me tightened in return. And in that moment, I understood the feeling of home-coming – of rightness – that had gripped Nik upon his arrival home after all these years, because I felt the same way in his embrace.

Then I squeezed my eyes shut and held on for dear life as the sobs ripped through my throat like the beginnings of a hurricane.

***