Read Online One Night with Sole Regret 06 Tell Me by Olivia Cunning - Free Book Online Page B

Tough love was so much harder than enabling, but she had to do this for Nikki’s good as well as for her own sanity. Nikki wouldn’t see it as beneficial. She’d see it as Melanie being mean to her. And yelling at Nikki made Melanie feel mean. She felt like a horrible person for hurting someone who had been hurt so many times already—broken, used, and abused by those she should have been able to trust—but Melanie couldn’t back down on this. Not even if it elevated her to megabitch status.
    Heart thudding and eyes stinging with the threat of tears, Melanie pivoted and started back toward the dressing room. Don’t look back. Don’t let her see you’re about to crumble. Melanie hadn’t taken three steps when a body careened into her and a pair of arms tightened around her waist.
    “You can’t leave me, Mel,” Nikki sobbed against the back of Melanie’s shoulder. “You just can’t. I have no one in this world but you. I have no one. No one.”
    This was not another case of Nikki’s fabricated drama. Nikki actually believed it, because it happened to be true. Melanie closed her eyes, trying to stop the tears from falling, but a fat droplet crept out from beneath each eyelid and streaked down her face.
    “I’m not leaving you, Nikki. I’m leaving this situation you created.” And the guilt was already robbing her of breath. She knew Nikki didn’t have anyone. Melanie wanted her to be surrounded by caring people. She wanted Nikki to find more friends and a boyfriend who cared about her. She wished Nikki had a family that wasn’t completely dysfunctional and abusive. But if Nikki’s neediness was trying on their strong friendship, it was devastating to new ones. Nikki tried too hard to make people love her and went about it all wrong. She slept around because for the few hours she was with a man, beneath a man, she could pretend that he loved her. But no one could really love her until she loved herself. And Melanie knew how Nikki struggled to see her true self-worth after everything she’d been through.
    God, I ’m such a selfish cow. How could she have yelled at Nikki when she knew how much her disapproval would hurt her?
    She was also a spineless coward, it seemed, because she was totally going to cave again. She could feel her resolve crumbling already. Melanie turned in Nikki ’s arms and held her while she cried. Tough love was one thing. Leaving your best friend sobbing in a corridor in an unfamiliar city was another.
    “Pull yourself together,” Melanie said gently. “It’s going to be all right. You want me to be happy, don’t you?”
    Nikki nodded.
    “Then give me this weekend with Gabe. Can you do that?”
    Nikki hesitated and then nodded slowly, her tears still falling. At least she wasn’t sobbing and wailing any longer.
    “Do you want to go back to the hotel or do you want to fly home to Wichita tonight?” Melanie realized she was treating Nikki like a toddler again, giving her two solid options and not an open-ended what do you want to do ?
    “I’ll stay at the hotel.”
    “Are you sure?”
    Nikki nodded again. “And can we do something together when you get back on Sunday, Mel?”
    “Yeah. Of course.”
    “Just the two of us?”
    “After Gabe leaves.” She wasn’t going to make promises she was unwilling to keep.
    Nikki sniffed. “I’ll stay here.” She took a deep, gasping breath. “Alone.”
    “ I’ll get you as far as the hotel and then you’re on your own for the weekend. You can handle that, right?”
    Enabler, enabler, enabler, a nasty little voice seemed to whisper in her ear.
    “I think so,” Nikki said , sniffing again.
    “I know you can.”
    Melanie pulled away slightly and waited while Nikki wiped her wet face on the hem of her T-shirt. Several curious men watched them, obviously wanting to comfort poor beautiful Nikki. Poor fragile, broken sex kitten Nikki. But the comfort those men had in mind was the last thing Nikki needed.
    “Let’s go call you