Wicked Chase

❖ Chapter Eight

"Are you okay?" I asked at last, breaking the short silence that had descended upon us.

He cast me a swift glance, his silvery gaze making my heart do a double take. He took a few seconds to reply like he was debating on what he should say. "John isn't such a loyal friend," Alastair said, his gaze back on the road.

"He wouldn't do this," I said weakly, looking down at my hands because even I knew that what I had uttered was a false declaration.

"Then you don't know your friend at all," he said, his voice clipped and void of any emotion. Was this what he did - go back into his shell after everything eventful and drastic happened?

I looked about me, looking for my bag that I was sure I carried with me. I needed my phone. I need to call John. I need to know if he was even capable of doing such a thing. When my bag was nowhere in sight I sighed and looked back to Alastair. "Can I borrow your phone?" I asked, anticipation slowly building within me. I wasn't sure what I was going to achieve by talking to John whose loyalty clearly never laid with me but there was still a part of me - that other part of me that countered everything I knew or did - that grasped onto the thin line of hope.

"Why?" he asked, lifting himself up from the seat the slightest bit so he could fish out his phone from his back pocket. His alluring grey eyes met mine when he handed his phone over to me. While his face remained that serious expression that I had become well acquainted with, his silvery gaze looked guarded like he wasn't sure he could handle what he was doing anymore and I wondered why. I could protect myself. I hadn't taken those long, boring, defence classes for no reason. And I knew that Alastair protecting me wasn't all that hard of a job that my father, that man who claimed to care for me after being away from my life for over nineteen years, had apparently entrusted Alastair with. So why was Alastair so guarded?

I took the phone from him, my fingers brushing over his in the process and I felt my heart slightly flutter before I mentally commanded it to shut up. "I need to call John," I said once I had unlocked the phone with a swipe of my fingers because Alastair hadn't thought about putting a security lock on it, and going to the dial of the phone.

"I don't have his number," Alastair said, his voice holding the distant emotion of cautiousness and confusion.

"I know it by heart," I replied when I was midway through typing the digits to John's number. A moment of silence had ensued, the beeping of the phone every second was the only thing that could be heard. He picked up on the eleventh ring.

"Hello?" a rough, hesitant voice answered.

I pressed the phone to my ear, holding the phone tighter against my hand which caused the left edge of the phone to dig into the inside of my palm. "John, it's Gen," I said in a rush and I tried to keep the betrayal out of my voice but it was easier said than done.

"Fuck," I heard him murmur before he said, "did they come after you? Are you alright?"

Anger instantly swelled in my chest. "Am I alright?" I almost screamed, the pitch of my voice rising due to the anger that burned within me. "You helped those men track me! You have no right to feel concerned or guilty when you did this on your own accord-"

"Gen, listen-"

"I mean, we're not that great friends but I thought we were good enough of friends to place trust in each other. I don't understand why you did this, you arsehole-"

"I'm sorry-"

"Wow, you have the audacity to even apologize after you helped Thorin? Why the hell would you help Thorin?" I could practically hear the desperation that laced through my voice and I bit back my tongue to prevent any further outbursts and show just how vulnerable and hurt that I felt in that moment.