Wicked Chase

♛ Chapter Thirty-Five

I frowned and tilted my head so I could get a better look at his face. "Worried?" I echoed, "what are you worried about?"

He licked his lips as if he were nervous before he said, "not what, who." He took a deep breath before his silvery gaze met mine again. He sighed before he pulled away so that he could be directly in front of me as he gathered my hands into his, and it felt lovely having him hold my hands like this within his warm grasp but something about his expression filled me with dread. "I'm worried about you, Genevieve," he said, his soft silvery voice wrapping around me like the tone of his voice may just cushion me from the words he was yet to say. "I want to know what's bothering you. I want you to talk to me. I want you to be happy and smile and I know after everything that just happened asking you to be happy may seem selfish of me but, baby, I need you to see yourself. I want you to talk to me, to get what you're keeping locked inside there out" - he pointed to my chest, his finger right above my heart - "so that I can help you with what you're feeling. I know it is killing you, whatever it is that you keep feeling and thinking so please, let me your boyfriend and ask you how you are doing, and getting an actual response."

Humour had never been Alastair's forte but I truly appreciated how he wanted to be there for me, how he was trying to ease the harsh reality out of me and something about that loosened the knot of hesitance and I felt myself looking away from him, out into the view of the Kingdom as I took a deep breath and said, "I don't want to you lose you, too."

"Baby, I promised to not let go once I caught a hold of you. I'm not letting go. You're not going to lose me," he whispered, his arms wrapping themselves around me as he pulled me to his chest, resting his chin on top of my shoulder as his warm minty breath heated my neck. "What makes you think that you'll lose me, Genevieve?"

I bit my lip at his question and I was glad that we weren't facing each other because I felt the tears well up in my eyes and Alastair had seen me cry countless of times - he had been my shoulder countless of times - but there was something different about now and I knew the reason that it was different was because this involved him, him viewing me as the monster I didn't want him to view me as. And losing Alastair...that thought terrified me to the bone that I couldn't even face Alastair as the words came pouring out of my mouth.

"What makes me think that I'll lose you?" I took a deep breath before sinking into his embrace, accepting all the warmth and comfort it offered before I said, "what about the fact that I killed my uncle and I don't regret it? What about the fact that I killed a human being and that I kept driving my sword into him over and over again? What about - what about letting my mother die in the hands of that bastard and letting all those images in my nightmares come true? What about being a failure to myself, to you, to this Kingdom? What about being a monster?"

My short tempered rant was met with a fleeting silence before I felt Alastair's breath tickle my shoulder which meant he either sighed or gave out a huff of frustrated breath but I couldn't be too bothered by what he was doing because I was already making up excuses why he should stick with me despite all of that.

"Genevieve," Alastair whispered.

"Hmm?"

"Please turn around and face me."

"Uh, no, I can't. I'm already so embarrassed by wh-"

I didn't get to finish my sentence as Alastair had moved back away from me slightly, his arms unwinding from around me as the col chill air met my back, all before I was being whirled around to face him, his rough hands on my forearms as those deep, enticing grey eyes bore into mine and with that look on his face and that look in his silvery gaze, it seemed as if he could read my soul and my mind and that was all it took for my defences to fall down and for a stray tear to betray me and roll down my cheek, being swiped away by Alastair's thumb that he had risen to my face.