Chapter 279

Alexi steps towards me and I step back. A clear signal I don’t want him near me, and he relents. Stopping himself and moves away instead, to give me space, the flicker of pain evident as his eyes dip to avoid me for a second.

A show of real emotion. Who knew he was capable of such things? Capable of showing me he is human after all.

It just makes the ache grow, spreading from my stomach out to every limb and even my face trembles with the agony I’m feeling.

“You were always worthy. I just screwed everything up. I was scared, I was torn, I was lost in my own mistrust of you. Blinded by what I believed. I was protecting myself.”

He sounds how I feel. Like he knows that this is pointless, and the past is more than can be overcome.

“So, what changed?” My voice cracks, face wet with my sadness, and I curl my arms around myself and try to give self-comfort from the internal pangs running through me. Clawing for answers to the mountain of doubts and questions within me.

“You tried to hurt yourself because of me. And then I almost killed you in desperation to stop you. That night changed everything. You can’t keep lying to yourself when your heart is lying in a hospital bed after you almost lost her.”

I never knew a sentence could rip my heart to shreds, but that one does. Choking me with a lump in my throat so I have to swallow hard and breathe through another sob. His voice wracked with strained emotion.

Alexi reaches one hand towards me impulsively then retracts and shoves them both in his pockets as though he assumes it will make him less likely to invade my space. He shuffles on his feet uncomfortably, looking ashen and pale for his normally tanned self, and I start to go numb as my body takes over to shield me from hurt. Tears rolling down my face but all that goes with them dulls. I’m just so exhausted.

“If that’s true then why did you leave me there, alone? Why did you tell me to go then try to pay me to leave you alone? Why didn’t you come for me, or tell me then?” My head is scrambling back in time, for the questions that plagued me for those months. The number of times I told myself he never cared about me. He owes me answers. Months of loneliness and scraping by to survive, when he could have ended it all before it began.

“I never left you there alone. I was beside you until I knew you would be okay. Then I did what I thought was best, to protect you. Get you the hell away from me so I could never hurt you again or push you to hurt yourself. I didn’t know what else to do to make sure you wouldn’t try a second attempt after recovery. I never wanted you to die, or get hurt like that, and I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t do it again if I didn’t let you go.” Alexi's voice softens hugely, as do his eyes on me, and the anger that was firing between us simmers to something gentler. He moves closer slightly, pulling his hands out and I stand my ground eyeing him warily. The tension has evaporated, and I’m too tired to keep fighting him.

“I don’t remember you there. I don’t believe you.” Another tear trickles down my face, words uttered softly and this time he reaches out and brushes it away. His touch, so unwanted yet so longed for makes me flinch at his caress, but I still don’t move away. Rooted to the spot as my heart aches for answers from him, stopping myself from closing my eyes to savour the gentle way he wipes my tears. For so long I wanted him to feel something for me. So many nights I cried myself to sleep because I believed I was nothing to him.

Yet with one simple caress, a lot of little moments surface to give me a new perspective on recent times with him. A reminder of the man who consoled me after Feral died. Miami, before he beat someone half to death.

He was in there, but I failed to see it until now.

The knee-jerk reaction I had to his uttering of those words is simmering as my confuddled mind tries to piece these things together. My emotions already waning from fatigue as though I just cannot take any more for one night. Confusion taking over, and I’m combatting my own feelings and thoughts.

“I held your hand, I stood by your bed and watched you sleep. I told you a million times I would never let anything happen to you. Even if that meant letting you go. I mean it—I will never let anything happen to you. I promised I would always protect you. I told you I was sorry, and I meant it, Cam. If I could take it all back, I would.”

His gently uttered words send tingles down my spine. His voice soft and low as he stands only inches from me, bodies apart and mirroring poses. The only touch between us is his hand lingering on my cheek and the way his breath fans my forehead and nose from his taller height. The intensity of this moment has me trawling through my memory banks.

A flicker of him standing in his office when he said those words before, kindle in my mind. An intimate moment just like this, a tiny pang of déjà vu and how familiar they seemed even though I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. My memories jumbled and foggy from that night, and yet I hear his voice and those words as I struggled in the darkness. As clear as day, they run through my blank head as though confirming the truth. I hear them as though he is uttering them in my ear all over again.

‘I will never let anything happen to you.’

In the office when he tried to give me a gun, and in that hospital when I awoke to darkness and voices. I thought it was Mico. The stranger in the shadows who calmed me and told me they were there. That strange power they held over my racing mind and drew me to a quiet, peaceful place so I slipped back into slumber.

It was Alexi in the hospital beside me that night, both were there, but he was the one who laid his hands on mine and soothed me. There were two shadows, and the one who calmed me, as he is doing now, with a gentle trailing touch of fingers down my cheek ignites the memory fully.

Alexi was by my side when he thought I might die. It was him who asked if I knew he was there. I can remember it all now. My head bursting with new information which adds to the confusion of my heart.

It’s funny how seeing things from a new angle can alter everything you knew before.

He was there with me. He took me to get help. He stayed by my side and held my hand.

My heart almost breaks all over again at the thought of after what I did, he took care of me and watched over me while in my hazy state of a concussion, I was dying from a wounded heart. If I had known it was him, maybe I wouldn’t have run. Maybe I would have given him a chance to fix things. Maybe I wouldn’t have continued to cry myself to sleep over him for months after. Maybe I wouldn’t have let the hate grow and fester.

“I gave Mico the money to ensure you started somewhere else, where I couldn’t hurt you anymore. I wanted you safe and alive, even if that was nowhere near me. I knew I had completely destroyed any hope of taking it all back.” Alexi leans a tiny inch nearer so I can feel his words on my skin, his breath tingling across my face more so than before. I stare blankly at his chest to focus and stop myself from falling apart.

“You left me there though. You still walked away, and I woke up without you.” I utter softly. Clinging to a reason to still deny him.

“I did. I left Mico to watch over you where I knew I wasn’t welcome. I went and got so drunk I lost a week of my life before he came looking for me and kicked my ass back in touch. I was a mess, Cam. I couldn’t handle anything anymore, and all I did was drink myself into oblivion so I wouldn’t keep seeing you inside my head. By the time he sobered me up they had discharged you and it was too late.” Alexi steps in so much closer, bodies a hair width apart so we are breathing the same air, and I can feel his heat radiating through me. We are almost physically touching. His hand drops from my cheek and we both stand there, millimetres apart, so close yet so far.

I look up into those normally windowless eyes and see the pain reflected in mine. A dark stormy grey sky over a turbulent sea. Alexi so focused on me that the grey has deepened in multiple shades, and his pupils seem huge in the dim light. Goosebumps cover my body in a direct reaction to his proximity, and I’m almost breathless with the intensity of this moment.

“Why didn’t you come after me if that’s true?”

I want to believe him so badly. I want that yearning part of my soul to finally have completion, but I can’t just accept what he says. He has contradicted everything he once told me. People don’t change and I can’t forget what he did.

“I did. I swear. After battling my brain in a million different ways, but you’d already gone. You’re not an easy woman to find when you decide to disappear, and nothing and no one could locate you for dust. I promise, I looked, baby, everywhere. I couldn’t find you. I didn’t stop looking for you in all those months. I made myself insane with it.”

I don’t know what to say, my skin tingling all over from what he is saying. I’m so torn apart inside with confusion and fear. Afraid to let his words sink in, afraid to believe in anything.

I disappeared, and he really looked for me? It wasn’t a lie.

I don’t know anymore. My head is so muggy and drained, and my brain is struggling to keep processing. I feel like I’m in an alternate universe, one where Alexi Carrero has a heart and the ability to give a shit. I feel dizzy with all of this.

“Why are you telling me all this now? You’ve had months of me being here to say something. Why not then? Why not in Miami, why not in the restaurant, or after Feral died? You had so many opportunities.” I shake my head at him, still gripping myself tightly as a way of shielding my heart. Looking for the flaws in his words. Trying to stop myself from weakening and dissect it all. Trying to stay strong and deny him.

“I didn’t know how. After everything, I knew it wasn’t a simple case of admitting it. I knew I had pushed you so far away that I had zero chance, and I’m not exactly the best person at talking things out. I had to show you first I was not the same, and I was looking for that ounce of hope you still cared about me.” There’s a hint of a smile pointing out that my reaction to thinking he was dead was the hope he had been waiting for. I threw myself at him, distraught, and then had sex with him.

What other sign did he need?

It was obvious from that I cared, and he swooped in and took his shot—sex.

My smile drops as cold terror run through my veins with that single thought, and I step away from him unsurely. Fear clinging as my brain connects with what I already learned in the past—sex gives him power over me. Sex is the catalyst to games and pain and breaking me to pieces.

The inner me is so desperate to protect myself from the wounds he can inflict that she is backing up at a hundred miles an hour. Knowing that sleeping with him gave him back the knowledge that I still love him. He had enough belief to admit he cared, but he knows he has power over me once again.

“I don’t trust you,” I whisper as though ashamed to say it out loud, and he sighs heavily.

“I know you don’t.”

We both stand and look at each other for a long moment and he again reaches out to me, this time to brush a strand of my hair from my face, and my body explodes in tiny shivers and trembles at his touch. I’m falling to pieces and should get away from him. I need time to think and let this all sink in at a distance. He’s too potent when he’s close. He makes it hard to see things clearly and all this could just be another manipulation.

“That’s my problem to fix.” He utters it as softly as my words had come out. An eerie strangeness surrounding us as all of this sinks in, and I face an undeniable fact … we both know that each of us cares. Yet the ground between us is so broken and marred with the aftermath of our war that I don’t know what to do now. It’s hard to believe in someone who was once Satan in your world and took pleasure in seeing you crumble.

I have so many questions, so many things I want him to tell me, to answer, to clear up my confusion and doubts, but all I do is stand and stare at him helplessly.

Silence grows noticeably before he finally clears his throat.

“So … are you still leaving me?” Alexi cuts to the point and I sigh heavily. His question is so simple yet so loaded and my head is a screwed-up mess. A simple question with no simple answer.

“I was never with you to leave you.” I point out dryly, lightening the heavy mood and thinning out the air a little. It breaks the tension, getting an Alexi frown and he gently prods my cheek affectionately. This strange new vibe between us has me all out of whack.

“You know what I mean.” He smiles at me softly. Not a full-blown charm your pants off but an honest, slightly amused look. Resembling the one he gave me so very long ago in Luciano’s office when I first figured he found me entertaining at the very least.

That seems like a lifetime ago now.

This weird heavy atmosphere between us is like a fog blanket covering us up and making the air thick.

“My head’s a mess, I don’t know how to feel or what to think. This was not exactly something I foresaw, and now I don’t know what it is you want from me.” My voice is shaky and weak, my body trembling with nerves, and I feel like I’m standing on a cliff about to leap off.

So much danger. So much uncertainty.