My Wee Mate

18 - Place To Complain

Ailsa

We both sit in silence, the only noise surrounding us it the dripping of the cold, wet ceiling.

I'm sitting far away from Fraser today. I'm not sure that I want to be anywhere near him, too afraid of what I'll feel when our proximity mingles. I always experience feelings I shouldn't whenever he's involved.

I don't really know why I'm here. Everything in my life is going to hell, and somehow I still find time to sneak away and visit my secret prisoner. I stare at him, and he stares right back. My growing feelings for him are completely useless. What is it that I could expect with him?

A future? A relationship? A life? None of these things are possible, and yet... Yet I wish that I could just forget about this life I lead and make a new one, just start over where no one knows me, with him.

How would it be any different? I glare at him for a split second before putting my head down in shame.

Marrying Fraser would provide the same result. It would ensure my death either way. Stay, I die, leave, I die. There's no obvious choice here. No matter what, I will die young. There is no other way.

I flick my gaze down to my hands, eyeing the lines engraved in my pale, dry palms. Some say that those lines are a map of your destiny. I suddenly wish someone could read them and tell me what it is I'm destined for.

Am I destined to marry and sign my death contract? I'm only seventeen years old. Time is not on my side.

"You're thinking rather deeply tonight." Fraser's rumblings words were unbothered, emotionless. I look up at him and frown.

He's smirking, eyes lazy. He's holding the book I lent him in his lap, his legs sprawled casually across the chilly, stone ground.

It's the first time that I've really paid any attention to the clothes he's wearing. He's not in a kilt, but a pair of trews. The tartan isn't a pattern I recognize. Ever since I was a child, I was taught to recognize which tartans belong to which clans. But still, I do not recognize the red and green plaid.

Noticing this is dangerous, it only makes me more curious about him. He really is a stranger in most ways.

"Did you finish my book?" I ask, gesturing to the novel in his lap with a tip of my head.

Fraser narrows his eyes and flips through it, letting the pages feather down until the hard cover ladened with a thump. He shifted it to the ground, sliding in under the bars of the door until it connected with my ankle.

"I've read it five times. I would say it wasn't my favorite thing to read, but I'm hardly in a place to complain." He drawls.

I frown, picking up the book and sifting through it until I get to the spot where I had left off.

"I've never got the end. Don't spoil it for me." I insist. He chuckles in response, shaking his head.

"I won't, I promise, as long as you tell me what it is you're thinking about in that pretty head of yours." Fraser coaxes, lifting a finger and crooking it towards himself.

I sigh, my body scooting forward of its own accord, like there's a magnet dragging me towards him. I always feel this pull to Fraser, every day and night there's an invisible string trying to drag me down to the dungeons.

Leaning towards him, I smile up at him through my lashes. It's a weak smile, but it's there. I huff again, a sigh that gives away every emotion hiding under the surface.