The Beetle Bride (ON HOLD)

Chapter Fifteen; The Ghost With The Most

**A/N**
Hey lovely people! I'm so so, soooooo sorry for the lateness of this update. Things have been real crazy busy on the Homefront (adulting really sucks)
Anyway I hope you'll think this chapter was worth waiting for, because all I'm going to say in relation to it is, "Helloooooooo" ~ nudge nudge, wink wink ~
As always, thank you kindly for leaving comments/voting etc. It really means a lot to me. And thank you for your patience :)

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It felt as though Lydia's heart was bursting out of her chest, and she half expected to drop dead on the spot at any any second.
She was shocked. So utterly shocked by his unexpected and almost unwilling declaration. Her dainty hands dropped from his grasp, her jaw slackening as she stood with her eyes wider than usual, and her arms dangling uselessly by her sides.
This couldn't be real, and she was too afraid to believe it.
'He's just using you.' The nagging voice of doubt whispered in her mind, refusing to be silent. 'He doesn't meant it.'

His head had lowered now, and he was staring at the floor, seemingly enthralled by a crumpled up leaflet which advertised his services as a bio exorcist. Was he...embarrassed? No, that couldn't be right. It wasn't possible. Not the self proclaimed 'ghost with the most'. A title which she was starting to suspect was code for 'professional panty wetter'.

"What? So, you're trying to tell me that you..."
Her words dissolved, unable to say any more for fear of speaking the words aloud. As if they were so fragile they might shatter and then be lost forever.

Huffing slightly, he raised his head, forcing himself to look directly into her eyes, and she felt that familiar inimitable warmth spread out through her body.

"Yeah."
His furrowed brow deepened in an anxious frown.
He was so damn nervous he'd never felt such relief to be dead. Otherwise he'd have been worried about so much as breathing the wrong way. His guts had become an unrecognisable, churning mass of butterflies rather than beetles. And he found himself wondering yet again, how the hell this had happened to him.

She looked worryingly alarmed, and as he gently pushed a rogue lock of hair behind her ear, he was careful to move in almost animated slow motion. She was like a butterfly herself, a beautiful black butterfly, a dark, delicate, skittish creature that may fly away from him at any moment if startled.

This wasn't exactly how he'd planned on telling her. In fact, he hadn't really seriously considered telling her at all. Instead, he'd hoped maybe she would've admitted her feelings, thus enabling him to respond with something much more simple such as a "yeah, me too."
But in a moment of complete madness he'd decided he had to man-up and tell her. Regardless of the outcome, and whatever happened, he had to voice what his foolish heart wanted him to. He needed her to know how he felt.
However, he still wasn't quite prepared for her next words...

"How do I know that you're not just saying that? For all I know you could just be tricking me, trying to break the curse."
The uncertainty and doubt were blindingly visible in her beautiful, expressive face. Her chocolatey eyes were narrowed in suspicion, and her neat little nose wrinkled.

And that's when he felt it. The full on humiliation. The sadness. The complete agony of knowing that he'd just opened his withered, old heart and confessed to the love of his afterlife, who thought he was just after one thing. And not even a sexual favour at that.
"What?? No!"
He spluttered, recoiling away from her like a wounded cobra.
"You think I'd do that? Really? Well, thanks Lyds. Thanks a fuckin' bunch. Ya' know, a guy spills his guts, and you have to go kick him in the balls, that's nice. Real nice."