Deadly Discern - Book Three ✔️

Chapter Eight - Gaining Ground -

Alex POV

I am fucking frustrated.

Frustrated and desperate.
Kate had given me nothing, absolutely nothing, the woman was little more than a wasted trip. I couldn't believe she held it all back from me. She knows something, I could sense it from her words and her looks but the bitch kept it to herself. Fuck!

What now?

I couldn't return to Danica yet. Not without something more to work from. I won't go back without more to give her, I need to give her some kind of hope that what lies within her is beatable, that she can outfight it. I know she can. But she obviously doesn't believe that she can. That's what worries me the most, that she simply doesn't believe in herself.

Stopped at an intersection, I stare about me, traffic whizzing by in front and cars idling beside me, if only my life would hit a point of idling, because shit, I'm exhausted, in every way. I drop my head back roughly onto the headrest and yawn deeply. I need sleep. My head won't let me rest completely at the moment, what with way too many possibilities flying around up there. How is one person supposed to handle so much turmoil?

A honk from behind alerts me to the moving traffic ahead of me and I drive on through the dark, knowing that sleep won't find me tonight, Kate had stolen that option when she said those last few words to me.

''I have more care than anyone. You'd do well to remember that."

What did she mean by that?

Did she mean that she left for the good of Danica? Or did she mean that she knows there is more to Danica than I know? Maybe she meant that Danica had issues before.

I grunt loudly to myself. This thought process is getting me nowhere, for fucks sake, I need to stop thinking. I glance down at my lap where Ditz stares up at me curiously, probably wondering what the fuss had been about a moment ago, I pat her head a few times as I return my focus to the road ahead. And only the road.

The drive is long, heading back the way I'd come in the first place, back to where it all began and where it all ruptured. The closer in range that I got to home, the more unsettled I felt. The weight sitting firm upon my shoulders again, my muscles tightening, my brain beginning to feel the thoughts push for attention. Those thoughts aren't helping me though and I refuse to submit to them, action is what's most vital right now. Action and answers. I don't care what I have to do to get them either.

Which is why I'm returning to Carols.

I've gotten to a point of no return and I can't have that, not when Danica's existence is in jeopardy. I realise that I can't say that in words to Carol, I'm going to have to pry the information from her some other way, I need her to see that I need to know the truth and that she needn't fear that Danica will find out because I've got her best interests in mind.
And I always will.

That woman of mine - all flaws aside - is everything to me, no matter the lengths I have to go to keep her from ruining herself, I'll be the wall of separation between glory and eradication for her.

Wouldn't everyone else in my position do the same?

I thought on this for a long time. The thought becoming all consuming and thick, with a fog like substance to it, no other thoughts being able to navigate through the haze.

Am I crazy for wanting to help?

I squeeze the steering wheel tight, feeling myself come back to the present time, glad I'd decided to stop for some food before the next leg of the drive, because I couldn't have driven while stuck in my head like I'd been.