Drive me Wild, Rival(BL)

Chapter 139: Not Going Anywhere

Alaric

​I gasped out loud, my heart stopping entirely. The air left my lungs in a sharp rush as I stared at Nico, the shock paralyzing me.

​"What is it?" Nico asked, taking a step closer, his voice laced with panic. "What did he say?"

​"He..." I swallowed hard, looking at Nico with wide, trembling eyes. "He said something that only you are supposed to know. But Harold knows it too. He... he just told me that someone named Seo-jun wrote letters to me and that someone is you."

​Nico froze entirely. His face went completely pale, his eyes widening in absolute shock as he stared at me. He didn’t speak for a long time, just processing the fact that a voice inside my head knew a secret that deep. Slowly, silently, Nico gave a stiff nod of confirmation.

​I let out a ragged, broken sigh, burying my face back into my hands. "I am truly going crazy," I lamented, my voice cracking as the reality of my condition hit me like a physical blow. "For two whole years... for two years, I thought Harold was a real entity. I thought I had a friend watching over me in the hospital. Harold had been by my side since I woke up and I always wondered why anyone couldn’t see him or why he always... ’’ I paused to catch my breath.

’’Meanwhile, he is just my other identity. He’s a fragment of my own broken brain. I am completely, utterly losing my mind. I can’t believe how pathetic I am sounding right now,’’ I said aloud, my heart pounding harshly in my chest.

​I shook my head, tears of pure frustration and fear burning the edges of my eyes. I couldn’t even look at Nico. He was a top-tier, flawless athlete, and here I was, his primary rival, losing my grip on reality on a beach in my family vacation home.

I felt entirely defective. I was certain that if I looked up, I would see disgust on his face.

He was probably completely repulsed by me now.

​Suddenly, a pair of strong arms wrapped tightly around my upper body.

​Before I could even process the movement, Nico dropped to his knees on the sand and pulled me forcefully against his chest. He held me in a fierce, crushing hug, burying his face into my shoulder.

​I froze, my hands hovering in the air in complete disbelief. "Nico... what the hell are you doing? Didn’t you hear me? I’m crazy."

​"I don’t care," Nico’s voice came out muffled against my shoulder, but it was filled with a fierce, stubborn determination. He squeezed me even tighter, as if he could physically hold my scattered mind together. "I don’t care if you think you’re crazy, and I don’t care if you have another identity living inside your head. None of that matters to me, Alaric. It doesn’t change a single thing about how I see you."

​"How can you say that?" I whispered, my voice trembling.

​"Because that illusion kept you alive," Nico said, pulling back just enough to look me dead in the eye, his hands gripping my shoulders with immense warmth. "If your brain had to create Harold to save you from the trauma of that crash two years ago, then I am grateful to him. I am sane enough for the both of us, Alaric. As long as you are still here, breathing, and looking at me, I don’t care about anything else."

​"Why..." I choked out, a tear finally slipping down my cheek as I stared into his genuine, soft eyes. "Why are you doing all of this for me, Nico? Why are you even here?"

​Nico let out a soft breath, his gaze melting into pure, undeniable devotion.

​"Because I love you, Alaric," Nico confessed, the words pouring out of him like a floodgate had finally been smashed open. "I should have told you all this while. It started out as a childish, ridiculous childhood crush back when we were kids at the track, but now? I have to tell you that I truly, deeply cherish you."

​He took a deep breath, his hands moving from my shoulders to gently hold both sides of my face, forcing me to feel every single word he was saying.

​"I fell in love with you for every single reason a person shouldn’t fall for their rival. I fell in love with the way your eyes change when you’re staring down an apex at two hundred miles an hour. I fell in love with your ridiculous, arrogant posture in the paddock, and the way you refuse to let anyone see you sweat. For years, you were just the man I was supposed to beat, the wall I was supposed to climb over to get a trophy. But somewhere along the line, winning didn’t matter if you weren’t the one standing on the step next to me and when you had that terrible accident, I had thought all hope was lost and I couldn’t believe it and it was why I wrote all those letters to you back then.’’

​Nico’s thumb gently wiped away the tear on my cheek, his voice dropping into a passionate, heavy whisper.

’’And when you return to the grid, the only way that I could gain your attention was to rile you up but Alaric, you are the most important thing in my life since that day and no matter how many banter we have, It would never change how I truly feel about you and I realized a little too late that I have fallen in love with you which is crazy because I was supposed to be your rival.’’

My heart jumped at that confession because I already heard him telling his mother but right now, hearing it from him was a little bit different and it made my heart pound even harder because never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that someone like him would love him.

It wasn’t because I wasn’t deserved of love but because I always thought that he hated me and that he was my rival.

’’To me,’’ he continued after a moment of silence. ’’You are the most perfect, resilient driver this sport has ever seen. I don’t care about the corporate suits, I don’t care about the fifty lenses trying to capture our downfall, and I don’t care about what will happen to our career if we were ever found out. All I care about is you Alaric de villier because I love you and I am not going anywhere.’’