‘Don’t make me go back home Arry.’ I try one more time, appealing to his softer side with doe eyes and a wobbling voice, but he only catches hold of my upper arm as he passes me and yanks me with him.
‘Don’t. I am in no fucking mood to have Bambi eyes and begging from you. It won’t work on me this time Sophie. I am so beyond livid with you right now; I really would consider fucking spanking you.’ He hauls me at speed to the front door, stopping as we get to it and turning back on me.
‘Keys?’ He commands, looking at me expectantly.
I lean out to the mantle near the door and point at the vase where Camilla told me she left me a set of keys. Arrick leans over, tips them out and scoops them up fast, opening the door, he ushers me out into the carpeted hall. Still holding me captive while he pulls the door shut, locks up and posts them back through the slot without hesitation.
‘You won’t be coming back here, so you don’t need them. Don’t say a word.’ He glares at my gaping mouth; I had been ready to object, hating who he is right now, this version has never been him, and hauls me with him.
It’s as though the wall of fear has slowly been trickling down as anger builds inside of me. The realisation that he is still treating me like a child, after everything, and is giving me orders like he owns me. This isn’t the Arrick I have known and adored, the Arrick I love! This is more of a boorish Jake Carrero move right here, and I won’t stand for it, I won’t stand for bully tactics and using his strength and aggression against me.
Suddenly finding my fire exploding back up inside of me, I haul my arm harshly, using my other to try and prize his fingers off, as I wriggle and squirm in a bid to free myself. Arrick drops my bag, yanking me closer, to control me, but I just up the gear to fight him harder, properly twisting and pushing at him to get him off. Using arms, fingers, and knees to try and break his hold on me, like a hellcat whose sole intent is on breaking loose.
I struggle with all my might to be free, pulling at his wrist, shoving at his body, trying to break his hold over me, as hands and muscle counteract every action. Arrick seems to snap. Pushing me back hard and marching me into a wall with fierceness, until he pins me there with wrists at each side of my head, and his nose practically touching mine aggressively. It shocks me into complete silent, fearful, submission.
‘Stop it!’ He barks at me, those normally softer hazel eyes seem overtaken with green flecks and he is beyond livid. Angrier than I think I have ever seen him in his life, ever. I swallow hard.
‘Stop fighting me. I’m not about to let you fucking go, so stop trying.’ He yells at me, his face crumbling when I burst into instant, wounded tears, at this version of him. Terrified into falling apart. Arrick seems to loosen his grip, his body sagging as he rests his forehead against me gently this time, and the fight seems to seep out of him at a rate of noughts.
‘You have no idea how out of my mind I have been over you.’ He says it softly, anger giving way to genuine emotion as his own eyes glaze over, pleading almost, to get me to just stop.
‘Sophie, I have been worried sick, searching every haunt you used to use in the city all day, banging doors and threatening fuck heads, trying to just find you.’ He lifts his face up so there is a little distance between us, and drops my wrists. My hands free from the sudden release, I instinctively use one hand to rub the other, even though he didn’t really hurt me. He is still close enough to keep me held in place and as his fingers come up to cradle my face, I feel myself inhaling fast. Tears still streaming down my face, heart erratic at the sheer craziness of this whole scenario.
‘I had to leave, they wanted to put me in rehab.’ I blurt out softly, eyes glued to the way Arrick seems to stop and focus on my mouth now that he seems calmer, and more like himself. Those perfect eyes, only inches from mine and so easily familiar, like a calling home that only reminds me of how much it hurts to see him. He flickers back up to meet mine and there is something completely unreadable in the depths, I have no clue how to read the translation.
‘Do you have any idea, the chaos you cause when you disappear from someone’s life?’ Arrick’s voice is soft and torn and I’m not entirely sure if he is still talking about me running from home. He’s looking at me in a way I have never known, I can’t read him at all. My heart rate still pounding through my chest, and his proximity is suddenly suffocating me in a whole new scale of crazy ways. It almost feels like there’s a crackle of tension in the air between us.
‘No.’ Is the only thing I can say, unsure how else to even answer that. Arrick frowns hard, a flicker of indecision crosses his face as he moves closer, close enough that I instinctively hold my breath, almost certain he is going to kiss me, even though sense tells me that is utterly ridiculous. He stops, almost grazing my mouth, noses missing by millimetres, indecision flitting across his face and then he moves back, letting out a breath and running hands through his hair in agitation.
‘You fucked me up. You ripped the rug out from under me Soph’s, and then cut me off… Do you have any idea what that did to me?’ He starts pacing in the dimly lit hall, while I stay against the wall, dumbfounded, watching him in confusion and no clue what to even say to him. I can only shake my head in answer.
He lets out a short breath, staring back at me before slumping back against the opposite wall so we’re across from one another.,
‘I don’t know how I feel anymore… About you… About Tasha. I only know, that when you cut me off Soph’s, I couldn’t function anymore. That when I kissed you, everything got turned upside down.’ He frowns at me harder, so many emotions flickering across his face at once, and I can only stare at him, wide eyed and breathless, as I try to absorb what he is saying.
‘I’ve been a mess. I just really needed to talk to you, talk to my best friend and try and figure some of this out Soph’s.’ He looks at me imploringly, almost like he’s begging me to fix this for him, for once.
‘I don’t understand.’ I whisper softly, my own voice ravaged and trying hard to really take what he is saying in, and compute it.
‘I’m saying … I don’t even know anymore. That I was sure I loved you as a kid sister Soph’s, that when you told me you loved me; it freaked me out. It sent me into a crazy panic at first, so many reasons that it’s just plain immoral and wrong, but then after…… After; when you wouldn’t just let me talk to you, to see you. When I kept questioning why I even kissed you. That’s when it hit home hardest.’ He shoves himself off the wall again and is back to pacing, rubbing his hands through his hair and seemingly unable to settle on one emotion. I stay silent, heart pounding faster, palms sweating as it dawns on me that Arrick is trying to tell me he might care for me, the same way I care for him. That maybe, possibly, there is something there between us, and it hasn’t always been one sided.
‘You think you might have feelings for me that are not platonic?’ I respond numbly. Unsure how or what to feel right now. My head scrambling like crazy.
‘I’m saying, that if I loved Tash the way I thought I did, then I wouldn’t be even contemplating the what if’s, Sophie…And that if I only felt what I have always believed to be sibling love for you, then I wouldn’t be this messed up over us.’ He goes back to leaning against the wall, resting his head back against it hopelessly, and staring at the ceiling, his whole body unsettled and restless as though he just cannot stay at peace. I watch him, my own body still and in control as it filters through. A weird sense of calm engulfing me for once. A sense of coolness taking hold inside of me, like a pause, watching and waiting. I feel like we’re in a role reversal right now, and it’s completely odd.
‘You were so sure. You told me you didn’t feel this way.’ I remind him. Unable to really open that closed door in my heart to this possibility, afraid to believe anything he is saying, and strangely detached.
‘You’ve always been accessible to me, I never had to try, because you were always there. I always knew I could see you, or talk to you, at any given time.’ He brings h
is face back down to look at me, frowning while trying to explain.
‘I always figured you needed me to be your rock in life, but I never really ever looked at what you were to me; beyond that kid who needed a protector. I never analysed what life without Sophie in it could feel like.’ He frowns hard, swallows softly, and seems to take a moment to really grasp the words he is trying to formulate. He just looks so confused and torn, to the point it makes my heart ache.
‘You still see me as a kid, you’re always telling me I am.’ I chew on my lip nervously. Not sure why I am trying to talk sense into him, when this is exactly what my heart wants. I don’t even know how to feel, or if what he is saying is even filtering through properly, or if I am only hearing what I want to hear.
‘No Sophie, I don’t see a kid anymore. I tried like fuck to ignore the fact you were getting older, every skimpy outfit or boyfriend, I put down to hating because I was a brother, and I didn’t want to see those things on you. It was easy to tell myself it was down to being protective, to dismiss it as nothing.’ He sighs hopelessly, again messing with his hair and scratching his scalp, agitated with himself and looking so very tired. He just looks like his brain has been in a car wreck and this is the major fallout.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’ Arrick walks back to me, again backing me into the wall closely, hand on my upper arms gently, so we are breathing the same air.
‘It’s royally fucking me up in the head, because Tash deserves none of this. You deserve none of this.’ I drop my gaze to the floor between us, jumping slightly when his fingers come to tilt my face back to him, cupping my cheek and jaw. It’s not exactly a new mannerism for him, yet, it feels like it’s different from any other time he’s done this, and I am immediately drawn to how large his pupils look right now.
‘All I know is that without you in my life Soph’s, I fall apart, and everything just sucks. I can’t seem to function, and that points some major fucking questions at what Natasha is to me.’ His face crumbles, furrowing brow, lost boy eyes, and the heaviest sigh ever.
My heart has almost stopped beating, my voice caught in my throat at this confession of sorts, and I no longer know what to do, or what to say, tears free falling down my face as Arrick gently wipes them away with soft fingertips.
‘What do you want from me?’ I blurt out, unsure what to even think or feel anymore, heart constricting with the return of my pain and suffering.
This is what I wanted wasn’t it?
Then why does it still feel like he’s pushing me away?
‘I don’t even know. I don’t know how to feel or what to do. That’s the honest truth…… All I know, is that when Jake called me today, and told me you were missing, the world stopped turning Sophie. I couldn’t breathe, and I dropped everything to start looking for you. I walked out on Natasha during a fight and haven’t been home all day; she only knows I’m looking for you. I just needed to know you were okay, that you were safe.’ Arrick seems to struggle with the closeness and steps back again, dragging air into his lungs heavily, screwing up his face as though battling something in his head and rubs his hand up the back of his neck and hair in agitation.
‘I didn’t think beyond finding you, and I never intended to say any of this to you. All of this shit wasn’t why I looked for you. I just wanted you home and safe, to know where you were, and that you weren’t out there alone with some idiot hurting you. I just couldn’t get it out of my head that you needed me and wouldn’t call me.’ He looks broken, making my heart break too, but still, the nagging doubts in my heart are pushing me in so many directions.
‘But Arrick….. You told me you didn’t feel that way about me though, you were so sure. I can’t understand how you can go from that, to this? How you can say you don’t feel that way, and then do a complete turnaround?’ I’m clutching, trying to get my head round this and really not doing it well; brain slowly rehashing all of this, and everything he has said, and really just verbalising for my own brain process.
‘I was wrong, it was a knee jerk reaction because of how many different things about this are wrong. This is so fucking complicated. You and I, there are alike a million moral reasons that I shouldn’t see you in any other way, so many boundaries this crosses Sophie. It’s not exactly easy to realise that the kid I was so sure was like a little sister to me, is someone I can even contemplate wanting in that way. You have no idea how messed up my own head is with every fucking little detail of why this isn’t right. It’s You… Mio Mimmo… My Soph’s. My side kick, and my best friend. My brother is your God father for god’s sake, and you’re the adopted kid of a family that has been an extension of my own, since I was born. I put you on the very firm side of platonic, and put up a million boundaries so long ago, mentally shelved you on the, ‘never go there’, and ‘never see you in any other way pile’.’ He rubs his face with both palms roughly, giving me space, yet again, and so obviously in complete turmoil.
‘You trust me, everyone trusts me when it comes to you. How can I cross that boundary Sophie? That’s without even getting to the fact that I have a girl, who loves me, sitting in my apartment right now, and completely trusts that I would never hurt her like this.’ He sounds more ravaged with every word out of his mouth, suddenly so clear as to why his head is in the throes of world war three and he is acting like a guy going out of his mind.
‘I… I… I don’t know what you expect me to say.’ I feel the complete bewilderment run through me, it’s calmed my tears and instead of pain, or fear, or even confusion, I just feel weirdly detached. Like this is all some dream and I no longer have an attachment to my emotions. I think I may be in minor shock, like all of this has gotten too much to actually absorb, so my mind has taken a time out, or maybe my heart. I am so god damn disconnected right now.
Arrick picks my bag off the floor and puts it back on his shoulder, running hands down his face and exhaling slowly, as though somehow trying to regain control of this situation.
‘Let’s just get to my apartment Soph’s, take one thing at a time. Deal with your family and this mess you created, and worry about us later.’ He sounds exhausted, defeated and I am so not ready to have this conversation swiped away.
‘You can’t just hit me with this then drop it.’ I snap at him, aware of the hypocrisy in that statement.
‘I can’t deal with this right now, I don’t have answers or a solution. Natasha is sat waiting in my apartment, with no clue as to where I even am, other than looking for you. I have a life and a relationship, I never thought I would find myself torn between two women I love like this. What do you want me to say? I’m an asshole? Yes, I fucking am…. I never thought I would find myself contemplating even kissing you Sophie, let alone fucking up my life, or the life of my girlfriend over it.’ He raises his palms in desperation, his face ashen and crushed. I am momentarily halted with the way he phrases it, like he actually thought about throwing everything away for me?
‘Do you really want to be taking me back to your girlfriend after this little conversation?’ I shake my head at him, completely gobsmacked, and in some sort of dream state that this might be an alternate reality.
‘She knows nothing about this, about us. Not yet. I haven’t been able to figure out how the hell I am going to tell her any of this just yet. I can’t just turn off feelings and throw her aside after eighteen months of life with her. I need time to figure this out, and get my head straight, you know that thing you keep asking for. She knows somethings wrong, we keep fighting over how I’m being and I can’t blame her. We’re on a break, I asked her for time to get my head out of my ass and some time to be single, to think things through. It’s the least I could do, not carry on like everything is okay, when it’s clearly not.’ He reaches out to me, gesturing for my hand as though trying to get us moving, but I only stick them in my pockets and walk past him with my chin in the air. A little unsure how I should take the revelation that he has currently broken up with the woman I thought he would be wit
h forever. I just feel prickly right now, and I too maybe need a little processing time.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t be touching me a whole lot anymore. Especially as it’s not so innocent now.’ I snap childishly, leading the way to the bank of elevators. Arrick doesn’t respond, he just follows me and walks into the first one that opens. I follow him in and press the ground floor button as he moves to the corner and slumps into it. I can feel his eyes on me, but I ignore him, somehow rage has found its way crawling back up inside of me, to try and dominate. I have no idea why I am even so fucking angry right now, like every mood I ever have. Zero logic and I’ll be damned if I even know how to dissect this one. All I know is right now, I feel mad, pissed as hell and it’s aimed at him.
‘I like your hair, not sure about the colour, I always loved your natural blonde hair, but the cut suits you. You look beautiful Soph’s. I almost didn’t recognise you at first.’ He sounds sheepish, trying to make polite conversation, to calm the atmosphere I guess. I turn and give him a doubtful look. Not sure how to behave around him right now and just feeling that hint of hostility still brewing inside of me.
‘I wanted drastic changes. Tired of the old me and the way people treat me.’ I answer flatly. Arrick frowns, the silence stretching between us as it seems to take an age to reach the ground floor.
* * *
Driving the few blocks to Arrick’s apartment, we are equally silent, both lost in our own heads. His occasional glances my way don’t go unnoticed, but I have no clue how to feel, and I am dreading the moment we walk into his home and come face to face with the girl who has shared his bed for the past almost two years. Everything is a mess, I should have stayed miles away from him, like I planned, but somehow that tiny flicker of hope inside of me is destroying all my will power.
The Carrero Heart - Beginning: Arrick and Sophie. (The Carrero Series Book 4) Page 24