‘Stop it Sophie, for fucks sake. Stop it.’ He yells at me, silencing me with the shock of it and drops my hands in front of me harshly. Glaring at me with a stony face and narrowed eyes, brows crushing his expression.
‘I didn’t want to do this now, but you pushed it, and now it’s come out like this and made everything fucking worse….. I’ll find you a hotel until we sort out an apartment, I think it’s best if we both have some space for a while. Let you get started in school and settled in while I…..’ He trails off, staring at the ceiling to avoid looking at me once more, sighing. Seemingly lost with how to deal with the problem that is Sophie, always the same in the end. I have no place in his life anymore.
I am rendered numb, standing with wet cheeks, but no fresh tears after he shocked me to a standstill, the part of my heart that always disables crippling pain, moving in to protect me with numb and cold emptiness. Like a welcome friend draping a blanket around my body.
‘While you play happy families with your girlfriend and forget all about me.’ I wipe my tears off my face with the back of my hand, crazily calm so suddenly, heart closing up and demeanour icing over. I glare at him hatefully. Heart wounded, but pride unwilling to let him ruin me again, ever, ever again. I lift that defiant chin and stare him down.
Taking one last deep heavy breath, I turn on my heel and start to walk away, walk back to my bedroom without looking back, while pulling myself together, heart just too full of shearing pain to even do this anymore.
‘Soph’s?’ It’s a soft almost desperate whisper from him, but I ignore it. Knowing this is all futile. We lost who we were the first time I ever told him how I really felt; this, since, has just been an agonising game of bullshit and tears for me that I can’t take anymore. Part of me is relieved that he’s making me walk away. I should have kept it that way from the start, never let him in to do this to me and stuck to the plan of getting over him. It’s so much worse than anything I ever endured in the past.
Arrick is lost inside his own head, his decisions are final and he isn’t the type to let emotion cloud his logic when that cold manner moves in. Too busy always trying to juggle everyone’s happiness and ignoring his own. Even if he kills me along with it. I used to be the centre of everything and now, he doesn’t seem to care that everything he does is wounding me to the core. That’s not the Arry I loved.
I don’t even think I like this version of him, let alone love him.
I’m sure he loves me in some small way still, deep down somewhere inside, but he is so far down in denial that I know I have no chance. I don’t have the energy to fight it out of him and why should I? This isn’t how it is supposed to be. I deserve more and I am only just beginning to see it.
Just because I love him doesn’t mean he deserves me.
‘I’ll be gone by the time you get up. I’m sure I can find my own hotel and you can send on the rest of my stuff. I’ll be Jake’s problem now. I’m not going back to crashing with friends and turning into some drunken idiot, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll do fine without you, like I intended.’ I answer him so coldly, good old Sophie pushing him away at a hundred miles an hour and presenting that bitch face to the world, so they never know they have struck me down.
Only this isn’t angry lashing out while my heart screams for the polar opposite. I mean it. I need more, I need someone who will move mountains to be with me and I know I will never move on with him in my life, never get from him what my soul needs.
He says nothing, just lets me walk to my room, close the door and shut him out. I know this will be the last time I see him. I’ll get up early and just go. He probably won’t stick around to see or even try to stop me either. He has a girlfriend to win back and I am just a thorn in that relationship who no longer has any place in his life anymore.
**************** End of book 1 *******************
The Carrero Heart - Beginning: Arrick and Sophie. (The Carrero Series Book 4) Page 40