by C. L. Stacey
“Do you believe what you see?”
“Is there anything I should know?”
The expression on her face shifts, then she brings her hand to my shoulder, keeping it there. “Click,” she says, then brushes her hand over my jacket as if she were dusting it off. Then she brings her hand up to my face, holding it there. “Click,” she says again, and then she pinches my cheek as if I were some five-year-old kid on the street. Holding her hand over my head, she waits. “Click.” Then she starts rearranging my hair as if I’d had a few strands out of place. “As for the hugs, Stefan just has a very touchy-feely personality.” Then she grabs my hair and yanks on it.
“OW, ARI!”
“The only thing you should know, Caleb, is what you’ve already had mastered for as long as I’ve fucking known you. Timing is everything.”
“Watch your fucking mouth, babe,” I warn her first. “I wasn’t asking if there was anything going on between you and Stefan. I asked if there’s anything I should know, meaning did you see anyone hanging around the shoot. Like the paparazzi, or perhaps maybe a random fan that kept lurking around. I know you wouldn’t cheat, I’m not that stupid!”
Realizing her own mistake, the tension vanishes from Ari’s face. “Oh,” she giggles. “No. I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
“Okay, well, we still have a problem. I don’t know what this person’s going to do with these photos.”
Ari shrugs. “So?”
“People will start talking the minute this hits the web.”
“So, let them. No such thing as bad press, right? I can be the rebel. As long as you know the truth, I’m fine.”
The front door opens again, and we both rise to our feet. Jane pops her head around the corner. “What are the two of you doing out here? It’s freezing!”
“Work drama.” Ari rolls her eyes, dismissively waving her hand in the air. “Apparently, someone thinks I’m a slut.”
“Oh, that’s nice, dear. Are you?”
“No, Mother.” Ari passes Jane on her way back inside.
The conversation went a lot easier than I thought, but this still worries me. Whoever it is won’t answer my email. Which could mean they’re not in this for the blackmail.
What the hell do they want if they’re not in this for the money?
Why send these pictures to me at all if they don’t want anything in return?
After dinner, Ari and I went our separate ways. The plan was that she’d soon meet me here in my room after telling Aryn that she was heading out to meet up with some friends at a Christmas party.
Finally, a small ping sounds from my phone, and I smile when I get exactly what I wanted from the anonymous sender.
“Got you,” I mutter.
They just asked me for ten thousand dollars. If Ari had been worried about the photos, I would’ve paid ten times that amount. Too bad, for whoever this is, she doesn’t. I’m not paying this troll a fucking dime.
But at least I have proof of blackmail.
I shift my attention from the screen when I hear Ari using her key to enter my room, and I chuckle when she comes in wearing a cute little Santa hat.
She comes running toward me, and I set my drink down, prepared to catch her when she jumps onto my lap. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Carlisle,” she whispers against my mouth, and I growl ravenously into hers.
Ari shifts above me to get off the couch, but I pull her back down. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t you want your gift?”
“My gift?”
Ari moves to stand again, and this time, I let her. Her fingers undo the front of her long, black wool-blend jacket, and she opens it to reveal to me the red lace baby-doll she has on underneath.
My eyes venture south, landing on the thigh-high leather boots she’s wearing, then I look right back up when her coat drops to the floor by her feet. “Come here.” I hold my hand out to her.
“Come play with me.” She nods toward the bedroom.
“In a minute, come here.”
Ari comes to sit on the coffee table across from me, and I lean over to grab the box I left on the end table.
Opening the lid, I pull the necklace out carefully and dangle the platinum chain from my pointer finger. The two-carat solitaire diamond sways softly in front of Ari’s face.
Bringing a hand over her naked neck, Ari gasps. “Is that for me?”
“Well, it’s not for me,” I laugh. “Do you like it?”
“Caleb, I can’t—”
“Of course you can. Come here.” When she doesn’t move from the table, I take her by the hand and pull her onto the couch with me. Ari’s hands come around to move her hair out of the way, and I fasten the clasp behind her neck. “I want you to think of me whenever you wear this.” I press a kiss against her shoulder, then another against her favorite spot at the very top of her neck.
Turning to look over her shoulder, Ari catches my lips with hers. “I always think of you.” She smiles.
Finally coming to the perfect moment I’ve been waiting all night for, I open my mouth to tell her, but she practically jumps off the couch.
“You are about to get very lucky. Come with me.” She holds her hands out to me.
“Wait, I want to talk to you about something.”
“After, Caleb. Please.”
“Ari—”
“Rule number five: Come running when I need. I need you.” Ari shakes her hands out at me. “Please.”
These goddamn rules are going to kill me.
I take her hands and stand from the couch, and when Ari’s fingers pull at the straps to undress, I shake my head. “Leave it.” Ari giggles, squealing when I take her in my arms, and her legs come up to wrap around my waist.
If all came to a stop here and now, freezing on this moment, that’d be fine. So long as I have Ari, I’ll never want for anything again.
“What kind of guy am I, Ari?”
“My guy.”
“Great answer.”
Getting whipped cream and chocolate syrup in some… uncomfortable places, we were forced to scrub off in the shower after playtime was over.
I’m walking out of the bathroom just as my phone stops ringing.
Wondering who it could be, I grab it off the nightstand to check. When I see that it was Aryn, I feel some of the blood drain from my face. I’ve missed five calls from him while we were in the shower.
He never calls me this many times, and we were only in there for fifteen minutes, at most.
What could be so important for him to call this many times?
Something must be wrong.
My heart jumps in my chest when it starts ringing in my hand again, and I accept it right away. “Hello?”
“Where are you right now?”
“Is everything okay? Did something happen?” I ask, needing answers to my questions first.
“Everything’s fine. Where are you?” he asks again.
Releasing a sigh of relief, I answer him this time. “I’m in my room. Why, what’s up?”
“Open the door.”
“What door.”
“I’m outside your room. Open the door.”
You know that feeling you get when you know you’re about to get caught telling the biggest lie of your life? Your heart slams, the world just sort of stops, and there’s a chill in your veins when your blood runs cold.
That’s me. Right now. And I can’t fucking move.
I need to get out of this, but there’s no fucking way. The only way out of this room is through one door. The door Aryn is standing on the other side of.
Does he know?
No, there’s no way. I’m just overreacting.
But I can’t open the door right now, Ari’s still in the shower…
“Aryn…” I pause to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I’ve got a girl in here, I can’t just open the door. I’ll send her home. Can you come back in a few minutes?”
Three angry raps sound from the door, causing me to f
linch. I close my eyes and grip the phone so tight my knuckles go white.
He knows.
“Open the fucking door!” Aryn barks from the other side.
Seeing as I have no other choice, I tell him to hold on and hang up. I quickly get dressed, hurrying for the door when Aryn pounds another three times.
I barely get the door open before Aryn shoves it wide open.
“Aryn…”
His eyes dart around the room, stopping when they land on the bed. “Where the fuck is she?”
When I don’t answer his question right away, he shouts it again. “WHERE IS SHE, CALEB?”
The water from the shower turns off in the bathroom, drawing both our attention in the same direction.
He laughs under his breath, eyes crazed when meeting mine again. “I can’t believe this… is that her?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Tell me you’re not fucking my baby sister, Caleb. Tell me that I’ve somehow got this all wrong!”
“Aryn…” I shake my head, not knowing what else to do.
I’m not going to apologize for any of this, because I don’t feel the slightest regret.
I’m not going to lie to him, because I respect him more than that.
My failure to deny it only sends him over the edge. “You and I are through. You hear me? Done.”
“Aryn, it’s not what you think. It’s not.”
When Aryn starts for the bathroom, I wrap a hand over his arm to stop him. “Don’t, you’ll scare her.” Aryn fights me off and shoves against my chest, but I don’t give up, I run around to block his path. “You’re going to scare her!” I fight to keep my voice under a shout. “Just give me a second. I will send her away.” He shrugs me off once more, and I get in his way again. “I’ll send her home, just give me a fucking minute!” I beg.
No matter how angry he is with me, he knows damn well that I am the only one thinking rationally here, so he reluctantly accepts my request for more time. “Tell her to go pick Ayli up from my in-law’s.” I nod in understanding, and Aryn begins to make way for the exit. Then he turns around. “One minute, Caleb. I will give you exactly a minute. Get her the fuck out of here.”
“Okay.”
Ari comes walking out of the bathroom almost the same time Aryn exits. Her smile falls from her face when she takes in my distraught expression. “Hey, what’s wrong?” She walks over, wrapping her arms snugly around my waist.
“Nothing’s wrong.” I force a smile. “Aryn called just a second ago, looking for you. He knew we’d be together because of the… party.”
“What did he need?”
“He needs you to pick Ayli up from Kayli’s parents’ place. He got held up somewhere.”
“Oh.” Her lips pull into a confused frown. “How come he didn’t call me?” She untangles her arms from around me to check on her phone. “Oh, wow. I missed a bunch of calls from him…” she says.
“Yea, he tried calling us both when we were in the shower. You should go get her.”
“Yea,” she agrees, dropping her towel to get dressed.
I turn away and sit against the edge of the bed, trying to figure out just what the hell I’m going to say to Aryn. If Ari finds out that he knows… I don’t know what will happen. How do I fix this?
When Ari comes to stand in front of me, I’m glad to find that she’s fully dressed in clothes different from the ones she came in. “I’m sorry to have to run like this… I know you hate it.” She brings a hand to my cheek, then she leans in to kiss me goodbye, and I swear I feel my heart rip a little when her lips touch mine.
I cut the kiss short, and I sell another smile. “It’s okay. I’ll just see you later.”
“Promise?”
“Yea, of course. Drive safely,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster.
“Okay,” she sighs. “Bye.”
“Bye…”
Ari flashes me a grin over her shoulder, puckering her lips to blow me a kiss before walking out the door.
My heart rips in half.
About two seconds later, right on cue, I hear a knock at my door.
I walk dejectedly toward the door and open it for Aryn, stepping aside to let him in.
We don’t say anything for a while. He just stares around the room in silence, everything in disarray.
Finally, Aryn breaks the silence with his first question. I only wish it were literally anything else. “How long?”
“Aryn…” I shake my head.
The piercing glare he shoots my way warns me not to push him further. “Answer the fucking question, Carlisle. How long?”
“A year.”
“A ye—” Aryn stops, fixing me with an incredulous stare. “You are unbelievable. A fucking year?”
I don’t defend myself. I don’t say anything to justify my actions. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”
“Fuck you!” he roars. I stand silent again. “You know,” he laughs humorlessly, “I always knew you were a piece of shit… but I never imagined you screwing me over. What the hell were you thinking? She’s better than this, than you! She’s not one of your whores, Caleb!”
My eyes flash angrily at him. “I never, not once, fucking treated her like a whore, Aryn. I’m aware that she’s better than that, than me. I know it. But I…” I shake my head. “I care about her—”
A hard punch to my face knocks me back, and I do nothing to retaliate because I deserved that.
Aryn lets out a slew of curses, eyes reflecting nothing but his disappointment in me. “You don’t know the first thing about caring for a woman, Caleb. You love yourself too fucking much to let anyone else in. Ari deserves a man who will love her, not a boy who’d fuck anything with two legs.”
Warm blood fills my mouth, and I roll over onto my hands, streaking the carpet with red when I spit out.
“Whatever this was, it’s over,” he says with finality. “You are never to see my sister again. Do you get that? You sign her over to someone else in your company, and you stick to your side of the fucking country. I don’t want to see you around this family, ever again.”
“No…” I push off my hands, standing on my knees to face him directly. “I can’t do that, Aryn. No.”
“Come again?”
“Years of friendship…” I spit onto the carpet again and rise to my feet. “If this is all you think of me, a friend you claimed to love like a brother, then I can stand to live a life without you in it. But I refuse to live in one without her, Aryn. So, no.”
The door to my room opens, and Ari walks back in with her head down, digging around in her purse for something with my key card in her mouth.
No, no, no!
“Babe, have you seen my car keys? I think they fell out, I can’t find them any—” Ari stops when she sees that I’m not alone. Ripping the key card from her mouth, her face blanches the moment she sees her brother. “Aryn,” she breathes.
Aryn turns his back to me. “My best friend, Ari? Really?”
“Aryn, wait…”
“Shut your fucking mouth, I don’t want to hear it!” he shouts in her face, scaring her to tears.
“God, Aryn, what the hell is the matter with you?” I reach for Ari and pull her to my side. Cradling her face in my hands, I sweep my thumbs across her cheeks to dry her tears. “You okay?”
I don’t know why I just asked that, she’s clearly not okay. She’s fucking trembling, and her tears won’t stop coming, just pouring down her face.
“No, I knew this would happen. I told you it would,” she sobs. “Look at your face.” She reaches out to touch, but stops before making contact. “Does it hurt?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Disgusted by our display, Aryn pipes up. “Ariana, come with me, we’re leaving,” he orders her.
“Don’t.” I stop her when she obeys, taking her first step away from me. “Ari, look at me.”
“Caleb, I swear to fucking God…” Aryn warns me. “Let my sister go.”
Tears s
pill down her cheeks again when she closes her eyes, then she brings her hand up over mine. “Let me go, Caleb.”
“No.” I stand firm.
“He’s not going to hurt me. If I stay here, he’ll hurt you. Let me go,” she says again.
If she leaves, I don’t know when I’ll see her again. Aryn will keep her from me, and she’ll listen to him, I know it.
“I’ll fucking live. Don’t go, Ari,” I plead. “Look at me.” I tilt her chin up, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Rule number four: Don’t be a pussy,” I remind her. “You trust me, don’t you?”
Ari starts to nod when Aryn steps in, taking her by the arm, and when he starts to pull her away from me, I shove him off, tucking her safely behind me.
“If you wanna leave, then leave,” I say. “You’re not taking her with you, she wants to stay with me.”
Outraged by that claim, Aryn’s eyes cut to Ari. “That true?”
“Why else would we have gone through the trouble of hiding this from you for a whole fucking year?”
“I didn’t ask you, Caleb.” Aryn’s eyes don’t leave Ari’s. “I’m only looking out for you, Ari. What the hell do you expect to happen here? Models, actresses, singers, waitresses, just women in general… you’ve seen the tabloids. You’re just another girl on his list. Maybe this has gone on for as long as it has because you guys got a strange kick out of sneaking around behind my back, but what do you think will happen now that I know? He’ll get bored and leave you heartbroken.”
When Aryn first walked in, I had no intention of hurting him. I knew of the consequences when I decided to pursue Ari. I knew of the risks. I knew of the betrayal I was committing. I knew how angry Aryn would be. But he just fed her a bunch of shit she didn’t need to hear, making her wonder about what she should already know. I haven’t been that guy in a really long time.
Losing the will to remain the bigger person completely, I tackle Aryn to the ground. I land a punch, hitting him square in the jaw.
“Caleb, no!” Ari screams from behind me.
Attacking him was stupid. It was a snap decision I made, one I was sure would satisfy my rage. Then the horror in Ari’s voice… I instantly regret my actions. I can’t imagine how this must look to her, how I must look.