Winter's Heart

by Warneke, A. C.

  “Please, you’re going to be a famous actress; your place is here,” Flynn scoffed, pulling back and wiping away the tears that hadn’t quite fallen. “Plus, Harry is here. Besides, once I dye my hair, get some contacts, and change my name I can come back.”

  Fallon smiled like Flynn hoped she would.

  Using the secret knock, Harry tapped on the door and with a heavy sigh, Flynn stood up as Fallon let her boyfriend in. He looked at Fallon with a heart melting expression that made Flynn want to cry, with sadness over what she lost and joy over what Fallon found. But she couldn’t afford to thaw out, not yet. Then Harry turned to her, his eyes burning with pity. “Let’s get you ready to go.”

  She nodded, following him into the bathroom, freezing when she saw herself in the mirror. “God, I look like something even the cat wouldn’t drag in.”

  Harry gave a little smirk, his equivalent of a laugh. Pulling stuff out of the bag he had sat on the toilet, he held up a small white box of black hair dye. “This is temporary and will wash out once you get home and take a shower.”

  She nodded her head in understanding. Next he pulled out a couple of small packages. Holding one up, he said, “I can pierce you or,” he held up the other, “We can put fake studs in. As long as no one gets too close they won’t be able to tell the difference.”

  “Combination?” she asked, swallowing against the lump in her throat. A few more piercings to match the holes in her heart might be appropriate. “I think I would like a line of hoops along the shell of my left ear.”

  “I can do that,” he nodded, setting the supplies down on the counter next to the hair dye. “I’m also going to affix a fake hoop to your nose and attach it to the earring in your lobe with a lightweight chain.”

  “Cool.”

  The last thing he grabbed was a small palette of colors, black and white and gray. Holding her eyes, he simply said, “Makeup.”

  She nodded and let him get to work, transforming her from the girl next door to a Goth chick. The temporary dye was first, the black hair altering her appearance almost enough to let her escape without being recognized. Next came the earrings, which didn’t hurt until he got to the cartilage and she begged him to stop after only five holes. Setting her down on the toilet, he applied the makeup, whitening her skin until she was deathly pale and then lining her lids with charcoal and swiping her lips with black. The final piece was the fake nose ring attached to her real earring.

  “I look nothing like me,” she breathed as she stared at the reflection that looked like an extra in a death metal video. Smiling a ghoulish smile, she met Harry’s eyes in the mirror, “I bet I’m not too sweet for you now, am I, Harry?”

  “Nah,” he grinned, touching the tip of her nose with his finger to let her know that he still thought she was too sweet despite his words. “You’re way too spicy for a hard ass like me.”

  Her smile was a little more genuine at his kind lie. “Thank you for that.”

  “Now, remember to sneer at anyone who looks at you,” he instructed. “And if they start to stare, meet their eyes and stare right back. Most people are uncomfortable with that kind of direct confrontation.”

  “I’m uncomfortable with that,” she admitted.

  “But you’re not you,” he reminded her. “Stare back and don’t flinch. You’re encased in a bubble, Flynn, and nothing can touch you.”

  Her heart was in her throat and she was certain she wasn’t going to be able to remember most of the advice he was giving her but she nodded, “Okay.”

  “Here.” He handed her a fake ID that looked like the girl in the reflection, more or less. Running his hand through his red Mohawk, he said, “I bought the ticket under Roberta Smith and had my guy make up an ID. I found the picture on the internet.”

  She nodded as tears filled her eyes. His eyes went wide as he held up his hands, “Don’t cry!’

  “I won’t,” she sniffed, blinking back the tears. Throwing her arms around his broad shoulders, she managed to say, “Thank you, Harry, for everything.”

  “Thank you for Fallon,” he whispered back, returning the hug with surprising emotion. Taking her hand in his, he led her out to the living room where Fallon just about dropped her cup of water.

  “Holy fucking shit, Flynn,” she choked out. Picking her jaw up from off the ground, she shook her head and grinned, “You look fucking amazing.”

  Closing the distance between them, Flynn took her sister in a huge hug, “I love you, Fallon.”

  “I love you, too, Flynn,” she whispered. “I’m not going to cry because this isn’t goodbye. You’ll be back before the summer is over.”

  “For a visit, maybe,” Flynn conceded, pulling back and wiping a smudge of black from her sister’s face. “I’ll see you soon, Fallon.”

  Fallon pasted on a brilliant smile, “I guess that is my cue to be the distraction.”

  With a deep breath, her sister spun on her heal and headed out to the chaos below. Turning, Flynn found Harry staring after Fallon with a look of wonder on his face. When he caught her staring, he gave a slight smile and vowed, “I’m going to marry that woman.”

  ♥~♥~♥

  For a week, Winter hid out in his house in the country with Storm, spending most of his time with his son, except for when Storm was with his private tutor. Since Storm was currently having lessons, Winter sat in his living room watching the latest developments on the mess his life had become, turning the volume up when he saw a familiar figure emerge from the front of the most popular building in L.A. since last Monday. His heart picked up speed until he realized it was only Fallon and not… the other one. There was something beating at him from inside his head but he ignored it because he didn’t want to think about her. If he thought about her, about her betrayal, he might break.

  With dramatic flair that would have done Shakespeare proud, Fallon tossed back her long, shimmering hair as reporters crowded around her and bellowed out questions. “Flynn! Look this way! Flynn Rogers!”

  Smiling brilliantly, she swept off her glasses, her green eyes flashing annoyance and fury, making her a sight to behold. “You’re all mistaken. I’m not Flynn, I’m her older sister Fallon.”

  “A few questions!” the jackals called out, not fazing the girl in the least.

  “Do your worst,” she said with a shark’s smile. He doubted that any of the reporters realized that the most dangerous person there was the one they were trying to devour. Fallon was going to have them for breakfast and possibly tear a piece of his soul away while she was at it.

  Sitting up abruptly, he saw a pair of familiar figures in the background exiting the building but none of the reporters paid the duo the least bit of attention. It took him only a moment to realize that the punk and the dead girl were Harry and… her. Bold as brass, she hid in plain sight as she made her escape.

  The camera angle changed and he found himself screaming at the T.V. “Pan back, you fuckers!”

  “How do you feel knowing your sister is a betraying whore?” Gerald Camden asked, an immoral bastard from Skin Me, a magazine all about degrading the entire human race with its hackneyed articles and debased nudes that lacked even an ounce of artistry. Usually his questions were drowned out by the other, slightly less sleazy reporters, but every single one of the spineless bastards let the question stand.

  Fallon pinned the man with her stare and Winter could have sworn the slimy bastard flinched. Her smile was all teeth as she scathingly answered, “I’m outraged….”

  A flurry of questions exploded until she held up her hand and silence fell so she could continue talking. “I am outraged on my sister’s behalf. It takes a whole boatload of crazy to implicate Flynn in any of this and yet somehow someone managed to do precisely that. My sister would never sell out anyone, let alone the love of her life.”

  “It was a lot of money,” Moira Jones said.

  “I’m sure it was,” Fallon answered smoothly, her sharp eyes piercing the woman where she stood. Moira too
k a step back before catching herself. “And someone out there is far richer for betraying not just the handful of good people in that article but Flynn as well since she. Didn’t. Do. It.”

  “How can you be so certain of that?” Jackson Belington asked. He was the next to flinch.

  Fallon actually threw her head back and laughed in mockery and astonishment. “Because I know my sister. And if Winter knew her at all, he would realize that Flynn could never have betrayed him. Ever.”

  A sharp, piercing pain stabbed his heart and Winter pressed the mute button on the T.V., hoping to catch one last glimpse of the deathly duo but the camera never panned back. Besides, they were probably gone long before the first question was answered. Tilting his head back, he stared at the ceiling, wondering what the truth was.

  Flynn couldn’t have done it because it was Flynn.

  Flynn had to have done it because no one else could have.

  Pulling his laptop back onto his lap, his hand hovered over the mouse as the pointer hovered over the video icon. He hadn’t watched the finished film since he spliced the tapes together nearly six weeks before. At first he had been sleeping with the girl in the film and then last week she broke his heart and he couldn’t bear to see her lying, exquisite face.

  Taking an unsteady breath, he double clicked the icon and the video came up and the screen capture he had used for the menu screen startled him. She was naked from the waist up and smiling at him and the picture filled him with eternal longing and burning desire. He didn’t have to press play because her eyes were shining with open and genuine love and his stomach clenched with loathing. Only he wasn’t sure if it was for her or for him. Either she was guilty or she wasn’t.

  Setting the laptop back down, his eyes drifted shut as the two contradictory facets of Flynn battled back and forth in his pounding skull. Pressing his thumb and his forefinger into his eyes until there was only blackness, he wondered how long it had been since he had gotten any sleep. Every time he had drifted off in the last week he had seen her face smiling back at him, taunting him, enticing him, and he’d wake with a violent start.

  In a hazy fog, he grabbed the damn laptop again and inexplicably found himself on her profile page and it had a new status:

  Flynn Rogers is: DEAD! You bastards killed a sweet, beautiful, INNOCENT girl. May you all rot in Hell!

  As he read, a voice screamed the words out loud in his ear, emphasizing every last sound and syllable and he thought his heart might be shattering in his chest. Ice filled his veins as he read and re-read the words, unable to believe them.

  “It’s hard to breathe, isn’t it?” Flynn asked, suddenly standing before him in a flowing white gown, looking ethereal and beautiful and unbearably sad.

  “Tell me I’m dreaming,” he begged, drinking in the sight of her.

  “Of course you are,” she purred, straddling his lap and dragging her fingers through his hair. His hands went to her hips, curling into the familiar flesh as his body hardened. “You’re so certain it could only be me that you refuse to close your eyes and re-live the worst moment of your life to figure out who it actually was.”

  “Who else could it be?” he asked, desperate for her to answer even though he knew she was only a dream.

  “Melissa.”

  He jerked awake, almost knocking his laptop to the floor. Hadn’t she mentioned Melissa’s name when he had confronted her? Was she innocent or was his mind playing tricks on him because it had been so long since he had slept?

  A few minutes later, a knock at the door dragged him away from his incessant circling of thoughts. Stills stuck his head into the room and softly murmured, “There is an Addison Holmes here to see you, sir. Shall I let her in?”

  Addison. Pushing his hands through his hair and grabbing a chunk in the back, he pulled. Should he see her? She was just as much a victim of all of this as he was, if not more so, but what could she possibly want from him? Not trusting his voice, he nodded and a split second later, the door opened, making him realize she wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Winter,” she said, floating into the room with a taller bearing than she had had the last time he had seen her. With a slight smile at Stills as the butler closed the door behind her, she faced Winter and heaved a sigh, “I should have known my secret lover was you.”

  “Why?” he asked, genuinely curious, though his relationship with her was one of the last things he wanted to talk about. “I didn’t know it was you.”

  She chuckled softly, not offended by his brash words. “Because you are demanding but generous in everything that you do. Because you are kind.”

  He rolled his eyes because he wasn’t kind. Her soft gasp drew his attention and he saw that she was staring at his laptop, at the image of naked Flynn. Slamming the lid closed, he muttered, “Sorry.”

  Delicate color stained her cheeks as she slowly met his eyes. “She must’ve loved you a great deal.”

  Afraid to hope, to believe he had been wrong about Flynn betraying him, he reluctantly asked, “What makes you say that?”

  Nodding towards the closed laptop, she murmured, “Because in the video she completely exposed herself to you, made herself utterly vulnerable, gave you her trust, and yet there was never fear in her eyes.”

  His lips quirked up into a reluctant smile, “You saw all of that in an image you viewed for, what, two seconds?”

  The delicate color became a florid red as she glanced away and muttered, “I saw the video.”

  Stilling, the gears in his head slowly cranking as he tried to comprehend what the girl was saying, he asked, “What video?”

  “Um,” she cleared her throat, looking anywhere else but at him. Fingering the tie of her wrap dress, she mumbled, “She sold the video, too. It was released last night and has already gotten millions of hits.”

  Was it possible to die a thousand deaths in a single moment? Hadn’t she already killed him by selling all of the things he told her in confidence? But how did she even know about the video? Unless she found out he hadn’t destroyed the recordings like he promised he would and she had exacted revenge for what she perceived as his betraying her first.

  But to sell their sex tape? Was money really that important to her that she would do something like that? Unless she had lied about not being an actress and saw the video as her chance to break into the business. For some, notoriety was just as good as popularity, as long as it came with fame.

  Unaware of his tumultuous thoughts, Addison continued speaking, “You were the Beast that night, weren’t you?” At his absent nod, she continued, “You recognized me….”

  “I recognized the mask,” he said dumbly.

  At her little frown, she nodded, “You recognized the mask but you didn’t even blink. Even then you were in love with her.”

  Tilting his head to the side, he asked, “Why do you think I’m in love with her?”

  “I saw the tape,” she said in a slow, measured tone, as if that explained everything. At his blank look, she rolled her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. Standing up, she untied her wrap dress and let the material slide to the floor. Her body was exactly as he remembered, from the curves of her breasts to her slender thighs and everything in between, except now she had a shaved pussy that glistened with her arousal. “Since it’s over between you and the girl, I was maybe wondering if you’d like to resume our relationship, only without the masks this time.”

  Without needing to think twice, he grabbed the dress and wrapped her back into it, calmly shaking his head no as he freaked out on the inside. She pressed her hand against his thickening penis, “But you’re hard.”

  Of course he was hard. Addison was a beautiful woman and he hadn’t had sex since he took Flynn in an alcove at Storm’s party but Addison wasn’t who he wanted. Tying her dress closed, turning red when he realized he had tied her arms to her side, he stammered, “I’m really not interested in starting anything right now.”

  P
ushing her arms through the sleeves and tightening the tie around her waist, she blushed profusely as she realized he wasn’t going to accept her offer. Smoothing the front of her dress down, avoiding his eyes as he avoided hers, she stammered, “She didn’t seem the type, did she?”

  His penis was still trying to figure out why he didn’t take Addison up on the offer to fuck her while his brain was telling his penis to go fuck itself and it took him a moment to realize she was talking. “Pardon?”

  “Flynn,” she said, saying the name that lanced his heart and stabbed his gut. “I mean, I only spent a few minutes with her that night and, shoot me if I’m wrong, but there was something about her, wasn’t there? Something that made you want to tell her all of your secrets because you knew she’d take them to the grave.”

  Exactly! That’s exactly what it had been like! And like a fool, he had spilled all of his secrets, including secrets that weren’t his to spill. Bitterly, he sneered, “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  She nodded her head in agreement as she started towards the door. “I guess so. I mean the horrid lies she said about Melissa were completely unfair.”

  Actually, the things that were written about Melissa were fairly accurate but he wasn’t going to contradict Addison because Melissa worked very hard to cultivate a warm persona.

  “Maybe I should be grateful to the little bitch,” Addison said with a sigh, as if her heart weren’t quite into the name calling. “Because of her, the writers are taking my show into an entirely new direction, giving me a much juicier role. Instead of playing another fucking virgin, I’m going to be a college student who leads a double life, the virginal Maxie trying to figure out college and the high end prostitute Vixen trying not to fall in love with her clients. It’s actually quite exciting.”

  “Congratulations,” he said numbly, not giving two shits about the new direction her show was taking.

  Twinkling, she leaned in and added, “If it weren’t for Melissa I’d never have this series but if it weren’t for Flynn, I’d just be another young actress trying to launch yet another television series that was doomed to failure.”