by K. A. Linde
Grant hadn’t told me about this. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t even come looking for me. And now, I didn’t know where he was, except for hearing Donovan’s vague notion of celebrating. That didn’t sit right with me either.
“Hey, Ari,” Miller said, walking up to us.
Sydney had finally reappeared after the blowout with Vin, and she was standing awfully close to Miller.
“Hey. Have you seen Grant?” I felt a sense of déjà vu wash over me at the question.
“Yeah. He went up to put his guitar away. He should be back any minute.”
I released the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. Just putting his guitar away. Totally normal. No reason for me to worry.
“Thanks,” I said appreciatively.
“Hey, Ari,” Donovan said.
Ugh, he knows my name now.
“Think about New Year’s.”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking. I couldn’t even dignify that with a response. If I was going to be in New York City for New Year’s, then I was going to be with Grant. Donovan Jenkins wasn’t even on my radar.
Jogging up the path to the rooms, I felt a burst of adrenaline rush through me. I’d been basically holding my breath since I walked out of the private room. I didn’t like fighting with Grant. We were both too stubborn and strong-willed for it. All it did was make me emotional and irritable.
Once I reached the door to his suite, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t looking forward to this conversation, but it was necessary. I pushed open the door and froze. My stomach lurched, and I felt all the air push out of my lungs. Grant was standing there, just outside of his bedroom, kissing a naked woman.
My gasp must have brought him out of his stupor, and he forcefully shoved the woman away from him. That was when I recognized her—Kristin.
My world spun, and I latched on to the doorframe. Grant turned abruptly, and our eyes met across the distance.
“Ari,” he whispered, his face aghast.
I thought I might be sick. Bile touched my throat, and I had to push it down to keep from throwing up. I’d never doubted him. I’d thought he had been sleeping with other women before we were serious, but even then, he’d claimed that he hadn’t. Even in a compromising position back in the private room, I’d never once suspected that he was cheating on me. And now…with the proof before my eyes, I just felt disgusted with him, with myself, with everything. How had I believed him?
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he said. His hands were splayed out in front of him.
“What does it look like, Grant?” My voice was shaking.
“Bad. It looks bad.”
“Oh, Aribel,” Kristin said sweetly. She didn’t even bother covering up. “Are you guys still together? Grant never said—”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” he roared. “Go put some fucking clothes on and get the fuck out of my room.”
“That’s not what you were saying earlier.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he yelled.
Kristin jumped at his harsh tone and darted into the bathroom.
I just stood there, unable to move forward or to run away. There were so many things I wanted to say, but I just watched as Grant screamed at Kristin. She knew that we were together. Even if she had been in the room when we argued earlier, we hadn’t broken up.
Grant’s attention returned to me. He quickly walked across the room and tried to reach for me.
“Don’t,” I said menacingly.
“Ari,” he pleaded.
The tears hit me without notice. Full-on hysterical tears that made my chest shake and my whole body tremble. This couldn’t be happening to me. I’d given up so much for him. I’d concentrated less on school. I’d gone to all of this shows. I’d spent weekends with him instead of doing homework. I’d fucking given him my body, mind, and soul.
He had told me about his family, and then he’d crushed me under the weight of his callous, abrasive nature. He’d let himself get drawn into things that fed his addictive personality. And after he’d had sex with me, he’d just pushed me aside without batting his eyes. I felt like a total idiot. I threw my hands over my face, sank to a crouch, and just let the tears fall.
“Ari, come on. Please let me try to explain.”
I just shook my head. I couldn’t do this. That was all I could get out, “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” he asked carefully.
I stood stiffly and wiped the tears away with the backs of my hands. They still flowed easily, but I couldn’t stop them. My voice wavered as I said, “This. I can’t do this, Grant.”
“Us?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I wanted him desperately, but I hurt everywhere.
He’d ripped out the very part of my body that he completed.
Kristin took that moment to scurry out of the room. Luckily, she was fully dressed. She looked sullen that she was getting kicked out, but maybe a bit too cheerful when she caught a glimpse of my face. She strode over to the door where Grant and I were standing and gave me a smug look.
I couldn’t help it. I just lashed out. My hand connected with her face with a satisfying crack that whipped her head back. She gasped, and her hand flew to her face. A big red handprint was already forming on her cheek.
“You bitch!” she shrieked.
“Fuck you!” I spat. “You’re a dirty fucking whore. You’ll never be better than a groupie slut who gets passed around like the disgusting piece of shit you are. No one will ever take you seriously! You’re a fucking disgrace.”
Kristin lunged for me, but Grant was there first. He knocked her back into the door.
“Don’t even fucking think about it,” he growled. “Get the fuck out of here!”
“You just think you’re fucking better than everyone else, Aribel. But you’re no better than I am. You think he won’t drop you for someone else just as fast?”
“Get out!” Grant roared, shoving her out the door and slamming it in her face.
And just like that, my walls broke down. I couldn’t do this. It was the only thing ringing through. I was still crying, but my strength was returning. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe you sang that song for me and then went off with another girl. I wasn’t even worried about this shit! You couldn’t have…I don’t know…shopped around for someone who wasn’t in my circle of friends? Someone I hadn’t come on this trip with? Someone who I didn’t have classes with? Someone I wouldn’t have to see all the time after you fucking ripped out my heart and tossed it aside like it was nothing?”
“Ari, please listen to me. I did absolutely nothing with her!” Grant said. “She slipped on the ice, and then I thought she accidentally lost her key. I was just letting her clean her hand before coming back downstairs. She came out of the bathroom naked and, like, attacked me.”
“I don’t want to hear your story!” I cried. “I’m sure you have a million explanations for why you had a naked girl in your room.”
“No. There is only one explanation.”
“I don’t care. I just…I can’t believe I thought you would change.”
“Ari, come on. I’m not the same person I was when we first met. The only person I want to be with is you.”
“I just…find that hard to believe, considering you had a naked woman in your room.”
“Just because I had a naked woman in my room doesn’t mean I’m cheating on you!”
“The fact that you have a naked woman in your room at all should be a red flag! Don’t you see how serious all this is?”
“I can’t fucking help what other people do.”
“You had your hands on her!”
“I was shoving her out of the room!”
I shook my head. We could argue this in circles all night.
“Ari, just listen to me.”
“I was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I got played so perfectly.”
Grant ran his hands back through his hair and shook his head
. “I’m not playing you. Ari, you’re the one that I want. Can’t you see that?”
“No!” I said, losing it completely. “All I see is a very confused person who has a lot of emotional baggage but no idea how to treat people he cares about. You went with Drift earlier without a thought for your friends. You humiliated me in front of a group of people. You just let me walk away, and you never came looking for me again. Then, I find you kissing someone else! That does not sound like someone who wants to be with me! That sounds like someone who is congratulating himself on taking my virginity and moving on!”
Grant openly glared at me. “Who the fuck do you think you are, talking to me like that? You think I would treat you like that?”
“I think you would say anything to get a girl into bed,” I said in my frustration. I wanted him to feel what was coursing through me in that moment. “You freaked the fuck out when you just thought that I’d been talking to my ex-boyfriend. You told Donovan that you’d fucking destroy him if he came near me. But where were you? Off with some other girl? There’s an insane double standard to everything happening right now, and you don’t even see it!”
“What do you want me to do? I’m trying. I’ve turned my world upside down for you!”
“What have you turned upside down?” I nearly screamed at him. “You’re still playing your guitar, boozing, smoking, hanging around groupies. The only thing that’s different is that you’re supposedly not sleeping around with everything that walks by.”
“You have no idea what’s changed in me…”
“That’s the point! I don’t know because you won’t tell me. You confided in me about your parents. You gave me these dog tags. But for what? So, you could take my virginity and then fuck someone else? Well, congratulations! That’s the only thing you’re getting out of this whole trip. You have absolutely nothing to offer me. You’re not educated, motivated, or ambitious,” I said, ticking off all the characteristics I’d thrown to the wind when I became enamored with Grant. “How could I ever want someone like that?”
Grant lost all semblance of control after that. I was feeding into his belief that he wasn’t good enough for me. I knew his inadequacies, and I was pushing his buttons in my anger.
“What? You think you’re perfect? You talk about your family like you’re picture-fucking-perfect, but they’re controlling. You live in a motherfucking bubble. You’ve never experienced anything because you’re too fucking scared of your shadow. You might be educated, motivated, and ambitious, Princess, but you have no common sense when it comes to the real world. Not to mention, you never fucking shut up, and you think you’re smarter than everyone else in the room.”
“I am smarter than everyone else in the room!” I screamed back in his face. I couldn’t control my temper at this point.
I’d given everything to Grant, and now, we were just digging our heels in. We were being mean on purpose. Every single thing he’d said felt like a knife wound to my chest.
“I can’t do this, Grant.”
He ground his teeth and took a deep breath. “Ari…I’m sorry.”
“No…” I said, backing up toward the closed door.
“We shouldn’t have said those things.”
“But you meant them. I meant them. That’s all that matters.”
“Ari, please,” he pleaded.
Too little, too late.
“I just need some space, some time to think,” I whispered, the tears hitting my eyes again.
“Don’t do this.”
I shook my head. “Just give me some time,” I said before grabbing the door handle and rushing out of Grant’s suite.
Holy fucking shit!
What the fuck had just happened? What had I just said to her? The entire argument was a blur. It had been ugly, really fucking ugly. The tears in her eyes still stung, and all I wanted to do was run out of this godforsaken room and make things right. But I knew that wouldn’t help. Something deep down inside me told me that no matter what I said or did to try to fix this, it wouldn’t work.
I’d broken her—just like I’d feared that I would. And in doing that…she’d broken me.
I’d never felt this kind of hurt before. Pain, yes, pain I was used to. Pain and guilt and agonizing repressed memories and torture. But this…goddamn, this was like someone had taken a razor blade to my chest and started slicing through everything important.
How could I have been stupid enough to let Kristin into my place? I hadn’t been sober enough, or maybe I hadn’t cared enough to put the pieces together. I’d seen her on more than one occasion, and I’d just never given two shits who she was because she wasn’t Ari. Now, that was kicking me in the ass. She was the fucking chick who had told me that Ari was seeing her ex. She had been in The Drift’s backstage room. She had probably fucking slipped on the ice on purpose, just to get me to walk with her.
I was starting to feel like I had gotten played. I’d set my guitar down and shown her where the bathroom was. She’d gone in there, and I’d sat on the couch to wait her out. When she’d called my name, I hadn’t even thought she would put the moves on me. There simply wasn’t anyone but Ari anymore. Then, the chick had stepped out of the bathroom naked. And yeah, I’d looked. What the hell was I supposed to do? I’d just shaken my head and told her she needed to leave. Then, she’d literally forced herself on me. I wasn’t usually caught off guard, but I hadn’t been prepared for that.
It was my fault for letting her in, and I was paying for it. I wanted to throw something or put my fist through the wall, but that wouldn’t bring Ari back. Feeling defeated and even more fucking angry, I stormed out of the suite and down to the lodge.
“Hey, man. What took you so long?” Miller asked when he saw me approaching.
Sydney was sitting on his lap, and Vin was nowhere to be found.
“Whoa! What’s wrong? What happened?” He scooted Sydney to the side and stood.
“Alcohol. Now. Lots of it.”
Sydney jumped up. “Cuz, you all right? You look murderous.”
I just glared at her. “You got alcohol, Syd? Or are you not understanding?”
“Whoa there, motherfucker! I’m your fucking cousin, not some groupie whore.”
“Then, get out of my way because I think I need one.”
Sydney gave me a disgusted look. Coming from the dirty slut that she was, it should have sent off warnings, but I just ignored it. Miller, however, I couldn’t ignore.
“No way. No can do. Ari would kill you and me both if I let that happen.”
“Well, she’s not here, is she?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Sydney snapped. “You’re normally this disgusting pig but not with her.”
“Are you done wasting my time?” I asked, pushing her out of my way and back onto the couch.
Miller grabbed my arm, threw it behind me, and gave a small shove upward. I grimaced. Shit, that hurt!
“You going to stop acting like an idiot?” Miller asked.
He had the upper hand, and I just wanted to pummel him, but I wasn’t mad at him. I was mad at Ari. Or myself. Or Kristin. But mostly myself.
Finally, I nodded. Miller released me and then strongly encouraged me to take a seat.
“What’s going on?”
“Yeah, cuz. What the fuck has gotten into you?”
I ground my teeth together and ignored Sydney as she crawled back onto Miller’s lap. Great. One big fucking reminder of what I’d just completely trashed.
“I don’t want to talk about it, so just lay off. I should go find Donovan since you two seem to be a bit lost in your own world, and all my other brothers are gone,” I said bitterly.
“Something happen with Ari?” Sydney probed.
“Did you not just hear me say that I didn’t want to fucking talk about it?” I bit back.
“All right,” Miller said.
He dropped his hand on Sydney’s knee, and she sighed back into his chest. Fuck that!
“Are we done with
the interrogation now?” I had other things on my mind, like booze and pot and women and incoherence and blacking out and forgetting that this shit day ever happened.
Miller was giving me a sympathetic look, like he’d already guessed what was going on without me telling him. “Are you sure you want to go hang out with The Drift right now? Being around Donovan and the rest of the band might not be in your best interest.”
I stood abruptly. “The only person who made me care about my best interest just fucking walked out on me, so I don’t think it fucking matters what else I do.”
I woke up at the crack of dawn, feeling like absolute shit, and it wasn’t just from the bottle of whiskey last night. Aribel. Oh shit! No, this could not be happening to my life.
I needed her. I couldn’t go on without her. She was my breath of fresh air. She reminded me what it was like to live. She was the only person I’d ever cared enough about to invest time into. I couldn’t just let her get away.
Throwing my legs over the bed, I immediately regretted my decision. I had a splitting headache and the sudden need to vomit. I braced myself on the side table and then stood up. Drinking with Donovan last night had been a terrible idea. The guy could fucking drink me under the table, and I had no clue how. He’d tried to throw groupies at me, but luckily, I hadn’t been a total shithead. My bed was mercifully empty. I would have regretted that for the rest of my life.
Clothes were a struggle, but I eventually managed to throw something suitable on. Then, I was out of the room and out the front door before the sun had cleared the horizon.
I needed to talk to Ari. I needed to make this right.
That conversation should have never happened. I’d been fucking wasted, and nothing I’d said had come out right. I should have told her that I would never even touch another girl if it meant we were together. I should have told her that Kristin was nobody and that it was wrong for her to be in my suite and that I did understand how serious the situation was. I should have begged Ari to stay. I should have followed her. A heavy cloud of regret settled in the pit of my stomach, and it did nothing for my hangover.