The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

Chapter 222

Arrick’s POV

~ Leila’s party ~

Leila’s party is losing its sparkle for me. Too drunk, too miserable at having to see Sophs swanning around with golden boy Christian all night and I am done with being here. I’ve said my goodbyes to my brother and I’m leaving before I do something stupid I’m going to totally regret concerning ‘boyfriend’ and drag Sophs into a dark corner to kiss the shit out of her if I stay here. Seeing her looking this beautiful, this happy with someone else is killing me.

I spy Sophs, Leila, and Daniel huddled together at the front door as I head that way, a little too late due to not watching where I was going and swerve at the last second before she spots me. My heart lurching at running into her again when I’m already a complete emotional wreck. Hating that even still, my initial reaction to seeing her is a swift kick in the gut. Almost keeling sideways because I am way too drunk for this shit and my balance is fucked as it is. I should never have downed so much booze in a bid to numb out my heartbreak.

“I just need to make sure my baby sister is okay, you know, cos I love her more than life, and the world, and the earth, and the …” Leila’s slurring, commanding, cutesy voice sways my way as I make to escape but someone grabs me in passing and hauls me backwards with a firm tug. No sense of balance whatsoever means I stumble backwards comically, arms flailing for a second before I’m righted by my main man Daniel, who seems sober. My head spinning with the effort and growl as I turn on that blonde little fireball known as Leelou. Hating that she brought me right back beside the object of all my pain and the reason I was fleeing. I’m more than aware of Sophs standing looking like my idea of a fantasy in a sparkly little silver dress, big beautiful blue eyes in smoky makeup and that gorgeous blonde hair which brings back so many painful happy memories.

“Arree!” Leila chants and startles me with her ninja-style maneuver, she’s waaaaay drunker than I’m and being held up by her husband, seeing as I seem to have trouble standing still. I clear my throat painfully as instinct pulls my eyes to Sophs, because I can never control that part that’s always drawn to her, hating that she blushes and immediately turns away to avoid the contact. My heart clenches in my chest and my palms immediately get clammy at her proximity again. I still haven’t recovered from dancing with her earlier. © 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

“What, Leeloo?” I lean in and bop her on the head, loving the bones of one of closest friends and amused she’s this hammered at her own party. I sway in and almost bang her face to face and have to right myself before Daniel ends up holding us both up again. Everything is swaying and I am overly aware of the sexy, beautiful crazy little distraction to my left. All I want to do is touch her.

“Take Sophie home and look after her. She needs a real man to take care of her, not that gay guy she hangs about with, making moon eyes at my husband.” Leila is slurring and her words don’t make sense. I frown as I decipher and repeat it slowly in my brain once more, picking out the two most important words ‘gay guy’ and throwing a questioning look at her. Instantly confused as something in the back of my mind jumps to attention.

“What gay guy?” I lean in and try to get her full attention, but Daniel starts pulling her in the direction of the door, in a bid to control her wandering body and she throws me a deep frown, like I’m thick. A sweet look of ‘duh’ on her pretty face.

“Christian! He’s lovely and all, but Sophie needs a real boyfriend, Arrick. Why don’t you love my sister? She’s awesome and beautiful, and she adores you. You would make such cute babies and look; we would be like a real brother and sister.” Leila grabs my face clumsily and plants a kiss on my nose, in a mortifyingly cute, yet kind of gruesome way as her words reverberate through my skull and I stand like a shocked silent moron as they filter through. Daniel has obviously had enough, and starts pushing her outwards, throwing some sort of weird glance Sophs way which only heightens my suspicion and I throw her a look that asks ‘why?’

Heart racing as I take in what Leila said, body instantly stiffer as my drunk haze is kicked aside a little to really grasp the weight and clarity of those words. I almost can’t inhale and have to swallow hard to really let it sink in that Christian is gay. That ‘boyfriend’; touchy feely, hands on my Sophs, with her every second of every minute of her days, shadowing her in her life, is into men … so that means …

“Come on you.” Daniel lifts and scoops Leila up into his arms, looking mighty fucking guilty for a so- called mate and he avoids my glare. Confirming Leila isn’t lying and is not being drunk and mental. Christian is fucking gay! I stand rooted to the spot for a second, chest hammering and breathing shallow as it really hits home that I wasted months without her, because of him! Christian!

“Leila, I’m staying here. I don’t need anyone to look after me and I don’t need a boyfriend. I’m fine.” Sophs offers sweetly, her eyes homed in on her sister and avoiding me as I stare at her side profile, eating into her face to try and pull out answers, knowing fine well she’s been caught out. I can see it all over her. The guilt because she’s never been dishonest with me.

She lied to me.

Sort of. I mean, okay she didn’t say he was her…. but it was implied. It looked like… and Jake told me… Mother fucking assholes!

Judging by this being common knowledge among the Huntsbergers, I am pretty much banking my family knew too, and I’m the only idiot who was kept in the dark, suffering because I thought she’d moved on. Jake is going to get a broken face for letting me believe it this, for letting me pine and suffer when I should have been chasing her to the ends of the world.

Sophie moves to help Daniel with Leila as she loses a shoe and follows them, scooping it up and avoiding what’s probably my death glare, aimed at her head as it all sinks in that these last months, she hasn’t been dating Christian… he’s nothing more than her friend and she’s been single this entire

fucking time. My relief is shrouded in anger, hurt, betrayal at some many parts of this and I’m pissed that after everything we were, she let me believe it.

She follows them, picking up discarded jewelry and a bag before Leila hugs her around the head when we step outside and she waves them off. So small and petite and looking every bit like the other half to my soul. Even if she’s one who fucking lies to me.

I’m like a hound dog stuck to her ass, relentlessly following her because I have to know for sure. That he’s gay and why the fuck she let me believe otherwise. Why the charade, why the weeks of agony when I could have just …. I could have fixed us. I could have fixed everything so long ago.

As soon as they saunter off and it’s only the two of us out here on the doorstep, Sophs turns and tries to dodge me, making it obvious she isn’t going to offer any kind of explanation and tries to veer around me to go back inside. I am in no mood for avoidance, not when I find out the girl, I am crazy about and only stayed away from has been hiding behind a fucking lie. A huge one that changes everything.

I grab her by the hand as she passes and pull her back with me. Head set on answers and being a drunk asshole because I’m fucking raging that she kept the truth from me. To hurt me? To fuck me up? Yeah, I deserved it, but it still sucks that it cuts this deep and she has no idea what it’s stopped me from doing these past months. How many times I stood outside her apartment and didn’t come to her, didn’t try harder to reach out or get to her. How much I have pined, ached, and longed to see her. He’s all that stood in my way because I thought she had moved on and all I ever wanted was to see her happy.

I pull her down the steps with me, into the garden, focused on heading to my own garden and away from eyes, ears and fucking gay friends who pretend to be boyfriends in an attempt to keep her away from me. So not in the mood for interference when I have a lot to say and I’m drunk enough to do it. Moving fast, paced with anger and aware of her struggling to keep up. She tries to get her wrist free from me but in no way am I letting her go until we have this out. She has no idea the agony I’ve been

through thinking she was with him, that her and him were ... I can’t even. The thought of it presses on my ribs and makes breathing harder.

“We need to talk,” I hear the slur in my voice and tell myself to calm down. To remember why Sophs no longer has anything to do with me and why I’m dragging her petite little ass across the street like a madman on a rampage.

I’m the one who should be groveling, explaining and I need to stop raging because I’m hurt. Need to remind myself of how much I hurt her and why she might’ve pretended to have someone else. To keep me away, to protect her heart. To make sure I stayed out of her life because of what I did. To convince me she didn’t need me anymore and show me she had severed all ties and meant it. All of which stab me in the stomach with the reality of why she stopped me from getting near her again.

“Arrick slow down, wait!” her voice is panicked, tugging backwards but her resistance only makes me worse. Her struggling to get away from me and making it clear that all this time, she chose to keep me thinking she had moved on with another guy. It cuts me to the bone and rips me to shreds inside. I would have chased her, I would have crawled on my knees to her, to see her, to beg for forgiveness to have her back in any way. She delayed all that because I thought she had fallen for another guy.

“Why did you let me think you and he were together? “I spin on her angrily when I get us into the side passage of my mom’s garden. It’s secluded and private enough here and far from the party. Blocking her in the side of my home and she stumbles into my sudden halt, falling off her ridiculously high shoes and into my chest. She goes over her ankle and yelps, grabbing onto my arm and abdomen to stop herself and I instinctively catch her in my arms, pulling her against me, stopping her falls and it calms some of my fire.

Stupid shoes.

I lean down and pull them off her feet automatically, swooping into us of old and tending to her so she can stand on the soft grass without breaking her leg, and drop them beside her before straightening up to glare at her for answers. Heart racing, body poised because so much importance rides on this little tiny fact. I’m almost crippled with a low guttural fear that maybe he isn’t gay, and she does love him that way.

Her face changes from pale shock at minor pain to all out Sophie rage, bristling up, little warrior posture pulling free and she shoves me hard in the chest to get me the hell off her.

“I didn’t tell you I was with him in that way, not once! Don’t you dare hit me with this shit!” she spits angrily; my fiery little diva hitting full throttle as she squares up to me, enraged that I have accused her of something she has clearly done. For a moment that swell of pride and warmth stirs deep down. I always loved this side of her, even when I was on the receiving end. The evidence of teaching her to never let anyone every mistreat her again. Her fire, her fight, her spirit. It’s the beauty of Sophs. I makes my anger sizzle down and my heart open wider to continue bleeding out.

“Then why would Jake think that? Why would you not want to see me again? Tell me straight, Sophie … is there someone, are you seeing anyone? Have you moved on?” I’m cycling between anger, real fear, and fucking despair. Heart pounding through my chest as logic starts to push in and the very real chance that Sophs might not have moved on at all, and instead of hopeless unrequited love, she might actually still have a modicum of feeling for me and I should be begging her, not yelling at her. Then there are the doubts that he’s not gay, I’m being a drunk asshole and she’s about to tear me a new one and never speak to me again.

I impulsively catch her delicate chin in my hand and tug her to face me, towards me so desperate for real answers and no bluffs, lies or games. Anger subsiding when faced with the enraged woman I would die for and the feel of her near me, making everything less shitty. Longed to be this close to her for months now.

Sophie recoils and shoves me hard across the arm to dislodge my hold, that inner demon sparking in her eyes and I drop my hands when faced with the version of her I used to see often. Blown away by the appearance of my hurricane. There’s not one version of her that I could ever dislike. She’s my beautiful storm, who has the power to rip through my heart and devastate every part of me.

“It has nothing to do with you.” she snaps, furiously, glaring at me with venom and I’m shocked at the fury and poison behind that look. Winded by the very real evidence that my hurting her has left her just as messed up as I’ve been for months. My anger fully sizzles away to nothing at all when faced with sheer fury and what to others would look like irredeemable hatred. I know I have a chance, a glimmer of hope to talk her down and around and maybe a chance at fixing some of my mistakes. I know her, I know what I see.

“It does when I can’t stop thinking about you, can’t stop missing you. I just need to know Sophie if I blew it … if I’m too late?” I lock my focus on that beautiful face, seeing the tears well in her eyes, the stubborn jut of that chin and all the little tells that the Sophie wall is fully functioning and up around her on all sides. She’s seething, throwing me her strongest hostile, ‘I hate you’ vibes, which can only mean my baby’s in real pain, and she might still care about me too. If she had moved on, I wouldn’t be able to wound her anymore, no matter what I was saying to her. Not like this, to this depth.

“Don’t you fucking dare! You don’t have a right to do this to me again … To say this to me!” it’s spat in accusation, shielding heartbreak and only because I know her the way I do, I see it. The fire, the venom, the tough girl lashing at me and hating me because I hurt her. I broke my angel, and this is the fall out that I deserve. I recoil inwardly, all anger dying when I realize I should never have started this with rage. I should have come at her on my knees and asked for forgiveness. She’s not as fierce as she likes people to think and I pushed her into a corner without stopping to treat her heart delicately. I forced this reaction. I’m a dumbass, and it pulls a sense of calm to my ravaged soul, a tiny slap of sober. That I need to change my approach.

“Sophie, I just want to talk, to explain.” My voice breaks a little as my tone and manner fully switch from anger to heart felt submission. Knowing I have no right to be mad at her for protecting herself against me. I deserved it. I don’t want to fight with her, I don’t care if she let me believe it and it’s fucked me up for weeks, it’s nothing in the grand scheme of things or compared to how I wounded her. Focusing on the fact that it means she isn’t in love with him, dating him and I might stand a chance at some redemption if I stop fucking around and tell her how much I need her.

“I’m not a toy you can pick up and drop anytime you feel like it, Arrick. You hurt me. You chose someone else. You don’t get to come back and try again. You don’t get back in.” her voice waivers, her eyes filled with moisture as she tries to avoid looking at me and scoops to grab her shoes, making it clear she’s leaving. I panic, not willing to let her go ever again and not ready to be done with this conversation when I haven’t had a chance to say half the shit spiraling in my mind, now we’re here. Cold icy terror grasping my guts with the very real possibility she might walk off. I catch her by the wrist as she straightens up, pull her to me in a bid to keep her here but Sophie flies into demon mode and shoves at me, slapping with her shoe at my arm so I release her before she darts back out of reach. Wild eyed and panting. Scolded by my touch.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever fucking touch me again.” She screeches at me viscously; raw pain on show as tears cascade down her face, an expression that rips my soul in two because it’s exactly the same as the night I shredded her heart and rejected her once and for all. That undeniable heartache that I caused her, and it makes me bleed. Everything inside of me crumbles to dust and I’m left with panging, throbbing ache. So much regret and desperation.

“Please, Sophie, hear me out. Give me a chance to explain, a chance to say what I have wanted to say to you for weeks.” I lift my hands defensively, trying to show her I won’t touch her. I know her mind and how she is when in extreme pain. The no touching, give me space or I’ll lash out self-defense mode and I hate that I initiated it. It’s in full throttle and she’s verging on an all-out freak out if I keep pushing her. She begins pacing in a circle, her body bristling, breathing erratic and I can tell its because she

needs to lash out, vent, so close to the breaking point. Her emotions are spiraling, and she can’t calm them without help when she’s like this. Only I could and I have no way of helping her if she won’t let me close. I feel so instantly helpless and the need to hold her consumes me.

“Why? So you can tell me how confused you are? How you don’t want to hurt Natasha? How you love me, but you don’t know how to feel? Go fuck yourself! I moved on … I found a way to deal with things on my own, and the last thing I need is you fucking my head up all over again! Go away.” It’s a spew of tear sodden venomous words, thrown for maximum wounding impact and it does. Truth has a way of slicing your soul. It cripples my heart and I wince like she’s stabbed me with a fishing pole right through the chest because I did all that to her, like a dumb fucking moron who had no idea what he was losing at the time. I don’t have a second to react, or respond, when she spins on her heel and starts stomping away. Making it clear she’s done with this, me, us, and walking away.

I follow her desperately, I mean, what else can I do. She’s literally my entire reason for breathing and hate me or not, I swore I would never let her walk away again if I ever got the chance. I love her, she’s all I want in life and I can’t let her go without a fight. I won’t give up until I say everything I need her to hear and do everything in my power to have her listen to me.

“Do you want me to beg? I will, I’ll beg … on my knees, Sophie. If that’s what it takes for you to hear me out. That’s all I want, just a chance to speak to you.” I call out in despair and pace after her into the middle of our street, dropping to my knees impulsively as the words flow out, to show her I’m serious, and holding my palms out skywards, praying she stops and stays. I so badly want her to turn around and for her to listen. I don’t know what else to do. She deserves grand gestures and sonnets, not drunk assholes in the street who can barely stop slurring, making a damn fool of themselves, but I’m working with what I’ve got.

She glances back sassily, a flick of attitude and anger, eyes filled with tears as though expecting it to be a lie and shudders to a halt when she sees me on the ground. A look of shock passing across her

sweet face in a nanosecond. My heartbeat stops with a flutter at her instant response.

“Stop it. Get up. Don’t do that.” She yells at me, turning and waving her hands, motioning for me to get back up as though somehow my doing this is the absolute worst thing in the world. I don’t move. I’m broken and the woman I’m crazy about is going to walk away for a second time if I don’t grovel and beg and tell her how much I need her. I can’t go through life without her. It’s too hard, too empty, too bleak and she took al the sun and goodness, the happiness with her when she walked out.

My eyes are blurry as I’m overcome with aching pain, my throat hoarse with pent up emotion and the need to have her stay with me. I have nothing else if I don’t have her. I can’t let her go on not hearing it from me, my mouth my words, that I love her and losing her was the single worst mistake of my life.

Something in her expression snaps and she marches at me, angrily, sobbing her beautiful little heart out and starts tugging at my jacket in a bid to haul me up, looking around likes she’s scared people will see me and it strikes a pain in my heart. That she cares that I’ll embarrass myself, or the fact she knows I don’t so public shows of vulnerable and emotional. For her I will, for her I would walk barefoot through fire and brimstone to show her I love her. Sore knees on cold uneven gravel is nothing compared to months of agony at not being in her life.

“I want you back, Sophs … I need you. I can’t keep going on like this, without you. It just gets worse with every passing day. I can’t do it …. I’ve tried and I can’t live a Sophieless life.” She’s still tugging hopelessly as I swallow hard and try to bring her focus back to me, meaning every word. Body wracked with a toothache like throbbing, knees starting to really smart through my tux pants and remaining stiff in keeping this position. I will beg her for an eternity if it’s what it takes. A heartfelt tear rolls down my cheek in utter desperation to have her back in my life in any way I can get her. For her not to hate me the way she seems to now and to stop fighting for one second so I can try and break through her steel walls again.

“I don’t want to face a future that doesn’t have you in it. I can’t live that way. Nothing means anything anymore.” My voice breaks as my emotions do. Aching for her, needing her more than air, and feeling hopeless in how to navigate this. How to undo everything I’ve broken.

Sophs covers her ears as she drags in a ragged breath, inhaling a sob, crumbling from tough and fierce to small and wounded and showing me that somewhere in there I can still make her cry. This affects her on some deeper level, and that means there’s hope that she still cares enough. That my words struck a chord and she maybe misses me too. She moves to covering her face when a fresh torrent of tears hit her instead and I can’t stand it anymore. Crushing, heavy pain consumes me that my baby sobbing in the street, looking this broken at my hands and my carelessness with her heart.

I jump to my feet, stalking to her and wrapping my arms around her upper body to hug her instinctively. Wrapping myself around her fragile, tiny, figure and almost melting at being able to get this close to her. Nothing and no one ever feels like she does. That coming home, that missing part to my being that somehow slots in and makes the world feel right and safe again. Sophie is the missing piece; she always has been.

Finding a way to slide a hand under her chin softly and tugging her up to face me so I can see her. I try to calm myself back to that cool solid she needs in her life. To be her grounding force and push my head mess and frazzled emotions aside as I pull myself together. She doesn’t fight me. She relents. I feel the change in her stiff stance as she hesitates, sags slightly, and I can’t contain how good she feels.

A warm rush of adrenaline that I get the first tiny hints that she’s softening, that she’s responding to me and it completely overwhelms me in every way. I step in a little more, lean in and do what I’ve dreamt of since I let her leave me. I kiss her. Finding her mouth, pressing against her with all the passion and longing coursing through me of months of despair and emptiness at losing her, as I find my way back home against the only girl that’s ever really mattered to me.

It’s bittersweet. The soft press of her sweet warm mouth, memories flooding in to remind me of her taste, her smell, the way my heart self-combusts and my stomach fills with butterflies at this kind of contact. My head and crazy mind falls silent, like I slip effortlessly under a calm warm sea as nothingness and contentment floods my soul and brings me real peace again. Sophie was always the anchor to my internal manic insanity. Just like I’m the steady rock to her outward hurricane.

For a second, she stops, caves and kisses me back, for the sweetest locking and joining of lips that ignites tingles and goosebumps over my entire body. Lost to her, floating in space and free falling as I lose consciousness to everything but the feel of her mouth against mine. A parting of her lips signals her falling into this with me, as I move to take this to another level of intense as passion sears and need for her overtakes logic. Heart somersaulting at her touch, being back with her this way, physically rejoicing in being allowed to taste her once again and she’s as sweet as I remember.

And then she slaps me.

I don’t see or feel it coming at all and it knocks me for six. Good old Sophie recoil, she yanks back and delivers a face tingling one hander that knocks some sense and sobriety into my thick skull and reminds me just how much of a cyclone and sassy diva she can be. Stunned with the impact, brain jolted from fantasy land and knocked with a stinging thud back to the here and now and faced with my hellcat whose spitting teeth and my audacity to kiss her. My cheek tingles and I take a moment to reel my head back around at the fact, she actually slapped me.

Sophs? Babe?