The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

He disappears into the crowd with the force of my assault and I move fast, knowing better than to stick around for him to come back, trying to get out of sight before he gets back to his original spot. Heart racing a little as adrenaline flows and sense tells me to duck and weave faster to the safety of the dark, back wall of the club.

Men in this club are known for being aggressive and perverted at the best of times, and I’ve been groped on more than one occasion to know it’s true. One weekend had seen too close a call with one hot-tempered asshole who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Arrick had shown up just in time and broken his nose when he had refused to back down. Arry my pro boxing hero.

“Leave me alone!” I yell back as an afterthought, almost coherently, to the general direction he’s fallen back; my slurring voice non-existent under the thumping house music and intent on just finding a quiet place to get off my tired legs to hide. I’m exhausted.

I wish Arry was here already and helping me out to his car, so I can lie down and go to sleep. The thought of him coming for me is all that is keeping me sane right now; alcohol and tears are never a good mix. I’m disheveled, out of place and vulnerable. I’m not sure if I should even tell him about why I’m upset this time, why I have been crying.

Arrick hates my friends, not that I can’t see why, as they’re all pretty pathetic and really just the crowd I fell into when I came here.

I can’t ever seem to form real friendships with people, no matter how hard I try, and I know it’s because I don’t ever let them past my outer wall. It’s the same with men I date. I hide who I really am behind that mask of party girl and reckless persona and attract the wrong kind. Arrick hates the men I date almost as much as I hate his girlfriend Natasha, and another sob story about how hard done to I am by one of them again, will just annoy him. I can’t say that I blame him; it annoys me too, that I’ve become this pathetic doormat that men wipe their feet on, and I let them.

My stomach churns like a washing machine, my throat aches, painfully parched. I sobbed for an hour before even calling him this time, letting the hazy flurry of booze clear a little so I didn’t slur as much on the phone to him, and it’s left me feeling raw and woozy.

have no idea where my so-called friends are, and last time I saw my handbag it was in the hands of that slimy prick Terry. I left him to hold it for me when I’d gone to dance. Terry is the guy I’ve been dating, on and off, most recently, nothing serious. Just looking for that guy who may be different

disbelief made me stand in open-mouthed silence, before shock, and then outrage hit me. Reacting

cried my eyes out. Completely betrayed by two people I should have been able to

promises to pay it back. My clothes, my shoes and now my man. Luckily, my cell was in the back pocket of my denim skirt, a habit Arry drilled into me from an early age. To always keep my cell phone on me in case I ever need him … no matter what.

the ladies’ room, tear-stained and lightheaded to find them, I realized I’d been abandoned. We all came here to get drunk before our main event;

of them cares about me, they only care that I pay my share, or more, of the booze, and don’t cause drama. No one bothers even looking for me and it’s why I always end up calling

hero coming to rescue me and take care of me for a while, that guy who never abandons me, even if he is pissed at me for calling. It’s stopped me falling off the edge of the cliff I’m dangerously walking along many a time. My haven of calm, my island in

are only around for the party but never the aftermath, and even then, only around as long as my allowance doesn’t run out. Tired of being used and discarded by men when they move on to someone else, as though I’m worth no more than a cheap night out

way through the last crowded expanse to the empty back seats of the club, into the darkest and quieter shadows, despite Arry telling me never to venture back here alone. Into the depths, but I’m so consumed with needing to sit down and put my head on something to stop it from spinning. I need to just sit and breathe

This isn’t the first cheating asshole I dated, and