The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

I wake up with a dry mouth, burning eyes and pounding head as the sound of music assaults my senses. Arrick has tunes pounding through the floors as I blink awake and realize I am still on the couch, face down, and the blanket is wrapped around my legs like freaking restraints. I feel like utter shit, and the table is littered with cold pizza and the scraps of a weird middle of the night scramble for food. We ate, fell asleep and woke up at the same time. Well actually, stretching out and slapping the back of my hand in his face was the catalyst for his grumpy rise from the dead, and he did try to push me off the sofa in retaliation.

We raided the kitchen for munchies, watched another movie for like an hour while grumpily arguing over absolute pointless crap because we were both tired, and in my opinion, Tom Cruise is far hotter with an Irish accent and boxing gloves, than he is in either Top Gun or Cocktail. We both must have fallen asleep after that, as everything beyond the horse dying in ‘The Never Ending Story’ is hazy in my head.

I can still see the indent on the cushion beside me from his head and the whole couch and I smell like him. I guess he stayed here with me the full night after all.

I groan and look around, spying him in the kitchen, singing to himself as he makes a fresh pot of coffee. He’s still rumpled and wearing last night’s clothes too, so I’m guessing he hasn’t been up for long either.

“Ughh, shut up.” I yell at him and go back to burying my head under the pillow I have been lying on. Annoyed that I have had like no sleep and he is being his usual happy, chirpy morning person self that grates on my nerves. I’m fairly sure he got as little sleep as me and it is way too early for this kind of nonsense.

I swear the music gets louder.

right now, he is a total ass who makes my life a living hell just for the fun of it. I think he gets off

with dazzling smiles is

trying to wipe my eyes awake and tame the hair that is tickling my face.

The grubby residue that ends up on my hands alerts me to the fact I slept in tear-stained makeup and probably look like a train wreck. I groan and get up to lazily trudge to his room for the nearest bathroom; the

him without even looking his way. In no way have I ever been a morning person and with an added hangover I can see me choking him with my bare hands. He laughs as I push open his door and shuffle into his immaculate bedroom, which is still in darkness from not opening the blinds in here.

tangled crazily due to the natural waves that I straighten out of my hair religiously. My face looks like I have been face painted as a panda then stood in a downpour for shits and giggles to let it run off, and I most definitely have bloodshot

door. I run a finger along the unit and pop it open to locate some wash products and spot all of Natasha’s crappy choices of shampoos and shower gels. I select a few and throw them all on the shower floor. I turn to the mirror with another grimace before kicking the bathroom door shut to his bedroom and strip off. I don’t even bother to lock it, knowing if he hears the shower

into his room, a lot more pulled together than the hazy fogginess of being ripped awake leaves. The soothing gray walls and mix of urban meets modern in his domain are welcoming; scaffold, wood and concrete assorted shelving he had built in here hold a lot of books and memorabilia as they span the one wall by the bed facing me. I smile at the large framed picture with Jake his brother, close to his bed. Both smiling back at me affectionately and obviously as close

eye color, it makes them crazily unalike. Like salt and pepper. In build, however, they are clearly matched. They both inherited height from Sylvana’s side of the family, maybe width and strength from Giovanni, but all that muscular Adonis-like power they each share is most definitely straight out of their Italian roots. I find it hard nowadays to pick out which brother is more capable of

so I can get dressed into something that fits me