The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

Arry doesn’t come back, he texts from the airport and says he needs time to cool off and will call me when he lands. I don’t bother replying and he doesn’t text again to see why I don’t.

Heartbroken that he went and did the one thing he never does; walked out and left me when we are fighting the worst kind of fight. It feels like a betrayal, that he’s broken a promise and the way I am feeling, I want to hate him. Hating him for four days will be easier than missing him.

I go to the kitchen and grab the ice cream from the freezer, eating so much I make myself throw up and then lay on bed feeling about a thousand times worse. I despise that he can make me feel this desolate, that when we argue he becomes the one obsessive thought in my head, and I cannot function beyond it.

Love sucks.

I lay my hand on my stomach and flinch when I do, like an internal guilt filter kicks in and I find myself peering down the length of my body.

“I didn’t mean it.” I say loudly, looking at the flat expanse of stomach and then look away again refusing to acknowledge that I am even talking to it. I feel dumb, but I can’t shake the regret at telling it that Arry leaving was its fault.

I know what it feels like to have someone who’s supposed to love you, hate you instead. I’m nothing like them. Even though I don’t want it, something in me feels like a shitty human for telling it this is it’s doing.

I get frustrated with myself and try to shake the conflicting confusing thoughts out of my head and sit up. Still tear stained, still sniffing and ache for him, even though I hate him.

I try to push down the nausea which swirls around me whenever it feels like it is peeking out and banish all thoughts of something growing inside of me away harshly, like I do every time my mind strays there.

Don’t think it exists and it won’t be real. Ignore it.

I notice my phone is lit up across on the bedside table and realize I left it on silent after I got his text. it’s been a long time since he left. An hour maybe. I don’t even know what time his flight was going out, so it might be him if he is sat in the departure area waiting. I get up slowly and wander over to it, seeing the list of missed calls and one text. All with little ‘Arry xXx’ symbols in a row.

Despite myself I pick it up and open his text, bracing myself for a lecture or something harsh and inhale quickly to suppress my anxiety.

I’m sorry. We need to focus on coming home, everything feels like it’s hanging in mid-air and suspended while we are stuck there. I love you, Sophie. More than you know. Both of you. Don’t hate me, baby, I’ll call you later. Xx A

makes me

insides. Tingly, weird feelings that

emotional exhaustion are crying for me to lay down and take a nap and I can’t think of anything better. If I reply we

my act together, he’s right. I can’t keep on like this, refusing to face what’s real and what’s happening. Whether I like it or not, there is a little thing inside of me that is already growing. I have no clue how

me. Arry tries so hard to be what I need, to take care of me; it’s not his fault everything is falling apart inside of me. My dreams and hopes were pinned on Paris. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life in every way and I have never felt so alone as I do right now. Have done for the past two weeks even with him here. This is the peak of

it or not, I won’t be able to start in New York when term goes back in two and a half months. I’ll be almost four months pregnant, Arry will be a nightmare, I know him. I remember what Jake was like over Emma and as much

overbearing and suffocating when they’re in carer mode. Bossy and controlling if he thinks he knows best. It will be another round of fights and for what? A couple of months before the school say I’m a

whole year out is like wiping the slate clean and I would be as well starting all over again. My Career won’t get off the ground at all. Before I get a chance, I’ll be elbow deep in diapers and bottles and have some

know about being a mom? About giving love and support to a

give a shit about anyone else, that’s what I learned from my birth mom. My adopted mom got

most of the time who is too reliant on him for everything. Can’t fend for myself, so

I’m a mess, a failure of epic proportions. A woman who can’t even get her head around something women are meant to do and have

up as bad as Emma was messed up before Jake? She’s told me extensively of the affects her mother had on her over the years, and her final absence in Emma’s life since she married Jake. Emma’s mom has not been in the picture at all, not even with the arrival of

to be that way? So cut off and unable to love anyone properly except Arrick. He’s the only one I ever let close, ever let under my skin properly in every way. Emma, I see as a guardian, but she still doesn’t get near the way he does. She doesn’t” know the half of the things

or let it love me? What if I am so emotionally fucked up that the maternal instinct doesn’t exist in

though I have learned to function a bit more like everyone else. Deep down underneath it all, I am still that little kid who had to fight to stay alive. Who had to blank out her mind to endure being raped by her father repeatedly. She shows up when I am low when I am angry or upset. She lashes out, she acts like an idiot when she’s in pain or defensive. She pushes people away and she runs. Every fucking time it gets too much, she runs. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. I’m doing it now, with him, with this. I’ll do it with my kid, and I will fuck it up the way I

I hurt my baby?

how it’s felt from day one, as things go around in my head. This is why I won’t stop and face the fact that there is a baby inside of my womb. I can’t let a baby have me as a mother. I can’t destroy an innocent little human that way. Arrick would dismiss this, tell me I am overreacting, but this is how I feel. This is

planning what pram to buy, while I am treading water to stay afloat. We don’t talk because it goes one way and

Then when I wake up, I can text him back and try to not kill each other while half a world apart and

up under the duvet with the intention of blocking it all out, switching on the TV in our room

***

with the smells of food wafting through the apartment and the faint sounds of music. That means Janetta is in the kitchen and by the looks of it I have slept the entire day away. I must have needed it more than I realized, and I sit up groggy and lightheaded. I feel weird. Hot, but not like flushes hot. I’m feverish and the nausea is all consuming. My head is throbbing, and I am so thirsty my throat aches. My body is heavy and achy like flu or something and when I try to get up,