The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

Arrick’s POV

~ Letting Sophie go ~

I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling of my room. I haven’t moved from this spot all night, still fully dressed and unable to even get up and function. The weight in my chest is almost holding me in place, crushing me with the pain, and I can’t stop running last night through my mind endlessly. I’m restless, torn, scrunching my fingers in my hair like I can rip this out of my head. The worst sort of agony that surpasses all.

I want to go to her room and see her, but I can’t. I can’t get her out of my head, even though she is only feet away and it’s torturing me.

I kissed Sophie... I did more than kiss her, and it felt good, it felt right. It made me feel a thousand things about her that I can’t even begin to analyze, comprehend how to, and all it did was make everything fall apart even more than it was, especially when Natasha showed up and slapped me back to reality. I know that I have feelings for her, so overwhelming that it’s terrifying and I have no clue how to navigate it without completely losing my mind. She makes me feel like I’m on the edge of a precipice and one little step will send me falling to the depths. It’s the single most terrifying thing I have ever felt.

Sophie scares me. Her blind faith and trust that we can just come together, and I will be everything she needs and wants in life. It’s crushing and suffocating, that she has so much faith in what she thinks it will be; she has no clue about the depths of pain that come with it falling apart. How real the threat of not working is, how it will destroy us. And there is no guarantee that we won’t fall apart.

I wanted her so badly, every part of my body, blocking out the niggles and doubts, despite the tidal wave of them. Natasha was the last thing on my mind, only Sophs and that beautiful face as she looked at me with those gorgeous blue eyes, that mouth that just aches to be kissed. She has no idea how much I wanted to lose myself in her and forget everything else around us. The pull she has always had over me.

She’s like a siren who was built specifically to pull me in and mesmerize me alone. Natasha showing up and destroying all that was a slap in the face. A wake-up call for a million reasons. I can’t go down that road with Sophie, I have too much to lose. Everything that clouds how I feel about her, the way her family would look at me for chasing her that way. I have everyone’s trust, including hers, and it crosses so many boundaries to give into my desires. She was a child when I met her, one who needed me, needed a hero and a protector. I would be abusing so much if I let my own needs overtake all that. It would destroy what we have if it all fell apart, there would be no coming back from that, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Natasha was distraught, her sobbing and heart-breaking almost ended me; sitting for hours with her while my guilt consumed me. Listening to her cry, trying to fix what I did. All the while, my head on the girl I left in my apartment the whole time and it made it all so much worse to deal with. I just clamped down and hid inside my own head. Saying what I needed to, to get her to stop crying and realizing that neglecting my life with her was happening long before Sophie made me think differently about her.

I need to go back and water my own garden, nurture my relationship back to happier times and stop fantasizing about something new and exciting. I’m not someone who just destroys the heart of the girl who loves me. Not that guy. Not some cheating ass hole who throws everything away and acts so coldly.

Only hours before, did I promise her, a fresh start, to fix the mess growing between us and yet there I was, moments away from picking up my best friend and making love to her. I know I would have, Sophie was willing, and I was incapable of stopping. I only saw and felt her, and in that headspace, it was all that mattered to me. Pulled in by her spell and so willing to follow her to the ends of eternity. It would have solved nothing and only served to destroy everything, so close to the brink of complete disaster.

I hear the noise of her in the room outside and I pause, holding my breath as she does whatever she is doing out there and it makes the pain in my gut grow larger, threatening to consume me from the inside out. It sounds like she’s pulling boxes, or a case and I know I should get up and help her. No. I should stop her. Although, I’m the one who told her to go so maybe I shouldn’t. We need time apart, space. I’m so fucked up about this. I don’t even know what to do, so instead, I just lay here, tense, muscles taut and poised.

I told her I chose Natasha.... Even when I was saying it, it was like sawdust in my throat and the look on her face ripped me apart. I couldn’t breathe, but I know it’s the right thing to do. More than just Sophie’s heart is at stake in this, and as much as it kills me right now, I know she will forgive me eventually. She’ll understand that having each other, forever, as friends... is better than an affair that could end us for all time. I need her too much to screw everything up with sex. I need her in my life and if we cross that boundary, there’s no guarantee of that. I need the guarantee that I won’t lose her.

I can hear the scraping of something heavy and I sit up, body tense, still, and aching to go to her, but something holds me back. A deep internal feeling of something that won’t let me follow her, as though some invisible force has me gripped. I need to let her do this, leave and work through this mess in separate places.

still silently straining to hear her. Picturing her

me before I get up. Not that I blame her. I fucked us up royally last night, and the look on her face is all I can fixate on. It’s killing me to remember that betrayal, that pain in those eyes I love so much. It gnaws at me like an eternal twisting slice. Every time I see her in there,

constricts, and I have to fight the urge to clutch my gut. She knows how to make me bleed. With a look. A killing little look. A word. A sentence.

words that ripped out the last pieces of my heart and trampled them to dust when I faced her last night. Only Sophs could make those five words a more

pressed the button to summon it and I’m on my feet in a flash, needing to stop her without thinking anymore. Panic rising inside of me, and impulsively going after her. Fear

to the door, hand on the metal handle and I can’t move. Natasha swimming in my mind, guilt eating

the good guy. Don’t be selfish and hurt people who love you. Be a good boy. Stop letting this mess

to drown out the chaos. Instinct takes over as I hear the swoosh

Don’t lose her.... Don’t

her feet and she looks so god damn small, and fragile. That slim little body, holding herself in

doors, running against the hysteria consuming me. Needing to pull her out of that elevator to tell her I don’t mean any of it. To wrap her in my arms and make it all better for her. That’s my job! That’s my soul purpose in life; to be

destroy all of that? Why did I

it’s shut; frantically clawing at the tiny gap in the doors to peel them apart and getting nowhere. I hit the button manically. Over and over, willing the doors to open for me, pressing it like I might impale it through the wall, acting like a complete lunatic but they don’t. The

No, Sophs!!!

it. I’m breathing hard, body

really walking

stomach is telling me this is all wrong and try as I might to calm my breathing and the tension growing inside of me. I can’t push it away. I run back to my room, searching for my cell, searching for shoes to go after her. Manically throwing shit around as I look for it and realize I have no clue where it is. I pull on sneakers haphazardly, throw on a hooded sweater without hesitation and grab my car keys in a blind flash, head set on one

her. If you let her go, you’ll

in front of it. It’s the downside to an access via elevator only, floor. One fucking exit. I could die up here in a fire, waiting on this god damn piece of shit. Die waiting for a fucking elevator, while she could already be in a cab, going god knows where, as I have no clue what her plans are after leaving me. My insides

in the apartment behind me and spin impulsively, frantic taking over, in case it’s her and manically running back, searching for the source. I spy it on the counter in the kitchen, with my wallet, and realize she must have left them there for me... after Natasha....

Fuck.

like she’s reading my mind, knowing how close I am to tearing after Sophie and sending us all back to square one. It’s like fate is using her as a guilt

my personal hell, knowing I can’t keep doing this shit. It’s not fair on either of them. I stare at the screen and stand still, from erratic chaos to icy cold stillness. Watching it flash, listening

I am supposed to love, a girl I promised forever too, who loves me, who trusts me, who spent two years