Winter's Heart

by Warneke, A. C.

  But then he stiffened and when he pulled her off his body, he glared at her with ice in his blue eyes, “Don’t touch me.”

  His words sliced through her because she didn’t understand why he was so cold. Tears welled in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around her shaking body to hold herself together. Icy fury radiated off him as his cold glare became frigid, “And don’t you dare cry. You don’t have the right to cry after what you’ve done and, for God’s sake, stop playing the innocent. You no longer have me fooled.”

  “I don’t understand.” The words were barely audible but they were loud enough for Winter to hear.

  He laughed in a cruelly scathing manner as he scrubbed his fingers through his hair that looked like he had been doing that all morning. Piercing her with his eyes, he sneered, “You’re just like everyone else, aren’t you? No, you’re worse because you pretended to fucking care.”

  “I do care.” She said the words but she no longer had a voice as Winter continued his tirade, killing her with every word he uttered.

  Suddenly he turned to her and grabbed her hands, desperation burning in his eyes as he asked, “Just tell me why you did it, Flynn. Tell me why. Did you need the money?”

  Was he talking about accepting the check Melissa had written her? She knew she wasn’t supposed to accept tips but it was a pittance compared to what Gilded Dreams got. Besides, she hadn’t even cashed it yet.

  As he pressed his hand against her cheek, as he brushed his thumb over her lower lip, he rasped in an agonized voice, “God, look at you. Even now you have the look of innocence down pat. If I hadn’t seen the article for myself I would have never have believed you could be so treacherous.”

  Her brows drew together as words spilled out of his mouth and twisted until she was certain he was speaking an alien language. What article? “What article?”

  “You clever girl,” he chided, pulling a magazine out of the inside pocket of his coat. Holding it up, she saw the headline and felt the color drain from her face. “Ah, there it is, the silent admission of guilt.”

  “I didn’t write it,” she protested, unable to tear her eyes away from the words that taunted her:

  WINTER FILES: A TALE OF DECEPTION AND LUST

  BY FLYNN ROGERS

  “Come now, I think we both know that you did,” he sneered. Opening it up to a page that was already creased with multiple views, he began to read, each word another scoop of dirt on her grave. She was going to be ill because every word he spoke had only ever been spoken to her and now, somehow, the whole world knew. The evidence against her was damning and if she didn’t know the truth, she would think she was guilty as hell.

  Every little detail he told her in confidence was there, from Storm’s paternity to his relationship with Melissa to the three girls from high school to his DUI to Addison Holmes. Taking a breath, he seemed to relax as he softly asked, “Did you know Ginger was Addison Holmes?” At her silence, he stiffened, “Did you know at the Masquerade?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t lie, even though she had seen the hope in his eyes that she hadn’t known, that it couldn’t have been her because Ginger’s identity was something he hadn’t known. His body stiffened as he sneered, his hard eyes glancing at the magazine she held in trembling hands.

  “‘He talked about warming her bottom with his hand and then fucking her until she couldn’t walk for a week,’” he quoted the article from memory. “‘Let me take your ass, Flynn. I can show you how good it can be,’ he begged, week after week, month after month until he finally wore me down and I let him violate me in that most forbidden manner on his birthday.’ Do you see what I mean that no one else could have written it? But violate, Flynn? It was fully consensual, unless you plan on accusing me of rape?”

  She frantically shook her head no, meaning that she would never accuse him of rape because it had always been consensual. Everything she did, she did willingly.

  He stiffened until he was painfully erect and a look of pain peered out from behind the arctic anger. “You’d do that, Flynn? You’d accuse me of rape.”

  “No!” she cried out, frozen to the ground where she stood. Holding her hands out in supplication, knowing she shook unmercifully, she begged him, “I didn’t write it, Winter. Please, you have to believe me.”

  In a defeated voice, he looked at her with sorrow and asked, “Who else could have done it, Flynn?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried, wracking her mind for someone, anyone. “Maybe Melissa?”

  He looked at her as if he didn’t know her, “I never told Melissa three quarters of what is in this article. The only person I ever told was you. And there was that file on your tablet, Flynn, the one of the same title.”

  “But it wasn’t me,” she protested feebly. Why didn’t he believe her, damn the evidence?

  Because he had once been betrayed by those he loved so why would he think she was different?

  “It’s not just my life you have upset,” he continued, his words flat, his tone dull. “The girls I went to high school with have families, Flynn. They will now have to live with this embarrassment and while I was the one who foolishly fucked them, you’re the one who told the world. And the things you said about Melissa… She has been nothing but kind to you and you tell the world she hates her fans, her fame and fortune.

  “And what about poor Addison Holmes?” he continued, laying her sins that weren’t her sins at her feet. “She’s a good girl, Flynn.”

  “You’ve met her?” she asked stupidly, her brain clawing at his words, trying to put them into any order that made sense.

  He huffed a cold laugh, “Missy’s had her over to the house before so, yeah, I know her. She doesn’t deserve to be branded a whore because of what she did. It’s no worse than what other young actresses do to get ahead in this world but no one talks about them.

  “I might have been able to forgive you for spilling those secrets,” he rumbled, emotion seeping back into his words as his eyes hardened once more. “But I cannot forgive you for what you’ve done to my son. He’s just a child, Flynn, just a little boy. He loved you, Flynn, trusted you, Flynn, and you threw him to the wolves. The sordid details of his birth will always be out there, Flynn, all thanks to you.”

  “Shut up,” she whispered, unable to take any more accusations. Tears streamed uselessly down her face but she hardly felt them since her heart was a worthless rock in her chest. Covering her ears, she turned her back on him and begged, “Please just shut up.”

  The heat of his body wrapped around her as he pressed his chest against her back but she didn’t feel it. She was frozen through and through and she didn’t think she’d ever feel heat again. “What’s wrong, Flynn? You can dish it out but you can’t take it?”

  “Please stop saying my name like that,” she cried.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you hate me.”

  “Oh, Flynn, you have to have some emotion to feel hate,” he savaged her with his words. “I don’t feel anything for you.”

  His hands moved over her shoulders in a mocking caress and then he was gone, slamming the door behind him as he left. The world whirled around her but her head was in a fog as she closed the lid on her emotions. She knew that if even the slightest drop got through she would implode and she needed her sister there before she could do that.

  Numb, she walked like a zombie over to the desk and picked up her phone, hitting Fallon’s number.

  “Hey, Flynn, what’s up?” Fallon’s cheerful voice said.

  Choking back a sob that she couldn’t afford to let loose just yet, she asked, “Can you come home?”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Fallon demurred. “I’m all the way across town and I’m up soon. What’s up?”

  “I think I’m dying,” Flynn rasped, her chest hitching as another sob tried to tear through her.

  There was a moment of silence before Fallon let out a light laugh, “And you call me the dramatic one. What’s wrong? Did you get your period and run o
ut of tampons?”

  In the back of her head she hazily remembered that Fallon was at an important casting call. She shouldn’t have called but the ache inside of her was growing rapidly, clawing at her and trying to get out. A third sob caught in her throat, expanding until she thought her airway was going to be cut off. Giving it a moment to subside, she choked, “When will you be home?”

  At once, Fallon’s entire demeanor changed as concern flooded her voice. “Flynn, what’s wrong?”

  “Just come home as soon as you can.” Hanging up, she stared down at the phone for an eternity before letting it drop to the ground. The chaos inside of her was growing, pushing against its restraints and threatening to overwhelm her. It was stealing pieces of her body, gnawing at her guts, scratching at her skin, tearing at her unmoving heart. If she remained perfectly still she might be able to hold herself together long enough for her sister to return and fix her with duct tape because she knew that if she so much as twitched she would shatter.

  The door opened behind her and she could feel herself disintegrating.

  “Flynn,” a low male voice said, halting her body’s disintegration. Harry. Fallon must have called him. Why would her sister do that? Flynn couldn’t very well fall to pieces in front of him. Holding herself as still as possible, she turned her head and looked at him but he was looking at the door with a bemused expression on his pierced face. “Why are there media vans and reporters haunting the grounds outside your apartment?”

  She started to open her mouth but thought better of it when a fourth sob rushed forwards in its eagerness to take the place of her words. When she didn’t answer, Harry turned his head and looked at her. She watched in fascination as the bad ass, tattooed and pierced man widened his eyes to impossible widths as he seemed to fall sideways until she realized she was the one falling. He crossed the room in two seconds flat and his arms were around her before she hit the floor.

  “Flynn, what happened?” he pleaded, the gentleness in his voice so at odds with his hard exterior. He was pushing her hair off her face and if she wasn’t mistaken, he was holding her on his lap like a child. It was hard enough to comprehend what he was saying but it didn’t matter anyway since speech was beyond her capabilities at the moment. Rocking her like a baby, he continued in a calm, gentle voice, “You freaked your sister out, Flynn. Fallon called and asked me to come check on you because it was going to take at least an hour for her to get home.”

  He seemed to want a response so she nodded, trying to find a dark corner in her mind where she could hide until the pain went away. It was getting so close now that each breath was like breathing in frost. She was fairly certain that ice now flowed through her veins because she was so very cold.

  Warm arms tightened around her but they were the wrong warm arms. Warm lips pressed against her forehead but they were the wrong warm lips. A warm voice whispered in her ear but it was the wrong warm voice. “Tell me what happened, baby girl. Tell me what I can do to make it better.”

  There was nothing he could do because.... Her chest hitched again as she blindly reached for the magazine. When she couldn’t feel it, she looked up at Harry’s compassionate dark eyes, pleading with him to find it for her. His eyes moved off her face and the compassion disappeared as his lips pressed together in a hard line when he reached towards the publication.

  Afraid that he would hate her, too, she scrambled off his lap and curled into a tight ball on the other side of the sofa, staring at him with wide eyes. She watched in growing horror as he picked up the magazine and read the article that had damned her soul to hell, even if she hadn’t written it. Or maybe she had, she no longer knew.

  His expression grew grimmer and grimmer as he read and she tightened her arms around her knees, wanting to bury her face so she didn’t have to see the moment he turned to her with hatred in his dark eyes. His neck worked as he swallowed thickly and then he squeezed his eyes shut and she knew that the moment had come. Her own eyes squeezed shut as she waited for his words of condemnation.

  “Oh, Flynn,” he murmured, his voice soft. Warm hands were pulling her onto a hard lap. Warm hands were once again stroking her hair as a warm body gently rocked her. “My poor baby. It’s not the end of the world, you know. Just tell Winter that you didn’t write it.”

  This time a sob escaped and she buried her face against Harry’s neck. His hands stopped stroking for only a moment before continuing. “He thinks you did it?” At her nod, he growled, “What a fool.”

  She thought she might have fallen asleep because it seemed only moments had passed before she heard her sister’s voice through a fog. “Flynn!”

  “Shhh,” Harry shushed. “She’s finally asleep.”

  There was a dip on the couch and then a cool hand pressed against her forehead as Fallon whispered, “It’s a madhouse out there. What the hell happened?”

  Flynn heard the rustling of slick papers and pried her eyes open to see her sister pick up the hateful magazine. After skimming through it, Fallon leaned back in the chair. “Huh, no wonder why everyone was giving me odd looks today. Why doesn’t she just tell Winter she didn’t write it?”

  “Apparently she tried and he didn’t believe her,” Harry said grimly, still gently rocking her. How long had he been holding her? “But I’m not positive because she isn’t talking.”

  “I want to go home,” she finally managed to say, her words coming out like a four-year-old’s.

  Fallon jumped at the unexpected sound, turning to face her with pity in her eyes. “If you run away it will be an admission of guilt.”

  “What does it matter if the only one who should believe me doesn’t?” she asked in a dead voice, no longer able to meet her sister’s eyes because she couldn’t bear to see the pity there. Not that it would have mattered since she didn’t feel anything, just a dull, nothingness that was comforting because she knew that agony waited on the other side of that numbness. “I just want to go home and lick my wounds.”

  “Stay, Flynn,” Fallon pleaded, rubbing Flynn’s arm as Harry continued to cradle her like a baby. “This will all blow over in a few days, sweetie.”

  Chapter 21

  Except it didn’t blow over, it got exponentially worse. Hate mail arrived by the truckload from Winter’s fans, from Melissa’s fans, from Addison’s fans, from everyone. Flynn was barricaded in her apartment because more and more reporters began camping outside the building in the hopes of catching sight of the infamous Flynn Rogers, the girl who betrayed Winter Mitchell and all of his friends. Everyone hated her for something she hadn’t done but was the only one who could have done it.

  Fallon was stuck as well, unwilling to leave Flynn’s side because that was what sisters did for one another. But it only made Flynn feel worse because her sister was missing auditions left and right. So she pasted on a smile and pretended she was fine while on the inside she was dead. In the week since the magazine hit, she hadn’t shed a single tear but then dead girls don’t cry.

  Sitting on the couch as Fallon took another look out the window, Flynn forced herself to take another bite of Harry’s food that he kept bringing up for them. It tasted like nothing but she didn’t want to worry her sister, who already looked at her with too much concern. Trying to erase that anxiety from Fallon’s eyes, she flippantly asked, “Why didn’t Harry marry me when I asked him to? Then none of this would be happening and I could be getting fat without the paparazzi watching.”

  “Sweetie,” Fallon said, letting the curtain fall back into place and joining Flynn on the couch. “Three bites of food are hardly going to make you fat. Besides, Harry’s mine.”

  Flynn forced her lips into an upwards curve to match her sister’s glowing smile but it hurt. “Maybe we could clone Harry and I can take the clone home with me.”

  “You’re really leaving?” Fallon asked, still not quite accepting the fact that Flynn couldn’t stay or that her plane was leaving in a few hours.

  “I am,” she nodded, laying her fork d
own on the mostly full plate, unable to stomach another mouthful. “As much as I love you, you’ll have more success if you can actually go out there and audition instead of sitting around here holding my hand. Besides, you have Harry.”

  “Sweetie,” Fallon started in that tone that told Flynn exactly what was coming next and she braced herself for it. “We still haven’t talked about… him.”

  “And we’re not going to,” she said through a frozen grin. She was trying so hard to hold it together and if she talked about… him, thought about… him, she’d come back to life and lose it. She’d fucking lose it.

  “Maybe once he calms down….”

  “We’re not talking about him,” Flynn interrupted, her knuckles turning white as she squeezed her hands into fists. She could feel her sluggish blood trying to warm her veins, feel her heart trying to bring her back to the land of the living. It was too soon.

  “He’ll realize he fucked up,” Fallon continued undeterred.

  “Fallon,” Flynn ground out. “There are times when I almost believe I wrote the article. It’s almost completely in my voice and everything written were things that he told only to me. Why would he ever believe otherwise?”

  “Then maybe he never knew you at all despite everything you gave him and you’re better off without him,” Fallon said with all of the conviction that only a sister can muster, deflating when she saw Flynn's sorrow. Offering a sad, resigned smile, she said, “You can use this to your advantage you know. Set up a business and call it Naughty Secrets Event Planners. Sure, the clientele might be a little suspect but you can use your notoriety for good because even whores need love and a well-planned party.”

  Despite her shattered heart, Flynn laughed. Throwing her arms around Fallon’s shoulders, she hugged her sister with all of her might, “I’m going to miss you most of all, Scarecrow.”

  Fallon chuckled, hugging her back. “There’s still time to get me a ticket so I can go back with you.”