Everything I want: Will Alfie and Lily's love survive?...

by K. L. Shandwick

  I waited in the restroom with Rosie, so I took the opportunity to put her worries about Jack and me to bed.

  “I love Jack, Rosie. It’s a weird relationship to other people, and I don’t want to hurt you. He’s the nearest thing to being my brother without being my brother. That’s why we can do all that flirty stuff, but that’s all it is, stuff. I know that you don’t want to hear this part, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Jack and I have slept in the same bed for years. Every time we got the chance. We’ve snuggled up to each other, spooned, and hell I even woke up once with my hand on his dick. That was an accident. We have never crossed the line. It isn’t that way for either of us at all. Jack is my platonic soul mate, and I’m his.”

  Huffing, I continued, “If you can accept how he is with me, I figure you could well be his partner for life. Jack is a fiercely loyal, amazing man. He’s never going to give me up. Even if I tried to shut him down, he wouldn’t give us up. Trust me when I say this, Rosie, what we have is weird, but wonderful for both of us. Alfie even got it when I was with him. He once said he could never fuck with my relationship with Jack, because Jack just completely got me. Alfie hates anyone touching me, but in the end he accepted that Jack wasn’t a threat to him, even if we did walk a fine line at times.”

  Holly swung the door open. “Luca’s at the front door talking to Louie. You should leave now; Alfie’s on the dance floor.” I hugged Rosie and Holly walked out in front of me; shielding me from any of our friends.

  Luca came forward and took my hand. “I hear we’re going home,” I stated as Louie pulled me in for a hug.

  Louie signaled to one of his security men. “Take the limo and call me, honey.”

  I smiled affectionately and kissed Louie’s cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Luca and I were ushered outside. The chauffeur opened the door for us. When we were inside Luca exhaled and held my hand. “Tough night for you,” he stated. I didn’t know how to respond so I didn’t.

  We sat in silence, and he put his arm around my shoulder, drawing me into his side, and kissing the top of my head. I felt like crying. Luca was everything I should want, but Alfie was messing with my psyche again.

  We pulled up by my building, but Luca didn’t move. Henry, Louie’s chauffeur, opened the door for us. Looking up at Luca, I saw his eyes were filled with sadness.

  “Go, Lily. Sweet dreams,” he cooed. I smiled feeling bad for the way Alfie behaved.

  “It’s okay for you to come up, Luca.”

  Luca shook his head slowly and drew in a deep sharp breath. “No it isn’t, Lily. You’re not ready for me. I like you very much,” he hesitated and huffed a breath out. “Tonight, from what I witnessed, I know there is much more unfinished business between you and Alfie, more than even I can deal with.”

  He held my gaze, looking at me affectionately. “I am a tolerant man. I could fall hard for you, Lily. I’m walking away, honey. This isn’t for your sake, it’s for mine. Goodnight, Bellissimo.”

  I stepped out of the car, and Henry closed the door, got behind the wheel, and pulled away. This had to be the perfect ending to the shittiest day on record for me.

  Such a desolate feeling washed over me. Feeling dejected, I had managed to fuck up my whole life because I met Alfie.

  I barely made it to the elevator before I started crying. By the time the elevator door opened on my floor I was a teary mess of mascara and snot.

  As soon as I got home I sent a text to Holly to tell her I was home and that I was alone. I was on my bed, still numb, an hour later, when I heard the door open. Holly had come home to see me because Luca had dumped me.

  Chapter 14 – Facing facts

  I was lying in bed with the sheet over my head when I heard the door handle latch click as she came in to my room.

  “I’m fine Holly, just leave me alone,” I sniffed. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened.

  The mattress dipped, and a caring hand landed on my back. I had a sudden feeling of elation, and my heartbeat raced. The touch ignited a buzz giving me feelings of a more sensual nature.

  I threw the sheet back and jumped into a sitting position. Alfie was sitting at the side of my bed, his face looking gaunt.

  I could see the turmoil in his face, not sure what to say, but I freaked out, because I had spent the last year and a half trying to be clever about avoiding him. Yet, he was in my bedroom, sitting on my bed.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I spat at him, embarrassed that I had been crying and devastated he was able to see my feelings laid bare.

  “I knew you needed me.” His low voice cracked with emotion as he said it. I shook my head and tried to get up. Alfie pushed me back on my pillow and leaned over me, his hands on either side of me. We were face to face.

  “Alfie you’re the last person I needed tonight. How did you get in here?” I just couldn’t understand any of this.

  My heart was racing from how near he was. I could smell his scent, and my body hummed with the sensation of his touch. I was still trembling from the adrenaline rush I’d had when I realized he was actually in my bedroom. Us girls had picked this building because of its security features.

  “Holly’s phone was on the table in the club when your text arrived. Her keys were in her purse. I saw the text was from you and read the text as it displayed when it came through. So I took her keys. I wanted to know if you were okay.”

  “I was okay until I saw you again, Alfie. My life was coming together and now you’re back. Here, in my bedroom, giving me the same mind fuck that you always do.”

  “No, Lily. I gave up that particular line of pursuit with you a long time ago. My life has been a meaningless without you. I. Can’t. Fucking. Live. Without. You. I don’t want to,” he whispered softly.

  Alfie’s eyes searched my face frantically, as if he needed me to understand what he was saying.

  “I fucking know you love me, Lily. Don’t try to deny it.” His fingers dug into the flesh of my upper arms. His eyes pleaded for honesty from me.

  I pushed put my hands on his chest and pushed him backwards, sitting up as he moved away. His hands cupped my face, and he pulled me toward him, my face close to his.

  “Say it, damn it. The truth. You need to tell me you feel the same way as I do.” I was stock still. I couldn’t look away. We were frozen, hypnotized by each other.

  Alfie’s eyes filled with tears, and one huge perfect teardrop streaked down his face and ran into the side of his lip. I couldn’t allow myself to react, because I’d be done all over again if I did.

  He didn’t move, and he didn’t blink. He just sat there continuing to stare at me with a tortured look. “Please…” he mouthed silently and swallowed hard. I heard how difficult it was for him to swallow, as another tear rolled down from sad eyes.

  I couldn’t let it fall this time. My forefinger touched his cheek, and his tear melted into my fingertip. His hand caught my finger, and he put it to his mouth, kissing the tear away.

  When he did that, it broke my heart. I couldn’t keep up the pretence. Not when he was laying himself bare to me again.

  My eyes closed with the admission as it passed my lips. “Of course I love you. There’s never been anyone else to love, since you.” I began to sob as my confession rolled off my tongue. I swallowed hard, but the relief I felt at being able to say it out loud was immense.

  Alfie’s head reeled back like I had slapped him. “Say it again!” He sat open mouthed, cupping my face again. He couldn’t believe that I had uttered the words he’d been waiting to hear.

  I sat expressionless. “I love you with everything I am, Alfie. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be together again.” I shook my head slowly and held the intense look he was giving me.

  His eyes rolled back and closed. “No. Fuck. Lily. Don’t do this. Don’t throw away our last chance to be toge
ther.” His voice sounded desperate, begging. “What do I have to do? Name it. I can’t live without you. I’ll do whatever it takes to have you in my life.”

  I bunched my brows. “Sure you can do it, Alfie. You have Zoe, now. She’s a lovely girl.” He stood up and ran his hand through his hair, then shoved both hands in his pockets.

  “I’m sad that I might hurt her, but she knows the score. She isn’t you, Lily.” His head started shaking vigorously. “I can’t and won’t be without you again. I can’t bear not seeing you. Not touching you.” He paused, thinking.

  “The thought of some guy touching you, Lily. Touching what’s mine.” He shook his head again, his closed fist banging on his chest. “Doing things I should be doing with you…to you. Please, I can’t…” he whispered.

  Alfie closed his eyes and began to cry again. I’d never seen a boy cry before, let alone the man I loved. It was heart wrenching. All I wanted to do was hug him and tell him that it was okay, that we were okay.

  Each time his eyes met mine, I could feel him drawing me in, bringing me close. This was not an act though. Alfie was showing the depth of his feelings and what I meant to him.

  The barriers I had erected to resist Alfie were slowly falling like dominos. Alfie knelt in front of me and grabbed my hand.

  He placed my palm over his heart. His warm, hard body was instantly familiar, and I wanted to run my fingertips over his smooth muscles under his t-shirt.

  His heart was beating rapidly under his shirt. He pushed my hand back in my lap and stood up, pulling the bottom of his t-shirt from his pants.

  He bent his arm over his shoulder and gripped the material behind his neck, pulling the t-shirt over his head. It was as if he’d known what I’d been thinking. “Alfie…”

  He glared at me. “Shush.”

  He picked my hand up and knelt before me again. Placing my palm back over his heart again, I could feel his smooth, silky skin, and I could smell the scent of him.

  He stared intensely into my eyes. “You feel that? You feel my skin? How warm my body is? You feel my strong heart beating inside of me?”

  “I do.” I had no idea what he was doing.

  “My heart beats strongly, because you are in my heart. My skin is warm, because you are under it. You. Own. Me. You are my heart. If you choose not to be, everything stops. I can’t go on without you. Each day without you, I die a little more.”

  I felt a sense of panic at what he was saying. He sounded so desperate. “Alfie, you have your life, and I have mine.”

  “Bullshit, Lily. I don’t want my fucking life if you aren’t in it. Can’t I get that through your thick skull? This fucking stops now. Today. I am not doing this shit with you another minute.” He wagged his finger no.

  He pointed at me. “You’re mine,” then pointed to him-self, “And I am yours, Lily. We’re never going to be over.”

  Alfie was my first love. He was my only real love. I had even more feelings for him at that point than I had at our best and worst of times.

  After all this time, no one else came close to the way he made me feel. At that moment I just wanted him to have all he wanted from me, because I realized I wanted it too, but I was scared.

  The difficulty was the same sticking point we would arrive at all our lives, unless one of us called a halt to it. Exactly what I was trying to do.

  Alfie was making it extremely difficult for me, though. “Tell me Alfie, what do you see happening if we did this?” He frowned.

  “We’d be happy for a start,” he said flatly.

  “Sure we would…at first.” I waited to see what else he could add to his short answer.

  “We’d have fun, make music, travel, settle down, have babies, and have a helluva time making those babies.” He smirked.

  “Yeah? Exactly how do we both make music? I’m in a band that’s going in one direction, and you’re going in another.”

  Alfie smiled. “Don’t you see? It’s even better than where we’ve been before?”

  I didn’t. “Enlighten me.”

  “You get on great with the guys in my band. They’re all cool guys in your band. We’d have a blast touring together. You’d get time to spend with Elle on the road, play music, and be with me.” I sat quietly thinking about what he was saying.

  “Okay, so you just go to the record label and say, ‘Oh by the way, XrAid is going to be the resident supporting band for Crakt Soundzz from now on?’”

  Alfie smirked. “Fuck, Lily, I’m in the hottest band in the world right now, I could tell the ‘suits’ I’ll only speak to them if they are dressed in chicken suits and pretending to peck on corn from the floor when I walk in the room, and they’d do it.”

  I grinned, it was too funny. Some of the executives from the label were very conventional. “Well Alfie you have this all figured out in your mind, don’t you?”

  Alfie smirked. “Don’t ask, you don’t get.” He put on a thick southern accent and rubbed his chin.

  “What about everyone else involved, Alfie? This is what you want. What about what everyone else wants?”

  He scowled and rubbed his hands together. “I’m sure what’s best for me is best for the band.” I sighed. He could only see his side of things.

  “What about XrAid, Alfie? The guys have free will. They won’t want to hang with you guys all the time. It might work in the early days, but what if…what if…we get to be just as successful in our own right? We won’t be supporting anymore and then there are two lots of tours to negotiate.” I was on a roll now. “Are we all going to be cozy on one bus? How do we travel? How do you envisage all of us taking turns with the one big room on the tour bus?”

  Alfie growled, “Stop! Just fucking stop, will you? Your need to know the end of the movie frustrates the fuck out of me. What we have right here is a love song. People would sing about us until the fucking cows came home. We have a once in a lifetime thing right here. That’s not enough for you to throw caution to the wind?” He started ranting. “Oh no. You’re going on about fucking buses and sharing bedrooms, and…and…jeez, you’re fucking crazy. You ought to be certified, girl.”

  I stared up at him pacing my room, running his hands through his hair and giggled nervously. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Now it’s funny…you think this is fucking funny, Lily?” I collected myself and tried to appear as serious as I could.

  “I don’t think it’s funny at all, apart from the part where you abandoned your girlfriend, stole someone’s keys and intruded on my privacy by breaking into my home. You came into my bedroom, and I’m the one that’s certifiable?”

  “I didn’t break in, I had a key remember?” Alfie threw himself on the bed and lay on his side with his head raised up on his elbow.

  “I love you, Lily Parnell. Me. Alfie Black. And. You. Love. Me. Back. I fucking know you do. We’ll find a way. You need to take that stick out of your ass, and beat yourself with it. I’m never going to leave you alone, Lily. You need to let yourself take that leap of faith, and get by my side.”

  Staring at him, I watched him lying there on my bed, with his gorgeous immaculately perfect mouth stretched into the most adorable smile.

  In the hour since he’d arrived, I had seen him go through a range of emotions, from a broken heart to elation.

  “Get off the bed, Alfie.” He grinned at me cockily with an air of mischief about him. “Or? What? You’ll get down here with me?”

  I wasn’t smiling at all. I was serious. In fact, his lack of regard for Zoe was pissing me off.

  “You need to leave Alfie. I don’t want you here. You have a girlfriend, and I’ve made enough mistakes since I met you. What happened at our launch night should never have happened. Zoe doesn’t deserve it.”

  He stood up and the mattress bounced as his weight left it. “You’re right. I need her to go.”

  I
snickered in disbelief. “Just like that, huh?”

  He spun around to face me. “You think? She knows the deal. She just doesn’t know that you’re the one.”

  My mouth hung open. “You told her you love someone else, and she’s with you anyway?”

  He nodded. “Things are rarely what they seem, Lily. You should know that about me by now. Zoe knows the score. I’ve never lied to her. Our relationship is built on sex.” I stood up and walked out of the bedroom to my front door.

  Grabbing the handle I flung it so wide, it creaked loudly on its hinges. “Get out.”

  He folded his arms. “Why? Is it because I’m having sex with Zoe?”

  “No Alfie, it’s because the poor girl has fallen for your ‘fuck buddy’ lines, except this time, you’ve used me as the excuse why she shouldn’t love you.”

  His hand reached up to his mouth, and he began pulling at his bottom lip, as he thought about what to say next. “Nope, not the same… and Zoe…she doesn’t love me.”

  I crossed my arms and hugged myself. “Listen, we could do this all day, Alfie, but I’d rather not.”

  He smirked. “I can think of better things to do with you instead, as well,” he quipped, smiling so widely his dimple was showing.

  Sighing wearily, I said, “Just go, Alfie.” He walked over to the couch and planted himself down heavily, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket and shook his head.

  “Nah, I can’t do that, Lily. This might be my one shot at making you see sense and getting you back.” He smirked, and I could tell he wasn’t about to leave.

  I took a seat near him, the front door still wide open. He stared at me, and I stared right back.

  We had reached a stalemate, and I didn’t know what to do next. Alfie’s voice broke into the silence. “You’re so fucking stunning. I know you’ve heard me say that before, but right now? Damn it, Lily. I’m blown away by you. You get more fucking beautiful with every year that passes.” I watched him talking about me, and recognized the hooded lust filled eyes. I was turning him on just by sitting here.