Lose Me: (New Adult Billionaire Romance) (Broken Idols)

by M. C. Frank

  Wes is led to the shade and offered a drink, his long body wrapped inside the robe, which looks impossibly white against his tanned skin, while Tim explains to me what I am to do next. “The light is not yet fully gone,” he explains. “We can save up a few hours still.”

  I try not to moan. I’ve got this. Today is not the day I die. Today is the day I prove myself. They say I’m just to walk along the beach, but it’s never as simple as that, is it?

  Lizzie is supposed to meet Will out on the beach, while running to her sick sister’s assistance. She has to be a bit dirty and disheveled and sandy and wet, since she’s been swimming. Will’s impeccably dressed friends, out on the beach for a party, are supposed to smirk and judge her, but Will himself will be struck silly by her brilliant eyes and her devotion to her sister.

  Tim doesn’t know yet what he wants exactly, so we spend the next two hours, getting footage of me running up and down the beach. I run back and forth across the strip of sand where the huge waves crash and the tiny pebbles, rushing into the swells, are slippery beneath my feet. I lay down to get sand in my hair, which is my own hair, quickly twisted in a braid, and try to pretend—all with my body language, of course—that I’m anxious and worried about Jane, my sister.

  When we’re done I can hardly breathe, the pain is killing me, and I’ve got a stitch in my side. Score.

  I try to get up from the sand and fall back down on my knees. A wave rushes over and I have just enough time to pull myself up and away before it swipes me into the sea again. I’m panting.

  Deep breaths, I say to myself. How will I ever get home?

  Wes drove his own car here, but I rode in the van with the lighting team.

  Sigh. Nothing to do but start walking towards the parking lot, so I can grab my clothes, at least. The road is going uphill all the way and my muscles are screaming with the added strain, so I start counting my steps. I keep looking down, at my flip flops, totally absorbed in the effort it takes to just put one foot in front of the other, and that’s why I don’t notice the car that’s been slowly following me.

  I look up and there it is. Wes’ gorgeous BMW i8 is soundlessly gliding right next to me. I recognize it from a tiny, grainy photograph I’d seen in a magazine weeks ago. Inside there was an article, and Katia said we should read it since he might be working at the same movie as me. So I’d read that the guy was crazy about cars—he even collects them, supposedly. There was a photo spread of some of the cars he’s driven the last two years, and I kept looking at them, swooning, while Katia was screaming in my ear about his shirtless photo shoot by the pool. I hadn’t even gotten to that page. I guess not everyone swoons at the same things, right?

  Anyway, I didn’t know he’s brought one of them here, but thinking about it, of course he would have. I’ve seen Elle get in and out of limos all over the place, but few of the other actors get such treatment. Except Wes isn’t just one of the ‘other actors’, is he? He’s even brought a freaking boat with him, after all.

  The car’s engine stops and next thing I know Wes is rolling down the window and reaching a long, tan arm across the seat to open the passenger door.

  “She’ll ride with me,” he tells Matt—I hadn’t noticed him walking behind me either. “We need to talk about. . . stuff. Hop in, Phelps, come on.”

  He says it like ‘c’m on’, and it sounds as though he’s talking to a kid. He has that eyebrow raised again, and I want to tell him that he looks like a patronizing idiot right now, but I don’t even have the energy to argue.

  “Come on,” he smiles up at me, “you know you’re itching to ride in the supercar.” That’s what the i8 is called by the reviewers, a ‘supercar’.

  Drat him, he’s right. I get in, all sandy and salt-watery and wait for him to complain about me getting the leather seat dirty.

  “Buckle up,” is all he says.

  As I turn to the side to look for the belt, I feel something touch the heavy braid that’s hanging down my shoulder. I glance at him quickly, and he drops his hand on his knee, smoothly turning the wheel as we peel away from the pavement. I can’t imagine why he would want to touch my hair, except to flick away a pebble that’s maybe tangled in the stray hairs that escaped as I was traipsing around the beach like a crazy person.

  “Wow,” I murmur, looking around me, my fingers aching to touch the wheel. “I thought there were like, ten of these in the world.”

  “Yep,” he says, looking smug, but he doesn’t elaborate.

  He’s looking straight ahead, as though the empty lane demands his entire concentration. After five more minutes of silence pass, I begin to think he’s forgotten I’m there and, deciding I’m going to ignore him too, I sit back and fall into an exhausted sleep.

  When I open my eyes, we’re not moving. Wes is watching me with a frown on his handsome face. The sun has set in the distance and the trees cast long shadows across the windshield. At first, I don’t recognize where we are. Have I been asleep the entire time? It must be more than an hour. Or did I pass out?

  And then I realize what’s happening. Why I’m so tired, why my legs won’t obey me, why I fell asleep in a freaking BMW i8.

  Tears prickle the inside of my eyelids and I close them before they spill over.

  I swallow hard.

  Oh no. It’s begun. It’s here.

  I’m dying.

  young people

  Unidentified sources have compiled for us a juicy bit of gossip concerning our lovely dystopian pirate-turned-gentleman, Weston Spencer, and his closest friend and current co-star, Oliver Sikks. Turns out Oliver’s mother, the famed and infamous actress Christina Taylor, recently sprung a bit of news on him. Now, listen to this, you won’t believe it. It seems that, back in the day, Christina wasn’t the ‘good girl’ her recent roles would have us believe. According to an unnamed source, Taylor spent a wild, hot summer on a remote island in the south of Italy. Yum.

  Well, you ask, is that all? Of course it’s not. Turns out she didn’t simply have a nice time, she had the BEST time. Apparently, she hooked up with a guy who rowed boats to the shore, or something romantic like that, and when she came back to L.A., she started to put on weight super quickly, if you know what we mean, wink wink.

  Yup. You read that right. Ms. Taylor has another kid. Rumor has it that the kid’s a daughter, who was raised somewhere in Europe, by her hunk of a dad, and has never been at the receiving end of a reporter’s flash until now.

  Now that’s a nice piece of news to spring on your twenty year-old son, isn’t it? Hmmm. . . it will be interesting to see how our beloved star will react to it. As for us, we’ll wait for the photos that will no doubt flood the media (if the story is true, after all) before we pass verdict on this mysterious mini-Christina.

  What do you think?

  Fact of fiction?

  Mother or Monster?

  Send us your opinion at ypm@youngpeople.com

  four

  Wes insists that I take a shower in his room. I start to protest, but he lifts his hands in the air.

  “If you think you look better without a shower, be my guest,” he says.

  My mouth gapes. “Are you really saying that I—?”

  He interrupts me quickly, laughing. “You know I’m not, Phelps.”

  Then he explains that we stopped at the yellow villa to pick up my clothes and my car, but I wouldn’t wake up, so he had the skinny lady put my things in a bag and decided to bring me here. He’s stopped the car in a gorgeous part of the old Town called Kanoni, in front of the main entrance of the Divani he’s staying at.

  “Didn’t you just tell me not to trust guys like you?” I ask him. A shower would be a life-saver right now, it’s true, but there’s no way I’m letting this happen. “Sorry for messing up your lovely car,” I add, as I get out of it on aching limbs.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he answers, holding the door for me. What, is he being nice to me now? Okay. He tosses the keys to the valet.

  He’s we
aring a black form-hugging T-shirt with a V neck and fitted jeans, simple enough, but on him the clothes look like a million bucks, as though they were tailored for his body.

  His hair is all tangled and dried-out, crispy with salt and sunshine and it falls over his eyes as he takes off his sunglasses and fits them into his left pocket, turning that brilliant gaze on me for a second.

  He slows down so that I can walk next to him and stretches an arm to my back, not quite touching me, but so close to my skin that I can feel the heat radiating from his body.

  “You had me a little scared there,” he says with a slight frown. “You were sleeping so deeply and looking so pale, for a moment I thought there might be something seriously wrong. I was hoping to let you drive a bit, but you wouldn’t wake up. Maybe my ride didn’t impress you as much I’d thought it would.”

  The thought of him wanting to ‘impress’ me with his car is so surreal and spot on, that I want to cry. He looks at me, waiting for a reply, but I say nothing, looking straight ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I barely have the energy to do that.

  “Phelps?” he insists. “Are you really that tired? You’re a trained athlete, aren’t you?”

  I turn to him, feeling the helplessness exude from my face. His expression changes; he was half-teasing before, but now he looks scared. In a second, he shrugs it off.

  “Probably the hangover,” he says. “Come on up.”

  His ‘room’ is the penthouse suite. The entire top floor. Of course.

  “I thought you’d stay at the villa,” I say as the elevator doors open and we enter a spacious living room decorated with gauze curtains and cream sofas. The entire left side of the room is made of two wide windows overlooking the sea.

  “Yeah, that’s what Tim said, because of the low budget nonsense. . . Not happening.”

  There are books everywhere. Literally everywhere. Stacked on the flat screen. Open on the dinner table. Strewn across the floor in stacks in front of a pair of dumbbells by the window that overlooks the sea. The glass doors are ajar and a breeze fills the room, the curtains billowing and falling with every gust of wind.

  Other than that it’s really tidy. Not to mention that an army of maids must have just been in here, for the place looks pristine-clean.

  “I can’t shower here,” I whisper, clutching the canvas bag with my clothes and shoes—he handed it to me as soon as we got off the elevator.

  “Why not?” he asks. His forehead wrinkles, and he looks at the floor. “It’s clean in there, I swear. The hotel ladies are in twice a day, they’ll have the place wiped of every sign of me.”

  This is so cute that I smile in spite of the crippling pain throbbing in my head.

  “Dude, I just got sand all over your car and now. . .”

  “Dude?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow, his eyes smiling.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I say quickly, bringing a hand to my aching head, “I mean you are freaking Weston Spencer after all—”

  Abruptly, he goes all bored and quiet on me. He turns away, planting himself onto a chair and turning on the TV. A Greek anchorman appears on screen, and Wes changes the channel with a soft curse.

  “You’ve never acted before like I was anything freaking special,” he spits out, not looking at me. “I swear, I could almost imagine I was a real person there for a while. Go on in,” he adds after a horrifying moment, while I stand mute in the middle of the room. “It’s the second door to your left. The sooner you’re done, the sooner I get my room back.”

  I have a sudden urge to run back out in the street and call a cab, bikini and all, but I know that would be childish. So I walk away, head throbbing but held high, and into the second door to the left.

  His bathroom is the size of the yellow villa. Well, not actually, but it’s pretty close. It’s all covered in marble, wall to wall, with wide windows that bring the stars inside. The overhead light reflected on the marble is so blindingly white it’s making my migraine worse and the sudden onslaught of pain threatens to double me over. Right. Let’s get this over with.

  The shower is a freaking separate room within the bathroom. I stand in this space that’s separated by a wall of fake, red-colored bricks and notice that there are four showerheads around me. I turn on the tap and water starts spewing at me from four different directions at full force. I turn it back down. Oh, wait. There’s buttons on the wall. How does this thing work?

  The water feels so cool running on my burning forehead. Am I running a fever? I close my eyes and let it wash over me, not bothering to wash the sand grains off my skin. My arms feel too tired, my legs can barely hold me up. I turn the knob towards hot and I notice that my hands are shaking.

  The desperation descends on me again and as the lukewarm water hits me with blissful force, I fall to my knees. Then the tears come.

  I hate crying. I never used to cry. And I haven’t really cried, not since the day I found out. . . well, I haven’t. Maybe that’s why it comes down in torrents now. I cry in that heart-wrenching, hiccupping way only kids do; I cry until I can’t breathe anymore.

  This whole crying thing does not help with my migraine, but I can’t stop.

  I try to get up, but everything is made slippery by the water and my feet can’t find the proper purchase on the shower floor. I slip back down on my knees, and I bend my head down, letting the water slide across my back, while tears soak my knees.

  I make another effort to get up and the room sways as though I’m about to pass out and for a moment I almost wish that that was it. That it was already all over. It would be so easy to slip away right now, so painless, so convenient.

  Then I realize what I had been thinking and fresh sobs shake me.

  Help, I think.

  Someone stop this. Please.

  “Ari?”

  I hear pounding on the door, booming through the room like thunder.

  “Ari!” Wes’ voice screams. “If you don’t answer me this second, I’m coming in!”

  I try to tell him that I’m fine, but my voice comes out hoarse from all the crying and it’s not enough to carry to the other side of the door. He pounds on it some more and then it suddenly opens with a crack—he must have kicked it, because I locked it as soon as I came in.

  “Ari,” he shouts, and it sounds like he’s having a hard time breathing, “did you—I heard. . . Oh my G—”

  The shower door opens, letting in cool air, as he walks around the separator with his clothes on. I can’t see him through the tears and water; I just hear him inhale sharply. He falls to his knees next to me with a splash. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice sounding all hoarse and scared. “Are you hurt?”

  “Wes. . . ”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” he replies, his voice dropping to a low rumble. “Just tell me what’s wrong, I’m here.”

  I don’t know what’s wrong, so I can’t tell him. The caring in his voice makes me cry even harder, until I choke and gag, water falling into my eyes and nose.

  “It’s okay,” he whispers into my hair, cupping my neck and lifting me out of the way of the water. He envelopes me in his arms and folds his long legs under him, tucking me inside his body, supporting me between his knees. He bends down over me so that his head is right next to mine, and holds me tightly as the water splashes all over him. “I’ve got you, baby, shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  He repeats it until my sobs subside a little and then he gets up and I whimper. It felt like his arms were the only thing holding me together, and now I’ll fall apart all over again. He doesn’t leave, though.

  He takes the showerhead in his hand and lowers the pressure of the water.

  Then he begins to wash the sand out of my tangled hair. He unbraids it with quick movements and smoothes it over my shoulders as he runs the water over every single strand, running his fingers through it. I can feel my headache slipping away with his every touch and I close my eyes, savoring the feel of him, losing myself in his nearness.
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  I would never have imagined it a month ago that I would be sitting in a guy’s penthouse suite shower, crying on the bathroom floor while he washed my hair.

  Then again, I would never have imagined other things as well.

  Slowly, tantalizingly, he passes his hands all over my body, washing away the sand and salt. “Your skin is burning,” he whispers.

  It’s not just from the fever that it’s burning. I can feel his fingers trembling too as they curl around my arm, so I don’t say anything. He places his palm flat on my bare back, sliding it up and down and I lean back, letting him support my weight for a second. I sigh as his calm movements drive the last of my anguish away, and by the time he has cleaned me out the tears have stopped. He washes my face last, turning me to face him, his lips puckered in concentration as his fingers linger on my lips, my cheekbones, my eyebrows.

  Then he turns the water off.

  “Put your arm around my neck,” he says softly, carefully, as though he’s afraid he’ll break me merely by speaking.

  He lifts me in his arms and carries me inside. His jeans have gotten wet, but he took his shirt off before he got into the shower, and droplets from his wet hair are falling on his chest.

  He helps me sit on his bed—again, I might add, because I remember soaking his other bed, on the M&M, as well—and goes to get me a towel. I dry myself off and he closes the bedroom door behind him as he leaves me to change.

  A few minutes later I open the door, only to find him on the floor just outside it, still in wet jeans and hair. He is barefoot. He leaps to his feet as I grasp the door handle, and opens it for me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks in a hoarse voice.

  “Fine,” I answer, hiding my swollen eyes from him. “I’m so sorry. . . I don’t know what happened before, I guess I was just tired, or— ”

  He shakes his head.