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

by M. C. Frank

  He only says one word: “Please?” His voice is a rasp.

  I nod. “I just need to make a call first,” I tell him, and step outside, straightening my shirt. He doesn’t let go of my hand until I disentangle my fingers from his.

  The cool air hits me as I step on deck, and I cross my arms over my chest. This is it. Stop overthinking it, okay?

  I call my dad real quick, just to say I won’t come home. He doesn’t ask, but I tell him that there’s something I’ve got to do before it’s too late. He’s silent for a bit, and I wait for him to realize what I’m talking about. In a minute he does, and he sobs as though his heart is breaking. Which it is.

  “Be safe,” he tells me and it’s not even awkward.

  It’s not even funny.

  ◊◊◊

  Wes takes me downstairs to the yacht’s cinema.

  Yep. It has a freaking cinema. It has a library too, of course, but we don’t stay in there for long.

  He puts on an episode of That 70’s Show.

  “Good choice,” I murmur.

  “Oh, I didn’t choose it, it was just in there. Do you hate it?” Wes asks. He’s sitting back lazily.

  “I don’t watch it, but Katia does; she binge-watches it every time she feels sad. She says it’s the only thing that can make her laugh on the days her mom goes mental on her.” He just nods. I’ve told him all about Katia already. “Do you know these guys?” I ask him about the actors.

  “I’ve worked with him and him and her,” he replies while lazily kissing my neck. He hasn’t glanced at the screen once. “Just introduced to the others.”

  “Wow.”

  “Mmmhm,” he murmurs absently.

  “Dude, seriously?”

  It’s not easy to think right now, because his hands are doing something to my neck, tangled among my hair, and his tongue is doing things in my. . .

  He comes up for air, his eyes sparkling.

  “Yeah. Dude.” What? Oh, right. I called him ‘dude’ again. Stupid brain that stops to function whenever he touches me. “I’m glad that knowing them impresses you far more than meeting me ever did.”

  His is voice low and sexy, and his eyes are devouring me. My heart starts beating wildly at the raw desire I see in them, but before I can say anything, he takes me in his arms and lifts me onto his lap.

  “Let’s see if I can impress you another way,” he whispers huskily into my cheek and right then my phone beeps.

  I look at it quickly before I turn it off, but I see it’s Katia. “I have to take this, I’ll be just a sec,” I tell him and get up. He moves away to give me some privacy, but all I want is to end the call quickly so I can be near him again.

  “Hey, Kat.”

  “So? How did it go?” she asks me with her mouth full. Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of a conversation. I know how lonely she is and how hard a time she’s been having. Clutching my phone close to my ear, so that Wes won’t hear what she’s saying, I walk towards a small window that’s almost at sea level.

  “Okay,” I answer, resting my palm on the cool glass. The window is open and a slight breeze lifts my hair from my face and I touch the spot Wes had just been kissing at the nape of my neck.

  “You’re such a liar,” she answers, swallowing. I hear her fork clinking on porcelain. I bet she’s eating noodles drenched in tomato sauce, her favorite. “It was more than okay. . . I can hear it in your voice. Wayyyy more.”

  I laugh, letting myself enjoy the sound. It’s so quiet outside.

  “Well,” I start, but that’s all I get to say before she interrupts me.

  “Hey, I almost forgot, Spiros called me earlier, he said he couldn’t get you on your phone. Do you know what he wanted? Is. . . is your grandma okay?”

  I hear the concern in her voice, but I can’t answer her. I concentrate on breathing. Suddenly the M&M seems too small, the walls closing in on me, the deck confining me in this tiny space, water all around. The peace is gone.

  “Ari?” Katia sounds freaked now. Perfect. “You. . . you would tell me if something was wrong with her, wouldn’t you?”

  “It—it’s fine,” I croak out. “She’s great, she probably wants him to prescribe her medication or something. Listen, Katia, I’m not home. . . I won’t be back till tomorrow.”

  She squeals and I hold the phone away from my ear, but then her voice turns serious.

  “Are you ready?” is all she asks.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” I reassure her, but deep down, I wish for once she wasn’t so direct.

  “Uh huh,” she replies, unconvinced. “Well, if there’s one person in the whole world who knows what she’s doing, that’s you. I trust you completely. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  We laugh and hang up.

  I don’t tell her she’s wrong.

  If there’s one person in the whole world who doesn’t know crap about what she’s doing. . . that’s me.

  I go back in. Wes is sitting on one of the plush cinema seats, typing on his phone. I sit next to him quietly, and right away he asks me what’s wrong.

  “I wasted five minutes of my time with you,” I answer, “that’s what’s wrong.”

  He lifts an eyebrow, but when he sees I won’t tell him anything else he lets it go, and presses the pause button. The screen lights up.

  “Tell me when to stop,” he whispers, burying his head against my neck, and trailing his fingers down the side of my body.

  Are you kidding me? I never will.

  The next second he’s cupping my head, lifting it to his lips, and fitting his mouth on mine. I’ll never get used to this heat coursing through my veins at his touch. I’m shaking all over, wanting to press even closer, to climb into him.

  My hair gets tangled in his hands and I can feel my lips swell from his kisses, but I’m too busy exploring the contours of his back muscles to notice. Then he slides his hand underneath my oversized sweater and I almost flinch. I wasn’t expecting his hand to feel so hot against my bare skin. A shiver travels from my spine down to my toes, and I part my lips from his, taking a deep breath.

  He lifts cautious eyes to mine. “All right?”

  “Yeah,” I gasp, breathless.

  And then his hand slides lower down my arm to find my bare skin. It’s as though an electric shock runs through me, white hot heat spreading through my body. I’ve never felt like this; it’s a heady, swoony feeling, but I can’t enjoy it, because suddenly the enormity of what’s happening hits me at full force. Just for a split second, I falter. He freezes immediately, not daring even to breathe.

  I leap away from him, freaked out at what we’re about to do.

  What am I doing? He thinks this is it. He thinks he’s got a girlfriend. He thinks we could have fun together. He hasn’t signed up for tears and hospitals and sickness and pain. He hasn’t signed up for death.

  Death. Oh God. I put my head in my hands, as I stumble.

  “Ari?” Wes calls my name, worried. He still doesn’t dare move.

  I turn to leave, breaking into a run. Wow, I’m getting really good at this.

  “No!” he shouts and rushes after me, grabbing me from behind, fitting his body to mine. He holds me there for a moment and leans against me, repeating over and over again: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t leave, baby, don’t go.”

  “I need some air,” I croak.

  “Of course,” he says with a sigh, and releases me. “Just please, don’t—I’m so sorry,” he whispers, his voice coming out rough.

  I turn to face him.

  It’s time I stopped being the most pathetic coward in the world.

  “You did nothing wrong,” I tell him, looking into his haunted eyes. “It’s all me. You. . . you are perfect.”

  He tightens his grasp on my hand, still without saying anything, and leads me up a winding staircase to the top deck.

  The air hits me with refreshing coolness and I try to breathe past the tightness in my throat.

&nb
sp; I’m sick, I try out the phrase in my head. No.

  I’m dying.

  Also wrong way of breaking the news to the guy I was making out with a minute ago.

  I won’t be around much longer.

  This won’t work either.

  So we just stand there, holding hands beneath the stars, and watch the lights of the night clubs of Corfu pulsate in the distance.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been happy before tonight,” Wes whispers against my cheek.

  My arms get covered in goose bumps. How is he not mad at me?

  “Me either,” I say and he squeezes his arms around me.

  In about ten minutes my eyelids start drooping with exhaustion. Wes laughs and takes me inside.

  We’re going to sleep in separate rooms, he says. I try to apologize for being weird again, but he doesn’t look mad. He just kisses me on the nose and proclaims that we have all the time in the world to be ‘naughty all we want’ later. I think he senses that I’m not ready, which is true, even if what he said about ‘having all the time in the world’ is not.

  A painful spasm wakes me up with a vengeance at about four in the morning.

  I sit there, holding my aching head in the darkness, biting my lip so that I won’t scream out in pain. I’ve taken painkillers, nothing works. This is new—the anger. Suddenly I’m so mad I could smash something. Mad at the pain for interrupting my life, mad at the deadlines I won’t be able to meet. I’m so tired of being inside my head; inside this stupid, sick, broken head. I fall back on the mattress, closing my eyes, waiting for the wave of pain and dizziness to abate a little bit, but it doesn’t. And I can’t stand it anymore. I get up and I run blindly for the hall.

  I stumble and fall to the floor with a thud that must wake Wes up, because his door is next to mine. I pick myself up again, but Wes has already opened his door. A thin ray of yellow light slices the small carpeted corridor between us.

  “Wes.” It comes out in a trembling, small voice.

  He comes quietly and kneels beside me. He’s barefoot, in his boxer shorts, his hair sticking up in all directions, his cheeks red with sleep. “Baby,” he gasps.

  He takes me in his arms and I lean my head on his chest. His hands come around me like wings.

  “I need you,” I whisper. “I need you. Just. . . be with me.”

  “I’m here, baby,” he says, “I’ll be what you need.”

  He starts kissing me, kneeling right there in the tiny yacht hallway, his back against the wood-paneled wall. He runs his hands all over my body and then holds me as I shake against his lips, wetting our kiss with my tears.

  “Shhh,” he murmurs, starting to sound scared. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Don’t cry.” He starts to shake too, a sob catching in his voice. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he begs me. “I’ll fix it for you.”

  “You can’t fix me,” I say against his mouth.

  His kiss deepens and he crushes my head between his hands, trying to tell me without words that he is enough to fix me.

  But he isn’t. He isn’t.

  We kiss until I’m too tired to cry anymore. Then we go into Wes’ room—and I was right, it was the one he took me to that first day, it was his bed I got all wet—and he wraps himself around me.

  “Go to sleep, Ari,” he whispers next to me. “I’m here. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you now.”

  And it must be true, because I sleep peacefully until morning. When I wake up, my headache is completely gone.

  At least for now.

  But ‘at least for now’ is enough.

  The next morning, we get up with half an hour to spare and head for the second deck. We just sit down by the pool and gaze out to the sparkling water. The sky looks like rain, but not for a couple of hours yet at least.

  Wes grabs one of his sweaters and drapes it across my shoulders—it has the Tottenham logo on the chest—while two ladies set every imaginable breakfast dish on the table. There’s tons of tea, too (of course).

  “Hungry?” Wes says and I reply that I’m not, so he picks up a piece of fruit and brings it towards my closed lips. I laugh and push his hand away, but he presses it until I open my mouth and gulp it down. I laugh so much I almost choke and Wes’ lips are smiling, too, but his eyes look determined and a little scared.

  I chew and swallow, and by the time I’ve eaten the piece of fruit, I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Wes looks out to the sea. He doesn’t ask me anything about last night, but I feel like I need to give him some sort of explanation.

  “Listen, about last night,” I start, and he stills, watching me.

  “What about last night?”

  ‘What about last night’ indeed. “I’m sorry,” is all that comes out.

  He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t change anything,” he says, the same thing he told me the other day, when I was sick and he was taking care of me. “Except for your pain.”

  “Wes, you. . . ” Up goes the eyebrow. “You’re an amazing person,” I finish lamely. And you don’t deserve this.

  “Thought you knew that already,” he teases. He smiles at me his crooked, shy smile that I’ve only seen once before. “Although yesterday I was perfect. Just saying.”

  “That too,” I answer, and with a sharp intake of breath he pulls me to him and kisses me long and hard, our breakfast forgotten.

  ◊◊◊

  He has to shoot some indoor party scenes today, and I leave him reluctantly, because I have to go home to change. On the way I call Katia, just as the rain starts slashing at my windshield.

  “I have bad news,” I tell her as she picks up.

  “What?” she asks. Her voice is sounding sort of choked up and I immediately ask her what’s wrong. “I. . . I don’t think I can do this,” she tells me. “I’m not smart enough.”

  “Katia, stop talking nonsense,” I tell her furiously. “Did anyone. . . Did your mom come over for a visit?”

  “Yep,” she says quietly and I know she’s crying.

  “Oh, Katia.”

  “No, it was fine. . . Except she started me on a diet. And said I don’t study hard enough. She’s right, I probably don’t.”

  I step on the gas angrily. “What!” I shout into the phone. “Are you serious? I’ll kick her ass to—” Her parents make me so mad. Why can’t they see how amazing she is? She’s always not studying enough, not beautiful enough, not something enough for them. I’ve seen her grow up doubting herself and it breaks my heart. Every time.

  “It’s okay,” Katia says, “it’s fine, she’s right.”

  “She. Is. Not.” I say so furiously that she laughs. But it sounds hollow.

  “So, what did you want to tell me? What’s your bad news? Is. . . is it something about last night?” I can’t tell her now, of course. I’m not sure I’d have the guts anyway, so there goes that. “Ari? Did you. . . you know, with the hot pirate?”

  I laugh out loud, but it starts sounding fake even to me, so I stop.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I tell her. “Not about last night, nothing happened. But remember that you told me to make him fall in love with me a little? Well I think I’m falling in love with him.”

  She’s silent for a minute. “Isn’t that a good thing? Or does he not like you back?”

  “No, it is. He does.”

  “That’s cool.” She doesn’t sound as excited as before. “Then why are you crying, Ari?”

  I wipe my cheeks but fresh tears wet them immediately.

  “Because one of us is going to have to leave soon,” I tell her. And it’s not the one she thinks.

  I spend the rest of the day with Coach, who takes one look at my pale cheeks and asks me what’s wrong.

  Nothing, I tell him.

  You’re lying to me, he answers.

  Well, I say.

  And we go back to doing triceps pushdowns.

  texts

  Wes: What’s up, Teddy?

  Theo: Same. You?

  Wes: I’m actually doing go
od.

  Theo: Good for you.

  Wes: How’s your brother? Is he any better?

  Theo: No change. Still waiting for him to wake up

  Theo: but it’s not happening.

  Wes: Don’t know what to say, man. I’m sorry.

  Theo: No one knows what to say. They keep expecting me to say/do something. Don’t effing know what.

  Wes: Tense atmosphere?

  Theo: Lava is less tense.

  Wes: Hey, look, do you want to come over here? I’ll done with the shoot in a few days, and I’m thinking of creating something.

  Theo: Something crazy?

  Wes: Of course. But maybe something good, too.

  Theo: Tell me.

  Wes: Have no idea yet, but I think I want to write something. A script.

  Theo: Not my thing, man.

  Wes: And I want to make it into a short film or films.

  Theo: Ha. You did say crazy.

  Wes: I did, so what do you say? Creative outlet and all that?

  Theo: Parents won’t let me out of their sight. Won’t let me breathe either.

  Wes: I can make a call.

  Theo: Since when?

  Wes: What do you mean?

  Theo: Since when do you care about parents and making calls and stuff?

  Wes: Since never, but I do care about you. I want you to breathe. You with me?

  Theo: . . .

  Wes: Teddy?

  Theo: I wish it was me, you know? Then no one would care.

  Wes: Don’t bloody say that.

  Theo: Why not? Everyone else keeps saying it.

  Wes: Stop it, Teddy, or I swear I’m hopping on a plane and coming over.

  Theo: Send me your encyclopedia when you write it. But include a synopsis because I don’t freaking read.