by Carrie Quest
The pictures are beautiful.
The hangovers are a bitch.
Four minutes.
I pull on T-shirt and a long-sleeve thermal and ignore the regulation Olympic jacket on the back of the chair, shrugging on an old fleece instead. An ancient Red Sox cap with the brim curled to hide my face gets shoved in my back pocket. I grab the sunglasses but leave the phone on the table next to my bed. My father can track me down with that, and tonight I don’t want to be found.
I’m not going to be gone very long anyway. An hour, tops. I’ll sneak out of the hotel he insisted I stay at, grab something to soak up the alcohol in my stomach, and then quietly head back to my room when my father’s minions have given up and moved on to fresh meat. Then a few hours of sleep before I get up to catch my flight tomorrow. For the first time in years, I’ll be flying commercial instead of on my father’s jet.
And for the first time in years, I’ll be choosing my destination myself, and he won’t be able to do anything about it.
I’m fucking done. I won my medal this afternoon and I celebrated with his chosen redhead, even let her grab my ass on the way out of the restaurant. Tomorrow, the internet will be blowing up with photos of snowboarding’s bad boy partying with yet another beautiful woman. A blonde and a trip to a club is overkill, but then, my father doesn’t believe in restraint.
The man has a gold toilet seat, for fuck’s sake. Understated is not in his wheelhouse.
Two minutes.
I fish around in the junk on my desk for painkillers, because my head is pounding from the vodka shots I did earlier. I’d been hoping to sleep it off, but that plan is well and truly fucked now. My credentials identifying me as an athlete go around my neck. That magic swipe card will get me pretty much anything I need if I go to the Village, but I also take my wallet, just in case.
I move quickly toward the stairs, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the walls because the swirly brown carpet makes me want to hurl. The elevator is a no-go, obviously. My five minutes are up and they’ll be waiting down there, lenses aimed at the doors, ready to get the shots my father ordered. He made his first fortune with his media empire, and he’s a master at manipulating the press and making deals. They keep me in the news and let him spin the stories, and in exchange he bestows favors, doling them out from his penthouse office like a king. Bailouts, exclusive scoops, tips about where the bodies are buried… My father is a powerful ally and an even more powerful enemy.
I’m living proof that it’s easier to claw your way out of hell than escape Reggie Power when he’s got you under his thumb, but I’m about to make my exit and if he doesn’t like it, he can go fuck himself. I stuck around this long because he threatened to cut me off from my younger brother unless I did what he said. My mom left us when I was ten and Jake was three, and she passed away a few years later. I’ve practically raised the kid, and there was no way I could leave him alone with my shark of a father.
So I won competitions and got my pictures taken in all the right places with all the right people. I shut up and let my father mold me into the heir he wanted: a smooth-talking playboy athlete with connections in every corner of the globe. The perfect person to take over his empire someday.
None of that matters now. Jake turned eighteen last week. I’ve got a plane ticket and a plan, and there’s nothing Reggie can do about it. Not anymore.
I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him all about how he’s losing his sons and his legacy. Then I’ll hang up, smash the phone he gave me, and never speak to him again. But I can’t deal with him tonight. I want to fucking relish that conversation, and right now I’m too tired and hungover to enjoy it.
I wince when the door to the stairs screeches open because fuck, my head is really hurting. No more vodka. Ever. The stairwell is freezing and I zip up my fleece and shove my hands in my pockets. Probably should have grabbed the showy team jacket, at least the fucker’s warm. But it’s not too far to the Village, and I can already taste the piping hot fries and burger I’m going to order when I get there. Now that I’m awake, I’m starving.
Jogging down the stairs hurts, the dull thuds of my footfalls echo through my throbbing head until I want to just collapse against the concrete wall until the pounding behind my eyes goes away and my mind is quiet. But no. I’m on a deadline, and if I’ve learned anything from being a professional athlete, it’s how to push through pain.
Being my father’s son taught me to do it with a smile on my face, because you never know who might be watching.
I slow down when I pass the door to the lobby, listening for the familiar sounds of excited voices, the shouts of photographers calling out my name. There aren’t supposed to be any paparazzi in this hotel, but a small pack of them have been camped out in the lobby since I arrived, waiting for me every morning like a pack of hungry dogs, begging for scraps of my imaginary life. I don’t hear them now, but I’m sure they’re out there, surrounding the mystery blonde as she waits for me.
So I keep going, heading down to the basement level. I happen to know there’s another exit down here, one that leads out into an alley that runs parallel to the main street heading to the Village. I scouted it out the first week I was here. My father’s not the only Power who does his homework.
The hallway down here isn’t as fancy as the ones upstairs. No more swirly brown carpet, thank fuck. The floors are a dull, scuffed concrete and the walls are covered with chipped gray paint. I suppose guests don’t usually wander down here. Why would they? Most people aren’t looking to flee a four-star hotel.
Several of the old florescent lights are blinking on and off and the hallway stretches out in front of me like something out of a nightmare. I put on my hat and speed up a little, eager to get out. Wouldn’t like to be stuck down here if those flickering lights give up. Maybe I should have brought my phone, if only for the flashlight.
I’m halfway to freedom when I hear them, coming up behind me from the direction of the stairwell. Voices shouting and the familiar clicks of lots of cameras going off at once. Shit. How the hell did they find me down here? I take off so fast that my sneakers squeak against the slick floor. It’s necessary, though. Being quiet isn’t going to save me if they come around that corner.
More voices echo through the hallway and I stop suddenly, panting, and try to get my bearings. Was I wrong? Are they actually ahead of me? I whip my head back and forth, then groan and have to reach out to steady myself on the wall when everything starts spinning. Fuck. I should have barricaded myself in my damn room.
I’m trapped. There are definitely voices coming from both directions now, and I’m bang in the middle of the hallway with no place to hide.
Two choices. I can keep sprinting and try to break through the line like I’m a desperate kid playing a high stakes game of Red Rover, or I can stroll up to meet them. Fix that famous smirk on my face and make them think this is all a damn game, one I enjoy playing.
Both choices end with pictures of me splashed across the tabloids sites, but only one gives me any control over the story. Or at least the illusion of some control. Shit shit shit. Maybe I can at least talk the blonde into changing the plan and making it a quick drink in the lobby instead of a club. She’ll get exposure and I’ll get some much-needed rest. Everybody wins, right?
Ha fucking ha.
That’s when I see it. A door. About ten feet away, right near the corner that leads to the exit, there’s a door. It’s painted the same dull gray color as the walls and it’s waiting for me.
Option three.
The voices and clicks are getting louder now, so I take off again, pumping my arms for speed, determined to get to the door before I’m discovered. Heart pounding, head throbbing, stomach heaving…I’m so close I can nearly reach out and grab the handle…when something crashes into me from the side and sends me flying. I twist in the air so I take the majority of the landing on my shoulder instead of my head, but it still hurts like fuck when I hit the solid concrete floor.
I’m u
sed to falling, though, so I scramble up, my mind still focused on getting through that door. But there’s someone in my way now, a blonde girl, her hair wild and sort of…crooked? Like it’s sliding off her skull. Damn, maybe I did hit my head.
She’s banging on the door—my door—like she’s desperate to get inside. I have no idea how my father knew to send her down here after me, and even less idea why she would be trying to escape the cameras instead of dragging me toward them, but no doubt she has a plan. They always have a plan. Maybe she wants to get caught on film following me through the door, looking over her shoulder toward the cameras with a saucy wink, like she’s so sexy that I can’t even wait to get her up to my room to ravish her.
It’s not a bad plan, actually. If she’s been following my press, and chances are she has, then she’ll know it would be a new shot. Something salivating editors, desperate for a new angle, haven’t seen before. I haven’t been seen going anywhere private with a woman for years. Not since the one girl I ever really cared about got her life blown up when she was caught disappearing into my hotel room.
Best night of my life.
Worst morning after in history.
So, yeah, the blonde is onto something with this plan, but there’s no way it’s happening. I reach past her for the door handle.
“It’s stuck,” she hisses at me.
Her voice sounds familiar, but her crooked hair is forming a curtain around her face and I can’t get a good look at her. Maybe my father has sent her before. He’s threatened this occasionally. That it would be a good idea for me to fake an entire relationship instead of a string of one night encounters. It’s the one thing I’ve always stood firm on, though. He wrecked my only relationship, and if I ever have another one, it’s going to be far away from the cameras and it’s not going to be with some model my father picked out of a catalogue.
She’s right about the door. I rattle the knob and the girl gives up her pounding and starts kicking it. She’s wearing big-ass winter boots, which are an odd choice for the kind of club my father would have chosen for our “date,” but again, maybe it’s all part of her plan to stand out from the crowd.
She starts teetering and cries out after one particularly vicious kick, and I reach out to steady her. My hand hits her shoulder, which is covered in hair that feels odd—too slippery somehow. Fake. She turns to look up at me and the movement causes the wig to slip the rest of the way off her head. Long, wavy auburn hair tumbles down her back and deep blue eyes meet mine, full of panic and something else.
Recognition.
“Belle?” My heart is racing and everything I’ve ever wanted to say if I saw her again is rushing through my mind. I’m sorry and it wasn’t me and please forgive me and, most of all, why didn’t you give me chance to explain?
Why would my father send her tonight? What kind of game is he trying to play this time?
And if he didn’t send her, then why the fuck is America’s skating sweetheart running from photographers in a creepy hotel basement?
She jumps away from my hand, brushes off her shoulder like maybe I’ve left something disgusting on her coat, and bends down to scoop up her wig. The voices are really loud now, the photographers so close they can probably smell the stale alcohol and sweat and eau de desperation coming out of my pores. Belle is staring at me, her eyes pleading, begging me to do something. It’s exactly the way she looked at me that morning and my stomach churns at the memory.
I nod for her to get out of the way and then back up and kick the door with everything I’ve got. Pain shoots down my leg and I let out a string of whispered curses, but the damn door pops open and Belle rushes through it. I halfway expect her to slam it in my face and leave me to my fate, but she reaches out and pulls me in after her. I get a glimpse of shelves piled high with suitcases and then she pushes the door closed and everything goes dark.
3
Belle
I press myself against the door, listening to the thud of footsteps and loud voices as the photographers rush past our hiding place. The noises fade and I gulp in deep breaths, trying to get my heart under control. It’s jogging unevenly in my chest, like a horse with one really short leg trying to gallop. The image makes me giggle and when I try to swallow the laugh, I snort instead.
Good. Great. Perfect.
I’m trapped in a secret basement storage room with the ex-love of my life, the one person on this earth I’ve sworn never to see or speak to again, and I’m snorting. I close my eyes and the poor gimpy horse in my mind starts puffing air out his nose loudly as he runs. I add a rider, a stick figure cowboy with a huge hat that keeps slipping down over his eyes, and give up trying to hold in my laugh. It bursts out of me, wild and uncontrollable, and I slide down to the ground and wrap my arms around my knees.
“What do you see?”
Gabriel’s voice is soft, so quiet I almost don’t hear it over the pounding of my heart and the slightly hysterical laugh that I cannot seem to smother. What do you see? It’s intimate, him asking me that, and for a moment I indulge myself and pretend that it’s three years ago and we’re in another hotel, making a tent out of our covers and whispering secrets in the dim light.
Gabe is the only person who ever asked what I saw when I closed my eyes and started to laugh to myself. Everyone else said Concentrate, Isabelle! Or Get out of your head, Isabelle! Not Gabe. He cared about what I thought, not only what my body could do.
Of course, he liked what my body could do as well, but I shut those images down fast. Thank god it’s dark in here. My face is red from running and inappropriate sex flashbacks, my hair is a snarly rat’s nest, and I’m laughing to myself like a frickin’ loon.
Super attractive, Isabelle. Exactly how you pictured looking if you saw Gabe again. Forget that whole idea about being dressed to the nines, sleek and sophisticated and haughty, with a male model on your arm and the world at your feet. This whole closet scenario is way better.
Yeah, right.
“Belle?”
Hearing him say the nickname he gave me sobers me up fast. Gabe grew up mostly in America, but his mom was French. She left when he was ten, and he stopped spending his summers in France with her family after that, so he doesn’t really have an accent. But every once in a while something soft and relaxed slides into his vowels, like he’s holding the words in his mouth a little longer than usual, savoring them, shaping them carefully with his tongue.
His tongue.
I blush again, remembering what that tongue can do, and he repeats my name.
“Belle?”
He doesn’t just spit it out, all harsh and short, he keeps the sound in his mouth and breathes it out slowly so it comes out more like “Bella.” It makes me want to burrow into his arms and then rip his clothes off, which is obviously out of the question, so instead I answer him.
“A horse,” I say. “With one short leg, trying to gallop.”
He chuckles, a deep velvet sound in the dark. “Wouldn’t he be going in circles?”
The image pops back into my mind and I laugh again, seeing the cowboy waving his stick arms in frustration. “I guess he would.”
More footsteps outside, thumping as the photographers double back.
“Where are they? The old man said Gabriel and a blonde, right? That was the deal, so where the hell did they go?”
Gabriel and a blonde. Something inside me feels hollow and empty, even after all this time, at the thought of Gabe and a random blonde. I’ve tried to avoid his press photos of course, but it’s impossible to prevent them from popping up. Not unless I want to avoid all social media forever and never open a magazine at the hairdresser’s or in the dentist’s waiting room again.
I squeeze the cheap wig that I’m still holding and the empty space inside me fills up fast. With fiery rage. Of course this is all his fault. Gabe and his army of cameras, always on hand to capture his smirks and his conquests and damn the consequences for anyone who gets caught in his path. I should have chosen a
brunette wig. Or just worn sunglasses and a frickin’ hat. Then they wouldn’t have chased me down here, and I’d be scoping out the Iceberg Palace right now instead of stuck in a closet.
“This is all your fault!” I hiss the words out, keeping my voice low.
“What?”
His voice is closer now, and I hear the rustle of his clothes as he moves slowly and carefully toward me, probably heading for the tiny crack of light at the bottom of the door.
I can’t see him, but I whip the wig in his direction and feel a small sense of satisfaction when he yelps.
“What the hell?”
“I had plans tonight,” I say.
“I know,” he says. His voice is icy cold and I press back against the door, getting as far away from his anger as possible.
“How much did my father offer you?” he asks. He’s even closer now. “Was it just about the money, or did you want to fuck with me? Get back at me for last time?”
He’s right next to me now. I can smell the mint on his breath when he speaks and the sharp bite of alcohol underneath. Of course he’s been celebrating, and certainly not alone. I swore I wasn’t going to watch it, but somehow I found myself in my hotel room with the television on when it was time for the half-pipe finals. Lots of snowboarders have been complaining about the pipe here in Sochi, saying the conditions sucked, but it didn’t seem to slow Gabe down. He flew, launching himself so high in the air and flipping so many times that I had to close my eyes, scared to death he was going to fall.
He got bronze, behind two of his American teammates, and while they were up on the podium laughing and hugging and slapping each other’s backs, Gabe just stood there, pushing his lips into a smile that didn’t ring true. It made me sad, seeing him like that. Forcing a smile on what should have been the happiest moment of his career.
Of course, now that he’s throwing accusations at me I’m not feeling sad for him anymore. I mostly feel like taking that medal and using the ribbon to strangle him.
