Bailing Out_Snow-Crossed Lovers

by Carrie Quest

  “I know it wasn’t your idea,” she whispers.

  I tilt my head forward to hear because she’s practically mouthing the words, like she’s afraid someone is listening.

  “I figured that out by the time I got back to my room,” she continues.

  “Then why didn’t you pick up your phone?” I keep my voice as quiet as hers, and she shuffles two tiny steps toward me, then stops and plants her feet, like she’s determined to go no farther. We stare at each other across the room. Close enough to touch hands if we stretched our fingers forward, but oh so far away.

  I force myself to keep standing straight as the memories hit me. Curled up behind Belle in that huge-ass bed in the Moscow hotel room, waking up hard and happy with the soft curve of her ass pressed back against my dick, pushing that glorious hair to the side and trailing kisses down the back of her neck until she was moaning and wiggling against me… It was our first night together and the first and only time I ever woke up with another person in my bed.

  The World Skating Championships were supposed to be held in Japan that year, but there was an earthquake ten days before the event was scheduled to start so it was postponed a month and moved to Moscow, which meant I could come watch Belle compete. She took gold, reclaiming her place in the top spot after missing the Vancouver Olympics due to an injury. I convinced her to take a week off and go to the Ile de Joie with me afterward, seven days of wandering the twisty cobbled streets where my mom grew up and seven nights of Belle in my bed. I’d just won my first major competition and I was taking a vacation with my girl. Life was perfect.

  But on our first morning her phone rang.

  My heart starts beating faster at the memory and my stomach twists, remembering the way I ran to the toilet and threw up after she stormed out of the room.

  “Don’t answer,” I’d murmured, smiling at her moan as I slid a hand up the smooth skin of her stomach to cup the warm weight of her breast.

  “It’s not important,” I told her as my fingers teased her nipple and it hardened to a tight bud, ready for my tongue.

  “Stay with me,” I’d begged her as she pulled away a moment later, just enough to reach for her phone. Her other hand snaked back to stroke my dick, and it felt so good that I closed my eyes, lost in the dream of waking up with the only woman I’d ever loved.

  Then she went stiff in my arms and screamed, and the dream turned into a nightmare.

  It was her sister, calling to ask why the hell there were pictures of America’s favorite daughter, the beloved sweetheart with a heart of gold, plastered all over the internet with me. And I mean, with me. Shots of us kissing desperately as we stumbled into my room, close-ups of Belle’s breasts as I undressed her, blurry images of my ass as I covered her body and made love to her, completely unaware that there was a camera hidden nearby.

  Yeah, that’s right. They blurred out my ass but left every inch of her tits in perfect focus. Her body instantly became the property of any horny loser with an internet connection, and I was the blurry guy who got to fuck her.

  That’s some sexist, fucked-up shit right there, and I knew instantly who was responsible.

  “Why didn’t you let me explain?” She jumps, maybe at the urgency in my voice, maybe because her mind has also been wandering in the past and I’ve pulled her back with my question.

  She presses her lips together so tightly they turn white and shakes her head. “I couldn’t,” she whispers.

  Fuck. I should stop pushing her. I saw part of that interview getting replayed on the news this afternoon, and I know she’s living her own nightmare right now. She was always shy about the reporters and cameras that followed her everywhere, wanting a piece of the perfect image of a girl that her mom and sister created. I’m sure our little photoshoot made her hate the press even more, and now that bitch Catie has basically called her out and forced Belle into the spotlight. She’s been reduced to sneaking out of a hotel in a wig, for fuck’s sake. The last thing she needs is me dragging her back to one of the shittiest memories of her life.

  So yeah, I should stop, but I don’t know if I can. These questions have been haunting me and this might be my last chance for answers.

  I yank my hands out of my pockets and press my palms against my eyes, breathing through the urge to scream. It’s not that I want to yell at her—I know she’s the victim here—but I’m so close to figuring out what the hell happened. I thought we loved each other, but she still vanished like a ghost. Warm and alive in my bed one moment and gone the next. Not even a voice on the other end of the phone—just a blank space in my life and my heart.

  Exactly like my mom, but she’s gone now. I’ll never be able to ask why I was so easy to leave when I was ten, but I need Belle to tell me how I was still so easy to walk away from when I was twenty-one.

  “I know the pictures were horrible, but I thought you loved me. At least enough to say goodbye, even if you couldn’t forgive me.”

  Her eyes fill with tears. “I loved you more than anything.”

  “Then why?” My voice is ragged. “Look, I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m done with snowboarding and the press and all this shit. So please tell me. I promise I won’t bother you again.”

  She swallows hard, and her eyes dart around our cramped prison, like maybe there are cameras here as well.

  “You’re really leaving? What about your father?”

  I shrug. “Fuck him. I’ve done everything he asked for twenty-five years. I’ve had enough.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “My mom left me some money and a house on the Ile de Joie. My uncle had it tied up in a trust so my dad couldn’t mess with it, but he turned it over to me on birthday. I’m done with my father’s shit. He can do whatever he wants to me, I’m not going back.”

  One side of her mouth tilts up in a sad little smile. “The Island of Joy. It always sounded so magical when you talked about it.”

  It’s a tiny place in the Mediterranean, nothing like the fancy island in the Maldives that shares its name. A sleepy paradise with flowers spilling down the thick stone walls and an old house surrounded by lemon trees that now belongs to me.

  “What will you do there?”

  I grin. “No fucking clue. Just live, I guess.”

  Want to come? I bite back the words because of course she doesn’t want to run away with me. She doesn’t even want to talk to me. Its taken being trapped in a closet to get her to even acknowledge my existence.

  Still, whenever I’ve dreamed of my escape, I’ve seen her. Lying beside me on the beach in a bikini, sipping wine under the striped umbrellas at one of the cafes near the port, laughing as we stroll into town to check out the random English bookstore that my great-grandmother started with the American soldier who saved her brother’s life in the war. In my mind, Belle has been there all along. Maybe she always will be.

  “It was your father,” she says, the words tumbling past her lips like she can’t contain them for one more second. “He came to see me that day, after I left your room. He told me he had plans for you, and that if I didn’t disappear, he would destroy us both.”

  5

  Belle

  Gabe’s eyes go dark and he actually growls, like he’s about to leap into the air and transform into a werewolf or some other fierce and scary creature. Mmmm. I file that image away to think about later. It won’t make me giggle, but it has definite possibilities to elicit…other…reactions.

  I glance around the room again, though it’s ridiculous to think that Reginald Power is watching and listening somehow. Still, once you’ve been burned by an illegally recorded sex tape, it’s hard to relax in any unfamiliar place. For at least a year after the pictures came out, I refused to be in a room with any stuffed animals because I was paranoid about nanny cams.

  The creepiest part, the part that still turns my stomach and floods my mouth with tangy prickles of panic, is the pictures that are still out there somewhere, the ones that never got released. I know they
exist, but I’ll never be able to control them. Gabe’s dad has kept his word so far, but he’s a blackmailing diabolical narcissist, so that’s not exactly comforting.

  My heart beats a little faster now, knowing that by telling Gabe the truth, I might be calling the wrath of his father down on me, but I’m so tired of living in fear. Besides, I’ve survived getting my leg crushed by a drunk driver, the end of my competitive skating career, and the death of a lifetime of dreams. I can survive some thirsty dudes getting another peek at my boobs.

  I’d rather not, of course, but I can do it if I have to.

  In a fucked-up way, the accident helped me heal from the picture scandal. Lying in that hospital bed, unsure if I’d ever walk again, let alone skate, I stopped stressing about anything that wasn’t literally life or death. That state of Zen didn’t last, of course. After a year and a half I’m apt to get as irrationally pissed about someone stealing my parking space as the next girl, but the perspective on the nude photos stuck. Sure, sometimes I still get uncomfortable in a crowd, knowing that the creepy guy raking his eyes over me has probably googled my topless shots, but it doesn’t completely shut me down the way it used to.

  I keep standing.

  I’m not going to let one evil man control the rest of my life.

  I’m not going to let him win.

  “What did he do?” Gabe’s jaw is clenched so tight that his speech is garbled. His hands are fisted and he’s pressing them into his thighs. Tension radiates off of him and the urge to soothe him is so strong that I cross my arms and take a step back. I need to get this out.

  Do not pet the werewolf.

  “He came to my room that morning. My sister was there, freaking out, screaming at me that I’d ruined everything. She said some really shitty things.”

  You’re an idiot, Isabelle. You’ve screwed everything up for a guy who obviously doesn’t care about you.

  He’s just using you and you fell for it.

  Everything we’ve worked for is totally fucked right now.

  I can’t even look at you.

  Zoe ranted and I sat on the bed, the bra I’d been too freaked out to put on when I fled Gabe’s room crushed in my fist. Later that day I discovered a cut in my palm where the underwire had poked into my skin. At the time I didn’t even feel it.

  “Zoe said you must have planned the whole thing.”

  “I didn’t—”

  I hold up my hand. “I know. But I guess I was in shock. I couldn’t fight back. Then your dad showed up. He said he had more pictures and if I ever spoke to you again, he would release them. He said not even an Olympic gold medal would be able to redeem my reputation when he was through with me. Zoe flipped out about the sponsorship deals she was negotiating, you know?”

  He nods. Of course he knows. Sponsors are a driving force for athletes, even the ones with billionaire fathers like Gabe. Sponsorship equals exposure, which equals more of everything: more fans, more likes, more people talking about you. It gives you a degree of control over your reputation and your brand and a springboard into a successful future after you’re too old or broken to keep competing.

  And for someone like me, whose parents don’t have a huge building in New York named after them, sponsorship deals mean money. The kind of money that can change your life.

  Your sister’s life too.

  I try to shake that thought, but it clings, stubborn as a barnacle. My sister loves me, I know she does, but her entire life—personal and professional—is based on my skating career, and that means she sees me as a product first. All decisions are based on what’s best for the Isabelle Garland brand, which is not necessarily what’s best for her little sister’s happiness.

  “He offered us a deal: He’d never let anyone see the rest of the photos, and in exchange, I had to agree to cut off all contact with you. He had a chance to make you a star—to build you up to be a media personality so you could take over his company and make it even bigger. But a ‘sweet little girlfriend’ didn’t fit in with his plan. He said you needed a different kind of press than I could give you.”

  Gabe swallows hard. He plants his hands on his hips and glares down at his feet, then turns away from me and stalks to the back of the room.

  “Motherfucker!” he yells. He kicks the chest at the base of the shelves and the wooden lid pops open, releasing a cloud of dust. He stands there a minute, chest heaving, fighting to get himself under control.

  When he finally turns around, I’m expecting anger, but his green eyes are shining, like he’s fighting back tears. He juts his chin out like a little boy who’s trying to be brave and folds his arms across his chest.

  “Was it really that easy?” he asks.

  The question itself should probably infuriate me, but there’s nothing aggressive or accusing in his tone. He doesn’t sound angry.

  He sounds broken.

  “I get that you had a lot to lose,” he continues, “but did you even consider coming to me instead? You said you loved me, Belle.”

  I gaze at him helplessly. “I did love you. But what could you have done? Your father was telling the truth about what he could do to me—to both of us. I knew you couldn’t walk away from him because of Jake. My whole family was depending on me, and I was skating better than ever. I was so close to what I wanted to be.”

  He just won an Olympic medal, for fuck’s sake. Gabe knows better than anyone the sacrifice it takes to be an elite athlete. Hours spent doing the same trick over and over; days spent running the same routine until even your nights are taken over because you see it in your dreams. Years of not going out with friends or drinking or eating what you want to eat.

  The amount of spinach alone…

  I couldn’t throw all that away, no matter how much I wanted him.

  “I had no idea he talked to you that morning,” Gabe says. “I knew the pictures must’ve been him, but he gave me some bullshit story about a rival paper bugging my room. I called him on it, but then you just…disappeared. I thought you blamed me, and when you wouldn’t let me explain, I guess I kind of went numb. It wasn’t worth fighting him and upsetting everything with Jake if I couldn’t have you. I tried so many times to get in touch, Belle. You were a ghost.”

  “I knew he would find out if we talked. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “You mean I wasn’t worth the risk,” he states simply. He drops his head, all defiance gone, until his chin rests in his chest.

  I try to pull out the right words, to explain that it wasn’t like that at all, but my head is spinning and my mind has gone blank. To be trapped together here, launched into this instant level of intimacy after not speaking for years, is so bizarre that my brain can’t quite catch up. It’s like landing in the middle of a story: I’m not sure what my role is or how we relate to each other. Is he a stranger? The love of my life?

  Both?

  “I was twenty years old,” I say slowly, not sure where this explanation is heading, feeling my way as I go. “You were my first boyfriend. That was the first night we spent in the same bed. Zoe was yelling at me about soup and face wash commercials and your frickin’ father was waving naked pictures of me in my face, and both of them kept telling me my skating career—the thing I’d worked for all my life—would be finished unless I gave you up. So I agreed. I made a weak choice in a weak moment, and I’m sorry if I hurt you, but you weren’t the only one who got hurt.

  I cried myself to sleep every night for months. Zoe and my mom were barely speaking to me, and they changed my phone number and shut down all my email and other accounts. By the time I had dealt with the shock and I was feeling brave enough to think about reaching out, I figured you hated me. And anyway, it seemed you had moved on. All those pictures.”

  All those women.

  He winces when I mention the paparazzi shots, but he keeps staring at the floor, giving me nothing. I push on anyway because when else will I get the chance? It’s been three years. I haven’t so much as kissed another guy and Gabe is ob
viously still angry. Maybe if I can get this right, there’s still a chance for something more. Or, if not that, at least some peace.

  I jump back in before I can think too much about what’s at stake. Because, yeah, I’m terrified, but letting Gabe go for real might be the scariest thing of all.

  “And then when the accident happened the next year…” My voice falters and he finally raises his head so those deep green eyes meet mine.

  “For a long time I thought the accident was my punishment,” I whisper. My chest is tight and I swallow down the sobs I know are coming.

  “Your punishment for what?”

  “For being weak. For choosing skating over you. It was like the universe crushed my leg and took it all away to send me the message that I’d made the wrong decision.”

  “Oh, baby. No.” His face gentles and the softness in his tone undoes me. All the emotions I’ve been holding down so carefully break free and I sob, loud and harsh, as my body shakes and the tears come. This is not delicate, ladylike, dab-it-with-a-lace-handkerchief type weeping.

  This is full-on ugly, fierce, mop-the-snot-with-paper-towels sobbing.

  Gabe pulls me into his arms and presses my face against his chest. This time I don’t fight it, I just melt into his strength, accepting the comfort.

  “It’s okay,” he murmurs, breathing the words into my skin over and over until they make a chain of sound that winds around us, binding us together. Until maybe we can both believe that he’s right.

  He holds me tight until the sobbing stops, but even when I’m quiet again, he doesn’t let me go. He cradles me against his chest, humming something slow and soothing, and rocking on the balls of his feet so we’re swaying together. My ear is pressed against his chest, and I hear the steady thump of his heart and the little vibrations of his song. One of his hands smoothes carefully up and down my back while the other is buried in my hair, his fingers gently working through the strands. After a while I wriggle my arms out so I can hug him as well, grabbing my left wrist with my right hand so he’s locked into my embrace. Caught. Safe.