Leah (Carter #2)

Twenty-Three

Leah

I slept deep. His arms were like pillows, and I was in heaven with the level of comfort I was feeling. Until… I heard something.

I thought I was dreaming of it at first.

I mean, why else would I hear voices ?

But as the minutes passed, I became distinctly aware that these voices were not a figment of my dream-state.

I was really hearing them.

Disoriented, I opened my eyes. I was curled in Carter’s arms, and he was still out, his chest moving evenly beneath my head. It took me a while to keep my eyes open for longer than five seconds. Then, sitting up slowly, I rubbed my face and glimpsed around the room, trying to make sense of things.

Where could I have heard voices?

The television was off, there was no radio in the room, and my phone was dead.

I couldn’t hear distinct words, but it was the sound of excitement that had my eyes turning to the windows. Immediately, my heart stopped cold in its tracks at the shadows moving on the other side. In the cracks between the blinds, I saw heads—multiple heads—and I gasped, terrified.

“Carter!” I yelled, the panic in my voice unmistakeable.

He stirred, his hand moving out to grab mine. “Hey, baby—”

“Carter, wake up! There are people outside the room!”

His eyes shot open, and he sat up quickly. “What?”

I gestured to the window, and he turned. The second he saw the shadows and heard the voices, his entire body tensed up. A stark look of anger took over his features, making him dangerously scary.

“Get changed,” he huffed out.

I slipped out of bed, the sheets wrapped tightly around me as I hurried into the bathroom, grabbing at my clothes along the way. I felt panicked.

How long had they been out there?

The second I was inside, I threw my shirt and shorts on. The clothes smelled bad, and they were still damp as hell. I felt disgusting, and I looked even worse than I expected.

My hair was in every direction, my eyes had dark circles beneath them, and my face was pale. I splashed water on my face just as the bathroom door opened and Carter stepped in, slamming it shut behind us.

“Fucking can’t believe this shit,” he growled out, slipping into just his jeans. It occurred to me then he’d walked naked to the bathroom, and I dreaded to think how many eyes had seen him.

“Did you have a look?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered, crossing his arms as he leaned his back against the sink. “People everywhere. Paparazzi and fans, mostly. A couple dozen.”

“A couple dozen? Jesus Christ, Carter!” I ran my hands through my hair, unable to process any of this. “What’s going to happen? They won’t break the door down or anything, will they?”

“No, but we need a car ready to pick us up. We can’t be here any longer or else that crowd is going to get bigger, and then who knows what’ll happen?”

“My phone’s dead.”

“That’s alright. I’ve got mine.” He noticed the look on my face and rested a hand to my shoulder, reassuring me. “Hey, baby, it’s okay. I promise. This will all be over.”

I wasn’t sure about that.

If anything, it had just begun.

He then pulled the phone out of his pocket and dialled a number. I knew it was Rome he was calling. He put the phone to his ear. “Hey, it’s me.”

I sat down on the lid of the toilet, wrapping a weak arm around my stomach as Carter explained the situation.

I felt sick.

Oh, my God, the thought of cameras in my face almost had me keeling over. This was Carter’s world, and now it had collided into mine. I hoped to God they wouldn’t pry. I didn’t need my life torn to pieces by a bunch of fucking life-suckers intent on making a buck through their stalking.

My life was meant to be private. I was meant to be achieving my pathetic little milestones unobtrusively.

What have you done?

I’d taken it too far.

God, I threw caution to the wind by being here with Carter.

What the hell had I been thinking?

I should have told him to leave the second I found him standing in the store. Then none of this would have happened. A fucking fool once again, driven by my emotions.

“Don’t start with me,” he vented on the phone. “It’s not a good time to tell me what I should have fucking done, Rome. Just get us out of here.” He rattled off the directions to Rome before he got off the phone. “Alright, he’s on his way.”

“He’s pissed, isn’t he?” I questioned, numbly.

“Who cares what he is?” He kneeled in front of me, and I looked at his worried face, glimpsing at his torso and at all the marks I’d given him during our time together last night. They were little scratches, most likely from my riding him with my fingers dug into his chest. Awesome, Leah. Did the people out there get a good look at those too?

“Hey,” he said softly, grabbing my hand. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this. It’s not that big of a deal. We’ll cut straight through them and get in the car and that will be the end of it.”

“That will be the end of it?” I shot him a disbelieving look. “No, it won’t, Carter. How long before we’re in some stupid fucking blog?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me !” I stressed, feeling my eyes mist over in panic. “I have a life here! I can’t have it turn upside down because of you. How am I meant to land a goddamn job fresh out of Uni if everyone in town is going to recognize me as your fling?”

His eyes immediately darkened. “What did you just say?”

My heart slowed.

I didn’t respond.

He moved closer to me, his anger exploding out of him as he gritted out, “Did you call yourself a fling, Leah?”

“That’s what they’ll be calling it, Carter.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what they call it!” he fumed. “That’s what they do, remember? They lie. They fucking lie about everything! If they want to call you a fling, then let them. We know the truth, and the longer you’re around, the more they’ll realize what we have is real.”

I just blinked at him for a moment, incredulously.

What did he just say?

I pulled my hand away from his. “The longer I’m around, Carter? I’m not going to be around because I’m here and you’re over there—”

“We have something,” he cut in sharply. “There’s so much potential here to make this work.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do. You have my word, Leah.”

“And you think your word means anything to me after all we’ve been through?” I seethed, completely losing my shit. “You broke my heart, Carter. You made me believe so many times during our time together that there was something more between us, and then you destroyed me! You can’t sit here and tell me that we can make this work when I have a list of reasons to doubt you.”

There.

I said it.

My true thoughts on the matter. I wasn’t going to shirk around this. He needed to know where I was at.

“Look at me,” he suddenly said, softly. Grabbing at my face with both hands, he turned me to him. “Leah, I want you. Just you. Only you. Don’t cheapen yourself right now. Don’t think of yourself as a fling. You’re not. You’re the only real thing in my life, and I can’t stand the thought of you walking away from this. I’m not that guy anymore. Are you hearing me? I’m not that guy anymore, Leah.”

His voice broke as he pleaded to me, and my eyes were sore from the tears swimming behind them. This was a different sort of pain. We lived two completely different lives. Even if I wanted to make this work, I knew it couldn’t.

Our kind of relationship needed a lot of healing, and a man as busy as him couldn’t put aside that time to nurture us after our kind of fucked-up past.

Regardless, I wasn’t na?ve anymore. He could give me his word until he was black and blue in the face, my heart refused to believe it. I’d been put through the wringer too many times to fall for words.

This had been a mistake.

A giant step backwards.

I didn’t know what this was going to do to me when the dust settled.

“Carter,” I said quietly, forcing the words out one by one, “I told you already: I’m not the same person either.”

He dropped his hands from my face and collapsed to the ground, looking at me with incredulity. “What happened between us, Leah? What did we just do last night?”

I sighed, throat thick. “We spent the day together, and then we had sex.”

“Do you have to make it sound so clinical?”

“I don’t mean to.”

“Do you regret what we did?”

I paused, hesitating. “No.”

“Then you know more happened than us just fucking. Admit it. You felt it, what we have. How amazing it could be. Admit that much at least. Don’t be like I used to be. Don’t be a coward, Leah. You’re better than that.”

I looked into his eyes, saddened by the hope that lingered there. “You came back into my life, and you’re incredible. I see that. Maybe you’ve changed. But… I…” I took a few deep breaths, feeling the hot tears flow down my cheeks. “I’m— I’m not strong enough to do this again. I can’t have my life torn to pieces again, Carter.”

“I won’t tear your life to pieces,” he promised, his chest rapidly moving now as he stressed his words. “Leah, you have to believe me.”

“You’re asking me to do a big thing, and I’m not ready.”

He froze, gazing at me like his entire world had stopped making sense. “ You’re not ready? There’s a strange fucking irony to this, isn’t there?”

“You don’t understand—”

“I do understand! See, I know what you’re feeling. You want to keep me at arm’s length because you’ve been burned badly. Leah, I understand that. I know what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you love. But closing your heart means letting the best thing that happened to you pass by. It’s the fear of the unknown stopping you. Listen to me when I tell you that I’m not going to make the same mistake again.”

You hear the sense in his words. You understand how serious he’s being. But… you can’t control the twist in the pit of your stomach that tells you to run.

That’s what I fought with. He was right; I was scared, and maybe I was being a coward. I was closing my heart up and letting something that might work go.

Love was a gamble, and I’d spent the last three years playing on the safe side, avoiding that gamble with anyone. And by doing so, I avoided the most acute pain possible.

What he was asking for was too much.

I just wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

And besides, I wasn’t the girl I was before, willing to take a leap of faith on a man that had stepped back into my world only a few days ago. No, that wasn’t possible. He didn’t know what he was talking about. Carter would return and continue his flings with dense giraffes like Molly, and I would salvage my life here after it got torn apart by the fuckers outside the motel room.

He read me like a book, and the disappointment on his face was almost too hard to bear.

“I’m sorry, Carter,” I apologized, and I meant it. “I never expected us to find each other again like this. I imagined something entirely different.”

“You’re making a mistake, Leah,” he whispered to me, a mixture of sadness and anger in his voice. “You really are, and you’re going to let more time go. Time we’ll never have back.”

“This time, we’ll really go our separate ways—”

“ You’re the deluded one all along,” he cut in, shaking his head in defeat. “We’ll never move on. How many more years are you going to let pass before you realize this?”

“The whole purpose was for us not to have to depend on each other—”

“We’re not depending on each other! I’m here because I want to be! I don’t need you the way I did before, Leah. I want you, desperately.” His breaths were ragged, his gaze tearing through me. “How can you lie to yourself right now? Where do you draw the strength to let me walk away? I’m giving you what you always wanted. I’m giving you my heart on a fucking platter, and you’re too stuck in the past to accept it.”

When I didn’t respond, his face dropped. “You really have changed.”

“What did you expect would happen?” I retorted, staring hard at him. “You really thought I was living my life here, never forgetting you, always keeping my heart open in case you came back—”

“No,” he cut in, “I didn’t think you were waiting for me, but I hoped you were. Do you really want us to go our separate ways again, have empty fucks all over again, and continue this denial shit happening between us?”

“I’m just not ready!” I stressed, face reddening as I reached my limit. “I’m not ready to feel pain again like before! That’s the truth. You keep telling me to move on from the past, but try telling trauma to fuck back off—it’s not possible. I’m burned, goddammit. I’m scarred, Carter!”

He ran his teeth over his bottom lip, another surge of anger tearing through his features. He dragged a hand through his hair before the defeat shone in his eyes. He got up and left the bathroom. I almost wanted to call him back in, but I stopped myself short.

I didn’t move, not for a long time. I buried my face into my arms, thinking about everything he said. When did my life get so complicated? I wanted simple again. I wanted loneliness because it didn’t fuck me up like he did.

When he returned a half hour later, he simply opened the door a crack and, in a guarded voice, said, “Time to go.”

Dazedly, I gathered my things and put my shoes on, all the while avoiding his eyes. He waited by the door, glancing out the blinds before turning back to me with this lifeless look on his face.

“Ready?” he asked when I finished.

Feeling equally inert, I nodded.

Grabbing the hat off the night table—the same damn hat he fucked me with— he set it over my head, hardly looking at me.

In a monotone voice, he said, “When we go out, don’t speak. Just look down, and I’ll lead the way. I won’t let them touch you. Stick by me and nothing will happen.”

I nodded again.

He took me gently by the hand and put his other hand on the doorknob. “We’re going to go straight through the crowd and into the car waiting for us. Never mind about checking out. I’ll have all of that sorted. Easy?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

Anxiety made my stomach twist, and I almost pushed him away right then to seek the safety of the bathroom again. Somehow, I pulled it together.

He noticed my twist of emotions, and he sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment to breathe. He was fighting that wall again, but it came down.

“Don’t listen to a word they say,” he added caringly, looking about my face with concern and…affection. “It might get ugly, and the Leah I know doesn’t take ugly, but you’re going to have to.”

“Okay, I will,” I promised.

This was it.

Our moment walking down memory lane was over—

And I felt despair because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to it.

He opened the door a moment later, and nothing could prepare me for the chaos that unfolded. A man barged into the motel with a camera in hand, and he made it only a step before Carter shoved him harshly out the door. The man fell on his back, still desperately taking pictures as we stepped over him. Carter’s grip tightened around me, and I could understand why.

There were people as far as the eye could see, and we were shoving through a bunch of them. I saw faces everywhere. Fans were screaming, men with cameras were shouting so many questions, it made my head dizzy.

“Is this your new love, Carter?”

“Is it true you’ve cheated on Molly?”

“Will you be staying in your hometown long?”

“Is it the end of Fatal Rebellion? Is that why you’ve all gone separate ways?”

Then there were the fans. Angry women, pointing at me, shrieking obscenities.

“Heartbreaker!”

“Whore!”

I felt anger, wanting nothing more than to wrangle these bitches to the ground. I kept myself in check, though, remembering my promise not even twenty seconds ago. I didn’t need a catfight under my belt, but god, they sure loved to provoke it, didn’t they?

Carter navigated through the crowd, looking down, saying nothing. I did the same, keeping my eyes glued to my sneakers, painfully aware of how horrible I looked. My hair fell over parts of my face, and I could only pray it was enough to keep my identity hidden.

We approached a black BMW, and I knew Rome was inside. Carter opened the passenger door and I quickly climbed in. Looking toward the front, Rome sat behind the wheel, dressed in a hat and sunglasses. He frowned at me in the rear-view mirror, shaking his head in frustration.

The crowd had followed us out to the car, and Carter ended up shoving more people out of the way to get inside. Just as he turned, a hand grabbed at him, and flashing lights of the man’s camera went off in Carter’s face. I heard Carter curse as he turned and landed a punch across the man’s face.

“Don’t fucking touch me!” I heard him growl out.

Huh, so much for taking the ugly.

Without waiting, he slipped into the car, panting hard, stretching out the hand he used to punch the man. The man himself had a crowd surrounding him, taking pictures of him sprawled on the ground with his hand clutched to the side of his face.

This had escalated beyond anything I could imagine.

“Fuck!” hollered Rome as he attempted to manoeuvre through the crowd, honking on the horn at least a dozen times as people continued to take pictures and scream. “This is fucked up, man.”

“You shouldn’t have left the fucking bodyguards behind,” Carter retorted, staring out the window with flared nostrils.

“Oh, so it’s my fault, huh? I told you not to leave the goddamn fucking house!”

I tensed as they argued, feeling uncomfortably out of place.

When Rome finally managed to get away, he pressed down hard on the gas and took off down the road, going way over the speed limit. My body harshly fell back as he took it over a hundred kilometres an hour.

“You need to calm down,” Carter told him. “I know we fucked up, alright? Just calm the fuck down.”

“I wanted one visit with my parents without one single incident,” Rome fumed. “The dickheads out there had only just stopped waiting outside their house, and now they’ll be all over it again! How do you think my parents are going to take their privacy being violated once more now that everyone knows we were here? And now it’s due to something that could have completely been avoided had you not fucking left the house! How hard is it to stay under one roof? You couldn’t just call Leah over? You had to do a runner? They’re going to take to the news with this. You’re going to get smeared—”

“I don’t fucking care about my image, Rome—”

“—they’re going to drag the whole Molly shit into this—”

“Well, fuck Molly! The hell do I care about her? I broke it off with that girl, told her I wasn’t into her, and she still came around.”

“Nobody cares, Carter. They get to decide the story, not you. They’re going to drag Leah into this too, you asshole!”

Carter went silent, running an exasperated hand through his hair. He looked a downright mess.

“They’re going to antagonize Leah,” Rome continued, talking about me as if I wasn’t there. “Make her out to be some relationship breaking slut. Is that what you wanted? Congratu-fucking-lations if it is.”

“Of course it isn’t!” Carter growled back.

“I told you to hold off on her, man. I told you to fucking wait.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” I suddenly intervened. “I agreed to everything Carter said, and more.”

Rome glanced at me in the mirror, like he’d just remembered I was there. “You have to lay low, Leah.”

“They didn’t see my face—”

“They’ll know your name in an hour. They’ll have your life story done by tonight. There will be pictures up, along with everything they believe happened, all before you lay your head to rest tonight. And by morning, it will be everywhere. That’s the world we live in, and you’ve just been dragged into it by the stellar guy sitting next to you.”

Carter stared despondently out the window, confirming Rome’s words with his silence.

Jesus Christ, I was fucked.

“How did they find us?” I asked, hysterically. “I don’t understand. How? I don’t…”

It could have been anyone, really. Could have been my boss. Could have been the motel lady. Could have been the trucker that passed us along the road. Fuck, it could have been someone we didn’t even know that had seen us.

It was worrisome not knowing who had been watching.

What kind of person could live through this?

“How?” I asked again, shocked.

“Doesn’t matter,” Carter mumbled. “It never does at the end of the day.”

No one spoke after that.