CHAPTER577
The flight is long and depressing. I barely sleep at all and now after two nights of zero sleep I am a walking zombie as I push my way through the people exiting JFK airport onto the street in the hopes of finding a cab. It’s still another thirty minutes or more in a car back to Manhattan and I’m literally seeing double with fatigue. It’s around seven a.m. now, the sky bright with a new day and cold as hell. You can tell there has been a recent bout of storms and snow, due to how icy the air around me is and I swear it’s colder than Europe right now. Never thought that was possible.
I’m so beyond happy to be back on American soil, my feet planted on familiar sidewalks and looking around at people who sound like home. If we move our ass we will get to my apartment before Arrick leaves for work and I’ll get a chance to shock him with my presence and give him a piece of my mind.
I may still be due him some mad Sophie, but really, now all I want, and need is Arrick to give me a huge hug and tell me it’s all going to be okay. My moods have been swinging full circle on this long flight and I am no surer about how to feel about him than I was nine hours ago sitting in a French terminal.
I haul my suitcase with me from the car, luckily, I chose a small one and hand the driver some money. Pulling myself into the sidewalk in front of our building and I have to admit, the sense of elation at just seeing our familiar gorgeously tall luxury apartment block looming up in front of me, does amazing things for my mood. Up there in the clouds is our penthouse pad, my heart and my home and seeing as it’s still before eight a.m., my prince too. I don’t know what his training schedule is anymore for the gym here but even if he is still doing his five am slots he always comes home to get ready before eight to be at the office for nine am. Arry will be here. He is ritualistic with his routines and habits; I can set a watch by him. Steadily regular and reliable, usually.
I pull my case with me and smile at Frank the desk clerk as I pass, beaming at him with the hugest grin I can muster. He seems to take a double take then grins right back at me. Probably shocked that me of all people can get to New York alone and before daybreak.
“Miss Sophie… it’s great to see you home, Mr. Carrero. never mentioned it.” He keeps grinning at me as I pass his desk and I wave his way with a “Shhhhh” motion
“It’s a surprise, he doesn’t know I am home. It’s great to see you again.” I wave him off with a smile as I head for the bank of elevators and move to the last in the row. It’s the only one which goes as high as the top floor and usually other tenants don’t use it much because of that. It’s pretty much Arry’s exclusive elevator nowadays.
When the doors open, I’m surprised to see two men in suits emerge, but shrug it off. It is still one that is used by other floors too, so I guess they are visitors to the building and just assumed this was like the other ones. Although they look a little rumpled to be starting anew day, especially with so obviously expensive suits.
When I get in, I key in the pin on the pad to access the penthouse and lean back against the back wall as tiredness overtakes me. I’m almost home, almost there and just need to hold on for a couple of minutes more before I can throw myself on the couch and flake out.
God, I miss that couch so badly.
I don’t know what his reaction will be, but all I can think about after that long ass trip is some hours in a bed, sleeping this off. Beyond exhausted, hungover, and so overwrought and emotional because of it that I know I am hardly functioning. I sigh when the doors slide shut and close my eyes for the few minutes it takes to get to our floor and our home. I have no clue how I am going to react when I see him, still haven’t turned on my cell for his messages and no idea what I am even going to say when faced with him. I’m a little apprehensive seeing as last thing I did say to him was I didn’t want to see him, and he could go fuck himself.
Even if he deserved it, I’m nervous.
I’m alerted to the doors opening with the ping of reaching my destination and straighten up, pulling my case in firmly beside me and pull off my handbag across my shoulder. I plan on dumping both as soon as I get in and go find my man, even if I’m still hating on him.
The doors slide open onto the familiar open plan interior of our apartment and I walk in confidently, inhaling it like heaven. Halting briskly when I realize I’m not faced with the clean and neat haven like it always is, but instead a takeout littered sitting area, with dishes and evidence of a night of food and wine. It’s messy and slobby and the Arry I know would never leave it like this for love nor money. His anal germaphobe OCD tendencies would have an all-out meltdown.
Looking from the messy center table my eyes span the space, partially lighted and still gloomy from the dullness of the hour and halt in shock at the new sight that catches my eye, one that makes my heart stop dead and my whole body freezes with the icy wash that consumes me.
A woman cozily standing in my kitchen making herself a mug of coffee and looking totally at home.
I can only see her from the waist up but she’s standing in a blouse that’s unbuttoned to cleavage level and she looks sleep deprived. Startled as her eyes meet me in shocked silence and we regard each other wordlessly as reality seems to slip away from me.
My heart skips a beat as I stare at her, completely unsure how to react as we both gawp at one another and then Arry walks into view from the bedroom, pulling on a shirt over his naked torso and buttoning it up as he wanders out towards the middle of the room.
“You got mine ready?” He says to her nonchalantly as he focuses on what he is doing, oblivious to my presence like I am having an out of body experience. Literally, like all time halts and I can’t catch my breath.
I do a double take from his half-dressed state to the young brunette in my kitchen and stand like a statue, unsure what else to think as my heart breaks into a million pieces with the sight before me. Rationale impossible when all I can feel is the shattering of every piece of me inside. Tears filling my eyes and blurring my vision as my lungs collapse.
The elevator starts to ping as the doors signal closing and it draws Arry’s eyes up to mine in a split second as he sees me. Frozen, paralyzed in complete disbelief, my eyes sting as recognition flicks across his face.
“Sophs?” He seems pleased to see me in that second, weirdly, then blinks as he takes in my expression and obvious growing distress. Looking around him, from her to me and back again, and his face drops. His whole posture changes from casual and aloof to stiff and panicked.
It says it all.
“It’s not what you…” He sounds terrified, eyes wide as he moves fast towards me. I don’t give him a chance to finish, backing into the elevator as the doors begin to close, my instinct to run from pain, unable to breathe, unable to function and grab at the wall to hold myself up as everything comes crashing in on me. He makes a dash towards me, for the doors, but they close before he gets close enough, locking him out, protecting me from whatever it is he was about to say.
What have you done to us, Arry?
All I can think about is Natasha, the night she walked in on us and the realization that she was two years into her relationship with him and it was falling apart when he decided to come after me.
Is this what he’s doing to me? Would he?
We’re two years in and falling apart. This is fate coming back to punish me for Natasha.
I don’t know how to react, what to think or how to feel. Like I’m going to vomit, or pass out, or die from the pain that’s consuming me all over. My skin is rippling with horrid sensations as though I’m being pricked all over, my lungs deflating with heaviness. Every part of me aches with an agony I have no coping mechanism for.
Natasha was blind to all of it… Is that me? Am I blind to what’s been going on?
In one split second my whole world just comes crashing down around me and I’m stood here breaking into a million pieces as my hearts bleeds out.
My Arry and some other woman, all cozy in the morning before work?
Arry wouldn’t do that to me?
He loves me, I love him and things between us have still been the same sexually when he is home. He wouldn’t do this to us.
He couldn’t do this to us—could he?
It’s different to what he had with Natasha… I’m not her. He always loved me, he never loved her."
