Chapter 164

“You know we can’t really plan a wedding while lying naked in bed and doing nothing except having sex all day.” Arrick nudges me in the butt with his groin and wakes me out of the semi slumber I was heading into.

We stayed up all night, having some bedroom acrobatics and now most of the day we have seemed to repeat it. The only time we did get up was for food that he cooked nakedly, and we had to revisit the couch and some of the apartment surfaces to remember how good sex on them was. It feels like we have gone back in time to our first weeks together and have a renewed hunger for it all the more.

Getting engaged really does rock.

“You know I can tell Leila she has a wedding to plan, and we can stay in bed.” I yawn and push back against his groin wiggling expertly until he grows hard once again and smile to myself at how easy he is. Arrick kisses me on the cheek and smacks my ass a little harshly.

“Keep that up and we won’t get out of bed for the actual wedding either. You can’t leave Leila in charge… she will make everything pink, glittery and we’ll have an Ed Sheeran wedding march.” Arrick is in good spirits still and scoops my hand up to kiss the knuckles one either side of my new ring.

“That all sounds fine to me… besides, you told me our song is an Ed Sheeran song.” I turn on him and let my fingers loose on the appearance of his five o’clock shadow, running my fingertips along the masculine jaw with pleasure.

“Okay, so maybe it is, but I don’t want pink and you’re enough sparkle in one wedding party, baby. I like when we cut down on the glitter.”

“Ughhh, I do not understand your weird anti-glitter standing… you live with me. How can you be so against the sparkle?” I huff and throw him my best frowny look, but he only prods me in the space between my eyebrows.

“Because I live with you… You are the reason I am anti sparkle. Overexposed and it’s killed my tolerance.” Arrick then flicks me in the same space and gets a serious glare this time and an ouch.

“Asshole.”

“Princess… Queen of all things sparkly.” He smiles, and this time makes a move to get up, much to my protest.

“Where are you going?” I demand as he slides up and grabs some boxers from the nearby drawer unit without a backwards glance. I have no intention of letting him escape for at least another couple of hours.

“We have a lot to do, baby. For a start, we need to go back to Paris and sort this shit out for the last weeks of your term. I need to see that asshole tutor of yours and lay down some fucking ground rules about my future wife. If we are not staying there anymore, then we need to list everything we want shipped back here, clothes and everything, and I need to speak to our housekeeper about her contract and Boris too, your driver. Secondly… we also need to tell our families about our happy news and start the ball rolling on you know… an actual wedding. We have to register for a marriage license, Sophie, and we need to throw cash at whoever it is to fast track a wedding in under three months. We need to book some flights and I also need to tell my dad I need some time to go do some personal shit for the next week.”

And in one engagement my sweet gentle boy turns into Jake Carrero… bossy, in control, throwing orders around and I blink at him like he has two heads.

“Nope! Not going to work.” I point out rather sassily and cross my arms as I sit up in the bed and stare at him.

“What’s not?” Arry regards me with a look of complete confusion. A hint of nervousness that maybe I rethought my whole ‘I want to marry you’ moment and I sigh heavily.

“You! Turning into a stereotypical Carrero, with your bossy pants on. This is me… you have only no chance of bossing me around.”

Clearly been spending way too much time in the folds of his family in business.

“Do you want a husband or not?” He eyes me rather stubbornly and I wonder if this is a sudden personality transplant, and maybe I should run for the hills.

“Does husband equal boss to you?” I narrow my eyes and for the first time wonder if old fashioned Italian upbringing has a whole set of new rules regarding marriage that Arry has never put into play as just boyfriend. I’m not sure I like this sudden difference.

Arry sighs and sits down on the bed, pulling me closer by the ankle and rests his hand on my leg.

“I have always been a bossy asshole, Sophs. I know when it comes to you it, is essentially futile. I’m also still exactly the same guy, but I have been too lax about shit for too long. We are getting our shit together, after a crappy year that left us both feeling run down and deflated. We are starting something real, something that really does mean forever and it’s about time I stepped up to the mark and started taking care of what is mine. I’ve spent a lot of time this past few days thinking about my priorities in life and it comes back to the same thing always. You.” He looks like he means it and I watch him silently. “As soon as this merger is signed off and the real work starts of combining two businesses, I’m cutting myself out of Carrero Corp to only a five percent share hold. That means no more say in the decision making and no more equal responsibility in how things run. I’m bowing out to focus on us, my fight career, and our future. My five percent makes sure our future kids will still have something to inherit and be financially secure. If they want a bigger cut of the business, there is a clause that they get my share of control back on their twenty first birthdays and will be split between whatever kids want to step up to the plate in business.”

I blanche at him in complete disbelief, not sure what I am actually hearing here.

“What are you talking about?” Arrick loves working in his family business, it’s more than a feeling of responsibility, he loves it and takes great pride in his work.

“I’m talking about putting us before work. You before anything. I’m tired of how this shit has been and missing your show was the final straw. The fight with my dad… I told him what I intended to do and some of those contracts I was up all night with… they were my resignation of a third of control, Sophie. I handed them to my father before I came home and proposed to you. I know where my future lies. I bought that ring two years ago and kept it in my safe at the office all this time. I should have fucking got my head out of my ass and done exactly what I am doing now.”

I have no actual words, like my normally laid back and go with the flow boy has taken a run and jumped off a damn cliff and this crazy imposter ranting about cutting himself out of Carrero Corp is his doppelganger. I feel sick to my stomach and my anxiety levels quadruple.

“You do put me before work, Arrick… Don’t you see that? You moved us to France, for me… you commuted across another country… for me. You are resigning, because of me. You always take care of me, even when you’re not physically with me; you make sure I have people around me to do your job. You missed my show, but you sent Christian, who probably was more excited than you about it anyway. You always make sure I’m cared for in your absence in the form of Janetta and Boris. You always put me at the front of everything … I do not need you to resign! … We need to come home and go back to our lives from before. No more Paris, no more commutes. We can be like we were.” the panic rising inside of me, knowing how immense a deal this is. This isn’t just about him cutting out of something he loves doing. This is about hurting his relationship with his father and possibly Jake too, although I’m sure Jake will be more understanding. Giovanni, however, will not. This is something he built for his sons to carry on and it has always been known that eventually he would hand his control to his sons to run the business in a fifty split they would pass onto their own kids. Arrick cutting out to be nothing more than a shareholder will cause a huge rift and no longer being part of the loop will be something he will regret. I cannot let him do this.

Even when he chose a fight career over Carrero Corp, he still kept his hand in and on top of things, he was never out of the loop. He went to college to learn business, so he could be a part of his family’s empire. He is a Carrero he should be a part of Carrero Corp.

“I’m doing this for us, Sophs. I told you I never wanted to lose you and these past few months… I’m losing us! Why did you never tell me you hated the people at school?” Arrick looks pained and I realize that little comment must have been sitting there in his brain since yesterday. He has been mulling it over, even though we talked it all out and it’s all part of the reason he thinks this is what we should do.

My overthinker is still in there.

“I didn’t want you to think moving there was a mistake. I didn’t want you to worry about me and make this more of a deal than it is.” I shrug and feel ashamed that after everything, I basically lied about something this dumb.

“This is what I mean, baby… I’m your best friend, on top of everything else we are, this is something you would have told me before. Yet because of me running back and forth and dealing with work, you didn’t. You kept something this important quiet and kept suffering alone. I’m so fucking tired of leaving you alone; that has never been the purpose of us, we are better together in every way. We suffer when we are apart, that’s not a flaw, it’s how we work.” Arrick gets up and climbs on the bed beside me, hauling me into his arms and leaning back so I am nestled against him, entangling our fingers snugly.

“I knew you would get stressed out with the fact they were all hostile bitches and there was nothing you could do about it. I handled it, Arry. They mean nothing in the grand scheme of things and after this they won’t mean a thing anymore. They are irrelevant to the bigger picture.” I’m trying to soothe him; I don’t want him bearing a burden of guilt for my choice.

“I hate that you didn’t talk to me… didn’t tell me. I hate knowing that all that time living there, Sophs… there was no one else in your life, but me. It explains why things became so much more strained out there.” His voice is hoarse and torn, and I know this is getting to his overprotective side on serious levels, as regret and shame rushes through me for ever hiding this. If it was the other way around, then I guess I would feel crushed that he kept something from me for a whole year that affected him this way.

“It’s done…I am done with all of it. I want to come home and get back to what we had here, before we ever went there.” I want my real friends, our shared friends and our social life back. I want the access to my family again and the monthly trips home to see them. I want New York and this apartment and Arrick in our bed every night beside me. I want the happiness back that I felt going to school here and all my hopes and dreams of the future back with it too. Paris has dented all of that.

“We need to go back … I won’t let you run out of the last month of school after getting through all of this. I need you to face this with me and at least end your year there properly. Finish school, get what we want from our apartment and I’ll sell it.” He’s back to sounding commanding and a little bit Jake-like but this time it’s not as bad and I’m not bristling at the tone. I understand his need to fix everything for us and make this right. Understand Arricks constant need to do things the right way, it’s always at the heart of everything he does, and I guess a part of me agrees in this.

I assumed that leaving now won’t affect my grades for my year, but after assaulting Claude, there is no telling what damage he might do. Maybe letting Arry loose on him is better for me after all and I can’t argue that we do need to go pick out and pack up what we want to bring home. We have accumulated a lot of stuff in Paris that I want here, and I really need to be there to do that.

“We only go back until I am officially done, then we’re out of there and we never go back … three weeks Arry. That’s all I have left of school and that’s more than enough time to orchestrate getting our belongings back here and the apartment up for sale. We’re coming home.” I am not budging in this; my mind is made up. Paris is like a dirty word to me now, all my experiences there have soured the city I should love as a fashion designer. I want my familiar back and my life.

“Three weeks and we come home together. We get married and we restart life back here. We fix us.” He lifts me onto his lap and wraps his arms around me to snuggle me close, burying his face in my hair as I curl up against that rock-hard chest.

“Sounds like the best idea you ever had.” I giggle and close my eyes when his mouth rests against my head as he kisses me through my hair.

“You were the best idea I ever had.” He squeezes me tight and I guess I can’t argue with that one.