Say Love (Lost & Found #2) Page 18

  Hopefully, Stefan being here will change that.

  The new plan is to tease the world with a sneak-peak promo come February, just in time for Valentine’s Day. The timing is horrible, considering we are officially in January, but with the concept she plans to build this brand around, the widely celebrated holiday will definitely work in Lena’s favor.

  We’re working in a warehouse studio today, and the place is packed with models and stylists. Ari’s currently sitting for hair and makeup, and I’ve been keeping my distance in respect to her bullshit request.

  She didn’t exactly ask me to stay away. She asked that I not touch her. But I can’t be around her right now, because all I can think about is touching her.

  Ari’s hair is styled to give off an untamed, messy look, with her long wavy tresses flowing down her front. You’d think messing someone’s hair up would be fast and easy, but it took the stylists nearly an hour to perfect. They covered her eyes in smoky makeup—that I hate. Her mouth is coated with nude-colored lip shit—that I hate.

  Watching her with another man may not be so bad. This isn’t the version of Ari that I’m crazy about.

  Wait, that’s a lie. I may not be a fan of makeup, but there’s really nothing they could add or remove from Ari’s face to make her any less sexy. She’s a natural beauty. Damn her.

  When Ari gets out of her chair, I try my damnedest to look anywhere else. Thanks to Lena, I’m not going to be able to do that. Because, you see, Ari’s parading around set in nothing but a pair of fucking jeans today. Lena thought it’d be ‘hot shit’ to have Ari frolicking with one of the male models for one of the shots. Not even shoes were chosen to go with her lack of outfit. Nope, just the jeans and her tits.

  And the jeans…

  They accentuate her curves so perfectly. Now that I know what her ass looks like under all the clothes, they do nothing but torture and mock me.

  I’m dying.

  I’m starving.

  I want to eat.

  I want to fuck.

  What the hell is happening to me? Is it because she said no? Am I really that pathetic?

  I place my questions on a brief hold when Ari’s partner shows up to greet her. She laughs at something he says, and I swear the room just got a little bit brighter.

  I can’t believe she won’t let me fuck her again.

  This is the meanest thing anyone’s ever done to me.

  What a bitch.

  No, I take that back. She’s not a bitch. I’m just a little moody, that’s all.

  You know what they call someone when they get so hungry they become angry? Hangry. I used to hate that word, it’s not English; it’s utter nonsense. Now, I totally get it.

  Someone’s hand wraps around my arm, and I look down at it before looking whoever it is in the eyes. When I finally do, a familiar pair of grey eyes stare back at me.

  “Natasha,” I greet flatly. “I don’t like to be touched.”

  Natasha removes her hand from my arm with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to say hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “I didn’t get to say goodbye before you disappeared on New Year’s Eve. How was the rest of your night?” She finally brings up a topic I don’t mind discussing.

  “It was perfect,” I smirk.

  Bored with the conversation again, I turn to check on Ari, and I find myself smiling when I catch her in action.

  “No, Ari. Try to relax a little bit, sweetheart,” Stefan, the photographer, shouts over the music.

  The guy working opposite Ari, let’s call him Ken, is doing everything he can to connect with his Barbie, but I see the clear signs of discomfort on her face. She looks stiff in Ken’s arms, finding it difficult to just relax, and Stefan’s just not having it.

  I see the frustration in our new photographer build from here.

  A few more failed attempts later, Stefan explodes. “Stop! Everyone take five.”

  Lena and Liz scurry over to join me when Stefan heads my way. “I can’t work with this girl. Who the hell hired her for this job?”

  “We all did. What’s the problem?” I clip.

  Ari hurries over to join the conversation, looking overwhelmed and distressed. Witnessing this brings out the protective side of me.

  “I’m sorry, Stefan. I’m just a little nervous. I’ll get it, I promise,” she pleads with him.

  Stefan ignores her attempts, focusing on me. “This girl—”

  “Her name is Ariana,” I interject. “Use it.”

  “Ariana is the most unsexy model I have ever had the displeasure of working with. I shoot people, Mr. Carlisle. I don’t shoot mannequins.” He talks with his hands, I notice. Very expressive.

  If he waves them in my face one more time, I break them.

  Having been humiliated enough, Ari removes herself from the conversation, running from the room in tears.

  “Go,” I order the women before they even have the chance to ask, and Liz and Lena quickly go after her.

  With a threatening step forward, I enter well into Stefan’s personal space. “Ariana is a person, Mr. Rossi,” I retort. “You were hired to bring Lena’s vision to life. As the photographer, it is your job to connect with your models. Be patient and learn to direct them during your shoots. You will treat my girls with respect, or you can leave.”

  “Leave?” he spits. “You just hired me.”

  “Let me be clear… you are replaceable, Ariana is not.”

  The room is silent, everyone suddenly so interested in our heated dispute.

  “Ariana is done for the day, she will be back in the morning. Carry on with the rest of the models who are still here to work.” I pause before turning to leave, thinking of another thing to add. “Oh, and do heed my warning, Mr. Rossi, because I rarely give one.” I smooth a hand over my tie, leaning in so he won’t miss a word of it. “If I get another call today concerning your diva-like behavior, I will have you thrown from my property. Do we have an understanding?”

  Eyes dripping with hatred, Stefan smartly decides to keep his mouth shut, moving his head in a reluctant nod.

  “Very good.” I pull back, and I order everyone to get back to work before I head in the direction Ari had gone.

  We don’t speak the whole way home. Ari’s too busy staring out the window, and I have no idea where to even begin. I failed her today.

  Ten painful minutes of silence later, I’m pulling up to the Tower. Not wanting to say goodbye this way, I decide to see her up myself and leave the car running for the valet.

  While silence is something I prefer when in the company of others, I hate it with Ari. Being quiet just isn’t her thing. In any given situation, she usually has plenty to say.

  We board the elevator, a few others filing in after us. Around the tenth floor is when I hit my boiling point. When nearly half of the people on the lift clear out, I bring my arm around her front, crossing over her chest to get to her shoulder, then I pull her to me, her back flush against my chest.

  Ari brings both hands up, holding onto my arm. She doesn’t burst into tears or anything like that, but I know she’s crying by the way the other people are staring.

  A mother-daughter pair standing to the right of us starts whispering, commenting on our odd behavior. I’d like to tell them to mind their own fucking business, but Ari hates it when I yell at other people, so I bite my tongue.

  We get halfway down the hall when Ari turns to look at me. “How’s my face?”

  “Beautiful.” I laugh when she punches my shoulder. “Do you have tissues in your purse?”

  “No,” she weeps.

  “Don’t cry. Here…” I bring my hand to her cheek and use my thumb to wipe away some of the black mascara tear stains. “There, we’re good.”

  “Thank you.”

  I press a kiss to her forehead and nod toward the door. “Unlock the door,” I say with a firm pat against her ass.

  “Ow, Caleb!” She punches me again.

  Ari shov
es the door open once she gets it unlocked, and she stops when we find Aryn in the middle of the living room, slipping into a jacket.

  “There you are—” Aryn pauses when catching a glimpse of her face. “Bad first day?” he asks knowingly.

  “Where’s Ayli?” Ari asks, ignoring the question.

  “I just put her down, so please hold off on breaking anything until she wakes up.”

  “You have a meeting today?”

  “Yea, I shouldn’t be too long, though. Few hours, tops.” He pulls his sleeves through the ends of his jacket, regarding Ari with a worried frown. “You gonna be okay? Was it that bad?”

  “No, I’m going to be fine.” Ari forces a smile. “I’m going to change out of my clothes,” she excuses herself.

  Aryn waits until the door to her bedroom closes before turning toward me. “What the hell happened?”

  I scratch the back of my head with a sigh. “It was her first day with this bitch of a photographer. She’ll get used to him eventually. They just need to get to know one another better. No need to worry,” I reassure him.

  Aryn shakes his head and grabs his keys off the counter. “You know this part of her world better than I. Look out for her, Caleb.”

  “Come on. Of course I will.”

  Standing with one foot aimed toward the door and with the other toward the main hallway, Aryn looks conflicted about making his next move. “Fuck! I really want to check on her, but I’m running late…”

  “I got it, go!” I shoo him away.

  “Thanks, Caleb—”

  “Fuck off, Aryn. Get out of here.”

  I plop down on the couch when Aryn walks out the door and start channel surfing while waiting for Ari to finish up in her room.

  Ten minutes roll by, and Ari still hasn’t come out.

  I know that women take longer than men to get ready, but she isn’t getting dressed to go out, she’s getting dressed to stay in. It shouldn’t take but five minutes.

  Powering off the flat screen, I stand back up and head down the hall to her room.

  “Ari?” I knock twice. Nothing.

  “Kid,” I knock again. Nothing.

  “I’m coming in. Naked or not, here I come.”

  Please be naked. I twist the doorknob and push the door open.

  I cross my arms over my chest and lean up against the frame. Ari is just sitting up in bed, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come join me outside. What are you doing in here?”

  “Studying,” she answers without looking up.

  “I knocked. You ignored me,” I accuse.

  “Go away,” she says from behind her magazine, and that’s when I notice it, the weirdness in her tone.

  “Are you crying again?”

  “No.”

  “Lower the magazine.”

  “Go away!”

  I cross the threshold, entering her room without permission, and when I get close enough, I pluck the magazine from her hands.

  Yep, she’s definitely crying.

  “Are you kidding me right now?” I gesture toward her tear-stained face with the magazine. “You can’t always have good days, kid. You’re bound to have several bad ones. Learn to take criticism, and don’t let it get to you.”

  Ari snatches the magazine back and starts flipping through pages again. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t expect you to.”

  “Enlighten me. Why are you crying?”

  Ari sweeps her fingers across her face to dry her wet cheeks before tucking her hair behind her ears. “God, Caleb, he said I was the most unsexy model he’s ever photographed! You guys picked me to be the face of this brand, and he humiliated me in front of the rest of the girls. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

  “You’re plenty sexy, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. What you’re supposed to do is prove the guy wrong. You don’t come in here and cry about it, Ari. You do something about it!”

  There’s this thing we do as living, breathing humans. We love to obsess, to overstress the unimportant things. When we fuck up, we replay that moment over and over again in our heads. In doing so, we take a microscopic problem and end up magnifying it tenfold. I don’t care who you are; you can’t deny it.

  You are your own worst enemy-slash-critic. It’s exactly what Ari’s doing now, dissecting the situation and fixating on the bad, doubting her ability to do what we all already believe she can. She can learn a whole lot from what happened today. Instead, she cowers.

  Suffering the humiliation all over again, Ari hides behind her hands, and I see a fresh set of tears spill down her cheeks. “No, I can’t. You bet on the wrong girl. I clearly suck at this!”

  Everything that just came spilling from her mouth makes me so fucking angry.

  I reach down, gripping her by the arms, and I yank her out of bed before setting her roughly on her feet. I may have just scared her a little bit, but at least she’s not crying behind her hands anymore.

  “Who am I?”

  “What?”

  “Who the fuck am I, Ari?” I restate the question, fully committing to the tough love approach.

  “Caleb?”

  “What?” I angle my ear toward her. “I can’t fucking hear you.”

  “Caleb Carlisle,” she says a little louder this time.

  “That’s right, I am. I never bet on the wrong girl, Ari. Not once. Not now. Not ever. Are you going to make me a liar?”

  “No,” she croaks.

  “Do you want to make me look like a fool?”

  “No!”

  “Then buck up!”

  Ari flinches when I take it one decibel too far. “Okay,” she says, unconvincing.

  I gentle my voice when telling her, “You can do this, Ari, I know you can.”

  “He hates me…”

  “Who the hell cares, honestly? I don’t hate you, and I own Runway. Lena doesn’t hate you, and she created this line. We are the ones who matter. Stefan is one fucking photographer. That’s all he is. Do you understand?”

  She nods.

  “Answer my question.”

  “Yea,” she says, no louder than a whisper.

  “Can’t hear you.”

  “Yea!” Some of her confidence returns.

  I smile when I catch a hint of one playing at the corners of her mouth. “Who is Stefan to you?”

  “No one!” she stomps her feet to add that extra oomph.

  Satisfied enough with the improvement in her mood, I nod. “Very good.”

  “I’m going to be sexy!” she shouts, taking it a step further.

  “Okay, quiet down, jeez… Ayli’s sleeping.”

  Ari bursts into giggles, covering her mouth with her hand. “Oops.”

  “We good?” I ask, loosening my grip around her arms.

  “Yes.” Ari wraps them around me tightly. “Thank you, you’re the best.”

  “Yes, I know.” I hug her back.

  Ari pulls away first, cutting our nice moment short, and she looks worried again.

  “What is it now?”

  “We have an early call time tomorrow. What do I do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she sits back down on the bed, “I’m looking through these magazines for inspiration, but I don’t know. Is that stupid?”

  “No, it’s not… stupid…”

  Ari looks up from the pages. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “It’s not stupid, but what? I can tell there’s something you want to add to that. Say it.”

  “Well…” I reach up to scratch the back of my head.

  “You think I don’t know about that tic?” Ari points out.

  I lower my hand by my side. “What tic? I don’t have a tic.”

  “You scratch your head every time something makes you the slightest bit uncomfortable.”

  “Okay, look… studying other models for inspiration will come off
way too obvious. You need to come up with your own thing.”

  “I don’t have a thing.”

  “Thank God,” I joke.

  Ari rolls up her magazine and whacks me with it. “Be serious!”

  “I am!”

  She whacks me again. “Asshole.”

  Provoked by the foul use of her mouth, I reach out and grip her by the face before claiming it with my own.

  At first, Ari returns the kiss, and the second I slip her my tongue, she whacks me against the head, forcing me to break the kiss immediately.

  “OW, ARI!”

  “Stop fucking doing that!” she growls.

  I take her mouth with mine and catch her by the wrist when she swings at me again. I pull back, our lips making a loud smacking sound when I do. “For every dirty word that leaves your mouth, I kiss you.”

  “That makes no sense, you hate it when I swear.”

  “And you hate it when I kiss you.”

  Ari blinks up at me. “I don’t hate it. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “If you don’t hate it, why do you keep smacking me with this?” I snatch the magazine from her and give her a little bump against the head with it.

  “Because it’s weird!”

  I tilt my head to the side with a thoughtful expression. “Should I be offended by that?”

  “No, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

  “Then what’d you mean by it?”

  “You make me feel… weird.”

  “That’s still slightly offensive.”

  “No—” She releases an exasperated sigh. “A kiss with Randy—”

  “I don’t give a shit about your kisses with Randy,” I cut her off.

  “Just listen to me,” she snaps.

  I cross my arms over my chest, forcing myself to hold my tongue while she reminisces about the stomach-twisting memories of her lame kisses with her cunt of an ex.

  “When I used to kiss Randy,” she starts again. “I had complete control over the situation. I was never weak. A kiss with you stirs up a bunch of other things that I’m not comfortable with.”

  I arch a brow at her. This version of her answer I like very much. “Oh, yea? Like what?”

  “Things that lead to other things,” she states vaguely, dismissing the conversation with a wave of her hand.