Fixated On You (Torn Series #5) (21 page)

In less than a month, I went from an engaged woman to a woman who had nothing left except Carter, who was patiently waiting on the landing as I tried to make sense of what the fuck had just happened.

I almost jumped out of my skin when big arms wrapped around me, holding me close. “It’s okay,” Carter murmured above my head with his chin resting on it. “It’s going to be okay. Breathe.”

The urge to cry and breakdown in his arms was tempting enough, however I was aware that no matter how much I’d shed tears, it wouldn’t erase the pain that the man I loved was going through at the moment.

Last night, it had been as though I had simply lost it; got too fed up with how much I was being trampled on. It was as if it was my vengeance for Bass fucking Nikki, the whole baby thing, the pictures and the videos. As much as those pained me to the core, seeing how hurt he was earlier had only made things worse for me.

You see, I wanted to die the second I knew he was in that room. Millions of things were running through my mind when I scrambled to go and chase him downstairs. Being so close to him had made me realize how much I’d missed him. And if I had any doubts in my mind about Bass and I, there wouldn’t be any chance for me to feast on that idea because the moment I realized that he wouldn’t even look at me; that was when I knew that he wouldn’t ever look at me the same.

I made my bed, now I had to lie in it.

Did I regret last night? I wanted to say
yes,
but at the same time, I did have fun. And yes, no one had put a gun to my head to force me to go through the things I did with Carter, so I wouldn’t even dare say that it was the alcohol talking. Yes, the alcohol made it easier for me to make the decisions, but it was all me who did the talking and doing.

I wasn’t sure I was ready to face Carter and what he was after from me. I needed to heal, to come to terms with the fact that I might never speak to Bass again.

Emotionally, I was a damn mess. Mentally, the psychologists would have a field day with me because of the fuck-ups I’d done and that they continually kept on coming. I was my own worst enemy.

Pulling away from Carter, I paused to gather my thoughts, barely glancing in his direction. “Give me a little space. I’m going to make some coffee then we’ll talk upstairs. Give me ten or twenty then I’ll come and join you.”

He nodded. “Take whatever time you need. I’ll be in your room.” Carter kissed my cheek before I watched him climb the stairs, eventually disappearing to my room.

Carter understood because he knew how much Bass had meant to me. Even last night, he apologized for taking advantage of my drunken state, but had said that he simply couldn’t resist me any longer. I didn’t blame him. This was all my doing.

So I took my time making us both coffees while I tried to wipe my tears away, still donning the wrapped sheet around my body. Each time I blinked, closed my eyes, dared to breathe, I saw him; the hurt and the pain I had just caused him.

No matter what I did now, it was going to haunt me day and night.

Now, I had to face another challenge, hoping Carter and I could come to a resolution; find a common ground to stand on. I knew my decisions as of late were not something I was proud of, but dwelling on that would only make me feel suicidal.

One problem at a time.
I was going to try and make the best of it.

Hopefully, this talk with Carter would enlighten me as to where to go from here on out.

Chapter 25

Bass

Two weeks later…

It was our last night filming. Tomorrow, most of the people would be flying out and jetting somewhere to recuperate.

It had been fourteen days of hell, and still counting. I had at least stopped myself from drinking, too excessively, because I was aware that I could end up smashing the items close to me—like the entire house. I thrashed the whole damn place. One incident had been enough. I didn’t need another repeat. Though that one incident had happened in my house in LA, I knew my feelings were too raw—emotions running too high—that I could easily have another rage-fest with the things around me.

The house in LA was a mess when I’d left it. It was such a mess that Barbara came to my rescue and had cleaners take care of it. Her suggestion afterward to sell the house had helped quite a bit as well. I didn’t want to be in that house anymore. As much as I loved Emma, each time I entered that foyer now, I was reminded of where my heart had been left for broken. I didn’t want that. It had honestly come to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to go inside the house, so I slept in a hotel room.

Broken relationships were a hardship to get over. However broken engagements were another thing entirely. It felt like no hope was left for me. It was my fault for falling so much and investing all of my time and effort into shaping up our future together. Maybe I had become too complacent after we got back together.

The
maybes
were endless and the blame game was stuck in my head.

When Kosta called for me to go visit Paris with him for a little while, I didn’t even think twice to say yes.

Since my home was put on the market and Emma had broken off our engagement and immediately run off to the love of her life, I was left empty handed. Even Gus, who I hadn’t spotted in her house, left an empty hole in me. I was a man who had a lot of things, but truly had nothing—nothing that counted for anything at least.

Dimitris was only there for a weekend with Lindsey, but I remained in the city of lights due to the fact that I had nowhere else to go, so I thought, why not enjoy what the Parisians can offer and try to forget the catastrophe that was my life at the moment?
Why not, indeed.

So I partied. Hard.
On a daily basis. I would wake up, eat, breathe and sleep partying. At one point, I thought that I might just be giving up on life because, heck, what’s the purpose of it anyway? I mean, come on, I tried to play by its rules, but that didn’t do much for me. In fact, it did the opposite, it merely fucking broke me.

Now here I was, a broken man in Paris, fucked inside and out, hating all the blonde women on sight—blue-eyed ones most especially.

It just went on repeat—that scene I had witnessed of Carter and Emma in bed—all day long. When would it stop? I wanted it to stop.

I was hurting too much. So much so that I would wake up screaming at times while sleeping—like a nightmare that lived in me, consciously and subconsciously—it pulled me down, drowning me with it.

Blue-eyed. Blonde. Sweet, honeyed kisses. Angelic voice. And lemons.

Home.

I wanted to go home, however the bare-boned fact that I was now a homeless man killed me each second that ticked by.

Hope diminished. The light was decimated. And darkness was inevitable. And if tomorrow was the end, I wanted to drown in lemons when I died.

If I was going to crumble, I was going to go down the way I wanted to…

Death. Was it looking for me or did I simply wish it
was?

Chapter 26

Emma

“Come on, Gus. We need to get in, sweetie,” I urged on, hoping he’d listen immediately because I didn’t feel all that well all of a sudden after our long walk.

Gus whimpered as he trudged towards me before stopping next to my leg to give me a lick. I sighed, smiling down. “I love you, too, babe.” My heart melted, knowing that this was the only thing I had left of Bass.

It had been three weeks since I had seen him last, and for the past week, I had been following him partying mad in Paris, one club after the other. It worried me, but who was I to stop him from his destructive ways?

Each picture I saw broke me all over again. It was absurd since it was me who really ended things, but most of all, it was me who had made that first move to start heading forward, and yet, seeing Bass with women around him made me feel nauseous, so nauseous in fact that I had puked a few times already. Questions like
had he fucked any of those women?
kept haunting me. Of course, knowing how pissed off he’d been, he probably had gone bonkers with all of them.

It was my undoing, although I didn’t like the repercussions.

Carter’s been around a lot lately, but I haven’t made a decision yet where he was concerned. As always, when it came to that, I didn’t have it in me to bite the bullet. I suppose, after Bass left the way he did, he hadn’t left me at all; at least not in thought. Now I was suffering, enduring this prolonged battle of letting go of someone I had hurt so greatly.

Reaching for the medicine cabinet, I pulled out two pain reliever tablets to make my headache go away, but three hours later, I was suffering from a chronic migraine and intense stomach pain. I was curled up in a ball when I heard Carter call out for me.

“Emma?”

I closed my
eyes, feeling like the room was spinning. “I don’t feel too good,” I grumbled, whiny.

He sat on the bed, reaching out to touch my forehead. “Let’s get you to the doctors.”

My body temperature seemed fine, yet I didn’t feel okay. Did I have food poisoning? Something? “No. It’ll go away.” I hoped it did; this came out of nowhere. I was fine earlier, well, last night, I truly hadn’t been, but then again, I’d been crying a lot lately and hadn’t been taking much care when it came to eating or hydrating my body. Maybe that was what it was?

“Emma, you’re hurting… it could be something serious.” Carter caressed my arm while his voice sounded pained, like he was feeling the agony with me.

It wasn’t the pain that was necessarily making me feel queasy. Something was just off. The more time I pondered, paranoid of the thing, I knew it was best to get some professional opinion before I diagnosed myself from reading up on Google that I might have stomach cancer.

“Okay.” I was starting to worry.

Once we got to the hospital, Carter took charge and had someone help me instantly. He was just as bad as Bass, though then again, both loved me like crazy.

When the nurse asked me questions, I was almost tempted to say that I needed Vicodin or something stronger to make the pain go away. Then again, I didn’t want to look like I was a screwed up, pill-popping druggie.

So I had to wait… and wait until they knew for sure what this was all about.

~E~

“Do you want me to come with you inside?” Carter asked, softly caressing my cheek.

Shaking my head, I declined his offer. Tonight, I needed to be alone to analyze and to think of Bass and what to do from here on out. The doctor had given me pills to ease some of my pain away, but basically, I was told to learn how to unwind and relax. How the heck was I supposed to accomplish that when I was breaking inside, though? Nothing was ebbing the pain away… not a fucking thing!

Giving Carter a chaste kiss on the cheek, I lamely left his car and went inside the house.

What greeted me was truly unexpected.

I came home and found myself in a puzzled state when everyone was crying in the house. “What’s going on?” I was even more baffled by both Lindsey and Amber being seated close to each other without Linds trying to lung insults her way. “
Tris?
” Since no one was really paying attention to me, I had to ask the closest person who was sitting on the counter stool.

She sniffed, wiping her mascara and tear-stained face. “Bass… they’re saying that he might be one of the victims in that fire in a nightclub that killed a hundred people and counting.”

No, that can’t be!
I screamed in my head, panicking, and yet, I couldn’t seem to move as my purse languidly dropped on the floor, bursting my contents everywhere. I didn’t notice it fall.

Bass was dead? No, he couldn’t be… He was fine in that news report the last time… NO.

Just NO.

NO! I didn’t want to hear any of it.

“He’s not—there’s no way—” My voice shook as my eyes clouded with tears. A tsunami of guilt washed over me, knowing that it was my fault that he had been there in Paris in the first place.

My Bass…

“No…” I whimpered, hysterically. I refused to believe any of the lies the news was broadcasting. My head swung back and forth as I looked at the TV screen, seeing and not seeing what they were reporting. Pictures and CCTV clips of Bass entering the club with women. So far, one of those women had been identified dead. She was some Italian model that he’d been partying with for the last week. If she was dead chances were Bass was, too, or so the news reporter was saying. “They’re lying!” I screamed.
They had to be
. Lies. Lies. All just a pack of lies!

Not my Bass, no,
never him…
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” I whispered to myself, dazed and beyond devastated. “I didn’t get to say sorry.”

Running upstairs towards my bedroom, Gus came trailing behind me before I launched myself on my bed, crying a river. “Please!” I cried into my pillow when I felt Gus curling up behind my back, comforting me somehow. Spinning around, I hugged him against my chest, crying some more against his furry neck as I hoped to get some warmth into my body. “He can’t leave us, Gus. He just can’t.” Gus made a soft grumbling sound, comforting me as if he knew what I was telling him; that his daddy was dead.