And then time started all over again.
On my son’s eleventh birthday, with my husband’s hand folded over mine, Travis laughing behind his cake, and a gorgeous little girl who would forever be mine sitting on my lap, I witnessed the brightest sunset of my entire life.
The End
The Darkest Sunrise Duet
* * *
“Get out!” I screamed, hurling my wine glass across the room. It shattered into a million pieces at his feet.
Just like my heart.
“Rita, baby. You have to let me explain.” He took two steps toward me, his long legs devouring the distance between us. If only he had done that sooner. Like maybe if he had closed the distance six months earlier rather than walking into another woman’s arms.
I stepped away.
If only I had done that sooner.
Like maybe before I’d given up my entire life for him.
Though, for seven years, I’d had no regrets.
I’d thought he was my dream man.
No, we weren’t perfect together. Far from it. We fought and bickered. And over the years, there had been plenty of problems and bumps along the way. But didn’t every marriage have those? I’d assumed that was how it went when you were with someone for almost a decade.
“Please!” He reached out and the tips of his fingers grazed a burning path across my skin.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” I seethed, tears trailing black mascara down my cheeks.
“Just listen… I love you.” He blew out a ragged breath and raked a hand through his hair.
His words evaporated before they ever breezed past my ears.
He didn’t love me.
I couldn’t be sure he ever had.
For some strange reason, I focused on his hand. It was the hand he had used to slide my wedding ring on my finger while vowing until death do us part. The hand that had held mine the day my mother was lowered into the ground. The hand that had rested on my stomach as the doctor told us that I’d miscarried. And the same damn hand he’d used to touch her naked body day after day for the last six months.
A sob tore from my throat as I clutched my chest. “I hate you so fucking much.”
He shook his head ruefully. “Honey, please.”
Narrowing my eyes, I tilted my head and stared at him. He’d aged since we’d first met in college. I had plans to follow him to medical school—medical school I’d never started because he’d asked me to marry him when he’d accepted an out-of-state residency. His brown hair was now thinning, and slight wrinkles lined the corners of his eyes. He was a far cry from that twenty-four-year-old kid who’d smiled at me from across the bar. But, if possible, he’d only gotten better with age. I was well aware that women noticed him. He was a handsome, successful doctor with a wide smile and a gentle demeanor. I’d never concerned myself with jealousy though. I’d naïvely assumed he was mine.
I sure as hell had been his.
Now, she was his too.
The few jagged shards that hung in my chest ached, and my chin quivered as I glanced around the room. We’d bought that house two years earlier, days after we’d decided to start a family. I’d spent countless hours decorating that three-thousand-square-foot shell. Love hung in photographs on the walls, and the furniture had been chosen specifically to fill the space with warmth. As far as I had been concerned, those walls and windows represented forever. We were going to raise our children in that house. Two rough and tumble boys with his dark hair and a blond princess who loved manicures and heels as much as I did. It was where we were going to celebrate anniversaries and holidays, host birthday parties and barbeques, and spend quiet nights curled up on the couch, basking in the life we had made for ourselves.
But right then, as I stared into his brown eyes, his lies and deceit tainted the beauty of that room.
My whole life was imploding inside that brick two-story.
And I had no way to escape.
Stupidly, so much of my identity was wrapped up in Greg Laughlin. Everything I had was tied to him in one way or another. The bank accounts, credit cards, the house—hell, even my car was in his name.
And with one choice, and countless lies, I was losing it all.
He shuffled forward. “Baby, it didn’t mean anything. I swear.”
He was so cliché. We’d been together for nine years, married for seven, and the fact that he wasn’t in love with her was supposed to somehow make an affair acceptable? Forget that I was dying inside. Forget that, since I’d first laid eyes on him, I had never considered being with another man. Forget that I’d given him my entire life. Every hope. Every dream. Every want. Every desire. And he’d thrown them all away for a piece of ass.
But I shouldn’t have worried. Because it meant nothing to him.
Squaring my shoulders, I willed my tears to stop. “I’m sorry to hear that. Because it meant everything to me.” I aimed a pointed finger over his shoulder at the door and allowed my anger to override my devastation. “Get. Out.”
His tall body swayed, looming over me as his hand cupped the back of my neck and pulled me close.
I knew what would follow next:
He’d dip low until our mouths were almost touching. His breath would mingle with mine and he’d breathe in as though he could inhale me. His other hand would go to my hip before sliding around to splay across my lower back, forcing me against his front. And then he’d sigh, long and content, as if holding me were the cure for his every ailment.
Before that moment, I’d always loved when he held me like that. It had made me feel cherished.
Now, it felt like a fraud—just like him.
And, as I’d found out only minutes earlier, just like our marriage.
I shoved his chest hard. “You’re not allowed to touch me anymore.”
“Rita, stop,” he pleaded.
“Stop?” I yelled, throwing my hands up and then slapping them against my thighs. “Yes. Please. Fucking stop, Greg!” I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, my stomach churning. “How many times did you come home to me, sleep in our bed, after you left her?”
“Rita,” he whispered, and then I heard his knees hit the wood floor.
I kept my eyes closed, unable to bear the sight of him anymore. “How many times did you bring her into that bed with us, Greg?”
“Never. I swear.”
More lies. Lies that, only hours ago, I didn’t know he was capable of.
And then I said the words I never thought I’d be capable of. “I want a divorce.”
He sucked in sharply. “Don’t say that. We just need to talk.”
“Is that what you did before you ruined us? Did you talk to me? Or what about after you slept with her the first time? Did you drop to your knees then, begging for my forgiveness? No. Talking hasn’t been real high on your agenda recently. So I need you to listen up, because this is the last conversation we will ever have. I want a divorce. I want you out. And I want the seven fucking years of my life that you stole from me back.”
“I made a mistake, sweetheart. But that was all she ever was. A mistake. I love you and I know you love me.” His arms wrapped around my hips and he pressed his head to my stomach. “We can get through this. I know we can.”
I squeezed my eyes tighter and a tear leaked out the side.
This was going to be one of the hardest things I’d ever done.
Greg had been sewn into the fabric of my life. He had been my first love.
And, now, he was my first heartbreak.
“There is no ‘we’ anymore,” I stated in a shaky voice. “And there is no getting through this.”
He hugged me tighter. “There will always be an us. I’m not giving up on you.”
I pried his arms from around my hips and finally opened my eyes.
Staring down at the only man I’d ever loved, I felt a stab from the cold blade of reality. “But you did give up on me.” I stepped out of his reach. “And it happened six months ago.�
��
Steeling myself for agony, I took one last glance at the two rings he’d given me all those years ago. I’d been on cloud nine the first time he’d dropped to his knees and asked me to be his wife.
And then I took them off. Every part of my body screamed at me to put them back on. Well, every part except my heart.
He’d made it more than clear that the promises he’d made with those rings had never been more than a figment of my imagination.
“No,” he gasped as his eyes flared wide.
“You can have these back,” I whispered, dropping both rings to the floor in front of him. “I don’t need them anymore.”
And then, with my heart in my throat and tears streaming down my face, I walked away.
* * *
“Get out!” I shouted as the door to my bedroom swung open.
Andrea stopped short and curled her lip. “Seriously?”
Beads of water dripped from the ends of my straight, blond hair as I snatched my pants over my ass and yanked the zipper up. “Yeah. I’m fucking serious.”
She smirked and raked her eyes down my bare chest to the button on my jeans. “Trust me, there is nothing you have that I haven’t already seen.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned toward me. “Multiple times.”
Thrusting a hand into the top of my hair, I combed it out of my eyes. “Three drunken nights, one of which I’m almost positive you roofied me, hardly give you an all-access pass to my bedroom. Besides, don’t you have a girlfriend now?”
She pouted her lips. “Awww, Tanner. Are you jealous?”
“Absolutely. Nicole was a beast in the sack.” I winked.
Her smile fell and her eyes bulged. “You did not have sex with my girlfriend.”
I barked a laugh. “No. I was kidding. I have a yearly crazy quota, and between you and Shana, I’m maxed out for the next decade. Nicole’s virtue is safe.” Barefoot, I padded across the dark mahogany floors to my dresser and dragged out a T-shirt.
“Oh, how is Shana?” she asked, prodding me with a fiery branding iron.
“Crazy. Delusional. Obsessed. Now that you mention it, a lot like you, actually.”
She shot me an icy glare. Before I had the chance to slip the shirt over my head, she walked over and snatched it from my hand. “Not so fast. You’ll need a tank. Your mic was distorted on the final cut. We need to do it again.”
We’d been filming all day—for the third week in a row—with at least two more weeks of the same schedule in our future. It was safe to say we were all exhausted.
As the number-one rated cooking show on television, Simmer was in high demand. The Food Channel had ordered triple the amount of episodes for season seven. It seemed America couldn’t get enough of Chef Tanner Reese. Or at least they couldn’t get enough of my chest as I tore my shirt off in the middle of every episode. There was something to be said about understanding your target audience. And, for me, it was women.
Old women.
Young women.
Tall women.
Short women.
Married women.
Single women.
A white smile, two dimples, and a six-pack seemed to be the universal language. Thanks to good genetics, I’d become fluent at a very young age. But I’d always assumed that those skills were limited to my personal life. However, the pretty face definitely hadn’t hurt when my agent had pitched me for my own show, and during episode two, when I’d spilled marinara on my shirt and jokingly taken it off, my producers had decided that the six-pack wouldn’t hurt, either.
They weren’t wrong.
Within a matter of weeks, my ratings had spiked to unfathomable highs, my face—and abs—had been plastered on magazine covers, and my show had been renewed for the foreseeable future.
I was a classically trained chef who’d graduated from New York’s Institute of Culinary Education before studying under the finest chefs in France for three years. My place was in the kitchen. But when my paycheck from Simmer had jumped from “hey, this is something fun to do while I’m not working at the restaurant” to “welcome to the millionaire club,” it had become clear that my place was actually in the kitchen while in front of a camera.
And I’ll be honest, having thousands of adoring fans and becoming People Magazine’s sexiest chef in America definitely had a few perks too. Mainly for my ego. But that didn’t mean any of it was easy. Sure, I wasn’t exactly digging ditches, but smiling and filming for hours on end was grueling.
“Oh, come on! I just took a shower,” I argued.
There wasn’t a hint of apology in her voice as she said, “Sorry.”
Andrea Garnis was the borderline-crazy—that border being only about a millimeter thick—director of Simmer. She’d been with me through every shirtless episode—and even a few shirtless nights that we both agreed never should have happened. Then we’d agreed that they would never happen again each and every time it happened. She was rude and crass, quite possibly the biggest bitch I had ever met, but she was loyal to a fault and had defended me more times than I could count.
I shouldn’t have been complaining to her about reshooting a few simple scenes.
And yet, I was.
Because, deep down, I hated that job with the fire of a thousand suns.
Would I admit that? Never. I didn’t even allow myself to think it most of the time.
But it was always there, festering beneath the surface, infecting me from the inside out. I could have quit. Broken my contract. Paid the network back a boatload of money.
But quitting meant admitting that the haters were right.
And, God, were they fucking right.
While the women of America loved me, the early rumblings from foodies and other professionals in the industry were not as warm. I’d quickly become the butt of all jokes in the culinary world, labeled as a talentless sellout who cared more about getting naked than the food I sent to plate.
What I’d learned from this was that there are assholes everywhere, ready to take shits all over a person’s success.
What did I do about it? I smoked a cigarette as I laughed my way to the bank.
Fuck ’em. All of ’em. The haters and the cheats. The liars and the… Well, that’s a Taylor Swift song for another day.
For five years, I’d worked my ass off to prove everyone wrong about me. And, for the most part, it had worked. Seven years later, I was once again at the top of the culinary world, respected from coast to coast. Admitting defeat now wasn’t an option.
But even though I hated my name being synonymous with my abs, I still loved that I had made a career for myself in food. I’d been cooking since the day I was born. Not literally—I doubt I garnished my baby bottles. But, for as long as I could remember, I’d been in the kitchen. What had first started as me whipping up random concoctions of condiments from the pantry when my mom wasn’t looking quickly became my passion. As a kid, while everyone else was out riding their bikes or playing video games, I was at home, nursing my obsession for public broadcast cooking shows, Mr. Food, and Southern Living Magazine. I was eight the first time my parents let me cook a full meal by myself. I prepared duck confit, mashed parsnips, and roasted peaches with a red wine sauce and a shallot ring garnish.
My father sat me down the same day and told me that it was okay that I was gay.
Years later, when he caught me in a clench with the girl from next door, I’d never seen him more surprised—or relieved. That relief faded after the second pregnancy scare from my high school girlfriend. (See aforementioned part about the smile, dimples, and six-pack.)
“Can’t we finish tomorrow?” I complained.
Andrea shook her head. “Nope. Tomorrow, we have three more episodes to film.”
I dropped my head back to stare at the ceiling. “I need a vacation.”
“We all d—shit!”
My gaze jumped to her in time to see Porter barging into the room, nearly plowing her over.
“We need to talk
!” he declared.
My brother was the biggest pain in my ass I had ever experienced. We looked alike—all sandy-blond hair and blue eyes. But, being two years older, he had been graced with the original smile-and-ab package, while I’d gotten the 2.0 version, which included the dimples. Looks aside, we couldn’t have been more different.
I was the creative mind. He was all numbers and practicality.
I was the dreamer. He was the planner.
I was the wild child. He was the family man.
We gave each other immense shit and agreed on virtually nothing, but at the end of the day, we couldn’t have been closer. And if I was being completely honest, I gave Porter the most shit because I was jealous of him—not that I’d ever admit it. It was just that the free-spirited-bachelor bit was only fun for so long. When I’d hit it big, I’d embraced that life harder than anyone in the world. It was what I’d thought I’d always want. Beautiful women. Impromptu vacations to exotic locations. Nothing tying me down. I was in the prime of my life. Who needed kids and a wife complicating it all?
I can tell you who. My brother.
God, I’d thought he was such a moron for getting married in his twenties. Joke was on me though. By the time I’d realized how right he was, I was thirty-two with no idea how to escape. My first and only attempt had gone up in flames like a dumpster fire. I was still paying the price for that one.
Though, as jealous as I was, Porter’s life was no walk in the park.
Three years earlier, my brother’s wife had unexpectedly passed away, leaving him a widower with two young kids. Along with our mom and dad, I rallied around him. His son, Travis, was eight and Hannah was only six months old when Catherine died. The kids struggled, but it was Porter who took it the hardest. Watching him fall apart under the grief and agony of his loss was one of the most painful things I’d ever experienced.
So one fated Friday, after he’d punched his boss and lost his job, I’d done the only thing I could think of to ease his shattered life.
The Complete Darkest Sunrise Series Page 40
