“This is really no way to live,” I say. “For either of us. You shouldn’t have to live this way, Reed. If we weren’t together you’d be able to live normally. None of this crap would be happening in your life. You could live without a bodyguard on your payroll. No invasion of anyone’s privacy would be necessary.”
“Don’t even talk like that. I lived a life without you in it. It wasn’t as good as life is with you by my side, Jenna. I don’t regret making you part of my life. Not for one second have I regretted it.” He squeezes my hand. “Do you?”
How do I tell him that I do have regrets, but only because of how I’m affecting his life?
Instead, I shake my head. “Of course I don’t have any regrets about you, Reed. I love you, and my life has been so much better with you in it. A thousand times better. But you have to admit this is difficult.”
“Nothing worth it is ever easy. I can take all that comes with having you in my life, Jenna. Whatever it takes, I will do it. I will deal with the fallout. I would walk through fire for you.” He looks at me with a very serious expression.
“But you shouldn’t have to,” I say, and it makes him frown.
“But I would,” he says as he pulls my hand up to kiss it.
And only one thought goes through my head when he does.
How did I get so damn lucky?
“Do you think if I found a way to call Rod and get him to meet with me that I could set him straight?” I ask, and immediately know the answer I’m going to get.
Reed’s head shakes fast. “No! There is not a way in the world that’s safe for you. Please never go behind my back and do that. Please! I know if you were talking about a sane person it would be the smart thing to do. But Rod is a little off the beaten path where sanity is concerned.”
“But this is no way to exist, Reed. I’m always looking over my shoulder, even with you or Sam around to protect me. I need to figure out how to deal with this threat myself.”
A red light has him stopping, and he looks at me. “Jenna, you are not alone. You and I are together in everything. You don’t have to deal with things alone. I’m here for you. Let me be. Let me help you.”
The light changes and I gesture to it with a nod of my head. “The light changed.”
He looks back at the road. “Promise me you will never try to contact him.”
“I promise you that if I feel it’s very important to then I will talk to you about if first.”
He nods. “Good. That’s settled then. No contacting him at this point, anyway.”
I nod in agreement, but inside I still think I have to do this on my own. The same way I made the decision to sign the damn paper on my own, I can make Rod understand what we had is over.
But Reed will never allow that!
Chapter 28
REED
My eyes open and all I see is the darkness of our bedroom. Then a light shines from my cell phone on the nightstand beside me. The vibration of the phone must’ve woken me up.
I pick up the phone and see my father is calling me. I also see that it’s three in the morning.
This cannot be good.
Phone calls at this hour from one’s family are always of the utmost importance. No one calls just to say hi at three in the morning.
Jenna stirs beside me. “Who’s that, Reed?”
“My father,” I say, then answer his call. “Hey, Dad, what’s up?” I try to sound casual, like I’m not internally about to freak out.
I prepare myself to hear bad news about my brother, as he’s the only wildcard in our family.
“Reed, I’m with your mother in the hospital. She fell earlier this evening, and she seemed confused. So I took her into Prescott to the emergency room.” He stops talking and then he clears his throat. “She’s got a brain tumor, son.”
My world stops and spins backward. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. They did a CAT scan a little while ago and found one about the size of a golf ball. They’re going to do surgery tomorrow morning. Rod’s here. I called him when I brought her in around five earlier this evening. Your mother wants to see you before she goes into surgery, just in case she doesn’t make it.” Then he just busts out crying, and I nearly do the same thing myself.
“Dad, everything will be fine. I’ll get on a plane within the hour and be there as soon as I can. You have to have faith. And we will do everything she needs to make it through this. Don’t worry.” I take Jenna’s hand to steady myself.
“See you then, son.”
I hang up and look at Jenna. “My mother has a tumor and they’re going to take it out in the morning. I need to go to her.”
She nods at me. “You want me to come?”
“Rod’s already there. I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
She looks down. “I understand.”
My mind is numb with the news and the fact I need Jenna with me is weighing on me. But my family doesn’t need any more drama.
“I’m going to take a shower. Do you think you could pack me enough clothes for a few days?” I get out of bed and my legs are shaking, so I fall back on it.
“Reed! Are you okay?” Jenna sits up and looks at me.
I shake my head. “No, I’m not. My mother might die, Jenna. I’m not okay at all.”
She gets off the bed, walks in front of me, and runs her arms around me. “She’ll be fine. You’ll see.” She hugs me tight.
She holds me as I grip her body. I need her. I need her to be with me.
But I can’t force her to see Rod again, after all he’s done to her.
She lets me out of her hug. “I’ll start the shower for you. Then I’ll pack while you take one.”
I watch her walk away from me and the ache begins. I won’t be able to go through this without her.
But somehow I have to find the strength to anyway.
She comes back and takes me by the hand and leads me to the shower. “Here you go. It’s all warmed up. I’ll go pack now.”
I step into the shower and barely feel the water on my skin as my body is numb as well as my mind. There’s just no way this is happening. My mother is healthy.
She can’t have a brain tumor!
I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the tiled wall. Scenes from my childhood flash through my brain. There’s one of my brother and me on a small boat with our parents. We’re all smiling as he holds up a tiny fish he caught.
Another of us with them on the first Christmas I can remember. Another as we all laugh and watched Dad lighting up fireworks. So many happy times.
They kind of drown out the bad. Funny that, when faced with a death, you can recall so much happiness that the bad fades so far back you can barely recall it at all.
The bathroom door opens and Jenna comes back in. “Oh, Reed, you haven’t moved since I left you.” She steps into the shower with me and pours shampoo into her palm.
Her hands move through my hair, massaging in the soap, and she hums a little as she washes my hair. Then she leans my head back and rinses it out.
She pours some body wash on the poufy pink thing she uses for herself and moves it all over my body. Still, she hums, and it makes me feel a little peaceful.
I catch her wrists up as she moves her hands up my arms. She looks at me and stops humming. “I need you, Jenna. I know it’s selfish of me to ask this of you. But I need you. I need you with me through this.”
“Then I will be there for you, Reed.” Her words come out soft and without hesitation.
Her selflessness is amazing to me. I know I shouldn’t take her into such a dangerous and terrible situation. But I feel like I can’t do it without her.
“I love you, Jenna.” I move my arms around her wet body and pull her to me.
My lips touch hers and for a moment everything else goes away. She’s my personal safe zone, where nothing can hurt me.
Her hands slip over my back and my cock stirs. I’m aware of how inappropriate it is to think about sex when y
our mother is facing death, but I need Jenna so bad right now it makes no real sense.
Pulling her body up, I slide my cock into her wet depths and her moan vibrates my mouth. I press her back against the tiled wall and thrust into her as she wraps her legs around me.
Hard and quick, I make deep strokes into her. My movements are kind of savage as I ram my cock into her as deep as I can.
I need her body to take me away from this horrible nightmare I’m having. This has to be a nightmare. My mother can’t really be facing death.
She just can’t be!
If that was true, I’d never be making love to Jenna in this shower. I’d be crying and pleading with God to save my mother. Not stroking my cock into my girlfriend.
Not slamming into Jenna so hard I can feel her body smashing between mine and the hard wall. Not pounding her until I feel her legs shaking and her body going into convulsive spasms as she has an orgasm but doesn’t take her mouth from mine to groan with the pleasure or shout my name like she does most of the time.
My cock stiffens and I cum in a long burst. I pull my mouth away and say a string of curse words as my semen flows into her, “Fuck! Shit! Fucking shit!”
Then it hits me like a brick upside my head. I hold Jenna to me tight and let it happen. A wave washes over me and I cry as I hide my eyes in her shoulder.
Her hands run softly over my back as she says, “It’s okay. Let it all out.”
My body is shaking. “Jenna, what if I lose her?”
“Don’t think like that. It’ll be okay,” she whispers.
I’m crying so hard that my words come out in hiccupped bursts, “I haven’t talked to her since that day. Not really talked to her like we used to talk. What if she dies and this is how it ends?”
“You can fix it, Reed. Don’t worry. Everything can be fixed. You’ll see,” she says as she runs her hand over my head and I do feel somewhat better. “You can hire the best doctors for her and get her the best treatment possible. You can help her. Have faith, Reed.”
My crying slows and I pull back and look at her. Running my hands over her wet hair, I push it back. “What did I do to deserve you, Jenna?”
She smiles. “No telling. So let’s get you out of this shower and into some clothes. I’ll call the charter service and let them know it’s an emergency.”
As she turns off the water, I grab her from behind and hug her. “You are amazing!”
“No, I’m just good in a crisis.” She turns in my arms and looks at me with shiny green eyes. “And I love you very much and hate to see you in pain.”
“Seems we have that in common. Jenna, are you sure you can handle seeing Rod?” I look deep into her eyes to find the real truth in them.
She blinks and smiles. “For you, I can handle anything that’s thrown at me. Even a big asshole like Rod. Put that out of your mind. This thing with your mother is bigger than the shit with me and him. I can put the asshole in his place now with ease. I love your mother too.”
“And she does love you too. I know she has her opinion that you were a willing participant in the things you did with Rod and all, and I don’t like that. I don’t like it one bit. But she does love you. And she doesn’t judge you about what you did.” I run my hands up and down her back.
“Reed, the fact is that I was a willing participant. He never chained me up where I couldn’t leave. I could’ve walked away if I had wanted to. At that time, he was all I knew. And I know it’s hard to believe or understand, but I loved him and thought I was helping him in some way by showing him that I could be what he needed. He could hurt me and I would still be there. It was stupid and naïve of me to think I wouldn’t suffer any harm from the abuse. But thanks to you and our therapist, I can see the past for what it is and learn from it instead of letting it hurt me any longer.”
I watch her talk and know she thinks what she’s saying is true. And in her mind, I suppose it is. But I know that when she has to look at Rod, things will hit her hard.
I should leave her here and not make her deal with this yet. She hasn’t had enough therapy to be able to handle him yet.
Sometimes life makes things happen before we’re ready for them, though. And this seems like one of those times.
“I’ll be there for you, Jenna. You won’t have to do anything alone. I’ll stay with you every second so he can’t do anything to hurt you.” I reach out, grab a towel, and wrap her up in it then take one to dry myself off.
Jenna smiles at me as she dries off. “Hopefully, I won’t have to use it, but I have a bottle of pepper spray in my purse. If he touches me, I’ll use it on him.”
“Smart thinking.” I pull her into my arms again. “We have to face this sometime anyway, don’t we?”
With a tweak to my nose, she says, “We do. We’re going to be married in May, only six months from now. Rod’s going to be my brother-in-law. You and I have to learn how to handle the dastardly man.”
With a hug, I kiss the top of her head. “We really have no choice. We have to face him head on and just be more stubborn than he is.”
I let her go, and she takes my hand and leads me to the bed where she has my clothes laid out for me. “I was reading the other day about facing what you’re afraid of. When you hide from it and show it you’re afraid, it gets stronger. That’s why I was talking to you about talking to Rod and letting him know I’m not afraid of him anymore.”
I watch her pull on a pair of little blue silk panties and a matching bra and listen to her talk, but I know Rod is a danger to her. He kidnapped her, and God only knows what he planned to do to her.
But I have to wrap my head around the fact we do have to confront him at some time about this. I just hope he cares more about our mother than he does with his obsession with Jenna, so we can begin to put things in the past and move forward.
If not, then this whole thing will get very messy, and I don’t want that. For my family’s sake, I don’t want that.
But people don’t always get what they want!
Chapter 29
JENNA
The sun has still not lit up the sky as Reed and I walk into the hospital his mother is in. It’s six in the morning, and her surgery is only hours away. The Intensive Care Unit nurse leads us to her room and tells us each visit can only be ten minutes long.
Sue’s eyes are closed as we walk into the glass room full of monitors which are hooked up to her.
“Mom,” Reed whispers.
Her eyes open and she smiles. “You made it.”
“Of course I did.” He lets my hand go and hugs her as best he can with all her attachments. “How do you feel?”
“Awful. Can you believe I have a golf-ball sized tumor in my head?” She looks at me and a frown covers her face. “You know Rod’s here, right?”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry, there will be no trouble. I promise.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Promise me that, Jenna.”
“I promise, Sue. I’ll leave if there is any.”
She nods. Reed looks back at me with his lips held tightly together. Then he looks back at his mother. “Don’t worry about a thing except getting better.”
“I wish I could just stop worrying. Maybe it’s the tumor that has me so riled up all the time. I just worry over everything lately. And Rod and Reed and their relationship is at the very top.” Sue looks at me again. “If I die …”
Reed stops her. “Mom, don’t even talk like that.”
She pats his hand he’s holding hers with. “I might die, son. It’s a fact, and I have little time to get this out there. I want my family back. I want you two boys to kiss and make up. I want it back. I can’t stand how things are. If you two can’t come to some middle ground where Jenna’s concerned, than I expect your blood to come before anything else.”
My heart stops, as I know what she’s saying. If they can’t figure out how to get along with this, then I need to step out of the picture.
Reed looks at her. “Mom
, I won’t ever let her go.”
“I know that. Neither of you will. That’s why I’m talking to Jenna. Woman to woman. You understand me, don’t you, Jenna? I love you, and I don’t want you to think I don’t. My family is the most important thing to me. My sons are all that will be left of me, and I want them to be able to have a relationship. If they can figure things out, great. If they can’t stop playing tug-of-war over you, then I expect you to take care of that. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. The Manning boys are not the only men in the world, you know.”
“Mom, don’t,” Reed says.
She pats his hands again. “I have to.”
I nod. “I understand and respect you, Sue. I will get out of the way if that’s what I have to do to honor your wishes. I promise you.”
Reed turns back to me with a terrified look on his handsome face, but says nothing. The nurse comes back in. “Time is up. She can have another visit in twenty minutes.”
Reed kisses his mother and I give her a wave, then we leave. Reed’s hand is shaking in mine and I know that was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
A waiting room on the left is open and empty and he pulls me into it then shuts and locks the door. I’m pulled into his arms as his whole body shakes and he cries even harder than he did when he first found this out.
“Jenna, you can’t walk away if Rod and I can’t come to terms over you! You can’t!”
“I’ll do all I can to make sure you two can come to terms, for her sake. She just wants to keep her family intact. I completely understand her.”
It’s so hard not to cry when he’s so hurt and afraid, but I feel I have to shove my fear aside and only show him strength at this time. I can go off when I’m alone and cry my eyes out. But for now, I have to be strong for him.
“Mom doesn’t understand how deeply I love you. If I lose you because of him, I won’t want a relationship with him, anyway.” He pulls back and looks at me with tears running down his face. It makes my heart hurt. “I can’t handle this thing with her and this thing with you too.”
“What do you want me to say? If I’m a source of friction, then I’ll be making things worse for your family. You are part of something, Reed. You are a part of a family. And I may be a thing that breaks you all apart. I can’t do that.”
His Sweet Torment: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance Page 43
