Torn from Two (Taken and Torn Book 2)

by Sam JD Hunt

  Rex shook his head, and with a sigh explained, “He’s delusional. Many times he tried to convince me I could never love her, or that she wasn’t right for me—all that kind of mind game shit Luther does to folks. Penny, I did love her. I loved her with everything inside of me—as much as I was capable of at the time. It wasn’t what we have, the three of us,” he gulped at the word three, his heart hurting for Nate, “but I did love her. Luther was wrong.”

  It was quiet for a long time, and I debated whether to let the conversation wane or ask the burning question in my mind—there was something unnatural in Luther’s feelings toward his mother. I decided to press and asked, “You said Luther had issues—what kind of issues? His father is a prominent Senator, he grew up rich, right?”

  “Did he ever mention his mother to you, Penny?” Rex’s voice was pensive as he held me.

  “Um, yeah, he said she encouraged him to play piano, called him Lawrence.”

  “His mother was close to him. Too close,” Rex said in a whisper so quiet I had to strain to hear his normally booming voice.

  “As in tied to the apron strings?”

  He inhaled deeply and began to tell me the whole story. “Penny, his mom was so wrapped up in him that he became her life. When he hit puberty, she…it got weird, baby. Luther told me one night while we were dodging fire in some fucking bombed out town that he started having sex with his mother at about age fourteen.” Rex instinctively flinched at the mention of incest.

  “Holy shit,” was all I could manage to choke out.

  “It gets worse.”

  “How could it get worse than that?” I couldn’t fathom what Luther had lived through.

  “His tutor caught them in bed together. She was some hot twenty-something who was sleeping with his father at the time. Now, she’s the Senator’s wife. Anyway, she caught them together and told his father.”

  “Oh my God—did his parents divorce? What happened?” I was stunned.

  “Well, no. His mother died a few weeks later—she fell down the long, steep stairs in their townhouse in Georgetown one night while everyone was sleeping.” A shiver ran down my spine at the implication.

  “A freaky coincidence?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Penny. Luther hinted that he suspected his father did it—but I’m not so sure. She drank a lot, and her autopsy showed a ridiculously high blood alcohol level.”

  “That is such heavy stuff to live with.”

  “Well, Luther wouldn’t see that his mother was a predator. To him, what they had was…special. Penny, he wouldn’t see anything wrong with it. He felt it was an expression of their love. Holy fuck, it was sick! I tried to show him, but Luther’s wasn’t a mind easily unraveled. He’s brilliant, a beautiful creature, but…well, something’s just broken in him.”

  I clung to Rex, worried we would slip away from each other. “I don’t understand why Luther would be involved in Nate leaving?”

  “To hurt me, baby,” Rex answered, reaching for his phone to call Nate, who never answered.

  *****

  Life alone with Rex, without Nate, was too sad. With each passing day, we were hurting each other, the cuts getting deeper and deeper. Nate refused to respond to us, and soon wasn’t even reading our messages. The first few nights Rex and I bonded together, holding each other through our grief, plotting to find Nate, and even making love a few times. But, it was empty. Alone, without the calming influence of Nate, we were oil and water—and a powder keg of emotion. One night, the worst happened.

  We’d been arguing all day, snapping at each other, taking out our pain on one another. After far too many drinks, I became angry.

  I cut into Rex with my acidic words, pointing a finger at him and saying, “This is your fault. You drove Nate away! You, your buddy Luther, and your damn homophobia.”

  He threw his tumbler of bourbon on the ground, smashing it into shards of glass.

  “Me?” he yelled, “What about you and your fucking wedding talk! Oh, and the damn baby stuff? Do you know what that did to him, Penny?”

  I threw my own glass to the hard floor, allowing it to shatter as the blood-red wine splattered. It was such a tragic parallel to the end of our relationship. I wanted far from Rex that night, away from the suffocating pain of our shared loss.

  “Fuck you,” I said, barely above a whisper.

  He never looked at me again—with his eyes fixated on the sickening stain of our crashed drinks, he said the words that shattered what was left of us.

  “Get out,” he said flatly.

  I knew things were on the precipice of disaster—but never once did I expect to hear those words from Rex. I tried to fix it. “Wait, we’re tired, we’re… we’re torn in pieces. Can we just go to sleep and—”

  “I don’t love you without him,” he said, his eyes never meeting mine. “Get out of my house.”

  Hot tears coursed down my cheeks. “You don’t mean that, we just need—”

  “Without Nate, it doesn’t work for me. Pack your shit and go.”

  He stood up, never looking at me, and walked to his room. He slammed the door, and I heard the distinctive click of his lock. My mind replayed his words over and over as I stared at his closed door. Could this really be the end? I couldn’t breathe. I prayed to wake up from this ugly nightmare.

  I spent an hour packing, leaving behind most of my things. Sobbing, I walked out the front door and into the waiting car. “Can we sit for a just a minute?” I asked the driver, sent from the gate by the head of security to drive me to the airport. I said a quick prayer that Rex would come out and save us from destruction. I still loved him, and always would. After fifteen excruciating minutes, there was no Rex—no rescue. I sobbed into the leather upholstery of the backseat of the dark sedan as I left my entire world behind me and headed to the place I was born and raised, a place I knew would never be home no matter how many lies I told myself.

  I spent three days in a hotel suite at my father’s casino sobbing—I wouldn’t eat, I wouldn’t get dressed. I cried myself to sleep, woke up, then bawled some more. I stared at my phone, praying that one of my men would call, or text, or email—anything. Twice I tried to call Nate, but my call went straight to voicemail, and my texts went unread. Rex wouldn’t answer either, but he did receive every one of the texts I sent, and the read receipt on the emails showed he read them, too.

  On the fourth day, my cousin Maddie was at my side. My father, who’d sat next to me the night before begging me to talk to him, then angrily commanding me to “snap out of it,” sent her to talk some sense into me.

  “Penny, I’m so sorry. I know how much it hurts to be dumped by one man, I can’t imagine being canned by two,” she said, trying in her own misguided way to console me.

  “I love them so much—they’re everything to me,” I sobbed into my pillow as she rubbed my back.

  “You have to get up, sweetie. Take a shower and let’s go down to the club and talk. It’ll help to get it out, and this room is just…well, gloomy. Besides, housekeeping is desperate to get in here. Come down and let’s chat, you can tell me everything.”

  I did as she asked—took a shower, dried my hair, slathered on some makeup, and even slid into a pair of sky-high heels. She smiled, proud that she’d gotten through to me, but really I just wanted to make a show of it so she, and my father, would leave me the hell alone.

  An hour later, I sat across from her at a tiny round pub table in the club where I’d spent so much time before that fateful night when I ran into Nathaniel Slater. Being there hurt; it hurt far more than I thought it would. I kept expecting to see his shiny designer suit sitting at the bar, his wavy mane of coppery hair gleaming in the subdued lights of the club. I had no intention of talking about what happened—I couldn’t and not lose it. Luckily, Maddie was less concerned about hearing my love-life trauma than regaling me with her own woes. She and Chad were having a tough time.

  “I don’t understand,” I shook my head, “you looked
so happy, so perfect.”

  “Perfect, ha,” she said with a headshake. “That’s the problem, Penny, we tried to be perfect. We had the wedding of our dreams, went on the honeymoon of a lifetime, bought the house we both had to have, and even joined the country club. But something just wasn’t there. We’d spent our entire relationship preparing for happily ever after—but when it was supposed to happen, we realized we didn’t really know who the other was.” I put my hand on hers—I was truly sad at her disillusionment with marriage.

  “Are you truly unhappy with marriage, with Chad, or are you just struggling to live up to perfect?” I asked her. She took a long drink of her daiquiri and looked at me.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, bewildered.

  “Do you love him? Does he love you? Is it all bad?”

  She thought for a long minute, then answered, “We do love each other. It’s not what we thought it would be.”

  I smiled at her. “Maddie, forget what you thought it would be, or what it should be, and find your way together. Go home to him—stop trying to be perfect and be real. Show him the real Maddie; let him show you the real Chad. Perfect is over-rated.”

  “You know, there’s a lot of wisdom in that blonde head,” she teased. “I’m going home to him. But . . . will you be okay?” She squeezed my hand. I smiled and nodded,

  “I’m going to finish this drink, and cry some more, but yeah, I’m as good as I can be at the moment. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

  With a hug, she left. I truly hoped they could work it out. I signaled to the bartender I’d known for years that I was heading back up, but he flashed me the “wait a minute” sign and walked over to my table with another glass of wine.

  “Don’t, I’m in no mood,” I warned.

  “I get that, but maintenance just called. Your air conditioning isn’t working right. Housekeeping complained about it being warm. They said give them thirty minutes and they’ll have it all fixed for you.”

  I sighed. “I’ve been too absorbed in my grief to bother with it, but yeah, it’s been toasty up there. I’ll inflict my sadness here while I wait, I guess,” I joked.

  An hour later, I was still forcibly kept out of my penthouse suite while a team of repairmen tried to fix the A/C. On my third glass of wine, a drop-dead gorgeous man, impeccably dressed, slid up next to me. He looked familiar.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” he said, blushing as soon as he said it. “That was weak,” he said, pursing his lips when I didn’t answer.

  “Do I know you? I’m sorry, you look familiar,” I said, trying to remember him. With a sudden realization, I blurted out, “Holy crap, you’re that guy from The Bachelor! I watched that entire season. She so did not deserve you.”

  The man, Adam Donovan, cringed at being recognized. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you from over there,” he said, pointing to the VIP lounge, “and I confess I’m not elated that you’ve seen the show.”

  He grinned, that sweet smile that fans of the show fell in love with. In Colombia, we got American TV by satellite, as well as streamed through the internet, and I was a reality show junkie. Adam was a great Bachelor, but unfortunately the woman he chose on the show was, as all of us watching at home knew, a lying bitch.

  I stared at him and gestured for him to sit. “I can’t believe you chose Mona!”

  “Have a drink with me and I’ll explain,” he bargained. It was nice to talk about something other than my own heartbreak, so I agreed. It was a rare treat to be able to pick the brain of a guy from a TV show I’d obsessed over, so we talked for another hour, long after I was given the all-clear to return to my suite.

  In the midst of laughing about his explanation of a group date where Adam had chosen the large busted loose girl over the more appropriate choice for him, he said words that hit me like a lightning strike. “I know the choice was idiotic, Penny, but what can I say? We men are weak.” Adam said it casually, as a self-deprecating cliché, but the words pierced through me.

  We men are weak.

  I knew what I had to do. Unfortunately, Adam didn’t get my cryptic signal. I stood up to leave, and he took this as some sort of come with me gesture, and wrapped his arm around mine. Immediately I pulled back, not in anger, but in surprise. “Oh, Adam, I have to go,” I said excitedly, my words running together, “my family needs me. But it’s been a blast talking to you, keep in touch.”

  His chiseled face blanched as he stared at me. “Oh shit, no…family. I had no idea you were… Uh, I don’t do that, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought you were single,” he muttered, pulling away from me, disappointment floating behind his deep brown eyes. “It’s not like that,” I shot out, gaining distance from him, “well, I mean it is. It’s just—I was interested in the show, nothing else. I’m sorry I was sending mixed signals. But, something you said just struck me. I’ll always be in your debt. Good night, Adam.”

  I left the bar, a fire burning within me. My men had given up way too soon—well I was done being weak. I remembered the night Rex kicked Luther out—he’d said, “That’s my family.” We were family, and we loved each other. Rex’s words had cut me, but the three of us had something real. And I was headed back home to get it back no matter what the cost. We would be three again, I decided that night in Las Vegas. I called Rex. The call went to voicemail, and this time I left one. “We’re getting Nate back. I love you, and this is far from over.”

  I flew home that night. The soonest commercial flight was the next morning, but I couldn’t wait until then. Once I’d had the miraculous revelation that nothing or no one would destroy our triple union, I couldn’t wait another second. I woke up the hotel’s VIP concierge and had him book me a private flight to Medellin, and from there I hired a private driver to take me to Rex. There was no way I was risking Stan, our head of security, or any of our normal drivers trying to stop me from getting to Rex.

  On the long flight back to Colombia, I had moments of doubt.

  Could we really get back everything that we’d lost?

  I pushed those negative thoughts aside, always coming back to the same answer—we had to. Rex’s words still stung, and there was a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach every time I remembered his venomous words that night—I don’t love you without him. I didn’t care—I wasn’t going to stop until I had my men back.

  It was late afternoon when I stepped off the private jet onto the hot tarmac in Colombia. The humid jungle air filled my lungs—I was home. I fought back the demons in my head as the sleek car made its way down the narrow roads toward the compound. I stared at my phone—there was nothing from my men, only a text from my father about the NetJet bill, and an update from Maddie. She and Chad were on their way to redefining their expectations of the perfect marriage and focusing on trying for happy.

  It was just before dusk when my hired car pulled up to the guard shack at the compound. I rolled my window down at the touch of a button to talk to the guard on duty, someone I didn’t know, but he knew me.

  “I’m sorry Miss Sedgewick, I’m not sure…” he trailed off, clearly at a loss for what to do. “Let me call Mr. Renton,” he finally said. I shook my head and pointed a finger at him.

  “Don’t you dare! I’m here to surprise him—if you ruin it, I swear to God I’ll fire you. I live here, by the fucking way.” I was putting every bit of performance art I had into it as he stared at me, a layer of sweat glistening on his forehead.

  “Um, I’m sorry, I’m new here. I just don’t want to get in trouble, ya know?” I took a gamble.

  “Listen, I get it. Can you ask your boss? Stan will tell you it’s okay.”

  My heart pounded in my chest as the new guard picked up a phone, a landline, and punched in a few numbers to dial Stan’s apartment—he lived on the compound. I strained to listen as the new guard, Phillip I later learned, explained that I was there to surprise Rex with an early return from my trip. Phillip listened for a moment, then exhaled deeply. “Thanks, I’m sorry to bothe
r you. I just wasn’t sure how to handle it,” he said before placing the phone back on the hook. “I apologize, ma’am, please go right in and let me know if there’s anything at all you need.”

  I let out the deep breath I was holding in relief. I returned his smile, “No worries, I appreciate that you’re keeping us safe. Please make sure no one ruins my surprise, okay?”

  He nodded, and the driver rolled forward as the heavy gate opened. I made a mental note to send Stan a really expensive bottle of booze—he’d saved my bacon that evening.

  With my luggage placed in the large entry, I tipped my driver and looked through the main living area. It was dark, which was odd. It was too early in the evening for the house to appear shut down—was Rex even home? I wondered. Where was the new maid? I called out for Rex, but there was no answer.

  With a feeling of dread, I pushed open his closed bedroom door. There weren’t any lights on, but the sun hadn’t fully set and a glow from the skylight above lit him up. Rex was passed out on the floor, face down with a bottle of whiskey beside him. It was nearly empty. I knelt down next to him—he looked like he’d been there for days, and he hadn’t shaved in a long time.

  “Rex, hey, it’s me,” I said nudging him. “Rex,” I said louder, panic setting in as I pushed at him to roll him to his back. After some effort, I managed to roll his heavy body over.

  “Ah,” he groaned. A few cuts on his golden skin were darkened with dried blood. I glanced around as his eyes fluttered open—a razor blade sat nearby, also covered in dried blood.

  “Help!” I screamed in panic as he sat up.

  “No, no, baby, don’t,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “I-I’m okay. I just…too much from the bottle, blacked out I think, that’s all.” His normally stunning deep blue eyes were bloodshot, his pupils dilated in the dim light. “Are you really here?” he said in a reverent whisper.

  “I left you a message,” I said. I felt awkward, unsure now of my plan.