Fixated On You (Torn Series #5) (23 page)

Just below the root of our love tree, something sparkled at me. Walking over, I sat on my heels before I plucked the item off the ground. It was dirty, yes, but it didn’t change the fact that it was
my engagement ring
from Bass
.

If I was fucked before, I was trembling with even more as the confusion of how this had come to happen pounded into my brain.

Bass went here?
When?
From the moment he landed in Paris, he was out every single night without fail. I knew because I had followed feeds like a stalker. I learned from the best; from when Lindsey had been one with Dimitris.

He came here to bury my ring. Our ring.
Us
. Even with his goodbye, he did it with hurtful execution. With precise fashion.

Bass had truly said his goodbye before he died. He probably died thinking that I hadn’t loved him. That he was all alone. That he didn’t have anyone. I sniffed, letting my tears fall to the ground.
Was he scared?
I thought dreadfully of how it would’ve been for him in there. People screaming. The loud stampede of panic ringing in your ears. The smoke suffocating your lungs as you tried to breathe, holding on to whatever minutes you had left—seconds even—until the eviscerating licks of fire consumed everyone in their wake.

Did he have someone hold him? Or did he die alone? The questions kept on rolling and I was deeper into my dark thoughts when something made me look up. I suppose it had been the sun, basking me with its last rays before it slowly dimmed the island because I didn’t see anything that would have caught my attention when I looked up. Therefore, I merely knelt there, frozen, as I let my tears fall freely.

Dimitris’s helicopter was in Aspasia. I was dropped off here by a boat that would come back for me first thing in the morning. When I suggested that I would stay the night here, they thought I was truly losing it. Yet I knew I needed this one night. This was our place. There was nowhere else I wanted to be other than here.

It was my one night where I could think back and cry for what I had lost. When tomorrow came, I would feel a little better, knowing that I could marry Carter without so much baggage with me.

I didn’t get up until it was truly dark and the stars glittered from the clear midnight blue sky. Dusting off my knees, I trembled slightly as I started to walk towards the cottage. It was the only one on the island—the one Bass built for us— which looked exactly like the one we had in Aspasia. The last time I was here, we were so happy. Even after we received the news of Nikki’s pregnancy, Bass had showered me with love and I had thought then that I could face whatever life shoved at me.

Nevertheless, I was a coward. I hadn’t fought for him. No, not that hard anyway. I gave up when he needed me to be strong. My insecurities became my downfall. Even if Bass took Nikki a hundred times to eat out and was photographed day and night, I should have known better; I should’ve known that my man—my Bass—wouldn’t touch her, not that way anyway. He had loved me. That was all he ever did. Why couldn’t I just have seen it? Why couldn’t I just have been happy that it was
me
who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with?

I had been too stubborn, too unsure of everything that it had been hard to see after the paranoia had settled in. Thus, my insecurities had become my downfall in the end.

Stepping into the darkened cottage on autopilot, I sought for the switch. I knew where it was, but navigating through darkness could be a tad difficult. It was so hard to see that I tripped over a piece of furniture just as I flicked the switched on. My hand gripped the ends of a small accent table as I held on for my life before losing balance, crashing the rest of them all with me.

“
Awwww!
” I screamed when a mug crashed with it, scalding my hand with hot water in it. “What the fuck!” I hissed, holding my stomach as I tried to get back on my feet again.

Checking myself over, I sighed with relief when I wasn’t bleeding anywhere.
You’d think I would be less clumsy while pregnant,
I thought, shaking my head in the process as I stared at the mess I created. Sighing, I was mid-step towards the kitchen to get something to clean things when I paused. A switch was suddenly flipped in my brain and a bright 120-watt light bulb flickered to life inside my mind, making me see things clearly.

Hot water. The water, it had scalded me, I realized as I stared at my red, heated skin. In slow motion, my eyes flickered to the mug.
Bass’s mug.

Was this the ghost of him playing tricks on me?
I thought as I felt my heart gallop against my chest…
or
… I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I couldn’t go there, or could I?

It was as if I had instantly found my own footing again as my eyes scanned the tiny cottage, hoping to find evidence that he was here, but nothing was amiss. The bedroom. I had to check the bedroom.

Sprinting towards the room we used to share, I glanced at the neat, dust-free place. I knew, though, Bass had hired a housekeeper for here that came once a week, making sure that everything was clean and in order.

“Bass,” I murmured, looking over the made bed, seeing us there, together. Memories of the last time we had spent in this bed flooded me momentarily.

He isn’t here
, I convinced myself. Maybe the hot water was from the caretaker who needed to make coffee and forgot about it because she needed to go back home before the sun retired for the day.

Dejectedly, I retraced my steps back to the kitchen so I could clean my mess up. Again, something made me pause when I passed the second bedroom—it was a tiny thing—however I knew when I spotted his cellphone on the bed… I just knew.
He was here somewhere
. There was no way in hell that guy would part with his phone. It was his lifeline. There was just no fucking way. The ring I understood, but the phone? No. Just no.

He probably hid himself the second he found out I was here.

“
Bass!
” I screeched at the top of my lungs, my voice vibrating all over the tiny cottage, but he didn’t come out.

It wasn’t until I checked every damn spot and corner that I proceeded to go outside with no light to guide me. Looking over to the shore then towards the vast lemon trees, I screamed his name again. “Bass!” I started running then half-running, not wanting to over-exert my body because of the baby. “I know you’re here somewhere!” My voice sounded creepy, echoing into the night as it repeated itself around the trees.

After walking for ten minutes, I found myself on the shore, crying heaps, almost ready to admit defeat. Was I really losing my mind? Lindsey did warn me that staying here wasn’t a good idea, especially when I was so messed up in the head at the moment. Carter said the same thing, too, but he was telling me that I should take care of the baby, and I shouldn’t go overboard with stress.

Maybe they were right. All of this was nothing more than a hallucination stemmed from stress.
But.

I sagged, not sure what to do from here on out. “If you’re here, please, don’t do this to me,” I begged.
At first I was bellowing then my voice became a whisper, “Don’t hurt me like this.” If this was his way of punishing me, he had succeeded. Never in my life had I experienced this life and death kind of agony. He had made me experience how it was to lose him fully. It was cruel, but fuck, it had worked. Big time.

I was about to crumble on the sand when I heard something behind me. I thought it was a rat, but when I spun around, there he was. Alive. He looked scruffy, like he hadn’t shaved in awhile, yet it was
him. It was really
him
.

Instinctively, I ran towards him, wanting to hug him, but his eyes stopped me cold. “Go home, Emma. Don’t ever come back here. Don’t say anything. Live your life, pretending that I’m dead and I will do the same.”

No! No.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered, biting my lip as I held back from throwing myself at him. I wanted to touch him so badly, to know that he was real, though he simply wouldn’t let me.

His eyes travelled my face, and for a moment, a flash of longing emitted from within his eyes before they hardened towards me. “Leave. You’re not welcome here.”

“You don’t mean that—” I gasped. After thinking that he was dead and gone, I had so many questions that I wanted to ask. Panic settled in again when he spun around about to step into the darkness again, away from the moonlight. “Bass—wait!” I ran up to him and pulled him by the arm, which made him stop from walking away.

Wrong. Move.

Because he stilled before looking down on my hand gripping his arm. When he lifted his hate-filled eyes at me, I felt like he had just killed me then. I forgot all about Carter’s ring.

“
Let me explain—
” I halted when he marched off towards the cottage.

“I’m going to call for someone to get you.” He parted from me with those words.

How long would it take them to get here? The boat would take about twenty to thirty minutes, but if it were a helicopter… it would be here in no time.

If he booted me off the island, how the heck would I get to talk to him? I needed him to listen. Then he could wish me away, but only after I spoke my piece.

Chapter 29

Bass

“I’m pregnant.” Her voice stopped me mid-step, just when I was about to go inside the bedroom to fetch my phone. Closing my eyes, I hoped that this night would just go away, that she would simply go away with the bad news she had just thrown at me.
Carter’s baby.

My deadly gaze dropped on her flat abdomen, noting that she might not be that far along. The thought of Emma, swollen with
their
baby… I had no words to describe what demons were now running through my mind.

Hearing her words made me feel as though my entire existence had been suspended while I looked at her in horror. Gnawing, deep-rooted pain clung to me as I watched her nervously lick her lips.

“After what happened with Nikki and now
this
.” Emma’s eyes pleaded, tears glassed them before she tried to explain herself again. “Leaving you and dealing with all the bullshit that happened, I understand that this might be difficult to acknowledge or accept. You must know.” She tore up, choking. “You have to know how sorry I am.”

She was
sorry?
She came here, thinking I was dead, possibly going to speak some insipid words in parting while hoping that her guilty conscience was clear of anything because she got pregnant by Carter before she got married. She fucking left me for dead. I didn’t need her. No. Emma was dead to me.

“Get the fuck out of here! I don’t want to see your face any longer.
Just fucking get out of my life!
” I marched towards her, spewing hate. I had never hated anyone to the point where I was shaking with so much anger and seeing red; seething with everything that’d been held back from the moment I had seen her in bed with him.

She wiped her tears while my eyes didn’t back down until I saw her move towards the door, shrinking, looking unsure if she was going to leave or not. Then she paused, breathing in shallow breaths. Emma pulled something out of her purse and placed it on the small, decorative table that was right next to me. My body turned cold when I saw a quick glimpse—a flash—of what it was.

A prenatal picture of her baby.

My furious hand was right there in an instant, yanking the damn picture off the table, shoving it in her hand. “You fucking insensitive whore!”

Emma flinched, crying. “It’s yours!” She tried to hold my gaze before looking away as rage took another turn in my body, upping it to the point of no return. “The baby is yours,” she repeated again, almost in a whisper.

That baby can’t be mine. I pinned her with my eyes, needing her to stop lying. My eyes burned into her belly, knowing that this was the oldest trick in the book. Emma had fucked him, too. It couldn’t be mine. She was good with fucking with my head.

“I don’t believe you.” I would never make the same mistake of trusting her again. Emma was dangerous.

She raised her hand about to touch my face, but my eyes stopped her motion. Her teary face did nothing to me. “We made this baby, Bass.”

Emma might be saying that now, but once she got back to LA, I doubted she would stick with the same story. Hell, since she was already engaged this quickly, she might’ve told Carter the same story. So why put me in the fucking picture? Did she like to torture me? Hadn’t she done enough?

“It can’t be mine, for fuck’s sake! You were on the damn pill, Emma.” I spat on her face, hating her on sight. “I’m going to make a call and—ready or not—someone will come and get you in ten minutes.”

“I’m not leaving.” She stood her ground. “Not after I thought I had lost you and found you again.” She reached out, but I slapped her hand away. “I know you hate me right now because of what I did… but I know, deep down, you still love me.”

Love!

The woman had the audacity to throw
that
in my face. “You disgust me. I don’t love you, Emma. That boat sunk the moment you let him touch you.” She had fucked him. It was unforgivable.