Broken, page 5
“Can we stay like this for a little bit?” he asked, his voice sending chills across her skin.
“As long as you’d like.”
He often would ask this of her, if she would just hold him, as if it would chase away the years he’d been starved of affection. Surely it was different in the house he was in now, with the lavish estate and having everything he could possibly need or want. He no longer kept his clothes in a trash bag. Now they were neatly folded and hung or put away. He no longer had to worry about food or shelter or having parental figures. Sure, Mr. Torrence went away a lot on business trips, but that was their normal.
Sometimes, though, he’d send pebbles flying up to her window just to be held.
“Ren?”
“Hmm?”
She shivered as he left a soft kiss on her neck. “I... I was wondering...what makes you...want to be held?”
“I love it when you hold me,” he whispered in her ear, and she held him closer, her hands rubbing his back. Emboldened by the kisses on her neck that were leaving her dizzy, she trailed her hands down to where his shirt met his pajama bottoms. She wondered what it would be like to feel his skin, see if he got chills, too. She glided her nails across his lower back, and he jumped.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he pulled away, but not before she felt his racing pulse.
“Not tonight. Please, Trina.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No...no, you’re...you’re perfect.” He held her hands in his, interlacing their fingers as he pulled her in for the sweetest kiss she’d ever known. “So perfect.”
And as he always did, he distracted her from her worries by kissing them away.
***
There were no sweet kisses this night. He even seemed to have trouble looking her in the eye.
“Ren?”
“I’m glad you’re here.” This time he did look at her, but his eyes were heavy lidded. “I’m just so tired.”
“I’m sure you are.” She pushed the hair back out of his face. “Rest.”
“Trina?”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised as she stood. “So will Justin and Martin and many other people, I’m sure.”
“Not many,” he mumbled before drifting to sleep.
“Not many, huh?” she asked quietly, knowing she wouldn’t get an answer. With tears still in her eyes, she left the room, pulling the door nearly shut before walking towards the elevators. She checked her phone, which she’d turned back on to message Justin, and noticed that her brother had texted her back.
Want details. Come over after visiting hours. I have shrimp cocktail and popcorn.
She was more than happy to go over there, to have the company as being alone that night didn’t feel suitable at all. She even felt at ease with Judith being a part of the conversation. But first...
First, she pulled up her Facebook app and typed in the name she swore she never would. There were five different Lorenzo Cades, but the one she was looking for was easy to spot. It was a faraway picture of him with his leather jacket on outside of his bar, which he was listed as the owner of.
He’d done exactly what he set out to do.
She could come up with a dozen or so changes she would make, but it wasn’t her call. It was Lorenzo’s.
All Lorenzo’s.
Once upon a time, she had been, too.
Curiosity getting the best of her, she clicked on his profile, scrolling down to see they had one mutual friend.
Emily Torrence.
And she couldn’t help the words that escaped her lips.
“What the actual fuck?”
CHAPTER 8
“What the actual fuck?”
Those were Justin’s first words after Katrina blurted out her findings the moment she arrived at her brother’s home.
“I said the exact same thing,” Katrina replied, then thanked him as he handed her an open beer. “How well does this go with cocktail shrimp? Never mind, I’m starving.”
“What did I miss?” Judith asked as she walked out into the living room with the serving tray of shrimp cocktail in her hands.
“Emily is friends with Lorenzo on Facebook,” Justin informed her.
“What the hell?”
“That’s a cleaner version of what I said.”
“And I don’t know how long she’s been friends with him,” Katrina added before helping herself to the shrimp cocktail. “I swear, you make the best sauce.”
“Thank you,” Judith said with a warm smile, only for her smile to fade when Katrina cuffed the back of Justin’s head.
“You told me you made it.”
“Yeah, well, it was my idea,” Justin replied.
Judith rolled her eyes at the two of them. “Back to the point, please?”
“The point is I don’t know how long Emily’s been hiding this,” Katrina said before throwing her hands up. “I honestly don’t know. I am rarely on Facebook, and...” Her voice trailed off as her phone pinged. She fished it out of her bag and scowled.
“What’s wrong?” Justin asked, and Katrina turned her phone around. “A friend request from Lorenzo. See? He’s friend requested you.”
“I should ignore it.” Katrina placed her phone down and took another piece of shrimp from the tray. “The same way he’s ignored me for years.”
“Why would he request you before me?” Justin asked. “We were best friends.”
“We were more than that, which is why I should just—”
“Enough with the Wonder Twins,” Judith interjected.
“We’re not twins,” Katrina reminded her.
“You may as well be. You have your own communication and you shut everyone else out.”
“Babe,” Justin began, “we’re not shutting you out. It’s just that I... we, sorry Trina, were very close to Lorenzo. And you weren’t. And that’s not me being a dick.”
“Thanks, Mr. States the obvious, but this is my turn to tell you both that you were kinda blind. And he was kinda an asshole to everyone else. Oh, and furthermore? Yeah, accept the friend request. No better way to stalk someone’s private profile than to be friends with them. What?” Judith paused when both Katrina and Justin gawked at her. “I had to peek. Curiosity and all that.”
“So I should accept his friend request?” Katrina nibbled on the inside of her lip. “Maybe not this soon. Maybe I should make him wait.”
“Maybe you should think this through.” Justin placed his hand on Katrina’s shoulder. “He put you through hell. Me, too, truthfully. I thought we were better friends than that.”
“You’re totally pouting that he hasn’t sent you a friend request.”
“No, Judith, I’m not,” Justin replied so defensively that it had his wife laughing.
“You totally are.”
“Yeah, well, technically he became friends with me and then Trina was always around so both of you should thank me for that.”
“Or blame you.” Judith was smirking again.
“Yeah, I could blame you,” Katrina said with a half-smile.
Justin huffed. “Women.”
“Would you just accept his friend request already?” Judith leaned forward in anticipation, but Katrina was hesitant.
“What do I say?”
“How about ‘you’re welcome’ when he thanks you for jumping in the way you did.”
“I didn’t...” Katrina’s voice trailed off.
She had jumped.
The moment she’d heard his name.
And now, instead of dinner with her boyfriend, she was at her brother’s house contemplating whether to accept a friend request from the boy who had shattered her heart.
But they’d been children then, teetering on the verge of adulthood though they had both been 18 at the time.
“Trina?” Justin’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“Hmm?”
“Oh, just do it,” Judith spoke up. “The curiosity is killing me.”
About that time, Justin’s phone pinged.
“Ah ha,” Judith said as she snatched it up off the table. “Friend request from Lorenzo? Accept.”
“Hey,” Justin interjected as he reached for his phone. Judith held it away and with her free hand, held up one finger.
“Gimme a sec.” She began scrolling, the corners of her mouth turned down.
“What is it?” Katrina asked.
“Accept and see for yourself,” Judith replied. “The man vague posts. Ugh.” She closed the app and gave Justin his phone back.
“Vague posts,” Katrina said, mostly to herself as she gave into temptation and accepted his friend request.
One particular post caught her eye.
How can you miss being a child when you never had the chance?
She remembered him alluding to this.
She remembered it well.
***
“I’m surprised you invited me,” Katrina said to Emily as she brought her belongings upstairs to the suite that Emily called her boudoir.
“Just because you have had your head up Lorenzo’s ass doesn’t mean we aren’t friends. Right?”
“He’s...he’s not as bad as you think he is, you know.”
“No. He’s worse.”
“Em—”
“So, there will be you, Judith, Debra, Kimberly, and Tanya. Lorenzo has some of the football players over, so he won’t be bothering us.”
“Justin won’t be here.”
“No, he won’t. Lorenzo needs to widen his circle of friends.”
Katrina put her hands on her hips. “Says who?”
“Says me, and I rule here, so...” Her voice trailed off as she sat on her luxurious four-poster bed. “Tell me you brought your bathing suit. You know the pool is heated and it’s time for the last hurrah before they close it.”
They meaning the people her parents hired to take care of the grounds.
They meaning people beneath Emily’s station.
“Yes,” Katrina replied, wondering to herself just how welcome she would feel once everyone else arrived.
She’d been more of an outsider lately, mostly because of her association with Lorenzo. Ren wasn’t a bother to her, nor to anyone else. In their grade, though, popularity weighed in on whether Emily Torrence accepted you.
This left Lorenzo on the outside.
And Katrina had been more than happy to be by his side, to tag along when Lorenzo and Justin decided they wanted to just hang out. The three of them were thick as thieves, and on this evening, Emily was showing Katrina just how easily she could split the three of them up.
“Why isn’t Justin here?” Judith had asked when she arrived.
“Because I don’t want him here,” Emily had replied with a nonchalant shrug.
And it stung.
Katrina was ready to pack her bag and head home herself when she caught a glimpse of Lorenzo in the hallway. “Ren?”
“Hey, Trina.” His smile was tight as his foster mother walked away.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head.
“Not one for words tonight?”
One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “You know me so well.”
Just as quickly as it had appeared, it left.
“C’mon,” she said, holding out her hand. “Let’s go out to the pool.”
He shook his head. “I need a shower.”
“Hello, silly. The pool first, then shower.”
He shook his head again.
“Let’s just go, I don’t know, celebrate our waning childhood or something, before it’s gone and we miss the hell out of it.”
“My childhood was stolen, Trina.”
The words were soft, but his eyes were hard.
“But you have the chance to have one now...right?”
He was silent, his dark eyes holding her captive.
“Ren—”
“I need a shower.”
“Ren—”
“Have fun. Enjoy your childhood.”
And with that, he’d walked down the long hallway to his room.
***
“Vague posting just must be his thing,” Judith said with a shrug.
“But it means something.”
“He’s fishing for people to ask what he means by that, like...oh, look, like Emily’s comment. She says ‘whatever do you mean by that.’ She’s fishing, too.”
“What’s the...oh, god.”
“Oh god what, Trina?”
“It was the day of his accident.”
“His accident on Willow Creek Road,” Judith added. “Something tells me that he went to tell her exactly what he meant.”
“And she’s not returning my calls or texts or messages,” Katrina said. “What about you?”
“No. No way. I’m not sending her a message; she knows I only tolerate her.”
“But you invite her here for dinner,” Katrina pointed out.
“With you,” Justin replied. “Because we know you two have been joined at the hip for the past six or so months.”
“Six or so months,” Judith said softly, reaching for Justin’s phone again.
“What are you doing, Jude?” Justin asked her as she scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled again.
“Six months. Bam.” Judith smirked. “When Emily posted her thank you for his friend request.” She looked over at Justin. “I told you she was a bitch. A million times over I have told you this.”
“And a million times I have agreed with you, but...Trina? Are you okay?”
Katrina could feel bile creeping up into her throat. “I can’t believe this.”
“I can,” Judith stated. “Just sayin.”
“What do you need?”
“Answers,” Katrina replied. “I need answers.”
And she knew exactly who she needed them from.
CHAPTER 9
“I need to show you something.” Lorenzo was smiling down at Katrina beneath the stars as they lay on a blanket.
“Oh, really?” Katrina teased.
“You’re hilarious.” Lorenzo reached into his back pocket and pulled his wallet out, extracting a card from it with ease. “Ta da.”
“You got your driver’s license!” Katrina sat up and gave him a quick congratulatory kiss that deepened when he sighed into her. “I’m so happy for you.”
“For us. We can officially go on a date now. If he’ll let me take one of the cars, that is.”
“We’ve been dating for a while.”
“I mean a real date, Trina. One with roses and dinner and...and the theatre. I know how much you love the theatre.”
“You’d do that for me?”
He rested his forehead against hers. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Anything?”
He left of whisper of a kiss and spoke against her lips. “Anything.”
***
Katrina woke with a start, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. Of course, she would dream about him. He was already consuming her thoughts, her emotions even though he had only just crashed back into her life. Literally.
“Damn it,” she muttered, pushing back her hair with a shaking hand. She would have to see him today. She needed to return his belongings, after all.
What would she say to him?
“I could say ‘thanks for friending Emily and not me’,” she muttered as she shuffled towards her kitchen. “I could say ‘where the hell have you been for the past ten years.’ I could say a ton of things to him. Bastard.” She felt the hurt centered in her chest, aching the way it had years before.
He was back now.
But for how long?
And...and what did that mean for her? For them?
Did it mean anything?
“I suppose I could stalk his Facebook now.” She picked her phone up, then sighed. “No. Coffee.” Placing her phone back down, she prepared a half pot of coffee, fully aware she’d drink the entire thing.
Her phone pinged, indicating a text from Justin.
Best of luck today.
She replied with a dry ‘thanks’ without asking him if he could call off work, or perhaps go in late. She didn’t need backup to see Lorenzo. She was an adult now who had processed his betrayal and the bitterness it had left within her.
The same bitterness that held her back with Timothy.
“Fuck, Timothy!” She shook her head and sent a text to him, letting him know that she wouldn’t be at work that day, either, and that she would contact him later. Her boss already knew, but Timothy had a habit of stopping by.
Tell me you’re not going to see him was Timothy’s reply.
“I have to,” she said aloud as she typed the words. “I have to return his things to him.”
What are you doing with his things?
“Oh, I don’t have time for this. Or the energy.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and plopped down in her favorite chair in the living room.
Visiting hours would begin soon.
She looked at the neat pile of Lorenzo’s belongings, his clothing freshly laundered, his wallet and destroyed phone on top along with the notebook. She could return it all, tell him good luck with his life, and leave.
Just leave.
The way he’d just left her.
Tears welled in her eyes at the thought of that. “You can’t consume my every thought, Ren. Not anymore.”
If only she believed it.
***
Katrina stared at the sign in front of the large office building. Torrence Industries was where Emily’s father had made his fortune, and where Emily was following in his footsteps. Emily had yet to return any of Katrina’s calls or messages and having seen the damning evidence with her own eyes, Katrina was certain she knew why.
Lorenzo.
It was all about Lorenzo.
None of it made sense to Katrina, though, even as she made her way through the sprawling lobby to the elevators, smiling at a few of the people there who were obviously going to work. She hit the button for the eighth floor, where Emily’s office was, and waited silently amongst strangers until she reached her destination.
