Torn (37 page)

--THE END--

Author’s Note:

I do hope you enjoyed reading Torn as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have to admit that this is a book that almost never got written. A few years back I sat down with the intent of writing about a girl that was slightly damaged, and a boy that for all he was a bit more than just human, faced odds too insurmountable even for him to conquer.

Seven or eight months later, I finished up what I would later come to call Broken, and breathed a sigh of relief that Adri had finally been able to tell her story. Despite being ‘done’, I couldn’t shake the idea that there was a huge swath of the story that hadn’t been told. I told my subconscious more or less to shut up, which doesn’t usually work out too well. Still, Broken was already pushing the limits, size wise, of what most publishers would be willing to print from any but their most proven authors. There was just no way that I could add another eighty or ninety thousand words to it and hope to get anyone to bite.

It wasn’t until I read the excerpt of Midnight Sun that Stephenie Meyer put on her website that things finally clicked. The best way to tell all of the cool parts of Adri and Alec’s story that hadn’t made it into Broken was to tell everything again, but do it from Alec’s point of view.

I knew on the outset that it was going to be a tricky project. I wanted something where it didn’t matter which novel you picked up, you still came away with questions that you had to then pick up the other novel to get answers to. I couldn’t just write Torn as much as I needed to go back to Broken and carve away some of the bits that would be better told from Alec’s point of view.

Depending on when you are reading this, Broken may or may not be available (We’re currently shooting for a release date a tad before Christmas 2011). If it is available, I hope you go pick it up as well. I’m incredibly pleased with how Broken and Torn each turned out individually, but they were always meant to be enjoyed in close proximity to each other. If you’re faced with a slight wait before you can go read Broken, I still want to give you a taste of what’s to come, so I’ve included a brief excerpt after the acknowledgements.

If you’ve already read Broken and have just finished reading the second half of the tale, I want to say thank you for seeing this chapter of Alec and Adri’s story through to the end, but don’t get too comfortable. The next book is in the editing stages and I can practically guarantee that you won’t guess what happens next. I know I didn’t see this one coming.

If you haven’t checked out some of my other work I’d strongly urge you to browse through the other stories I’ve currently got available. Scent of Tears is set in the same world as Broken and Torn, and even features a character who had the briefest of cameo’s in Torn. If you’re in the mode for something a little more of a romantic bent, Longing or Absence should be right up your alley. If epic fantasy is more your thing, I think you’ll find Frozen Prospects and Thawed Fortunes are both very much worth your time.

Acknowledgments:

As always, thanks need to go out to everyone that continues to provide support in dozens of different ways. When an author chooses to go the indie route, it means they absolutely rely on their fans to get the word out, and I'm very appreciative of all of you that blog, review, or otherwise help put Torn on the map.

There are a few individuals who deserve special mention. The Corbridge brothers and C-M2E all of who have gone way above and beyond the call of duty.

Additional thanks and acknowledgement need made to Obsidian Dawn, www.obsidiandawn.com, for brushes used in the creation of the cover for Torn.

Finally, the biggest thanks of all goes to Katie, who serves as my cover artist, editor, and first reader, all the while keeping Hurricane Sage from destroying the surrounding countryside.

About the Author:

Dean started reading seriously in
the second grade due to a competition, and has spent most of the
subsequent three decades lost in other people's worlds. After reading
several local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he
started spending more time wandering around worlds of his own
creation to avoid the boredom of the 'real' world.

Things worsened, or improved
depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting
with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days
Dean has a wonderful wife and daughter to keep him rather more
grounded, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets
interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends
to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.

Keep up to speed on Dean's latest
projects at
http://www.deansonlinefiction.com/
or follow me on Twitter @Writer_Dean

There were a couple of times between Monday and the end of the week where I didn't think I was going to survive having to worry about whether or not I'd be able to sneak out to Brandon's party. My dreams had taken a decidedly odd turn. I'd had the lucid, vivid dreams every single night, but my guilty conscience seemed to be working overtime. At least that's all I could assume. I woke up flustered, with vague memories of Alec. My best guess was that I was trying to defend myself after having argued with his little sister. If I was going to waste my time in the vivid dreams, it would've made more sense to spend them trying to explain my side of what'd happened to Rachel, but apparently I wasn't normal enough for that.

I'd been all set to swallow my pride and thank Alec for shutting up the two kids sitting behind me. Only that'd been before the ride home all by myself on the bus while he sped home in his little luxury car. Maybe I'd still have apologized to him if he'd been in school on Monday. Instead, he'd skipped the entire first half of the week, and by the time I did finally see him, I'd backed myself so far into a corner, I couldn't even meet his eyes during class.

Somehow I'd managed to make it through day after day of isolation. Brandon's friends continued to more or less ignore me, the boys without the trace of spite that I picked up from most of the girls. Britney started another rumor sometime about the middle of the week. Apparently I was now some kind of closet drug addict who was hoping to get Brandon to fund my habit.

Rachel hadn't been back to tutoring since we'd argued, and I was picking up an increasing number of hostile looks from people I didn't even know. Some of them were recognizable as Alec's friends, but most of them were just nameless nerds who apparently had a soft spot for Rachel, or a towering hatred for Brandon's friends.

“Adriana Paige. Have you heard a word I was saying?”

I looked up and blinked a couple of times. “Sorry mom, I was thinking about school.”

“I swear, you've become more absent minded lately than ever before. As much time as you spend studying and thinking about your classes, I'm surprised they haven't decided to graduate you a year early.”

I shrugged uncomfortably. Since mom hadn't been interested in the things I could safely tell her without getting grounded, school had become a standard excuse for why I was so distracted.

“Speaking of which, when do they send out mid-term reports?”

“I think they do them twice here. We missed the first batch, and the second isn't until later.” I still didn't particularly like lying, but seemed to be doing it more and more often.

“Anyways, I was just apologizing for leaving you home alone on a weekend again. I ran into another trio of hikers, and they told me about a new vantage point for that crooked looking mountain I keep telling you about. It's on the far side, so I'm going to hike as far in as I can while it's still light today so I can make it there tomorrow with plenty of time before sunset. I don't want to make the hike again, so I'll probably spend all of Sunday shooting, and then hike back on Monday.”

Mom paused in her preparations to put her hand on my forehead. “You're not coming down with anything are you? You've been so listless lately. Do you need me to stay home with you?”

There it was, the perfect opportunity to get her to stay home with me. It would get me out of having to spend time with Brandon's increasingly annoying friends, which was what I currently wanted more than almost anything else in the world.

Unfortunately I wanted to spend time with Brandon even more than I wanted to avoid his friends, so there wasn't really a choice.

“I'm fine mom. Just feeling a little run down. I'll spend the whole weekend lying around reading and studying. That should fix me right up.”

I gave mom a wan smile, exactly the kind I used when I was really sick, and helped her finish packing. I wasn't sure whether I helped because I was feeling guilty, or because I was worried Brandon would show up before she'd left. Maybe I was just hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

It wasn't until she was finally in the Jeep and backing down our lane that I finally stopped worrying that Brandon was going to pop around the corner. He'd been smugly confident he wouldn't show up before she was gone, but had refused to tell me how he planned on pulling up at my house five minutes after the coast is clear.

Half of me was strongly tempted to dawdle for fifteen or twenty minutes, but with my luck he'd really manage to show up within the next few minutes, and I'd have to scramble to get ready while he waited for me.

With a sigh I ran up to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, gave my hair the once over, and grabbed a light jacket as I left my room. It wasn't even remotely as cold here as I would be at home by this late in the year, but the oppressive heat had finally started to wane a little. Knowing my luck, if I left it home tonight would be the first time it snowed in Sanctuary in the last two centuries.

More and more excited about the prospect of going to my first real party, I bounced down the stairs and into the kitchen for a drink. I happened to look out the window as I pulled a glass out of the cupboard, and nearly dropped it when I saw Brandon leaning against his car, patiently waiting for me. Before I could move out of sight, he looked up at me with a self-satisfied smile. I nearly dropped the glass again.

Twenty seconds later I was headed out the door. “How did you do that? There was no way you could possibly have timed things that close.”

Another smirk as he held my door open for me. “I told you. Great instincts resulting from superior breeding.”

“Fine don't tell me. I didn't really want to know anyway.”

Brandon chuckled as he threw the Mustang into reverse and sped out of the lane faster than normal. The stereo clicked over to another song as we flipped around and headed back into town. It was more of the thrumming beats I'd come to associate with Brandon.

“I thought this place was in one of the parks or something. Why are we headed back to town?”

“Wow, you really are a city girl. In order to get far enough not to be busted by the cops we have to go really remote. There isn't any way my car would make it where we need to go. We're headed to Vincent's to hitch a ride in his truck.”

'Truck' turned out to be an understatement. I'd marveled more than once since getting to Utah, at just how big some of the pickup trucks I saw driving around were. It seemed like nobody was willing to drive anything around the way it came off of the showroom floor. Everything had bigger wheels, and suspension that lifted it up several inches.

Vincent's truck had more in common with the beasts in monster truck rallies than it did with the souped-up vehicles I'd seen driving around town. The tires were the biggest I'd seen on anything outside of a tractor, and the lift kit on it was so outrageously tall that I was pretty sure someone was going to have to lift me into the cab. By myself it was going to take a rope and climbing shoes. Of course it was black. I couldn't imagine Vincent in anything other than a black vehicle.

Predictably, Vincent was rubbing down his vehicle, but the exercise seemed more targeted to giving him a chance to walk around with his shirt off than it did with cleaning up the already immaculate truck. Based on the way the cheerleader types by the garage were watching him, it was working.

I much preferred Brandon's jeans and tee shirt, tight as it was, over the shorts and shirtless look, but apparently I was in the minority.

I almost hyperventilated when Vincent casually walked out of the house with a pair of beer kegs and tied them down in the bed of his pickup. His house was more on the fringes of town, but it was still in town. What if his parents came home and saw them? For that matter, where had he been hiding them? It wasn't even remotely possible that all of the people who were going to be at the party were old enough to drink without getting arrested.

Brandon looked at my white knuckles and laughed. “Don't worry, nobody's going to make you drink, and we've never been busted by the cops. We'll have you safely back home sometime early tomorrow morning, and your mom will never have the slightest idea you went to such a wild gathering.”

As far as reassurance went, it was a pretty lame attempt, but somehow it didn't sound so feeble when it was Brandon saying it. I calmed down enough to marvel at the amount of other baggage Vincent dragged out of the house, and then any chance I might have had to back out vanished as Brandon picked me up and deposited me on the tailgate of Vincent's truck.

“Riding in the back, isn't that illegal?”

The high-maintenance blond that Vincent was helping up next to me rolled her eyes. “Please.”

Brandon helped a couple of late arrivals into the pickup, and then closed the tailgate. I half thought he was going to ride up front in the crowded cab, but he instead cleared the sides of the truck in a jump that was almost inhumanly graceful. He crowded in, close enough I could feel my skin start to tingle with anticipation, and then Vincent started the engine and we were off.

In what was probably the only display of maturity and common sense I'd ever seen out of Vincent, he didn't tear off down the freeway at eighty miles per hour. He was still going plenty fast, but at least the wind wasn't deafening. After a few minutes of white-knuckled fear, I was finally able to relax a little, and enjoy the feeling of having Brandon so close while the wind tossed my hair back and forth.