Authors Note: I know me again starting a new story but this was requested so I figured I may as well go ahead and make a start. Based on a two shot I wrote called Broken/Torn that can be found on my author's page. Dedicated to Pam211 who requested it. Also to my usual suspects, you know who you are.
Warnings: Some adult/minor relations, adult themes, occasional course language. Also if the thought of an affair between a step mother and step son is off putting to you…I suggest not reading.
I don't own One Tree Hill or Gossip Girl; they are the properties of their creators.
Broken and Torn
-Chapter One-
Life was supposed to be a fairy tale. They were young, they had a beautiful family and it seemed like Nathan's dream of a career in basketball was finally about to become a reality, but then, disaster struck.
She doesn't know exactly what happened that night at the bar, she wasn't there and neither Lucas or Nathan were talking about it, all she knows is that late that night she'd received a call from her brother in law frantically telling her to get to the hospital.
After that call, her whole world changed.
Nathan had been pushed through a glass window and he'd lost the use of his legs.
Haley had tried to be supportive, she'd sat through countless doctors meetings and trips to the physio, but after months of watching the man she loved deteriorate into nothing but a mere shadow of the father he despised the weight had been too much to bare.
When she'd met Carrie, she'd thought the young woman a gift from heaven, Jaime became happier, Haley herself was less tired and Nathan began to walk again. The fairy tale looked to be getting back on track.
But then the trouble started again.
She noticed little things at first, casual glances between her husband and her Nanny, glances that seemed innocent at first but held the ability to mean much more, the way Nathan would linger a second longer than he had to by the young woman's side, the whispered words between the two that Haley tried to convince herself she was imagining until it became tragically obvious that she hadn't imagined anything at all.
But it wasn't the affair that broke her heart, it wasn't the betrayal of her husband that shattered her into a million pieces until she was just a shell of the woman she'd once been. It was something infinitely more unbearable.
She'd been working late, grading papers for her eighth grade Literature class when she'd once again received a phone call telling her to head to the hospital.
She'd rushed there, fearing that Nathan had hurt his back again or had a relapse but instead she was greeted by the soul crushing news that her son had drowned in the back yard pool because his father and Nanny had been too busy fooling around to watch him.
She'd filed for divorce the day after she buried her little boy and taken the red eye back to New York with Brooke, her best friend and the only person she felt she could lean on because Tree Hill held to many memories of what she'd lost and she couldn't turn a corner or look into the faces of her friends without seeing the eyes of her tiny little Jaime staring back at her.
XBATXBATX
New York was new, so big that she could get lost in it and Brooke was everything she needed her to be, and while in the two months she'd been there she couldn't say she was happy, she could say she felt like she belonged.
She's nearing her third month in the city when she meets him.
Him being Bartholomew Bass, possibly the richest self-made millionaire New York has ever seen.
He approaches her at the bar of the Palace Hotel (which she is later informed by Brooke's mother Victoria is owned by him) where Brooke is holding a small function for key investors in her company and strikes up a conversation oozing all the style and charm that a man of his experience possesses and while she's not immediately swept away with him, she's slightly fascinated and just a little flattered by his attention.
But by the end of the night she's put him out of her mind and she's positive the meeting between them was just a one-time thing.
She's set straight the next morning when a bunch of yellow roses arrives for her in Brooke's penthouse and the note attached extends an invite to lunch.
Brooke urges her to go, claims it would be good for her to spend time with someone of his calibre, a man with style and sophistication, someone far removed from the type of man her ex-husband is.
Besides her brunette friend reasons with her, every young woman should have a romance with an older man at least once.
So she goes to lunch, and is swept up a little in the beauty of being wined and dined. She's always been a girl that could get along easily with older generations and she finds his intelligence and charm to be more than just a little alluring.
She isn't attracted to him physically, but she enjoys his company immensely and when he asks her to join him for dinner a few nights later she readily accepts.
After that it's a whirlwind of opulent surroundings and lively discussions and he becomes the first friend she makes in New York City that doesn't have the last name Davis.
He makes her feel valued, and safe and she's so desperately in need of both those feelings that when a little over a month into their courtship he proposes to her she accepts with only a moment's hesitation.
They marry in a small ceremony at a registrar away from the prying eyes of the press that so endlessly hound him and he whisks her out of the country for their honeymoon in Paris.
One month later she returns to Manhattan as Mrs Bart Bass and her world once again takes another huge turn.