Chapter 4
Hailey
My heart was goingway too fast. I put my hand over it, trying to get it to calm the fuck down, eyes glued to the swinging doors.
Ella Fucking Stewart. Out of nowhere.
I hated her. My panties were soaked, and that wasn’t a euphemism; as I stood in the back after caking her, I could feel the cotton panel of my underwear sticking to my recently waxed undercarriage every time I shifted my weight from one leg to the other.
I waited and waited, each beat of my heart threatening to kill me with acute adrenaline overdose, sure Ella was going to come into the back kitchen. Then we would either kill each other or screw, and I wasn’t sure which. Every muscle tensed, waiting. But she didn’t follow me.
I heard them leave. What the...?
Heather came back immediately. “What happened??”
I inhaled too deeply and this little whine of total emotional wreckage escaped on the exhale. “Where’d she go?”
“They left, Hails!” Heather yelled at me. “God! What was that you pulled? You really screwed everything up!”
Ella was gone. Just like that. Again. Fuuuckk. I was gonna get drunk tonight, that was for sure.
Except my body clearly had other plans for what I was gonna do when I got off work, fast and furious and as soon as I made it past my bedroom door.
Heather was still fuming and waiting for an explanation.
I shrugged. “Tripped.”
Truth? When I saw Ella, I did nearly drop the sampler. It wobbled, tasters of cake on their little doilies sliding across the overly large platter. It was Heather’s idea to put them on paper so we could write the name of each flavor next to the sample for clarity. With no grip to them, they’d all slid like skaters on ice. Then, like some reoccurring nightmare, I’d looked up and seen the ghost of the girl who’d ruined my life.
Naturally, I’d overcorrected. Two of the cupcake options toppled, and all the beautiful piping decorations had smooshed, including where Heather had carefully written out Three Birds and made little birds out of the various icing options. Right about that time, all my surprise at seeing Ella had catalyzed into pure rage and I’d YOLO’d it out of the ballpark, winging the whole tray at her.
Couldn’t lie. After everything Ella’d done to me, it was pretty satisfying.
“Bullshit, you tripped! I saw what happened, and I heard what you said. You’re lucky that Karen of a mom wasn’t there to witness, or you’d be fired right now. You caked a customer.”
Shit. I gave Heather big, nervous eyes. ”Please don”t fire me.”
Heather rolled hers. “I won’t. I can’t. The bride ordered a cake to serve three hundred fifty.”
Holy shit. That was a lot of money. “Really?”
“Of course, really! We make the best cake anyone’s ever tasted. Those two might be total bitches, but they know quality.”
My shoulders came down. Five years ago, I’d taken the scholarship money I’d won from Ella’s father and split my winnings with Jack because it had been the right thing to do. I’d taken my half and taken a good hard look at my life. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I could earn my money back on a bachelor’s degree. On the other hand, Mom had raised me in her hair salon, so I understood business.
So I’d gotten an associate”s degree in business management from Community College, and I’d used what I could scrimp and save to take classes at the local culinary school. World needs to eat, amirite?
I hadn’t planned on loving it, but I did. Culinary classes were expensive, so I focused only on the baking classes I could get into. I watched every YouTube I could to educate myself. Then I started my own YouTube channel, demonstrating what I’d learned. I didn’t exactly go viral, but it was a fair side hustle. That’s how Heather found me. Three Birds was Heather’s dream, her bakery. She’d been open about a year, and although we were getting good publicity, the orders weren’t exactly flooding in.
Heather said, “If they make good with the deposit, we’re gonna have to get this cake ready for the third Saturday in June. Think you can do that without pulling another stunt?”
“What?!” Somehow, the part about Ella being the bride had gone right over my head. Or maybe it seemed like some hypothetical thing that would happen in some faraway future. Not like...I counted on my fingers. Six weeks away?
When Heather nodded excitedly, I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to smile for my friend. Heather was barely making storefront rent...or honestly, her half of the rent for the apartment we shared. Lately, she’d been talking nervously about how most businesses didn’t make it three years. Breaking into a new venue with a big, showy cake would be a godsend for her business.
“Why on earth are the Stewarts so late reserving a cake? And coming to you? Us. No offense,” I added quickly. Business ties in our area were pretty strong. It was extremely slow going to break in. Rolling Green undoubtedly had their favorite vendors.
“I knew they were desperate, but I still figured it was over when you... Oh wait, that’s Ella Stewart?” I could see the wheels turning in Heather’s head: the Mercedes they’d arrived in, Mrs. Stewart’s liberal name-dropping about the country club. I expected Heather to finally realize she’d been talking to the owner of Rolling Green. “Holy shit, wasn’t that the girl who came out as being in a throuple or some such thing back in the day?”
“How did you even hear about that?” Three Birds was a two-hour drive from Rolling Green. Heather had grown up in this town.
She shrugged. “People talk. I think I heard it at a party—wait.” Another bomb dropped behind Heather’s eyes. “You weren’t...?”
My face went up in flames as I shook my head, lying, trying to deny my involvement. As far as Heather knew, I was a normal 24-year-old...who happened to grow up in Ella’s hometown. Heather knew that. And I was about Ella’s same age. And I just had a very strong negative reaction to seeing her.
Heather’s eyes narrowed. “Were you...did you...were you that girl she was having the threesome with?”
“No!” I laughed, lying through my teeth. “Ella was a grade above me and a total mean girl. We were definitely not in the same circles or anything.”
Heather nodded, but she still eyed me a little too long. “Oh yeah, of course, no. I mean, what are the odds, right?”
My laughter was brittle as chalk. “Nope, I was just another girl who hated her in high school.”
“Well, now you get to make her wedding cake,” Heather said, as though it was clear the universe had some sense of humor.
I must’ve looked like I was gonna hurl because Heather grabbed my shoulder and gave me a sharp, worried shake. “You have to make this wedding cake, Hailey. I can’t do the whole thing on my own.”
I didn’t need Heather to flesh it out for me. She was broke as a joke, and Three Birds was hanging by a thread. We definitely needed this job.
Ella’s wedding cake. Could I do that? I mean, did they let doctors do autopsies on their dead loved ones? It seemed like there should be a similar rule that I should not be allowed to pipe tiny flowers on the symbol of everlasting love between Ella and anyone else. I wasn’t the kind of girl who would ever do something so gross as to spit in the batter...but I wondered if I could manage to make a complete cake without getting any tears in it.
* * *
After an exhaustingday’s work, Heather and I drove home to our dingy two-bedroom on the border between the run-down section of town and the rough part. Heather and I weren’t romantic or anything, just business partners. The crappy apartment was a strategic decision; Heather sank all her money into Three Birds, and I had an addiction to culinary school classes, so we egged each other on to scrimp and save.
I promised myself the whole way home I wouldn’t call him. I knew if I could get through tonight, tomorrow the memory of Ella would fade, and eventually, that painful place in my heart would heal over again. By telling him, I was just ripping open his wounds.
But I could never keep things from Jack. Not when it counted. I looked over our phone records. We hadn’t texted in three months. I took a deep breath and dialed his number. It was selfish. It was me ruining his day. It was a mistake. I pulled the phone from my ear, thumb hovering over the End Call button when the sound of his voice blared through the speaker.
“Jack’s sex and sushi service. How can I help you?”
I mashed the phone to my ear, smiling stupidly. It felt good to hear his voice. I opened my mouth to tell him he was an ass, but all that came out was a watery gasp.
“Hails, what is it?” His voice filled with worry, and that same old love I’d always had for him flooded through me.
“I saw her.”
There was no pause, no time for him to wonder who I might be talking about. “You want me there?”
Maybe I’d known from the start he’d offer. Maybe I even thought I’d laugh and tell him no, that I just wanted to bitch about it over the phone. But when he said those words, I cried like a baby, nodding my head even though he couldn’t see.
“You at home? Sit tight. I’ll be there in ninety minutes.”
Jack lived two hours away, but I believed him.
* * *
Heather answered thedoor before I could get there.
“Well, helllllloooo handsome.” She batted her eyes at Jack.
“Hi, Heather,” he said in a friendly way, his gaze shooting right over her head to find me. He lunged past her. “It’s good to see you,” he called over his shoulder.
Jack moved like he was going to wrap me in his arms right there, but my mind flashed to how Heather had known about Ella. How hard would it be for her to put the pieces together if I was crying about that girl in the threesome and then my old boyfriend came over to comfort me?
I nodded toward my bedroom.
“Let’s talk in here?” I suggested in a formal tone, even though Heather knew Jack and I were basically booty call buddies.
Taking my cue, Jack straightened. “Uh, sure.”
It wasn’t until the bedroom door closed behind us and I put on some music to muffle our conversation that I fell into his arms and sobbed. Jack smoothed my hair against my head, both of us rocking in the sort of hug that was also kind of a slow dance of sadness.
What always happened when Jack and I were within two feet of each other began.
The smell of his skin made my heart race, tightening things inside me that only got tense for one reason.
I shook my head against his pec, resisting, but my open mouth dragged against his shirt in a caress. I could feel him get hard against my belly, and as soon as that happened, it was all over. We hadn’t seen each other in seven, maybe eight months. For all he knew, I had someone serious. For all I knew, he did too. None of that mattered. Just like it didn’t matter that I probably looked like a raccoon from crying in my work makeup or that I smelled like stress. He kissed me, arms squeezing me closer and closer to him, and then I fell backward onto the full-sized bed that took up more than half my cramped bedroom. I kicked off my shoes as he slid a hand up my shirt.
The problem for Jack and I had never been sex. And it had never been love. I’d held a massive torch for him since I was a freshman in high school. And then one day, he noticed me noticing him. Jack was the first boy who’d been skilled enough to bring me to orgasm. He’d done it as Ella had watched.
Ella.
“She came into work today.” I gasped as he worked his hand under the lace demicup of my bra and pinched my nipple, my body slowly bucking against his as though trying to prove that no matter what I said, the important part was getting him inside me.
We were both breathing hard, but Jack went still.
Just as she’d always done, Ella was fucking things up between me and him. It was my fault for mentioning her. My fault for bringing her, if only in spirit, back into our bedroom. Her ghost between us in this bed felt dirty and wrong and also made me the horniest I’d been in years. If you’ve ever seen one of those slow-motion videos of a water balloon bursting, that was going on in my panties at the moment.
“Did you know she was coming?” His breath tickled my skin. Even with the lights on, we were so close I couldn’t see more than parts of him—the muscles in his neck twitching as he curled my hair behind my ear. The smell and weight of his body on me were like both coming home and something new all at once.
I shook my head. Heather did all the bookings; it was her business.
“Why was she there?”
A traitorous tear slid from the corner of my eye, and my nose stuffed up until I had to breathe through my mouth. I wanted to focus on his erection, hard and insistent against my hip, the way my lips were so sensitive that every stuffy exhale made them tingle in that way that only kisses could fix. Instead, I was going to hurt Jack. At least we could hurt together. And it wasn’t like if I didn’t tell him she wouldn’t get married.
“Ordered a wedding cake.” I tried to laugh, but it came out sobby. “For June. At Rolling Green.”
“For her?” Jack laughed in disbelief, practically begging me to say he’d misunderstood, that Ella was a bridesmaid or something, even though Jack had to know I would never play such a cruel prank on him. I nodded. “Did she say anything to you? Did she see you, or were you in back?”
“I caked her,” I whispered, ashamed and proud.
“You did wha..?” Laughter overtook him. “You’re lying.”
I shook my head, grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. “I was bringing out a sampler tray and... I don’t know what came over me. She took it full in the face.”
Sometimes it felt as though I knew Jack better than I knew myself. Then there were moments like this, when I had no idea what was going on inside him. Ella had been his first everything.
Fiercely, he leaned in and kissed where the tears had slid down the side of my face. “I love you.”
That made me do the ugly cry thing. Not because of what he said; I knew Jack loved me. But because the three of us once had something I never thought a girl like me would ever get—real, fairy-tale love.
When Ella left, Jack and I had tried to stay together. But the thing about love is that it’s not interchangeable. Jack couldn’t love me enough to make up for the emptiness Ella left. The same thing happened when my dad split. Even though I loved my mother more than anything, it didn’t fill the black hole of needing my dad to come home.
Jack had a lot of guilt over what had happened. He insisted Ella’s parents must’ve kidnapped her and had her brainwashed or something. He scrolled religiously through her socials, watching all the picture-perfect images as they came up, looking for some secret sign or something. It made me mad after a while. Kidnapped or not, she obviously had access to her phone. She could’ve texted us.
For a while after the Pops, everywhere we went, bros howled Jack’s name and demanded to know what it was like to have two pussies at once. He bristled every time, refusing to smile as they hee-hawed and slapped his back. Once, we were out together and a guy asked me if Jack and I licked Ella out at the same time. Jack punched him and got arrested for assault. The charges were dropped, but getting booked left a mark on his sunny demeanor. To be honest, it scared me. Bit by bit, I watched him withdraw. I should’ve done better, should’ve been more supportive, should’ve filled the hole she left between us, but I was grieving too.
I kept my head down, focused on classes and saving enough money to move out of my mom’s house, because back then she’d been in what she called an “extended honeymoon phase” with Stone Strickland, even though he hadn’t actually asked her to get married. I’d had enough bad experiences with Mom’s boyfriends that even though Stone had been nothing other than a total snob, I was still skittish about a grown man having access to my space. Plus, honestly...their slutty, clothes-on-the-floor happiness left me homesick and bitter.
For a while, Jack and I talked about Ella every time we were together. We grieved. We got angry. We talked about all the little things we missed, two broken hearts consoling each other. It was depressing as hell.
Jack started drinking pretty heavily. He hadn’t completely flunked out of community college by the time we broke up, but he was on his way. And then I had a pregnancy scare. Turned out I was just late, but holy shit, ten days late. When we’d both watched the results come back negative on that pee stick, we’d known—it was our lucky day. And it was also the saddest day, because I think we both knew it was the end. I mean, we were still teenagers.
Every time I passed that pee stick in the trash, all I could think was how close I’d come to reliving my mother’s life: single mom with a drunk for a baby daddy, poor for the rest of my life. That’s when I’d had a come-to-Jesus meeting with myself, took a chance on the culinary classes, and quit having sex with Jack. It broke my heart, but it was a matter of survival. When he disappeared, I figured he felt the same.
Through our mutuals, I heard stories that Jack dropped out. He disappeared off the radar for a while. When I’d call, he acted like everything was fine, but he wouldn’t give me details. I told him I’d drop everything and come help him.
“Don’t you dare,” he’d answered hoarsely into the phone. “Sometimes the best part of my day is knowing you’re out there, happy.” And then he’d get me talking about classes or, honestly, we’d devolve into phone sex, then stay on the line in silence until one of us fell asleep.
Sometimes I’d reach out to his mom on Facebook to say hi, and she’d tell me Jack was doing OK. A few years after we’d parted ways, I caught a social media post from Jack’s high school best friend, Theo Benedict. The photo was of the two of them, glassy-eyed, on the Las Vegas Strip, the caption: “Happy 21st birthday, Jack. We’ve been through it all. Hope this year kicks ass, not nuts.”
Maybe a year later, Jack popped up on my social media just looking normal and living back in our old small town. Like two dummies who never learned, Jack and I tried to make it work again. It turned out like it always did: bittersweet, scorching hot, and, in the end, always a throuple missing our third. As soon as I’d graduated, I’d gotten the hell out of town and started my life here.
Fuck Ella for everything.
We still saw each other from time to time. He was older now, his jaw squaring out, facial stubble coarser. He had always been gentle, but that easygoing kindness that had made me fall in love with him our freshman year was more guarded now, as though his goodwill had been singed around the edges. He was fully grown and intimidatingly so. If he wanted to keep me in this bed, there was probably no way—physically, at least—I could stop him.
But I trusted Jack.
“I love you too.” It came out tinged with regret.
I lifted my head to kiss him in apology, and as soon as our mouths touched, it was back on. My hand threaded between our bodies, pulling up his shirt so I could drag my nails across his six-pack.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
“She looks exactly the same,” I said, and he groaned, frustrated. “She had frosting under her eye and the peach sponge got syrup on her chin, and she licked her lips.” Here, I licked my own. His hand caressed my side, my hip, moving around to squeeze my ass.
I desperately wanted him, but the feeling was filled with heartache. He was thinking of someone else. So was I.
“Did she say anything?” He scooched down the bed, mouth trailing down my front.
“She said hi.” I gasped as he yanked my pants down hard.
“What did you say?” He ran his hands along the waistband of my panties, making my stomach muscles jump. This was so messed up and kinky and wrong—Ella was even our dirty talk. I let him peel my panties down, tears still leaking from my eyes.
“I told her to get fucked.”
When he laughed, warm air tickled the bare skin of my thighs. I dragged my fingers through his hair. Oh, my God. Please.
“She said it was the best cake she’d ever tasted.”
He rested his head on my belly like it was his pillow, drawing his fingers across my skin as though reacquainting himself. “You’re the best cake I’ve ever tasted.”
That praise, the murmured, secret validation that between me and Ella, I was somehow his favorite in some small way? Maybe I had a petty, small heart because my dad left when I was small, but it got me.
My hands clawed at his head, bringing him up to kiss as he tugged the button of his jeans open and wiggled out of them. Bare, muscled thighs nudged between mine, and I couldn’t get him closer fast enough. He slid inside me, stretching me until I groaned. It had been so long since we had been together that it felt like too much. He was too big, and I dug my nails into his shoulders, and we both panted, still, until I nodded against him. “Now.”
He moved inside me with these slow and controlled strokes. First, like he was giving me time to adjust, as though I were as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. But as we moved together, as I got needier and more demanding, it seemed as though he was really in it to torture me in a different way. He took his time, stopping midthrust just to watch my face change as he slowly slid home, tilting his hips to hit that place inside me that made me lose my mind. I could feel myself go tight around his cock, and I closed my eyes, knowing he was watching as I got closer and closer.
Groaning, he pulled out and collapsed half on top of me.
“No!” I hit him with my fists, the unsatisfied emptiness unbearable.
His hard cock lay wet and hot on my thigh. There had been nothing between us, no barrier, and I wasn’t on the pill. Right. Thank God he stopped. Still, my pussy ached for more. It was a real impulse to jump on him and finish myself off before he could stop me.
“Come on.” He twisted in the bed, grabbing my thigh and wrapping it around his head, his belly to mine. “Gimme that cake.”
A moment later, the ticklish warmth of his tongue nudged between my labia lips. I grabbed his thigh and found his cock, running my tongue over it. He tasted like me, but I let myself imagine it was her. He groaned and found my clit. I couldn’t help myself. I fucked against his mouth, digging my fingers into his ass cheeks.
Neither of us could slow down. As I shot over the edge, I cried out, unable to concentrate on anything but wiggling my clit against his tongue. His thrusts went jagged and short, ramming down my throat, but as I lost control, his cock slid out, slick against my throat and tits. The apartment walls were embarrassingly thin, and he was doing things to me that made me sound like a porn star, my core throbbing and clenching. As my orgasm rolled over me, Jack spurted cum between my tits, hot and sticky and a huge fucking amount, both of us groaning.
I never tried to imagine Jack’s mouth was Ella’s, pretend his tongue was hers—they were too different. But I wondered if sometimes Jack imagined I was her.
* * *
After, we curled upin my small bed as Heather’s reality show audio blared through the thin walls. I knew she’d probably turned it up to give us privacy, but it only seemed to underline how out of control Jack and I had been.
“You never told me what happened to you. After,” I said as he trailed his fingertips across the inside of my arm.
He sighed as though looking back in time was like cracking a textbook and trying to give an impromptu lecture on a subject he’d studied years ago. “You know.”
“I know you dropped out, left town. I called your mom a few times. She always said you were fine.” I made a face. She had said exactly that, no matter what, every time. “So where’d you go?”
“Got in some trouble. Drank too much. Got in some more trouble.”
Jack had been a good student in school, varsity basketball, a lifeguarding gig in the summer. We’d all drank at parties, but he’d never seemed out of control before Ella left...except I did remember way back in middle school when Jack’s dad died. If I remembered right, Jack had some trouble then too—detentions, cutting classes. His stepdad had started showing up to every after-school game Jack had, and it wasn’t too long before Jack was back on track. Looking back now, I wondered how much time off work Jack’s stepdad had taken to do that.
Of course, that made me think of my dad, who was long gone by middle school.
“Was it losing her?” I swallowed the last word. All our conversations found their way back to Ella eventually.
“Hey.” He moved off the pillow to look me in the eye. “You were enough.”
I believed him. I didn’t believe him. Maybe it was guilt; he hadn’t been enough for me either, even though he was one-half of the love of my life. “So what’d you do?”
“Well,” he flopped back, “I pissed away the money you gave me.”
I punched his arm. “You asshole!”
Truth? A thousand dollars might not seem like a lot, but Jack and I had been eating instant noodle soups, too poor to even get an apartment near campus we could split...even if we shared a room and took on roommates. I’d given him that thousand for legit reasons, but him flushing it down the toilet pissed me off.
“I know.” Humor drained out of his face. “And I knew you would’ve done something great with it. So after I’d been a genuine piece of shit and made my mom cry, I took the other half to Vegas.”
I went tense, but I tried not to show how it was going to break my heart to get this replay of Jack’s downward spiral. At least he’d pulled out of it eventually. “Yeah, I think I saw Theo’s post for your twenty-first?”
“Yeah.” Jack’s face lit up fondly. “Turned out Theo was living down there part-time to help take care of his dad. Did you hear about that?” When I shook my head, Jack said. “Yeah, his dad had a stroke. He was always a real dick—”
“So that’s where Theo gets it,” I snarked.
“No, Theo’s blunt and he’s not great with people, but deep down, he’s a good guy.”
“You’ll never get me into the Theo fan club,” I said sourly.
Theo had once blackmailed Jack, Ella, and me with video of an illicit moment of us making out behind the farm barn at the county fair. Later, he’d come around and apologized for what he’d done, but not before Ella shelled out fifteen hundred bucks and pretended to be Theo’s best friend for weeks just to keep evidence of our throuple secret.
Once again, when I dug deep, it was Ella I hated most by the end of any story. Perfect, popular mean girl Ella who’d had Jack first and then briefly made me feel as though I could have everything I’d ever dreamed of...until she’d realized she’d rather have her life as Ella Stewart than be our girlfriend.
“So you’re friends with Theo again?” I asked to move it along. The less time talking about that douche canoe the better.
“I was there for my twenty-first birthday. I had no job, no prospects. I figured come Monday, I’d join up, broke as a joke. I put what I had left on the roulette wheel, number three—I was thinking, you, me, her—the part that mattered most. Thirty-five to one odds. I knew I was just throwing the last of the money away so I wouldn’t have any choices left. Figured at least I could dry out under Uncle Sam’s watchful eye. But...” He shrugged. “It hit.”
I gaped at him. Then laughed. “You absolute bullshitter!”
He grinned.
I did the math in my head. The scholarship had been $2,000.
I had split it with him. $1,000.
By his account, he pissed half of that away before he’d gotten to Vegas. $500.
If his number really hit, with 35:1 odds, he would’ve gotten...
“Seventeen thousand dollars?! You’re a liar.”
“Fourteen thousand and change.” He grinned at my shock. “Anything over ten grand, they call you into the back room and make you do taxes. I was sitting in there, half buzzed off the free drinks. Ten minutes before, I’d been wondering what I was gonna look like with my head shaved, you know? Instead, I’m doing taxes in the back room.”
“So what then?”
“They asked me not to come back for six months.”
I shoved him, still not entirely sure if he was pulling my leg. “What did you do with the money?”
He rolled to kiss me, his eyes liquid in that way they got when he was ready to go again. “I tried to give it to you.”
The memory of him drunk dialing me a few years ago at two in the morning sharpened in my mind. “I thought you were drunk.”
“Oh, I was absolutely plastered.”
If memory served, he’d been so stupid drunk I’d told him to get lost, and when he’d insisted he had money for me, I told him to keep it and hung up on him. In my defense, I’d been cramming for finals, and he’d called at an ungodly hour, the roar of a party raging in the background. It hadn’t been the first time he’d drunk dialed me, and I figured he was feeling guilty about splitting the scholarship and had a few bucks. The next time we’d seen each other, neither of us had mentioned it.
He hadn’t smelled like alcohol tonight or the last time we’d gotten together. “Yeah, that rings a bell. So then what’d you do?”
He shrugged. “I threw the winnings into cryptocurrency.”
“YOU WHAT?” I grabbed a pillow and hit him with it. I didn’t have money to invest, but even I’d seen that crypto had a reputation for being the investment equivalent of magic beans. “Idiot!”
“I was trying to lose it, to screw all my options so I’d have no choice but to straighten up and get my act together. I didn’t want to spend another year pissing away my life at parties.”
“I would have taken that money from you!” I hit him again. Then more seriously, I added, “You could’ve come here and stayed with me. I would’ve helped.”
“I wasn’t going to do that to you,” he said quietly. “I knew you would’ve taken me back because under that spitfire, you’re a soft touch. But Hails, what if I couldn’t get it together even with your help? I couldn’t have you look at me like that. Plus, I wanted you to have that money as a gift, not as payment for being my rehab.”
Guilt swam up, and I shut my mouth. Maybe he owed me for the $1,000 I had given him, his half of the scholarship money. But he was not my sugar daddy. We were just old friends who occasionally had a fling until the ghost of our shared past got too prominent to ignore.
“Let me give it to you now,” he said.
“Don’t be gross.” I squirmed away from his growing erection.
“The money, Hails. Let me fund the bakery.”
“It’s not mine. It’s Heather’s.”
“Then let me give you enough to buy half of it from her. Or leave her and start your own.”
“What did the crypto pay?” I asked uneasily. He was throwing around the idea of buying whole businesses wayyyy too easily.
“That’s private. But I will say that I was so pissed the price kept skyrocketing, I sold it.”
“And then what? You buy Tesla?” I snarked. At his reaction, I gasped. “No. You didn’t. Holy shit. How much money did you fall ass-backward into?”
“Enough that I can pay you back, plus interest. Enough that I can take care of you for a while if you want.”
I bit my lip. That had been my mother’s life; she had been pretty enough that from time to time, men would drop into her life and treat her, take her on trips or gallantly cover her bills for a few months. Mom’s mistake was that she depended on them, and after a while, they always split. At first, she and the guy would have a big blowout fight and he’d bail, taking his credit cards with him. As she got older, I could tell she’d go out of her way not to argue, even when the guys showed their asshole sides or got real slimy and hit on me. She’d smile and let them pay because she’d made a life that depended on a lift now and then.
“Thanks, but no.” I could’ve used the money. But keeping whatever I still had with Jack was more important. Hell, keeping my sense of self was more important too. “I’m OK.”
“Let me at least give back what I owe you. I’ve had it set aside for a while, waiting to see you again. I just... I don’t know why I couldn’t reach out.”
I understood. Sometimes it was too painful to see each other.
“We should crash her wedding.” I grinned mischievously.
“What, you didn’t get your invitation to Rolling Green’s event of the season?”
“Jerk.” I shoved him. No way had he been invited.
He grabbed me, tickling until I shrieked and held his wrists, fighting him off. We both panted, paused in a stalemate. Carefully, he freed himself, so obviously stronger than me it was unsettling; I’d only held him at bay because he’d let me. Jack pulled me into his chest, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my eyebrow, as though to let me know he would never hurt me in real life.
“We could stop her,” he said into my ear. “If she saw us together, she wouldn’t go through with it. She’d marry us instead.”
A little boy, wishing on a star.
But then he said something I’d never thought about. “Ella got up and told the world she loved us, Hails. She told her asshole dad, she told everyone at Rolling Green. Whatever happened after, she was brave as fuck in that moment. We never got the chance to tell the world we loved her back, you know?”
I had never thought of that.
He sighed. “Maybe she would’ve left anyway, but I wish...I wish she’d had what we had. That moment in front of everyone when she knew how much we loved her.”