Chapter 8
Ella
There were a millionthings to do ahead of the wedding, and it was late before I excused myself to my old bedroom that night. On my way upstairs, I grabbed a few of the remaining unused invitations. With my door locked behind me, I googled Mary Marshal until I found an address that looked legit. Carefully, I wrote out her street number on an envelope and stuffed an invitation to the wedding inside, then opened the Google doc and added her name to Mom’s master list so Mary and her plus-one would be on the seating list for the meal.
I wanted to think I was inviting Mary because she was important to Charlie and that by asking her to attend, I was letting her know I knew about her and wasn’t angry. But maybe that put me in a kinder light than the truth. Maybe I wanted her to see me stand next to Charlie while he swore his allegiance to me. Not that it would stop them from being together, but she would know the hierarchy. When push came to shove, Charlie had given me the title. He had seen her in the crowd and said my name instead.
Or maybe I had kinder feelings than I gave myself credit for. Maybe I wanted her to see Charlie choose me so that she could have a clean break if she wanted to take it. All of us deserved the chance to start fresh even if our slates were wiped clean by tears and heartbreak.
Next, I addressed Theo’s and Mr. Finick’s invites and added them to Mom’s master list. As I worked, the house went quiet around me, and although I couldn’t exactly hear it, I could tell lights were going off downstairs as the sky outside my window went from navy to black.
I did the last envelope in that curly, elaborate scrawl and blew the ink dry, then went to the bathroom to wash up. Sure enough, the house had gone silent and still, everyone tucked in for the night.
Alone in my room, I had plenty of time to think. Hailey’s cake samples were downstairs, packed in the garage freezer because Mom wanted to see if they’d hold up after hard-core refrigeration. It wasn’t Hailey’s handwriting scrawled next to the samples. But I felt sure it had been her and Jack there, in that moment of chaos. It had been five years, yet it felt as though no time at all had passed in terms of my feelings for them. One glance and I was up all night like a teenage girl with my first crush, wondering what they were doing, where they were, and if they were thinking of me.
Which should’ve made me feel guilty considering my upcoming wedding. I loved Charlie, but I wasn’t in love with him. The day I’d left the coffee shop with my mom, I knew that was the deal—when you betray love, you forfeit it. I had never had those feelings for anyone ever after that. I only got that zing of attraction when I thought of them. I tried not to think of Hailey and Jack. Memories were so fragile; you lost a piece of them each time you remembered until there was only a vague feeling left. But here in my old room, my heart ached with nostalgia from having seen Hailey and...and damn it, that was Jack. Older, yes, but it hadn’t been a million years or anything. There was no mistaking the guy who’d snuck into this very room on a night just like this and taken my virginity.
Soon, other parts of me ached as well.
That summer—our summer—Hailey had slept over, curled next to me in this very bed. One time, when she and I had come back here after a party, we’d walked through the front door holding hands as we giggled at each other, and my parents had smiled. Of course, they’d been oblivious. They just thought we were two pretty girls who had become best friends. Just as they’d had no idea Jack had climbed the trellis and joined us in my room later.
Because they’d trusted me, and I’d lied to them.The thought filled me with shame, and I pushed it away, wanting to keep the memory as it had been when it had happened—full of nothing but happiness.
Remembering got me too twisted up to sleep, which was a real problem because tomorrow was another huge day of errands ahead of the wedding. And in other ways it was a real problem because it made me miss them so damn much. Thinking of the past always tricked me that way—convincing me I could just enjoy the good part. But inevitably, it made me feel as though I had ruined my life back when I was too young to know better, and now memories were all I would ever have.
Sighing, I got into bed and turned out the light. Alone in the dark, the ache of missing them was overwhelming, my body still on high alert from the exhilaration of seeing them. I checked the clock. 12:12. I punched my pillow into shape, flipping onto my side. Closed my eyes. Opened them. Checked the clock again. 12:14. Ugh.
Annoyed, I twisted the knob on the small bedside light and yanked open my old dresser drawer by the bedside. Lip masks, a scented candle. My old high school meal card. Definitely no condoms or the small vibrator a friend had gotten me as a gag gift.
A vibrator would’ve helped.
I slid my legs out of the bed, landing my feet softly on the floor as I crept over to my travel bag. I was pretty sure... I dug around, searching until I found my toiletry bag. And inside...
Bingo. A small tube of Astroglide.
As I tiptoed back to bed with my contraband and some heated thoughts, I passed my closet and hesitated. I knew the box was there, but I didn’t like taking it out. First off, the fact that I’d kept the stuff inside it made me feel like a total sex pervert with stolen trophies. But even beyond that, my memories were these precious things to me, and I knew if I relived them too often they’d get dulled. And of course, I knew that as good as it was remembering, afterward would come the sadness of losing them all over again.
The box was in the back of my closet, on the highest shelf. Inside were Jack’s T-shirt, the one he’d left here one night as he’d scrambled down my trellis bare-chested seconds before my dad opened the bedroom door; the dried corsage he’d gotten me for prom; and Hailey’s swimsuit, the one I’d bought her with the string bikini ties at the hips. I don’t know why I stole it, but the feeling of being attached to her was so strong, and like that, I lost my battle for self-control, easing the closet open and going up on tip-toe so I could get to the box.
Opening it, I plucked Jack’s T-shirt with one hand, the bikini with the other, and raced back to bed, heart pumping with the sudden surge of naughtiness.
Jack’s shirt was still incredibly soft; it had been in his regular rotation that summer, the color of caramel with a faded band logo across the front in barely legible black lettering. I held it to my face and breathed in the fading scent of his body, the deodorant, and his sweat. He’d been playing basketball earlier in the evening, and even though he’d gone home to take a shower first, the odor of burnt calories and sweat still lingered. My heart slowed down, comfort and puppy love flooding through me, making me again into that girl who’d loved him more than anything.
Leaning against the headboard, I inhaled with his shirt crumpled to my face. Eyes closed, I groped for Hailey’s bathing suit top and held it next to his shirt. Maybe this was what happened when you repressed part of yourself too long—you became a weirdo...but this was all I had. No one had ever made me feel like this. Not Charlie, not anyone.
I caught the faint scents of chlorine from the pool and coconut sunblock. Under that, so faint but still there, them. My body throbbed as bad as pins and needles—as though parts of me had been dead asleep and I hadn’t realized until this moment as they came back to life.
It put me on the verge of weeping, but staying up all night sobbing was not my plan. Tomorrow morning, people expected a glowing bride-to-be, so I focused only on how my body reacted. I had a job to do, and that included getting off and sleeping soundly, not questioning my life choices.
For a moment, I did though. What would have happened if I’d stayed here, with them? The Pray Away the Gay counselors said loads of people had feelings they managed not to act on. Some people wanted to kill, some to thieve, or in my case, some wanted to be with two people at once. Restraining those urges made us a civilized society.
I pulled off my pajama top and put on Jack’s T-shirt, reveling in the scratchy-soft cotton against my bare breasts, catching the smell of him around his collar, needing to be as fully enveloped in Jackness as possible. I studied Hailey’s bathing suit. I was a total perv. I would be a total perv if I—
I picked up the bikini bottoms and put the crotch panel to my face. Yeah, OK. This was what pervs did, not pretty college graduates with—
I inhaled, catching the intimate smell of her.
One-handed, I grabbed the bottle of Astroglide, popped the top, and slid the bottle under the band of my pajama bottoms, under the elastic of my panties, and squirted a dollop of slick gel down there. Slapping the bottle on the bedside table, I jammed my hand back down, finger dipping into the slippery liquid, smearing it along my labia lips and then delving between them, gasping at the frictionless sensation of my finger over my engorged clit.
This was what I needed. No thinking. No mourning. Just this.
With the hand holding Hailey’s bikini, I grabbed the front of Jack’s shirt, pulling it up so I could smell them both at the same time. With my other, I circled my clit, tapping it, teasing myself.
Here in the room where I’d had them both, my face masked by the clothes they’d worn, Jack and Hailey were clearer in my head than they’d been for a while. My body reacted, needy and demanding. Trying to slow down and get the most pleasure, I rocked my hips, fucking my finger instead of the other way around. The intensity shocked me. Memories of what the three of us had done together flashed through my mind until I was gasping, rocking out of control until I was afraid someone would hear the bedsprings. I plunged two fingers deep inside myself, hooking them against that spot Jack hit when he was inside me.
I groaned, pressing the fabric against my face to smother the sound, but the smell of Hailey so close to my nose made me open my mouth, flicking my tongue out to taste her salt left on the panel. My cheeks burned with humiliation, but I could not stop what I was doing any more than I could stop jerking my hips off the bed, my body demanding release.
Eyes hazed with memories, I licked my lips, still tasting her as I rubbed my palm over my clit, fingers deep inside. As I moved, the scratchy softness of Jack’s shirt rode over my nipples, tickling them until I moaned with pleasure, unable to stop myself.
I thought about the first time we were ever together. Jack stretching me so tight it almost hurt. Hailey’s tongue on me.
I need that,I thought with every flex of my ass against the bedsheets, pumping up to take my fingers deeper inside. Just one more time. Just once more—
A sound. I froze, immediately thinking of someone inside. But that was wrong.
There was someone at my window.
The bedside light made the window opaque, but as I’d shifted in the bed, I’d caught movement, and then I’d seen it. A face.
I gasped, getting a snoot full of the mixed scents of Hailey and Jack, which was calming for a nanosecond before I realized what I must look like, huffing a shirt and bikini bottoms while I jerked it.
My legs snapped together at light speed. I dropped the bikini. But I didn’t scream, because by then I’d recognized the face. Jack.
I jumped out of bed, the shirt falling into place as I adjusted my pajama bottoms.
“Jack!” I hissed, pushing the windowpane open, feeling like I was eighteen again. “What are you doing here?”
“I uh...” He swallowed hard, eyes lit up.
I couldn’t help myself. I was so turned on, and I missed him so much, and I recognized the heat in his expression. Open mouth, I kissed him, sloppy and passionate, tongue seeking his. It didn’t matter we hadn’t seen each other in years.
He surged forward, leaning hard into me as we kissed, coming through the bedroom window, pushing me back until he fell in with a thump, collapsing on top of me. I could feel his erection between my legs.
Both of us went still at the noise, waiting to hear if anyone in the house called out. Just like when we’d been teenagers sneaking him into my bedroom late at night.
When no sound came, he went almost still, just the slow uncontrollable thrusts that rocked us as we stared at each other, his erection pressed against my opening, then pushing up along my pussy to my clit. Our clothes prevented him from getting inside but allowed for tons of pressure and sensation. He propped himself up on his forearm, his expression that of someone who’d fallen into a dream.
He’d lost that boyish softness, traded it in for thicker stubble and a defined jawline, and he had more muscle mass than at eighteen, his weight on me more serious. And omigod, his cock sure felt grown-up, a little intimidating even.
He brushed the hair from my forehead. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” I breathed.
In answer, he ground his cock against me, mashing the parts that had been on the edge of climax only moments ago. My body reacted, pussy clenching as though to draw him in. Good luck with that through two layers of clothes. Still, my hips tilted, ass rocking off the floor to get closer contact.
“What were you doing?” He sucked air in between his teeth as though it physically hurt him to ask.
“Were you spying on me?” I tried to keep the gasp out of my breath as his body moved, pinning me. I thought of what he must’ve seen and accused him of the things I felt guiltiest of. “Are you a pervert now?”
“No regrets.” He studied my face as though I was a wonder, and it made all my nerve endings tingle to be observed so closely. I was his ghost too. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Omigod, my fiancé was sleeping downstairs. I hoped Charlie was sleeping. Maybe he’d heard the thump and was searching for a baseball bat before he came up here and—
What if it had woken my dad? What if HE was coming up here with a baseball bat? Because Charlie wouldn’t kill Jack, but my father might actually—
I shoved Jack’s shoulders. “Get off!”
In response he rolled his cock between my legs, the pressure sending shock waves of pleasure up from my core. Even worse because the Astroglide only magnified things—all my folds rubbed against each other, slippery. Despite the circumstances, I could feel the orgasm building, and I bit my lip hard to regain control.
“OK.” I could hear the teasing in his voice.
“Get off of me, Jack!” I clarified, pushing again at his shoulder.
He went still. “Sure?”
Was I? No. Not at all. I could get his pants off in four moves, and my drawstring pants would slide down in one. I imagined him shoving his cock inside me. I’d come in about three strokes. My nipples went tight at the math.
He took my pause as permission, fingers trailing over the front of the shirt I was wearing, ticklish. They reached the hem at my belly and slid underneath. His fingers were warm and calloused. “Is this mine?”
“No?” Damn it. I didn’t mean it to sound like a question.
He clucked his tongue. “Liar.”
“Why were you spying on me, Perv?” I taunted, furious at the scald of being called out.
“Heard you were in town. Thought I’d stop by and say hello.”
“My fiancé is downstairs.” I threw some heavy fuck-you emphasis on the second word.
I wanted Jack to feel what I felt. Not just desperate horniness either. I wanted him to feel the shame I felt at getting caught wanting something I couldn’t have. Would never have again, because like I’d told him, my fiancé...oh God. The man I’d agreed to marry was downstairs while I had another man between my legs. While I had to actively squeeze my butt cheeks together to prevent myself from grinding against him.
“I know,” Jack said in a husky tone, his eyes liquid. “We met.”
“What?!”
“At the club, earlier.”
“How long have you been...stalking me?!” I managed to steer myself back to outrage.
Jack considered. “Since I tagged along with Hailey to drop off your cake sampler.”
“I knew it!” I whispered. “I knew it was you.” And then the other shoe dropped for me. “You’re still with her?” I asked in an even smaller voice, betrayal knifing through me. I had no right to feel that way. I had left them. I was getting married. They were free to live however they wanted, and it was none of my business.
Except the news was killing me. Dread hollowed me out. My whole body went cold and numb with the shock of it. Except my pussy. That was still a four-alarm fire.
“She called me after she caked you.” His hand drew careless, tickling circles at my stomach, toying with the hem of the shirt I’d stolen. “Wanted emotional support coming back to this place. Rolling Green, you know?”
Did you sleep together? How close are you—was her call the first time you’d spoken in years, or do you hang on the regular? Are you both single, or are you cheating on Hailey by being here?
None of my business. I had no right to ask. I squirmed under him, seething.
Squirming made us both groan, that orgasm I’d missed still lurking, hoping to achieve breakthrough status.
“Ella, please,” Jack said, and I wasn’t sure if he was asking to fuck or for me to be still so he didn’t come on my pajama bottoms. Neither of us offered to get up off the floor though.
I sucked air between my teeth, trying for control. He had to leave. We couldn’t do this. I had to do the right thing. I just wanted this wrong thing to last a little longer. I wrapped my arms around his neck, running fingers through his hair.
“Where is she, then?” I asked in hushed tones, my traitorous hips tilting, making my pussy slide scant millimeters along the front of his pants.
“Fuck you,” Hailey had told me at Three Birds, but my heart heard I still love you, no matter what the actual words had been. So maybe it really was a fuck you. Fuck me for fucking up the rest of her romantic life.
In that case, I totally related. Hailey was branded on my heart. The best I could do was hide it from the world, but I was never getting rid of that part of me. Not any more than I would always be lit for Jack. Fucker came through my bedroom window and three seconds later I was in a fight for my life not to cheat on my fiancé.
Still, I would’ve expected Hailey to come barreling through my window to beat the sauce out of me before I’d expect her to be the one who noped out, leaving Jack and I together.
“She was on the job. You know...delivering your cake. She had to go back to the bakery to relieve the owner, who stayed up all night baking your samples. I gave her my car, told her I’d stick around. That’s when I caught your fiancé at the bar.” Jack made a face like he was weighing his impression of Charlie. “Nice guy. We had a few drinks.”
“What did you tell him?” Panic rose in me.
Jack exhaled through his nose as he studied my eyebrows, the lobes of my ears, the line of my jaw. Everywhere his eyes moved across my skin, I tingled in response. “That if he married you, he was the luckiest guy on earth.”
I reached up and clenched the hair at the nape of his neck, giving him a small, stern shake. “Seriously. What did you tell him?”
“He told me he’d cheated on you,” Jack answered. “That you called him on it.” I sucked in a quick breath, imagining Charlie at the bar of Rolling Green, telling a stranger these facts. “So, is the wedding off?”
“It’s on. I already knew.” I stuck out my chin.
In response, Jack moved, cock straining against his pants, rubbing my clit until I whimpered from the pleasure.
The moment the sound escaped me, he began moving in earnest, kissing my mouth, hand gliding under his shirt, up my rib cage to find my nipple. My hands trailed from the nape of his neck, reaching to grab his ass, pulling him closer. A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. Jack. After all this time.
“I can’t do this.” I tried to stay still, to make my body align with my words. My body really didn’t like that. It wanted to squirm, to twist against him.
Jack’s mouth moved down the side of my neck, stubble scraping and tickling. He was going to leave pink marks. Oh, my God. Tomorrow morning. Charlie was downstairs.
“Stop.” I panted.
Jack went still. The weight of his body on mine, the stretch of my inner thigh muscles as they cradled his hips. Everything in me ached.
“Charlie. He’s downstairs.”
“You’re not serious? Ella, he cheated on you. You can’t go through with this.”
“We already sent out the invitations. Third Saturday in June. My dress is ready. The bridal party—”
“You belong with us, not him. Why, Ella? Why would you be so stupid?”
“I didn’t ask why you were with Hailey last night or why you came back here today. You know why? Because it’s nobody’s business but yours. I have to do what I think is best for me.” The words hitched in my chest because that was a lie. If I’d done what I thought was best for me, I would be here with Jack and Hailey.
“Tell me you love him.” Jack cut through my speech with no empathy.
“Now? Literal weeks before my wedding you come here and say this?! Where have you been the last five years?”
His face went the color of milk, and distantly I recalled Theo putting an imaginary gun to his head when describing what Jack had been up to since I’d left. I’d been so ashamed of my choices I’d never had the courage to reach out. It had been better not to hurt Jack and Hailey over and over again by opening old wounds, by rekindling something that would only wreck my life. Just as it was wrecking my life now.
His expression went hard. “Say you love him and I’ll wish you all the best. I’ll send a gift to the wedding, and we can be friends for the rest of our days. But don’t you lie to me.”
I tried to will the words out. If that’s what it took to put an end to this doomed love affair for both of us, then I needed to say them. I’m in love with Charlie Sticht III, and I’m going to spend my life with him. We are going to be hotel moguls, and I will come back to take over Rolling Green. Then I will finally be home again, and that is all the happiness I need.
“I...”
I couldn’t. I did love Charlie, but not in the way Jack meant. Not in the way people who were about to get married should feel. Never in all the time I’d spent with Charlie did I feel like I did now.
“You broke my heart,” Jack said. “Our hearts.”
I sobbed, unable to control myself. It was like all the chemistry of a suppressed orgasm went nuclear and came out as tears. I had done us all wrong. Jack wrapped his arms around me, hugging me tight as we lay on the floor.
It made my heart slow to touch him. He nudged my head to the side, kissing down my chin and neck, pushing the thin shirt up over my rib cage. Above us, the curtains fluttered, the warm night air scented with honey. I wanted him, even if it was on this hard floor, even though I had spent the last five years trying to get over him. Even with Charlie down—
“Stop,” I said.
He didn’t.
I went still, rigid. It took all my self-control, tears still leaking, heart breaking.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered. “I have done a lot of shitty things in my life. I don’t want to be a cheater too.”
“You belong with us, Ells. I know I’m here late, but not too late for you to change your mind.”
“That was a long time ago.”
My entire world was his thick erection, the solid weight of his chest on mine, the tension in his arms as he held himself over me. He was strong enough to do whatever he wanted to me, with or without my permission. But the thing I knew deep in my heart was that Jack would never, ever hurt me.
He lifted up, cool air swirling in where his warm body had pressed against mine, leaving me with a dreadful empty feeling. He dragged his cock across my belly, and maybe it was just the way he got up, but it felt like one last lingering caress. Need twisted inside me, leaving me panting on the floor. He stood and paced my bedroom.
“So this is what you want? He cheats and you become some martyr to the life your parents want for you?” Jack stalked into view, his hand clenched, pretty streamers of Hailey’s blue suit hanging from his fist. “You’re not keeping this. It doesn’t belong to you. Keep the shirt...I guess,” he added sourly, as though he was too much of a gentleman to strip it off my back. Or maybe he wasn’t quite enough of a gentleman to control himself if I were topless.
I fiddled with the hem, wanting, despite everything I’d said to the contrary, to take the shirt off, to tease him into losing control. Maybe I wanted proof he was suffering as much as I was. Or maybe I wanted him to take control, to make the choices I couldn’t, so I could have him. Or maybe I would do anything so I didn’t have to face the terrible things he’d said about who I’d become.
“You’re not going to marry him,” Jack repeated like he was giving me orders.
Didn’t Jack remember how this played out? I wasn’t the girl who chose love over comfort.
“You still love me. I felt it.” His eyes drifted meaningfully down my frame, from the stolen shirt, over my exposed navel, to the crotch of my pajama pants. Oh God, were they soaked through? “You feel it too.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Get out.”
“I’m bringing Hailey back with me.”
My whole body surged. I wouldn’t be able to resist that. I would cheat on Charlie, and the whole house would hear the screaming orgasms as I rocketed off the planet.
I knew he saw my eyes light up, the irrepressible desire that surged through me, because I saw it light him up too. But I couldn’t tell him that’s what I wanted.
Jack scoffed, half angry, half like he couldn’t help but be amused. Guess he knew who I was deep down. He exited out the window backward, feet first, and then climbed carefully down the trellis. As soon as his head dipped below the sash, I clapped a hand between my legs, feeling for dampness, checking if he could really see. Of course, a hand mashed against my pussy sent a shock wave of need through me, and for a horrible moment I thought I was going to uncontrollably masturbate on the floor, with the window still open, as he left.
But then there was a crack, a quiet curse, and a second later, a thud.
I was up on my feet and to the window in a heartbeat.
He lay on the grass in front of our house, the trellis slightly broken halfway down.
“I’m OK,” he wheezed. I gaped, horrified, leaning out the window, breeze tickling my cheek. He gave a feeble thumbs-up.
Somewhere downstairs, a light went on near the windows, washing over part of Jack’s shorts. He jumped up with amazing speed for a guy who’d just fallen eight feet and disappeared across the lawn toward the street.