Chapter 17
17
The impact of the article was as terrible as Ella imagined.
People on everything from TikTok to Jake Prince fan sites to talk-back radio were talking about her morals – her morals – and her suitability as a principal. Arguments broke out in comments sections of social media posts which only aided in amplifying the furor.
Television cameras were waiting for her – and anyone else who fancied their face on the six o’clock news – at school on Monday morning and the phone ran hot with interview requests.
But by the time she got to her office, several messages from concerned parents had built up as well as a more ominous one from head office indicating they would call back. By midday, five families had announced their intentions to pull their kids out of Deluca and the phone calls from the media kept coming.
And then the phone call she’d been expecting – dreading – the most came. “Ms. Lucas, this is unacceptable,” Donald Wiseman said. “It’s not good for any school to be dragged into this kind of disrepute.”
“Mr. Wiseman, I can explain.”
“I’ve had media and angry parents on my phone all morning.”
“Join the club.”
“By my reckoning, if the number of people who say they will pull their kids out of your school actually do, then your numbers will no longer be viable.”
Ella’s grip tightened on the pencil she was flicking in her hand. Was that gloating she heard in his voice? She’d worked so hard to keep Deluca open and the change in the school and the students over the last few months had been truly miraculous.
She didn’t know whether to cry or slam the phone against the wall.
“I’m sure after this has blown over in a few days, parents will see it’s all been a media beat up and things will calm.”
“So, it’s not true what they’re saying? About your mother, about the affair with your high school principal?”
Ella gritted her teeth. “What I’m saying is that it’s nobody’s business, and once some other juicy news item has come along it’ll all be forgotten.”
“And if it isn’t?” His pompous inquiry set her teeth on edge. “It might be just as easy to affect an immediate closure. Stop dragging it out.”
Ella, usually calm and professional, felt that all snap at his preposterous statement. The rage that had been building since yesterday morning coalesced with the rage from all those goddamn years in Trently. She stabbed the pencil into the fake leather inset of her desk, snapping it in half.
Her hand shook as she rose to her feet, gripping the phone hard, wishing it was Donald Wiseman’s testicles instead.
“Go ahead,” she hissed. “Try it. This will be old news soon enough and no one is going to give a flying fuck who my mother slept with or how many times I supposedly porked the principal.”
Donald’s mortified spluttering about her language fed the roiling pit of rage as Ella plowed on.
“You think this is a media storm? This is nothing, nothing , compared to what you’ll have on your hands if you try to shut me down now. You might like to remember, Donald, that I have a very popular NFL player and his rather large platform up my sleeve and nothing left to lose. And you better believe that makes me a completely loose cannon.”
Ella slammed the phone down. And for a moment felt so alive, so invigorated, she could fleetingly understand why people took drugs.
Then her legs gave way and she flopped into an unceremonious heap in her chair.
On Wednesday, things were still manic and Ella felt like she’d been on the rack for months. Iris’s prediction had been eerily accurate – everything was a mess.
Her urban family had been exposed to ridicule, the negative publicity had taken a toll on the students and teachers alike and the Demons were finding it distracting. None of it was conducive to putting them in the zone for their first playoff game the following Friday.
Her phone rang not long after the bell had gone for the first period and Ella picked it up with some trepidation in case a journalist had managed to get through to her private line.
It was Gwen, Cameron’s biology teacher. “Cameron’s not here.”
Ella frowned. “Oh.” Cameron hadn’t missed a day’s school since Jake had picked him for the Demons. None of them had.
“I thought you might like to know.”
Ella thanked Gwen and hung up. Where the hell was he? He’d been quiet the last few days but then they’d all been a little preoccupied.
She called his cell phone and it went to voicemail. She left a terse get-your-ass-to-school message, then she texted the same for good measure. In fact, over the course of the day, she called and texted Cam dozens of times.
But she wasn’t overly worried. She was annoyed for sure, but she knew where he’d be come three o’clock.
Except he didn’t show to practice either. “Cam not joining us?” Pete asked.
Ella frowned. “Apparently not.”
“Everything okay?”
She gave a half-laugh, half-snort that sounded like an asthmatic horse. “What do you think?”
Pete nodded. “Some of the guys said Cameron’s been taking some shit the last few days from the other kids. About Rachel.”
Ella bit her lip as tears sprang to her eyes. Goddamn it – the woman had lived hundreds of miles away and was dead for crying out loud but still managed to cause Ella and Cam grief.
“Thanks, Pete.”
Heading back to her office, she called Jake, who was en route to the school and hadn’t seen Cam. She called Trish – not there. Thinking outside the box, she called a couple of the boys he used to hang with before football had set him on the straight and narrow, but they hadn’t seen him either.
Clutching at straws, Ella went to the arcade he’d frequented during his truant phase but there was no sign of him. She went home – not there either.
By now it was late afternoon and Ella was imagining him dead on a road somewhere or kidnapped by a serial killer. He’d never done this before. He may have been sullen, rude and hard to get along with, but she’d always known where he was – even when he’d been cutting class.
And they’d been making such progress.
It was almost dark and getting chillier by the second when the front gate squeaked. Ella flew to the front door as Cam stepped inside the house. She was so relieved to see him she didn’t know whether she wanted to hug him or spank him.
His casual, “Hey,” morphed her relief to anger.
“Don’t hey me,” she snapped. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick all afternoon.”
“Around,” he muttered, that mulish look she knew so well on his face.
“Around?” Ella winced at the shrillness of her voice as she tried to keep herself in check, aware that Daisy and Iris – no Rosie thankfully – were out on the back porch. But seriously, around ? “Are you kidding me right now?”
Cameron went to push past her. “I don’t want to talk.”
Ella stood her ground. Two years ago, the expression he was sporting would have had her backing down, not wanting to push him too much. But she was a lot surer of their relationship now.
“I don’t give a good goddamn what you want. Where the hell have you been all day?”
“Places.”
“Who were you with?”
“No one.”
Ella curled her fingers in her palms in case her temper got the better of her and she wrapped them around his neck. “Have you forgotten your promise to Jake when he put you in the team? What about your practice session today? What about your teammates?”
Yeah, she was pushing him but the adrenaline that had been pumping through her system needed a release somewhere.
“Jeez, Cam, I thought you’d moved past thinking of nobody but yourself? What about the Demons, about Deluca?”
Cam rounded on her then, his face red, his eyes bulging. “What about them?” he roared.
Ella startled at his sudden vehemence. His anger pulsed toward her on a hot cloud. But there was a crack in his voice and tears shining in his eyes.
“They don’t give a shit about me,” he yelled. “Jesus, Ella, why’d you have to go and open your mouth to that reporter? For the first time in my life, I was living someplace where no one knew all my dirty secrets.” He thrust his face right up in hers. “And now the entire school does. Fuck, t he whole country knows that my mother was a whore .”
Ella gasped as he spat the word with such contempt it blew her hair back. She was pretty sure not only Daisy and Iris had heard it but the entire neighborhood had as well.
“Don’t say that.”
Cameron blinked as tears spilled down his face. “For fuck’s sake, Ella, I’m not some kid you have to protect from the truth.” His breathing was choppy as he struggled with his emotions. “I knew who she was two years ago. I knew who she was from very early on. You can go on saying things like, oh Rachel liked to entertain or Rachel had a lot of men friends, to protect me for as long as you like, but I’m not an idiot.”
He was right, she had done that – made excuses for their mother. Tried to pretend she wasn’t who she’d been. Ella had tried to protect him from the truth, just like she had tried to protect herself for so many years.
“And now the whole world knows. How could you?” he demanded. “ How could you ?”
Cameron whirled around and stormed out of the house as she called, “Cam,” after him. “Cam, wait !”
But the gate opened then slammed closed, the metallic scrape like a rusty nail down a pane of glass.
He was right. How could she? It didn’t matter that she had no idea the sequence of events it would unleash. That talking to one local paper would lead John Wilmott to Trently and their sordid past.
Daisy appeared in the back doorway, her gaze locking with Ella’s. “He’ll cool down,” she said.
Ella nodded through a blur of tears. Daisy had always been the tough-love aunt, Iris the softie, but there was empathy in her gaze and she appreciated that it was coming from Daisy.
“Yeah.” She nodded and sniffled. “I’ll just…” She held up her cell. “Call Jake.”
“Okay.”
Daisy departed and Ella let the tears flow as she scrolled to his number. But she was shaking all over and crying so hard she could barely see the screen and she had to pull herself together to make the call, to be composed enough to speak.
He answered on the third ring. “Did you find him?”
The fact he asked about Cam first had Ella crumbling. “Yes but… we… we y… y… yelled and… and C… Cam was so… so mad… and he was cr… cr… crying… and?—”
She choked up then, emotion completely overwhelming her, a huge lump in her throat rendering her incapable of coherent speech. Her nose was running like a tap, so were her eyes. Her ribs were tight around her lungs, biting into them, making it impossible to grab enough air.
“Ella?” Even through a telephone line, Jake’s voice was thick with alarm and when she didn’t answer – couldn’t answer – his alarm intensified. “ Ella? Where are you?”
“At h-home,” she wailed.
“I’ll be there in ten.”
He made it in eight, screeching to a halt in front. Ella, who was sobbing into her hands looked up in time to see Jake practically hurdle over the gate to get to her. He took the steps in two strides, throwing himself down beside her and pulling her into his arms.
“I’ve m-messed everything up.” She’d reached the hiccoughy stage of her crying jag.
“Hey, hey,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
“No… Please. Go find Cam.” Ella shrugged out of his arms. “He’s so angry… I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Cam can wait,” he dismissed, his voice firm. “He’ll be fine for a few minutes. Tell me what happened.”
Ella opened her mouth to tell him but her face crumpled again and nothing came out but a sob.
“Shhh,” he crooned, stroking her hair, pulling her into his lap like he had that night in his office and they sat for a few minutes while Ella’s tears subsided.
“What happened?” he murmured when she’d grown silent and all that could be heard was the drone of distant car engines.
Ella raised her head from the comforting curve of his neck, took a deep breath and the whole messy argument tumbled out.
“Damn it, how can Rachel still be causing this much trouble so many years down the track? I thought we were both putting it behind us, but it just won’t let us be. Why can’t Trently just let us be ? It’s always there, between us. She’s always there.”
He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Maybe she’s always there because you’ve never let go of the anger? Maybe Trently keeps sucking you back because you keep trying to erase it from your memory banks instead of coming to terms with it?” He dropped a gentle kiss on her head. “You never even grieved her passing, Ella. Maybe it’s time to just let it all go?”
Ella’s heartbeat filled her head. She knew he was right, even as the rejection came to her lips. “No.”
“Yes,” he whispered, looking directly into her eyes. “Instead of railing against your origins, maybe you need to embrace them? Whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, Trently’s part of us. Rachel’s part of you. And Cam . Just like my drunk, gambling father’s part of me. Like them or loathe them, they made us who we are today.” He brushed his thumb across her mouth. “Stronger. And better.”
“What about you?” Ella searched his face, looking for an out. He was asking too much. “Have you let go of your anger?”
He nodded. “Over Trently? Sure. Mostly anyway. I had to, years ago. It was interfering with my game too much.”
Somewhere, amid the storm of her emotions, the irony that the jock was more emotionally evolved was not lost on Ella.
“Have you ever thought that maybe Rachel was just doing the best she could with what she had?” He paused. “I think by and large, people just do the best they can. Even my father. They’re not all strong like you, Ella.”
Ella gave a little laugh, her voice wobbly. “I’m strong?” Frankly, in that moment, she felt like she was going to break into a thousand pieces. She’d cried three times in the last two years and Jake had been there for each meltdown.
He grinned, easing away from her again. “You’re one of the strongest women I know.” He stroked her cheek. “It’s okay to have loved her, Ella.”
Ella felt a lump in her throat. “I did love her.”
“Of course you did,” he murmured. “She was your mother. It’s okay to miss her and to grieve for her. It’s also okay to admit you didn’t like her. You don’t have to make excuses or atone for her sins, no one’s asking you to do that. She was a grown woman and her actions were her own. But you do have to find a way to make peace with them, with her. Or you’re never going to be able to move forward. Neither will Cameron.”
Ella’s eyes filled with tears. Maybe he was right. She’d spent the last nineteen years in a knot of conflicted feelings about Rachel. She’d always thought admitting she loved her mom was tantamount to approving of her. But maybe she could love Rachel and not like her all at the same time and that was okay.
“She used to dance with me. When I was little. She’d put on ‘Blue Moon’ and she’d pick me up and waltz me around the room.”
“She used to feed me,” he said with a smile. “When I came to pick Dad up. I think she knew with my aunt gone there wasn’t a lot of routine. She’d say, Jake, you must be starving. I’ve made some choc-chip muffins for Ella, help yourself . Then she’d whip up this shake with honey and ice-cream and she’d sprinkle the top with cinnamon and she’d sit and chat with me while I ate.” He rubbed his forehead against her hair. “She asked me about school. About football. She talked about you. A lot. She was proud of your achievements, Ella.”
A single tear trekked down Ella’s face as she remembered the garnet glow in her mother’s room, the choc-chip muffins that had been such a staple of her childhood. When she’d cried in his office that night after the Roger Hillman debacle, she’d been crying for herself, for the sucky hand that life had dealt her. But now she was crying for her mother, mourning the person Rachel was beneath the label Trently had given her.
The real person that no one, including her as she’d grown older, had bothered to see.
Ella dashed the newly falling tears away. She’d cried enough for one day and this wasn’t finding Cam. Wriggling off Jake’s lap, she sat beside him again, her head on his shoulder.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded as a rush of the love that had been growing inside her for this man pressed against her vocal cords, wanting out. If she’d had to pick anyone in the world to fall in love with, it wouldn’t have been Jake, but she’d done it anyway.
Or maybe she’d always been in love with him – even back in Trently – and this moment had always been inevitable?
Whatever.
It could no longer be denied. And, weirdly, she wasn’t afraid to say it because it felt overwhelmingly right .
Even amidst the shambles of her life.
“I love you,” she said into the cold, crisp night as she stared at the house across the road.
“I love you, too.”
The words settled around her like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, making her whole. She sucked in a breath and glanced at him to find him looking at her. There were no choirs of angels or thunderbolts from heaven that she’d always thought would mark such a moment.
Just Jake. Looking at her. Smiling at her.
Loving her.
Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been afraid. Maybe she’d known somewhere that he felt the same. Maybe, like her, he’d always felt the same?
Ella’s lips curved into an answering smile. “You do, huh?”
“I do.”
“So this isn’t just a sex thing?”
Jake chuckled. “Nope. This is the real thing and I’m not going anywhere. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
Ella’s heart practically glowed in her chest. It was hard to believe not that long ago she’d wanted him as far away from her as possible and now, she couldn’t imagine her life without him in it.
“Thank you, Jake,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck and hugging him close, absorbing his strength, his solidness, his goodness .
She wasn’t sure how long they sat there, just holding each other, their hearts beating as one, but eventually he roused, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “I better go find Cam.”
“Oh God, yes, please.”
Ella nibbled at her bottom lip as her anxiety returned. This moment on the stoop with Jake had been a calm interlude in the chaos and she’d needed it more than she’d realized. But it was back to reality now.
“I don’t know where he’ll be.”
“I think I do.” Dropping a lingering kiss on her mouth, he said, “Sit tight.”
Jake pulled up at the Deluca football field ten minutes later. It had been a momentous night. Getting that frantic phone call from Ella after practice had been like a pickaxe to his heart. Her distress had caused a physical ache in his chest and the state of her when he’d arrived had ramped up the ache to a vicious stabbing pain and he’d realized he wanted to be the one to fix the situation.
That he always wanted to be the guy who fixed things for her.
Of course, she didn’t need him to ride in and rescue her but that didn’t stop him wanting to be that guy.
Her guy. Her first call. Fixing her shit would be his love language from now.
Love language.
Hearing her say I love you had been like opening a door he’d shut a long time ago. Or maybe it hadn’t ever been truly open to start with. But it had been wrenched wide tonight and the feelings he’d already been experiencing for her in all their depth and glory, had flooded in.
Ella Lucas loved him. And he loved her right back.
Smiling to himself, he unbuckled and got out of his car, his step lighter than it had been in years despite the conversation ahead. Glancing at the bleachers he could see a lone human shape sitting on the top row. The face was obscured by shadows and a hoodie but he didn’t need to be psychic to know it was Cameron.
Jake had always gone to the field when he’d been troubled or needed to think, too.
Jumping the fence with ease, he crossed to the bleachers, striding up them then navigating to where Cameron was sitting. It was evident from the waft of rum that greeted him that the kid was drinking.
“Cam.”
Cameron took a swig out of the bottle, not bothering to acknowledge Jake’s appearance. “My sister sent you, didn’t she?”
Jake sat. “She’s worried about you.”
“Well it’s a bit late for that now.”
The bitterness in the teenager’s voice hung heavy in the air and Jake remembered they weren’t that different, he and Cam.
“Getting drunk?”
Cameron shrugged. “You gonna snitch?”
“Is it helping?”
Cameron held the bottle up to the ambient light, inspecting the line of amber fluid sloshing against the glass. “Give it another ten minutes.”
“So, what? You’re just going to drink till you pass out? Is that your way of getting back at her?”
“Got a problem with that?”
Jake held onto his temper, forcing an air of nonchalance. “Well, it’s not particularly smart.”
“Oh, right,” Cameron sneered. “You telling me that you’ve never drowned your sorrows before?”
“Nope. I’m telling you as someone who’s drowned his sorrows a little too often, that it’s a dumbass thing to do.”
Cameron glared at him. “I’m the laughing stock of the school. I thought I’d gotten away from all that crap when she took me away from Trently. She should have just left me there.”
Jake nodded and stayed silent for a few minutes letting the angry teenager drink and stew for a little longer.
“You know what I learned a long time ago, Cam?” he asked eventually. “You can’t control what people say about you. You can only control how you react to it. Now, you can get mad, you can get drunk, or you do what I do.”
“What’s that?” Cameron eyed him with suspicion.
Jake held his hand out for the bottle. “You get even.”
Cameron regarded his open hand for a moment and Jake could see both the conflict and the sheen of tears in his eyes. After a beat or two his jaw clamped tight and he said, “Okay.” Taking one last swallow, he handed the bottle to Jake. “I want even.”
Jake grinned. “Good choice.” He tipped the bottle upside down until the last drop of amber fluid had drained away to the grass below. “Now let’s go win this game.”