38. Ella
Thirty Eight
Ella
Main Street in Briar Creek hadn’t changed, not really.
The faded awnings were still there, as was the hand-painted “ ANTIQUES ” sign leaning against a shop window.
The church steeple still stabbed at the sky like a finger wagging down at me.
As Hunter’s truck rolled slowly over the uneven pavement, I felt seventeen again just from looking out the window. Every storefront held a memory I didn’t care to relive.
There was the bakery where I used to buy my favorite red velvet cupcakes until I couldn’t endure the whispers and accusing stares anymore. There was the dress shop where Mrs. Calhoun hissed, “Bless her heart,” loud enough for me to hear.
And last but most certainly not least, the church steps where the youth group girls stood in a perfect row, avoiding my gaze after Sunday service.
Hunter parked at the curb. “This it?”
“This is it,” I said, though my throat burned around the words.
Why the fuck had I mentioned wanting to get a milkshake? Way to self-sabotage, Ella.
Maybe I’d get lucky, and we wouldn’t bump into any of the people I was trying to avoid.
Yeah, right. I pursed my lips at my delusions, shaking my head as I climbed out of his truck.
We started down the sidewalk, his hand brushing mine once, twice, until he just took it, his hold firm and steady. It should’ve calmed me.
Instead, every step felt like walking into a glaring spotlight when I hadn’t even agreed to be on a fucking stage.
A group of older men hunched on the bench outside the feed store fell silent as we passed. One of them spit tobacco juice into a Styrofoam cup and muttered something I couldn’t catch.
The others chuckled low, the kind of laugh you don’t have to hear all the words to understand.
“Ignore it,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“I won’t ignore shit,” Hunter said, his voice as sharp as razor blades. But he didn’t stop walking.
We passed First Baptist Church, which had definitely seen better days, with peeling white paint on the columns. Still, the wooden sign out front boldly proclaimed in big block letters: REPENT OR BE LEFT BEHIND .
My stomach lurched. I remembered standing in those pews, trying not to cry, while Pastor Reed thundered about sin and temptation. His words landed like stones.
I remembered the choir singing “Just as I Am” while the whole town watched me as a cautionary tale, a girl gone wrong.
Hunter didn’t say anything, but his hand tightened around mine. The kind of grip promising violence if anyone so much as looked at me wrong.
I swallowed hard, forcing air into my lungs which felt like paper bags ready to crumple. “Come on,” I said, tugging him toward the corner. “The diner’s just up here.”
But with every step, I felt like I was walking into an ambush. It sat on the corner of Main Street, just across from the Piggly Wiggly, like a monument refusing to die.
A neon “ EATS ” sign buzzed overhead with half the letters burned out, and a row of mud-splattered pickup trucks lined the gravel lot.
Inside, everything was the same as always: the cracked vinyl booths, the smell of burnt coffee and fryer grease, and the regulars stationed at the counter. Nothing in this town ever changed.
I used to think leaving would make this place seem smaller. But coming back made me feel small instead.
Hunter held the door for me, his broad frame nearly filling it. His hand rested on the small of my back as we walked in, heavy and grounding. It stayed there when we slid into a booth, as if to remind the entire diner I wasn’t alone anymore.
“You good?” he asked in a low voice, like gravel rolling.
I lied. “Yeah. Totally.”
I wasn’t.
Every breath here tasted like seventeen. Like shame and whispers and locker doors slamming behind me.
But Hunter wanted to see where I was raised. Idiot that I was, I was determined to be brave and prove I wasn’t scared anymore.
On the way in, I’d already caught three stares too many. Mrs. Jenkins from the church had squinted at me like she was still standing at the pulpit, judging my soul.
Two guys by the truck bed muttered something I couldn’t hear, but I felt their laughter punch me in the back as we walked past.
My old math teacher sat by the window with his wife, and though he didn’t say a word, his eyes slid over me like I was a headline he’d read once and filed away.
That was the worst part. Not the insults or the knowing looks. The way the entire town had decided who I was and branded me as such.
We slid into a booth near the window. He scanned the room automatically, his eyes sharp and his jaw tight, like he was cataloging threats.
Then he leaned closer. “Two minutes. Don’t move.”
It wasn’t a request. He stood and walked toward the counter with rigid shoulders, taking all the oxygen with him.
I tried to breathe and swallow the dread crawling up my throat. My fingers picked at the napkin dispenser and the ketchup bottle label peeling in the corner. Just a girl in a booth, nothing to see here.
Except people were seeing me. A teenage waitress glanced at me twice before ducking her head and whispering to her coworker. At the counter, two men stopped talking mid-sentence when I shifted in my seat.
Their eyes lingered too long, sharp with recognition, dulled by contempt. One of them muttered “slut” under his breath, not even bothering to hide it. My cheeks burned and my throat constricted.
The bell over the door jingled, and I froze. Laughter followed, as familiar as a nightmare, collapsing the years between now and high school in the matter of a second.
I didn’t have to look. My body knew first. Awareness hit me like a punch in the gut, and my limbs grew rigid while my heart pounded against my rib cage.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the hometown starlet.”
My head jerked up. They were older now, but I would recognize them anywhere.
These very same eyes had followed me down hallways. Those same mouths had twisted my secret into something dirty and passed it around like a party favor.
I thought telling him meant something. God, how naive I used to be. It only took one night to ruin you in these parts. I let one secret slip because I believed him when he said he liked me. That he wanted to know the real me.
I told him what I liked and what I wanted, and by Monday morning, the entire locker room knew. By Tuesday, the whole school knew. By Sunday, the sermon at First Baptist might as well have had my name stamped across it.
“Flee from lust,” Pastor Reed had thundered, and the congregation had murmured their Amens.
People wouldn’t look me in the eye when the service ended. The same women who used to hug me after choir practice now guided their daughters away. Like I was contagious, like I was the devil himself wrapped in a teenage girl’s skin.
So much for Christianity, I guess.
I used to think these guys were big, strong, and handsome.
If my stomach wasn’t twisting so violently and my chest didn’t feel like it was being constricted by a rubber band, maybe I would’ve laughed. God, how wrong I’d been.
“I bet your new man doesn’t know what you’re into, does he?” Stetson jeered.
His voice carried across the room, attracting the attention of quite a few people. He always liked to put on a show and wield his so-called power, trying and failing to feel better about himself.
“Bet he’s already had the full Ella Special.”
The words hit me harder than I wanted them to.
Heat clawed up my neck, and I sat up straighter, forcing my chin high. I would not cower. The past didn’t define me. Not anymore.
“Funny,” I said, my voice clear and sharp despite my slick palms. “One bad hookup, and years later, you’re still talking about me. Guess I must’ve been unforgettable.”
The diner went quiet. Forks hung in the air as the good folks of Briar Creek, Georgia, strained their ears to catch every single word we were uttering.
For half a second, I allowed myself to believe I’d won. That I’d finally reversed the current. But instead, the silence cracked and spilled into laughter, louder and crueler than before.
Even strangers laughed, the way you laugh at a dirty joke you don’t fully understand but don’t want to question. Their laughter swallowed me whole.
My chest squeezed so tight I thought I might splinter.
I was seventeen again, hearing the hiss of lockers slamming as I walked past, catching the words ‘freak’ and ‘whore’ slip like venom into the air. I was seventeen again, standing in the girl’s bathroom while someone wrote “OPEN FOR BUSINESS” on the stall in Sharpie.
Their laughter cracked the silence.
One of them stepped closer, blocking the light from the window. His shoulder brushed mine as if daring me. Another drifted behind me, boxing me in.
“Feisty,” one murmured. “Thought college would’ve cured you of your bad attitude.”
The air thickened. My chest squeezed. I dug my nails into my palms until they ached, but it didn’t stop the panic rising like bile.
Not again. Not here.
I tried to form the words, tried to summon some sharp retort, but my throat was as dry as desert sand. My body remembered it all too well: the stares, the whispers,
and the heat of humiliation crawling under my skin, making me want to tear it off.
The waitress behind the counter didn’t move to help. The men at the bar just watched. No one said a single fucking word. My humiliation was their entertainment, the same as it had always been.
The diner tilted. The voices blurred.
“Look at her,” one sneered. “Still easy.”
My vision went spotty.
And then—
The wall shook.
Hunter.
He was suddenly there, pulling one of them away from me as if he were made of cardboard. Stetson’s body hit the wall with a crack, with Hunter’s arm across his chest, pinning him like an insect.
Another one of them tried to grab Hunter — stupid, really — and he twisted his arm up behind his back until he screamed.
The third froze, wide-eyed, like a deer in headlights.
Hunter’s voice was a snarl, raw and inhuman. “Say her name again. I dare you.”
The entire diner had gone silent. The scraping of cutlery against plates ceased, and the waitress froze mid-pour, causing coffee to spill over the edge of a mug.
Stetson choked under Hunter’s arm. “We—we were just joking—”
Hunter pressed harder. The boy’s face turned red, veins bulging in his neck.
I should have been horrified. Yet, the most I could claim was being frozen in shock. Underneath it, deep down, something dark and secret thrilled at it. The monster was on my side.
Still, he couldn’t. Not here. Not in front of everyone. If he snapped, if he unleashed the violence threatening to boil over, he might end up killing them.
“Hunter.”
My voice cracked. He didn’t move, didn’t even fucking blink.
“Hunter!” I yelled louder this time. His arm felt hot and solid as steel under my palm as I dug my fingers into it. “Please.”
Finally, he looked at me.
His eyes were wild and feral, like an uncontrollable storm I couldn’t calm but couldn’t look away from.
“Your call,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Do you want me to finish this, or do you want the last word?”
The whole room held its breath.
I was still shaking, but something in me steadied. His fury wasn’t directed at me, it was for me, wrapping around me like armor.
Only when I stepped forward into Hunter’s warmth did I find my voice.
“I left this town and I fucking moved on. But you’re still here. Still whispering about high school. Tell me who really lost,” I said, every syllable as sharp as glass. “You don’t define me. You never did. Not then, not now, not ever.”
This time, no one laughed. Not a single person dared to breathe, and, for the first time in way, way too long, I felt the shame slide from my shoulders and land where it belonged — on theirs.
I turned on my heel, chin high, and walked out.
Hunter followed, close enough for his hand to brush my back. A claim, a promise, and a warning all wrapped in one.
The night air outside was heavy with honeysuckle, but it didn’t clear the taste of acid from my mouth. My hands were still shaking, but I could feel Hunter standing behind me, vibrating like a live wire, his fists flexing and his chest heaving.
I slid my hand onto his arm, grounding both of us.
He didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. I knew.
If I hadn’t touched him, if I hadn’t asked, he wouldn’t have stopped at bruises. He would’ve crossed every line to make sure I got my closure.