Ellie
The last few moments had been an absolute whirlwind. Tears blurred my vision, my pulse pounding so hard and fast it felt like I couldn’t think straight—like my body was moving faster than my mind could catch up.
I’d known something was coming. Logan confronting Miles was inevitable, but I had hoped, begged the universe, it would happen somewhere private. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere that wouldn’t make my stomach churn with that familiar, sickening twist.
But it hadn’t. It had happened right out in the open for the whole damn town to see.
The public nature of it ripped open wounds I thought I’d buried. It brought me right back to the day I found out about Buck, the day I learned the truth about what we really were. When the whispers started. The stares. The shame.
And now, here I was again. Center stage. Small-town drama playing out with me as the unwilling lead.
He found me so easily and it felt so violating, so reminiscent of how little he cared about my boundaries.
All I’d ever wanted was to blend in, to be a part of Faircloud without the weight of my past tethered to me like a scarlet letter. Just a girl with a job and a heart still learning how to beat steady again.
But this… this was too familiar. The burn in my chest. The cold sweat. The rising tide of panic. It crashed over me in waves.
Panic.
Dread.
Worry.
I sat trembling in Mac’s office chair, trying to force myself to breathe. Deep in, deep out. Again and again. My fingers gripped the armrests like they were the only thing anchoring me to the ground.
Aspen. Theo. Penny. They surrounded me—close and quiet—but didn’t crowd. They knew I needed space, needed silence more than sympathy in this moment.
“That’s it,” Theo whispered gently. “In for five, out for five.”
I followed her lead, my eyes slipping shut as I tried to sync my breathing with her voice. But inside, it was chaos. A movie reel of the past few years flipped through in flashes—pain, betrayal, heartbreak… and then hope.
I’d finally started to feel it again. After Miles. After everything. When I came back from the trip, there had been a strange, tentative calm inside me. Like maybe, just maybe, the worst was behind me. Like I could finally exhale. Start over. Begin to heal.
And now this.
I was angry—at myself, a little. At Logan, more than I wanted to admit.
Not for defending me. Never for that. Knowing he’d put Miles in his place made something in me ache in the sweetest, most protective way. But I wished, God, I wished he’d done it somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere that didn’t throw me back into the fire I’d worked so hard to climb out of.
I still hadn’t said a word. Only internally was I processing, talking myself down from the edge. The girls waited, patient but eager. I could feel their curiosity like static in the room. It was quiet but charged.
They didn’t press. Didn’t pry. But I knew they wanted to understand.
And maybe… maybe I needed to be the one to tell them.
The choice to share on my own terms had already been taken from me out there. But in here? With them?
Maybe letting it out, saying the words instead of swallowing them, might finally help me breathe again.
“I need to be honest with all of you…”
“Oh, thank God,” Penny said with a heavy sigh of relief. “I’ve been dying to ask, but I didn’t think now was the right time.”
Aspen smacked her lightly on the arm, eyes wide as she shot her a look.
The interaction made me laugh—an ache-filled, shaky laugh—but it helped. As much as I hurt, having them here softened the sharp edges of it all.
“It’s okay,” I said gently. “I need to say something… I need to get this out.”
My voice wavered, and the tears returned, stinging hot behind my eyes. I closed them, took a deep, steadying breath, and then let myself fall backward into memory—starting at the place I always tried so hard to avoid.
“The day I found out about Buck was one of the hardest days of my life.”
I’d never really talked about it. Not fully. Not even with myself. I’d buried it beneath survival and silence.
“I never went through his phone,” I began, my voice barely above a whisper. “I trusted that man with everything I had. He was my first kiss, my first love… my first and only everything. But that day, after all our years together, something just felt different. Off.”
He’d been on his phone more than usual. He was distant, distracted. Normally, I’d nudge him, tease him, and he’d smile and put it down, giving me the kind of attention I lived for. But not that day.
“I asked him to listen to me. I was excited about the farm stand plans. I had all these ideas, and I just wanted to share them. But he got frustrated. Cold. He brushed me off and kept scrolling, and after a while, I gave up.”
I swallowed hard, my fingers twisting in my lap.
“Then he went to the bathroom and threw his phone on the bed. He was so careless with it, so irritated, and I just… I knew. My gut screamed at me. Something wasn’t right.”
I let out a small, bitter laugh, not because it was funny, but because of how absurd it all sounded now. How naive I’d been.
“I picked it up. Opened it. And there it was. The girl he’d been cheating on me with… for years, apparently. And she was pregnant.”
Silence fell like a curtain over the room. My friends didn’t move. Didn’t speak. They knew the broad strokes of the story, knew Buck had cheated, knew there was a baby involved, but hearing it from my lips, raw and real, hit differently.
“She sent him a picture of the pregnancy test. Big, bold plus sign. No question.”
I looked up, my voice quieter than before. “That was the moment everything inside me broke. I fell into pieces. And instead of blaming him, I blamed myself. I thought… maybe if I’d been better. Prettier. More sexual. More exciting. I kept asking myself, What did I do wrong?”
The weight of that guilt still lived in my chest, pressing down like a boulder I couldn’t push off. Talking about it now wasn’t the relief I thought it would be. Not yet. But maybe this was part of healing—sitting in the discomfort, trusting it would pass.
“El…” Aspen’s voice was soft as she reached over, her hand curling around mine with a tenderness that cracked something further open inside me.
“None of that was your fault,” Penny added, her tone fierce and full of sisterly conviction.
“A real man doesn’t cheat,” Theo said. “He talks. He tries. He doesn’t destroy.”
I could only nod, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“I ended things with him,” I continued, voice thick. “He tried to deny it. Tried to twist it back on me, blaming me for his choices. And I let him, for a while. I pretended his words didn’t get to me, but they did. More than I want to admit.”
My hands trembled in my lap, and I rubbed them over my knees, trying to ground myself.
“Then the whole town found out. The whispers started. The pity stares. The way people looked at me like I was broken or like maybe I deserved it. And I just… I couldn’t take it anymore. So I left.”
I closed my eyes, my voice barely a breath now.
“I left because I didn’t know how to stay.”
The girls were all tear-filled now too. Hearing the truths I’d kept tucked away, the raw, intimate parts of what I’d endured, pulled emotion from them as well. It settled over the room like a thick blanket.
“While I was gone,” I began quietly, “I spent a lot of time reflecting. Asking myself what I wanted, what I needed. And the only word that kept coming up was different. I wanted things to be different. I wanted me to be different. I wanted my life, my world… all of it to shift into something unrecognizable from what I left behind.”
So that’s what I chased.
“I reinvented myself. Became someone new to the people I met along the way. I shoved away my old life and tried to become this version of myself that I thought, hoped, I could love.”
But so much of that time away felt like pretending. After a while, it became exhausting. Lonely. I was tired of running. Tired of missing the people I loved. Tired of missing me, the version of myself that existed before it all crumbled.
“You all were here,” I said, looking at them with a faint smile. “Living life while I was… gone. I didn’t let anyone in. Not for a long while. But there was one person I kept turning to, one small, steady thread of home I couldn’t let go of.”
“Logan,” Aspen said gently, her expression soft, her smile tight with understanding.
I nodded, shifting slightly in the desk chair, my heart tugging at the mention of his name.
“He kept texting me. Kept reaching out. Just… checking in. Sending little things that made him think of me. Pictures, quotes, flowers. Sometimes it was a joke, sometimes it was nothing at all. But it meant everything. He was the one thing I held onto when the loneliness felt unbearable. He even came to see me.”
A sigh slipped from my lips as a smile followed. Just moments ago, my anger at him had simmered, but now, it was overtaken by something softer. A sweetness. A longing. Love.
“Then, I came home,” I said. “I thought coming back to Faircloud would help with the self-discovery, that maybe I’d find peace in something familiar. Or that the town had changed. Or maybe I had.”
And I had found different… just not in the way I hoped.
“I came back angry—not just at Buck, but at Faircloud too. At everyone who fed the gossip, gave me those pitying looks. I threw all my hurt onto them instead of facing what was really going on inside me. And do you know how I chose to stick it to them?”
“How?” Theo asked, eyebrow raised in wary curiosity.
“By going on a date with the one guy I knew would stir up the most talk, the new city guy. Isn’t that just stupid?”
They didn’t answer, but I could feel their hearts softening toward me, understanding what I hadn’t been able to admit to myself back then.
“I thought if I dated someone from outside, someone so unlike Buck, it would prove something—show them that I wasn’t the problem. That they were.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me now.