The Bride (The Bride #1)(19)

She was right. I had evaded all eye contact.

“You’re falling for her.”

I shook my head. “You are so ridiculous right now, I can’t have this conversation.”

Because the conversation wasn’t going to end well and I had too much shit to do today. This wasn’t about me falling for Ellie. The truth, the real truth was I liked her more than Janet. That was where the guilt came from.

There. It was out. At least in my mind.

At some point in these last few months of our on-again, off-again relationship, I had stopped liking Janet. If there was someone I wanted to spend time with, it was Ellie.

Only I couldn’t have sex with Ellie, so I needed Janet. Which was wrong on so many levels.

And wait, did I just think about sex and Ellie in the same thought in my head?

Oh shit, I wasn’t…

No. Ellie was Ellie. This wasn’t about her. This was about Janet. I felt guilty that Janet caught me liking someone way more than her.

Janet opened the bakery box she had brought and took out a cupcake. She peeled the paper away from the cake and bit into it.

“Chocolate with vanilla frosting. I knew that was her favorite because you told me.”

“Janet, for real, I have to get to work. We can talk about this later.”

“No, I think we’re done talking.” She threw the cupcake at me and it hit me squarely in the face. “You fucking wasted two years of my fucking life.”

Fuck the drama.

I was wiping icing out of my eyes as she breezed by me. I was pissed enough and small enough to shout at her as she left.

“FYI, you suck at sucking dick.”

The front door slammed and the house rattled. I was toweling the frosting off my face when Ellie reappeared, dressed in clothes to feed the chickens.

“Don’t say a damn word,” I snapped.

“Okay. But I super hope you’re okay being broken up for good with her, because trust me when I tell you no girl is getting over that.”

I didn’t care. Because I was super over her.



*

It was eleven thirty that night when the front door was slammed shut hard for the second time that day.

I looked up, surprised to see Ellie. I checked my watch to be sure but yes, it was a full thirty minutes prior to midnight. I didn’t think she would be home a minute sooner. It had been tough to watch her leave tonight.

In some ways she looked all grown up in her pretty blue long dress with the thin sleeves. Her hair all blown out and hanging down her back. In other ways she looked like a girl trying to be a woman. Except she wasn’t a woman. Not yet.

That’s what seventeen was all about.

Seeing her as dressed up and as sexy as she could make herself put the whole morning into perspective. I didn’t have to worry about myself or my feelings for her. Not when she was still a girl.

I was about to comment on the thirty minutes when I looked at her face. It was red and blotched. Her lipstick was smeared around her mouth and her mascara, which she’d applied too much of, was smudged around her eyes.

She looked pissed and I thought someone was going to die that night.

That someone being Riley.

I stood up slowly, and calmly, again because I was dealing with an unpredictable animal. A teenage girl/woman.

“Ellie,” I said as I moved toward her.

“I don’t want to talk about it!” she screeched and bolted up the stairs before I could catch her. But this was something she didn’t get to not talk about. Not when she’d been on a date with an eighteen-year-old guy and came home looking like that.

She’d shut the bedroom door, but hadn’t bothered to lock it. Maybe because she didn’t think I would ever dare to come in. I had lived in this house for four months and I had not once seen the inside of this room.

For that matter, it had probably been four months since she’d stepped in what had been her father’s room.

She was lying facedown on the bed. When I came closer, she turned her head so she wasn’t looking at me.

“Ellie, talk to me. What happened tonight?”

My gut clenched. What the hell was I going to do if that prick actually hurt her?

“I mean it, Ellie. You don’t start talking, I’m going to find that boy and make him tell me.”

“Nothing,” she said and scrambled up until she was sitting on her knees. Yep, she was all sorts of pissed off. “Okay. Are you happy? Nothing happened.”

“Was something supposed to happen?”

She put her face in her hands. “Yes, I was supposed to have sex. There, I said it. I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore and I really liked Riley. So I told him we should go to the hunting cabin, and I had beer and condoms, and we could do it. And he said no. He said I was married and that it would be adultery and it was against his fucking religion! He said he liked me but he could never do that with me ever while I was still married. Which is so ridiculous. He can kiss me and make out with me even though I’m married, but not have sex with me?”

I didn’t catch much beyond beer and condoms. And it was so horribly sexist. I had sex when I was seventeen with Dinah. There had been beer and condoms. But the thought of Ellie in the hunting cabin…

I took a breath. Raised my eyes to heaven, asking Sam for inspiration, and then sat on the bed next to her and tried to get a grip on my feelings.