Chapter 8

I went for a walk today because I stress eat and hated myself a little bit. I took a bag of M&Ms with me because I needed something to motivate myself to walk in the first place. Ate a piece every ten seconds. Sometimes life is all about balance.

-Ellen’s real life thoughts

Jessie

I don’t know how it happened.

One minute I was sitting in the living room, flipping through the channels on the TV in the main room of the clubhouse with Ellen sitting on the couch perpendicular to me, and the next she was making a weird sound in her throat.

I turned to look at her, and the moment our eyes met, she broke down into sobs and ran from the room.

She was crying so hard that it took everything in me not to go to her. Not to follow the sound of her sobs into the hallway where she’d been given a room for the night.

My eyes went to the screen, and I realized that the movie that we’d watched hundreds of times so long ago when we’d been together was now playing on the big screen.

And I closed my eyes in dismay.

Shit.

I got up and walked down the hall, knowing that this was one of those times where I needed to fix this.

I couldn’t do this anymore.

I had to explain my reasoning.

Surely if she knew, she’d agree.

She’d realize that I wasn’t staying away from her to break her. Not to humiliate her. Not because of Sean. I was doing it to save her, dammit!

‘“Ellen,” I started to say, pushing her cracked door open slightly.

She was lying on the bed, her face buried in a pillow, trying to stifle the sounds of her sobs.

I felt sick to my stomach.

She held her hand up, trying to stop me from coming in, but I ignored her.

I did, however, leave the door open for her to have some semblance of openness, as if I weren’t shutting her in and forcing the issue.

“Get out,” she cried.

I came forward, not stopping until my knees hit the bed.

I lifted one knee and planted it into the bed, then leaned over until I could brush her hair away from her face.

I was such an idiot.

All this time I was protecting her and never once had it occurred to me that I was hurting her even worse in the process.

Sure, I’d realized she was sad.

But she had put on a good front these last few months. Ever since our parting comments that last night we were alone together, I’d stayed away.

She’d opened up her business. She’d kicked ass. She’d shown up at MC parties.

And overall, I thought she was getting better.

Then Sweet Home Alabama comes on, reminding us of old times, and suddenly she loses it.

Though, if I admitted as much, that movie had been a killer to watch over the years. Each and every time it came on, I changed the station.

Even now, I had each and every line memorized.

It’d been a movie that she’d fallen in love with, and I’d watched it with her because it made her happy.

Now, though, it was obvious that it didn’t.

Maybe she’d had the same problem over the years when it came to that movie as I did.

“Ellie,” I started to say.

She shot up off the bed and glared at me.

“Don’t call me that. And get the hell out.” She pointed to the door.

“It’s my room,” I countered, crossing my arms over my chest and standing there against her anger.

She ignored me and sat down on the bed, pulling her phone out to ignore me as if that would make me go away.

I felt my phone buzz, and I pulled it out to see a text from Ellie on the screen.

Ellen (8:24 PM): I need you to leave me alone. You’re breaking me. I need to be let off the hook.

And suddenly, I was just as pissed as she was.

“You don’t deserve to be let off the hook,” I said in response to her message.

She stood up and whirled around, confusion on her face.

Then her mouth dropped open as realization dawned.

“All of this time,” she whispered.

I deserved everything she threw at me and more as I read the destruction on her face.

“I fuckin’ hate you,” Ellen growled out.

I gritted my teeth. “Well, I don’t hate you, even though I should.”

Her mouth opened and she stared at me with confusion.

Then, like the dumbass that I was, I went right off the cliff.

There was no pussy-footing around the bush for me. No, I jumped whole hog into the middle of it, telling her exactly what I was thinking.

“I’m not the only one to blame in this situation,” I told her. “You broke me just as much as I broke you.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“How many times did you tell your mother that we were just friends?” I challenged her.

Her mouth snapped shut.

“Yeah,” I said. “And how many times did you hide us? Jessie, get in the closet so she doesn’t know you’re here. Jessie, let’s go to the next town over so no one will see us,” I mimicked her voice. “Any of those sound familiar?”

Her lips thinned.

“I loved you.”

I laughed a humorless laugh. One that hurt to hear, even from my ears.

“You loved me?” I snarled, my control breaking. “You loved me so much that you moved on within a week. When I came back to apologize, to tell you why I had to go, you were with someone.”

Her brows furrowed.

“I would never,” she snapped. “It took me three freakin’ years to move on, and even then I sabotaged my own relationships. I couldn’t get over you!”

“Does Mason Lyens ring any freakin’ bells?” I shot back.

Her brows rose.

“The boy that graduated with you? The one that you got into a fight with me over?” She pursed her lips, and those cute little lines between her eyebrows furrowed. “The one with the blonde hair and green eyes? The football player?”

I nodded, gut tight.

“That one.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, what about him?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked up at the ceiling, trying to calm down.

“You were with him,” I accused her. “When I came back, you were in his car, hugging him.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“This car?” she hissed, walking to the window and slamming the blinds down with her fingers, revealing the car that’d been rubbed in my face since I’d first seen her driving it.

My eyes flicked to the road, and my throat went tight.

“Yeah, that one.”

The thought of her still driving his car, the one that I’d envied in high school, was enough to drive a freakin’ stake straight through my heart.

Each time I saw her get in and out of it was enough to remind me exactly why I should stay away from her.

Anger overtook Ellen’s usually calm features, and she launched herself at me.

I caught her easily, stopping the right hook that she had aimed at my jaw with one hand, but caught an elbow to the forehead when she lifted up with the other.

I grunted and caught her around the middle, restraining her arms down at her sides so she couldn’t throw any more blows.

“I was buying that car so I could get to you, asshole!” she screamed, her voice hitting an octave that shouldn’t have been possible. “I was coming to you!”

My mouth dropped open.

My surprise didn’t stop her, though. No, she let me have it with both barrels.

“Seriously, it’s like you never knew me. Like you didn’t care like you said you cared,” she hissed. “You don’t care what kind of a mess you left me in fourteen years ago. All you care about is your own fucking self. You don’t even have the balls to apologize. I left Sean because of you. I liked Sean. But the minute you showed up, my whole freakin’ world changed. I couldn’t lie to Sean. I couldn’t continue to live that lie. I’ve loved you since I was a senior in high school. That’s fourteen years, Jessie!”

The raw emotion in her voice was hard for me to hear.

The bad thing was that when emotions started to swirl, I got angry. I couldn’t and didn’t handle them well, so I lashed out.

“You don’t think I know that, Ellie?” I countered. “You don’t think that was the hardest decision of my life? Because, let me just tell you something. It was. I regret that mistake every single second that I fucking breathe. Seeing you that first day I pledged to the club, it broke me. I was holding on by a thread, and there you come, waltzing right back into my life when I was barely breathing to begin with.”

Then she collapsed, and I nearly fell forward when she gave me every single bit of her weight.

Her body shook in racking sobs, and I dropped down to my knees, doing the only thing I could at that moment in time. Hold her.

“I texted you every day when you first left. And then I’ve been pouring my heart out to you in texts for fourteen years.”

My eyes closed.

“I read every single message.”

She just cried harder.