Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“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.
Chapter 9
I want someone to look at me the way I look at bacon.
-Ellen’s secret thoughts
Jessie
We fell asleep that way, her head on my shoulder, and my arm curled tightly around her waist.
We’d done this exact move countless times. Though now, with fourteen years between us, it felt so different.
I knew we needed to talk. Knew it, but the feel of her in my arms made me feel like I was home for the first time in five thousand, one hundred and ten days.
And yes, I’d counted.
I was a fucking fool in love. Had been for fourteen years and would be for the next fourteen.
***
When I woke up, she was gone.
I assumed she was in the other room, so I got in the shower to rinse off the day.
When I came back out, it was to find only Tally, Imogen, and Verity in the kitchen. Ellen and Naomi nowhere in sight.
“Where are the other two?” I asked.
Verity, Truth’s wife, was the one to answer.
“I know that Ellen left in her car about an hour ago,” she said.
I stiffened at hearing that Ellen had left.
“As for Naomi, I assumed she was in her room.”
She was eyeing me like I’d done something terribly wrong, and I instantly knew that they knew about me and Ellen.
They might not know the whole story, but they knew enough to put two and two together.
The clubhouse was big, but the walls were thin. They’d likely overheard what we’d discussed. Mostly because neither Ellen nor I had kept our voices down, and it was more likely than not, as all three women were looking at me like I’d committed the ultimate sin, that they knew every one of our dirty, little secrets now.
“Be back,” I muttered instead of denying their thoughts.
The truth was, Ellen had been with me.
And it pissed me off all over again that she’d leave without talking to me first. Without hashing out what we both knew needed ironed out between us.
Sooner rather than later.
I left the room and went in search of the illusive woman, wondering whether I should be concerned or not that she wasn’t still here.
I stopped in the living room when I saw Fender.
“You see Ellen leave?” I asked as I passed.
He shook his head. “Nope. I was in my room on the phone with my folks. Apparently, they’re coming for a little visit.”
I snorted.
Fender’s parents were very conservative. They hated that he didn’t graduate college. They hated that he worked somewhere they didn’t approve of instead of the family business, and they also hated that he rode motorcycles and had tattoos.
“What about Naomi?” I asked.
“Room, the last I checked,” Fender said distractedly, staring at the coffee table where he was working on a draft of a house. “She came out for an hour or so for some tea. We commiserated on the fact that y’all were fighting outside our rooms, and then she went back in there. I heard the TV turn on and haven’t checked since.”
I sighed.
I was pretty sure that everyone in the whole damn club would know about Ellen and I by sundown.
Annoyed now, I walked straight to the surveillance room that was set up off of the kitchen, and flipped on the monitor.