Page 14 of Look What You Made Me Do

Which made her super pissy. She was supposed to be thinking about Cam, goddamn it.

“Well, I’m sure they’d all take a number, Jake.”

Her deliberate insult slipped off him as he hooted with laughter. “Where’s Miss Rosie tonight?”

“She’s cooking her sure-thing curry for this guy she’s trying to woo.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Woo? How old fashioned.”

Ella shrugged. Maybe it was old fashioned but it sounded better than debauch.

“Sure thing because it works every time?”

She nodded, marveling anew at her bestie’s healthy libido. “Every time.”

He narrowed his eyes. “We’re not talking about curry now, are we?”

“Nope.”

“Does she add some secret aphrodisiac potion to it?”

“No, she just makes it so hot they have to go lie down.”

Jake’s laughter was drowned out by another round of loud hooting erupting around the bar and Ella gritted her teeth.

“Who do you root for?” he asked, his eyes flicking to the nearest screen.

“Oh please.” She snorted. “I’d rather stick a red-hot poker in my eye.”

He laughed. “Not a fan?”

Not a fan? Man, was that an understatement. Lifting her wine glass to him in salute, Ella said, “I hate it with a passion that consumes my entire being.”

“Whoa. What did football ever do to you?”

A familiar sense of impotence clawed at Ella’s throat. How could she say it took you away without sounding… ridiculous? How could he understand that although they’d rarely spoken she’d felt a desperate kind of affinity for him?

Jake’s mere existence had made things more bearable in Trently. Someone else in their dive of a town who truly understood what it felt like to be tolerated.

And then he’d left. To play football. And it was far easier to hate it than to hate him for taking his chance at getting the hell out of Dodge. Although tonight, after her day with Cam and her emotions in a complete tangle, she was more than happy to hate on him a little, too.

“Nothing. I just… hate the… slavish devotion we have in this country for a bunch of guys who just throw a dumb pointy ball around a stupid bit of grass.”

He laughed. “It’s not quite as easy as that.”

Yeah, maybe. But right now, Ella was too riled up to care about the intricacies of the game. She slapped her hand down on the bar. He was missing the point.

“It’s not rocket science, Jake. I mean the NFL’s not trying to find a cure for cancer. All they’re doing is taking a bunch of young guys fresh out of college, stuffing their pockets full of money, plying them with gifts, telling them their poop doesn’t stink all so they can make a shit ton of money.”

He nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Jesus, Jake, there are children all around the world and right here that live in poverty but we don’t have the money for that. We have kids in America who can’t read or write or add up but we don’t have the money for that. They’re trying to close my school down, for crying out loud. But never mind, there’s always money for football.”

Ella ran out of steam, slumping over her glass and staring morosely at the contents.

“Finished now?” he asked quietly.

She sighed. She wished she felt better for getting it all off her chest but she didn’t. They were still shutting her school down and her brother still hated her. “Finished.”

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