Page 17 of Look What You Made Me Do

Ella grinned. “Always. She grew up in a circus. Like… a literal circus. Her family have been circus people for generations. So she was never going to be beige.”

He laughed. “I bet Trently wasn’t ready for that.”

His laugh was delicious. Rich and warm, oozing over her like warm toffee. It gave her goosebumps despite the sultry evening and those muscles did their thing again. The way they were going she’d have the tightest pelvic floor around.

At least she’d be able to get a job as an exotic dancer firing ping pong balls out of her business if they shut her school down.

“Trently most definitely disapproved.”

He looked at her speculatively. “So you befriended her?”

“Yes.” Actually, Rosie, recognizing a fellow misfit, had invaded her personal space and refused to leave. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“You were always such a…” He shrugged. “A loner.”

Ella snorted. “Do you think that was through choice?” She stopped walking and Cerberus glanced at both of them, giving a low whine. “None of the good moms of Trently wanted their precious little girls playing with Rachel’s daughter.”

And loneliness had been far preferable to rejection.

“None of them wanted their daughters playing with Jake Prince either. Fortunately for me,” he grinned, “teenage girls and their mothers often don’t see eye to eye.”

Yeah, she hadn’t forgotten just how popular Jake had been back then. Ella huffed out a laugh but it rang with hollowness.

“Ella,” he murmured. “The mothers of Trently were a mob of prissy, small-town, narrow-minded bitches.”

She knew he was right but, oh, how she had longed to go to Sarah Charlton’s eighth birthday party along with all the other girls in her class.

Or any of the other birthday parties.

Cerberus whined again as if he could sense Ella’s mood.

“I know that. Now.” She reached down and patted the dog’s head. “But as a kid, I just wanted to fit in. To be like the others.”

“That’s what I liked about you. You were different from the others.”

Surprised, Ella glanced at him. He’d liked her? A bunch of silent distant acknowledgments, some brief, perfunctory exchanges and one dance that had culminated in the world’s most chaste homecoming kiss? “We barely said boo to each other.”

“Yeah, but you never judged me because my father was a drunk who blew our cash at the track every week.”

“Well…” She frowned as she straightened. “That would have been completely hypocritical of me, wouldn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Trently thrived on hypocrisy.”

Yup. Truer words had never been spoken. She forced herself to walk again, and Jake and Cerberus fell into step.

“For what it’s worth,” he murmured after several beats, “I really liked your mother, too.”

She slid him the side eye. “You knew Rachel?”

He just nodded and she silently berated herself. Of course he knew her mother. Everyone knew Rachel.

Ella remembered the first time she realized what her mother did and why they were ostracized. She’d been in fifth grade and overheard some teachers talking. She remembered the shock as if it was yesterday, trying to comprehend how the woman who danced with her to ‘Blue Moon’ every morning and had home-made, choc-chip muffins waiting for her after school, was the same person these adults were talking about.

She’d always known her mother wasn’t like the other moms but she’d liked that. Rachel had been the prettiest mom at the school and Ella had been secretly proud. She used to sit and watch her put on her make-up every morning, totally entranced, longing for the day when she would be old enough for red lipstick and pink cheeks.

Of course, the fact that Rachel was always in her silky dressing gown, day and night, should have been a clue. As a kid, Ella had just loved the cool slippery feel of it against her face and the way it smelled of perfume and powder. It had seemed so sophisticated. So adult.

Later she’d grown to hate it and all it represented.

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