Page 56 of Look What You Made Me Do

How could he?

How could he have touched her, made love to her, when he’d been with Rachel first?

The frown from before returned, the furrows deep enough now to plant seeds. He levered himself upright. “Okay… what the hell just happened?”

“Oh, Jake.” Ella fought against the urge to crumple as she was swamped by a tide of despair. “Don’t be so bloody obtuse. The vases, Jake. The vases.”

She saw the moment he got it, the moment it dawned on him.

“Oh, hang on.” He ripped back the sheets and scrabbled for his own clothes. “This is insane.”

Ella, her chest a cold block of ice, watched him step commando-style into his jeans and she prayed his dick would get stuck in the vicious teeth of his fly. Maybe then he’d know a bit of the pain that was tearing into her flesh.

Unfortunately, he pulled it up without incident.

“You think I fucked Rachel?” he hissed as he yanked his shirt down and shoved his hands on his hips.

Even hearing him say the words was like an icepick to her heart. Her brain busily conjured images that made her want to retch. She needed a shower. A scrubbing brush.

She needed hospital-grade disinfectant.

“Damn right I do, Jake.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “I didn’t.”

Right. As if she’d believe anything he said right now. “Sure you didn’t.”

He stalked toward her. “You seriously think that of me? After everything these last weeks? This is bullshit, Ella.”

A noise came from the back of her throat she didn’t recognize. Hell, it defied description. It was guttural and ugly, a cross between a roar and a mortally wounded whimper, ripping at her vocal cords.

“You have to have been in her room,” she said, her voice thick with emotion, “to know about the sunlight on the vases.”

And men only went into Rachel’s room for one reason.

The vases were one of the happier memories from Ella’s childhood. From when she was really little and used to snuggle in her mom’s bed every morning, watching and waiting for the sun to get high enough to strike the vases. The mystical garnet hue usually lasted a couple of hours and often she and Rachel would lay there until the last of it had disappeared.

The sense of magic and wonder created in those moments had always stayed with Ella. And the fact that her mom had apparently done the same thing with her mother had imbued the spectacle with family tradition.

Now that was all gone.

Ella gave Jake’s chest an angry shove which only managed to rock him back on his heels a little. “What do you think?” she asked, tears pricking her eyes as she shoved again, harder this time but still making no dent to the solid wall of his chest. “Was I as good as her?”

He reared back as if she’d struck him across the face and for a moment he was speechless. Then he opened his mouth as if he was going to say something.

But what?

Was he going to try and justify how he’d gotten into the pants of not one but two Lucas women? Ella sure as shit didn’t want to hear that and she was relieved when his jaw clicked shut.

“You know what, Ella? If you really believe that of me, I don’t think there’s much else to say.” He raked her with a contemptuous gaze before he turned away to gather the rest of his belongings.

Ella watched him with a strange sense of dislocation, hugging herself hard to stop the shakes, sniffling loudly as she blinked back the tears. How could she want him gone but be bereft at the thought of him leaving?

A whimper rose in her throat and she swallowed it down, biting her lip to stop herself from blurting out that it didn’t matter what happened over twenty years ago.

Because it really shouldn’t. But it did.

Most of the guys Ella had gone to school with had paid Rachel for sex. It had practically been a Trently rite of passage – why should Jake have been any different? He’d been a testosterone-driven, screw-anyone-who-said-yes teenager. And the entire town knew that Rachel was Trently’s favorite yes-woman.

---