Page 81 of Look What You Made Me Do

“You okay?” Jake asked, his voice low and soothing.

“Not really.” She cradled her face in her hands. “But I’ve got no one but myself to blame.”

“No.” He shook his head as his hand moved to her nape and massaged. “This stuff is inexcusable.”

“I don’t understand.” Ella frowned. “Most of this is just salacious gossip wrapped up in some loose public interest excuse. What does he hope to gain from this?”

Rosie shrugged. “Notoriety?”

“Circulation,” Simon said.

Jake shook his head. “He’s hoping to flush me out. Yank my chain enough that I’ll give him what he wants in exchange for him backing off.”

Ella laughed. There was a slight note of the manic about it, but she couldn’t help herself. “He doesn’t know you very well.”

But she did. She knew Jake Prince was his own master and didn’t dance to anyone else’s tune.

“What are you going to do?” Daisy demanded, looking directly at Jake.

“Nothing. For now. I’m not going to feed this monster any more morsels. None of you should.” He stood, the chair scraping back loudly, his mouth a grim slash in his face. “I have playoffs and hopefully the game against Chiswick to concentrate on and I will not let that asshole distract me. But after we’re done, I’m not going to rest until John Wilmott is writing the fluffiest-cat-in-show stories for some cowboy operation in fucking Siberia.”

17

The impact of the article was as terrible as Ella imagined.

People on everything from TikTok to Jake Prince fan sites to talk-back radio were talking about her morals – her morals – and her suitability as a principal. Arguments broke out in comments sections of social media posts which only aided in amplifying the furor.

Television cameras were waiting for her – and anyone else who fancied their face on the six o’clock news – at school on Monday morning and the phone ran hot with interview requests.

But by the time she got to her office, several messages from concerned parents had built up as well as a more ominous one from head office indicating they would call back. By midday, five families had announced their intentions to pull their kids out of Deluca and the phone calls from the media kept coming.

And then the phone call she’d been expecting – dreading – the most came. “Ms. Lucas, this is unacceptable,” Donald Wiseman said. “It’s not good for any school to be dragged into this kind of disrepute.”

“Mr. Wiseman, I can explain.”

“I’ve had media and angry parents on my phone all morning.”

“Join the club.”

“By my reckoning, if the number of people who say they will pull their kids out of your school actually do, then your numbers will no longer be viable.”

Ella’s grip tightened on the pencil she was flicking in her hand. Was that gloating she heard in his voice? She’d worked so hard to keep Deluca open and the change in the school and the students over the last few months had been truly miraculous.

She didn’t know whether to cry or slam the phone against the wall.

“I’m sure after this has blown over in a few days, parents will see it’s all been a media beat up and things will calm.”

“So, it’s not true what they’re saying? About your mother, about the affair with your high school principal?”

Ella gritted her teeth. “What I’m saying is that it’s nobody’s business, and once some other juicy news item has come along it’ll all be forgotten.”

“And if it isn’t?” His pompous inquiry set her teeth on edge. “It might be just as easy to affect an immediate closure. Stop dragging it out.”

Ella, usually calm and professional, felt that all snap at his preposterous statement. The rage that had been building since yesterday morning coalesced with the rage from all those goddamn years in Trently. She stabbed the pencil into the fake leather inset of her desk, snapping it in half.

Her hand shook as she rose to her feet, gripping the phone hard, wishing it was Donald Wiseman’s testicles instead.

“Go ahead,” she hissed. “Try it. This will be old news soon enough and no one is going to give a flying fuck who my mother slept with or how many times I supposedly porked the principal.”

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