Page 3 of How to Get Even

‘Absolutely not,’ Bella confirmed.

‘Don’t believe in love?’

‘I did,’ Bella admitted. ‘And then six months ago I stood up in front of 400 guests to let them know that my groom wasn’t coming.’

She pressed her lips together to keep the sudden well of unruly emotions from escaping.

‘Holy mother of…?’ Astrid spluttered as she clutched Bella’s forearm. ‘You were jilted?’

‘Yup. By text. The morning of.’

‘Bytext?’ Astrid’s mouth flattened.

Bella smiled, letting the women’s sympathy, their outrage, soothe the hurt caused by the wedding guests’ horrified fascination.

‘He’s not a bad person, really, he just did a bad thing,’ she admitted honestly. And he wasn’t. But Olly had told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Let her believe that, let her plan for how her life would be,with him. ‘He was a bit of a…’ She searched for the right word. ‘Peter Pan. Commitment wasn’t his strong suit and I made the classic mistake of thinking that it would be different with me,’ she admitted with a shrug, feeling embarrassed and ashamed that she’d been so foolish.

‘Doesn’t excuse him leaving you at the altar,’ Sienna said.

‘Viatext,’ Astrid stressed, furiously.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Bella replied, reaching for her glass before realising it was empty and putting it back on the table.

‘Well, you can string mine up,’ Astrid announced. ‘Unbeknownst to me he’dalreadytrotted up that aisle and merrily said “I do” to someone else.’

‘He turned you into the other woman?’ Bella asked, outraged.

‘Too right he did.’

‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ Sienna asked, shaking her head in disgust.

‘He’s an artist too. All about creating the feels in people… Chase Miller can give you “the feels” alright. The kind you want F all to do with.’

Chase Miller. Bella blinked in surprise. She’d seen one of his paintings only last month in Paris. She remembered it immediately. A huge, sprawling canvas that had stopped her in her tracks. How could such incredible talent be wasted on a man who would do such a thing? ‘What is wrong with these men?’ Bella demanded. ‘Doesn’t marriage mean anything any more?’

‘I don’t think men get the concept of commitment,’ Sienna mused. ‘Even the ones who seem to are just faking it.’

Bella leaned in, her heart going out to the sadness she felt from Sienna. ‘What happened?’

‘My ex kind ofdiscardedme. It wasn’t like some big, dramatic break up. I didn’t even get the chance to throw plates. I mean, we were just kids, but we were each other’s firsts, you know.’ They all nodded in understanding. ‘And I thought we were going to have a life together, but he hightailed it out of town without a backward glance.’

Just like Olly had done to her. Bella reached across to squeeze Sienna’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s terrible.’

While the girls talked about beheading deserving men, Bella wondered whether perhaps life was better off without men altogether.

‘My ex posted naked pictures and video of me online. He’d taken them without my knowledge or consent.’

Bella’s head snapped up, Paige’s words igniting a phosphorus flare deep inside her.

‘Revenge porn?’ hissed Sienna in disgust.

‘I’ve never felt sodegraded.’ Paige’s gaze dropped to the table, and the anger that Bella had kept at bay for months, morphed into a physical thing: a living, breathing monster that demanded payment for the hurt inflicted on Paige.

‘I met Harvey at Oxford. He was studying IT and I was a third-year law student. No prestigious law firm was going to take me on after that. Hell, not even a terrible law firm would. And I couldn’t bear staying on at Oxford, where everyone had seen the pictures. So I’ – Paige shrugged – ‘dropped out.’

Bella’s heart thumped painfully. Olly might have hurt her, but nothing,nothing, compared to the violation that Harvey had done to Paige. It was clear from the painful blush on Paige’s freckled cheeks how much she struggled with it.

Bella clenched her hands into fists. ‘What abastard.’

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