I never had a problem with any of the boys on the team when I was a cheerleader at St. Victoria. In fact, I was on good terms with everyone, considering my boyfriend at that time was the alternate captain of the Rangers.
No one would have dared to insult or put their hands on me.
More so if they’d known that beneath my nice exterior was a cutthroat bitch who loved teaching a lesson to assholes that had the audacity to fuck with me.
The masked man sounded furious…like this was a personal vendetta.
And goddammit, that tattoo and watch caused a flurry of vexing thoughts to race through my brain.Who was that? Why would they attack me? What could inspire so much spite in them?I wanted to connect the puzzles pieces, except I was missing the entire picture.
But when I got my answers?
That masked fucker will have wished he never crossed me.
Cade grimaced as he peered out the entrance door and observed the rainy night, fragrant with the sweet-musky scent of autumn leaves. “Shit, it’s still raining.”
I was about to ask him why he stated the obvious when he surprised me by shrugging out of his leather jacket and tossing it around me, making sure it covered my head and shoulders.
My kryptonite—the smell of him—engulfed my senses. Iassociated his cologne to pure comfort and inhaling it made me feel like I was stepping through the threshold of my home.
Off-kilter, I could only gawk at him in confusion. “What are you doing?”
Cade rubbed the back of his neck, unable to meet my stare. He lifted the hood of his black sweater to cover his head. “Your hair will get wet…and you’ve always been prone to catching a cold this time of the year.”
My expression fell, hands clenching fistfuls of his leather jacket. “Cade…Just stop.”
Stop messing with my mind and my heart. I’m not strong enough for this again. You. Me. Us. I can’t do it.
He replied back, his tone ragged and desperate, “Ican’t, Ella.”
Cade
1:51 a.m.
I’d dug enough graves to last me a lifetime, and here I was…digging up another.
Mind you, this was a fake one with a Halloween prop-style tombstone. It wasn’t difficult to spot in the cemetery, when the other graves had rudimentary markers like simple cross signs with no embellishments. Most of these belonged to the children who’d died in the fire nearly a hundred years ago.
When we were still students at St. Victoria, Ella used to drag me here every now and then so we could clean the graves and leave little flowers for the deceased.
As I dug, my traitorous mind replayed her words from thebelfry and my jaw clenched. I couldn’t believe she had the effrontery to spit those words. They ripped open old wounds, pouring salt inside of them.
“I’ve got a new type…And it’s not you.”
“I like brunets withbrowneyes. Like the guy I fucked over the summer…and Josh.”
“Maybe I should have listened to my parents and dated your brother instead of wasting three years of my life on you.”
They were all lies designed to hurt me and it worked. She’d left me stunned inside the bell tower, counting my breaths to calm myself before I lost it.
The fact that she actually threw my promise ring out the window was just the cherry on top of this fucked-up cake. I wanted to snap at her, but I knew this was Ella’s way of rebelling against what shestillfelt for me. I wasn’t a delusional prick; I just knew her better than anyone in the world.
Ella’s actions were proof that she hadn’t moved on. Neither had I. And we probably never would until we talked about what happened. Even then, I knew for me…there was no moving on from her.
She was my beginning, my middle, my end.
If we were each other’s venom, then we were each other’s antidotes too.
Ella refused to acknowledge it, but the only way we’d heal was if we laid all our cards, all our feelings, all our fucking pain on the table.
