He replied with a single bob of his head.
“I don’t remember you ever mentioning her,” Grayson said, more to himself than Maverick. “Don’t think you ever went out on a date with her.” He looked over his shoulder, toward Ella. “To be honest, I don’t remember her at all. I know she had asister, Martha, who was in the grade ahead of me. I knew her better, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. She wasn’t overly friendly withanyone, and she always sort of gave off holier-than-thou vibes. Was Ella the same? Was she bitchy back in school? Because if so, I think she’s changed. She was very friendly and nice just now, and it’s obvious Edith thinks she’s awesome.”
Maverick shook his head. “She wasn’t a bitch.”
Grayson put his sandwich down and leaned back, crossing his arms. “Going to make me work for an answer, or do you just want to spit it out?”
Maverick tossed the last half of his sandwich down as well, his appetite gone. He wiped his fingers off, then took a sip of water. He wasn’t purposely drawing this out to annoy his brother. He simply wasn’t sure where to start or how much to say. In truth, unbeknownst to Grayson, he knew more about Maverick’s relationship than anyone else in the world. Though that wasn’t saying much.
Maverick wasn’t even sure why the hell he was keeping his past with Ella a secret anyway. At the time, it had been because of her dad. And after she left, it had been too painful to talk about.
Nowadays?
Nowadays, there was absolutely nothing holding him back.
“Remember me telling you once that I had my heart broken for the first time just before senior year?”
Grayson nodded. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t tell me who it was. Said it didn’t matter.”
Maverick and Grayson had been chilling late one afternoon a few years earlier, and they’d fallen into a bottle of their newest wine. Grayson admitted he’d never been in love, and he’d thought it had been the same for Maverick, since he’dnever dated anyone, never brought a woman home to meet their mother, never slept with any woman more than once.
Grayson had been shocked when Maverick corrected him and said hehadbeen in love once, and the girl dumped him.
He watched as the light went on, and Grayson looked back over his shoulder at Ella once more. “Ella Decker?”
Maverick nodded. “We dated in secret from January of our junior year until the end of that summer. It was the best eight months of my life…followed by too many of the absolute worst.”
Grayson didn’t reply to that at first, clearly letting those words sink in. His brother was a thinker, the type to measure each word. While Maverick and Theo and Jace tended to be the impulsive ones, Grayson, like their older brothers Sam and Levi, acted rather than reacted.
“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” Grayson said quietly after a moment. “Why did you date in secret?”
Maverick explained that Ella’s dad was strict, refusing to allow the girls to date before they were eighteen. “She said several times that he was pretty devout, so maybe it had something to do with their religion. They went to that fundamentalist church over in Laurel Valley.”
Grayson whistled low. “That church has some pretty strong views about…well, everything. No alcohol or movies or dancing. Seem to remember a rumor about them trying to start their own school a few years ago because public education was a one-way street to Hell.”
“That’s the church.”
“Poor Ella.”
Maverick couldn’t help but nod because, despite everything that had gone down between them, he agreed that her childhood couldn’t have been easy. While she hadn’t talked about her family life much, he could tell there wasn’t much happiness or joy in her home.
“So what happened between you?” Grayson asked.
“She dumped me. With a Dear John letter.” Maverick wasn’t proud of it, but he still had that letter. He’d considered ripping it up, burning it, throwing it away countless times in the months following her departure from Gracemont, but for some stupid reason, he couldn’t do it. Instead, he’d tucked it between the pages of one of the few books he owned.
Despite Ella and Mrs. Crites’s efforts, Maverick had never succumbed to their good literary influence, which meant he could count the number of books he’d willingly read—not assigned works—on one hand. Unless it was to view a sporting event or a movie, he rarely sat still more than an hour at a time.
“Why did she break up with you?”
It occurred to Maverick this was one of the main reasons he’d never talked to his brothers about his relationship with Ella, or the subsequent heartbreak. Because he’d felt…
God, he felt guilty and even sick to his stomach when he recalled her words.
Maverick ran a hand through his hair, then leaned closer, his voice quieter. “We lost our virginity to each other,” he confessed. “And the sex…” Maverick shook his head. “I’ve slept with my fair share of women.”
Grayson scoffed.
“Being with Ella…it was the best sex of my life.”
