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“No.” I swallowed my next words as a group of people walked past us on the stairs. They shot us looks that made me cringe. They were all thinking about me and Vaughn sleeping together, about me and my stepbrother sleeping together. After they passed us, I stared down at my feet and let my panic talk for me. “This was a mistake, Vaughn. What we did… It was wrong. With your dad showing up and now this… The world is sending us plenty of hints. We can’t do this again.”
He grabbed my hand. “Ella, just-”
I pulled my hand free and shook my head. “No. It was a mistake. That’s all. I have to go.”
I turned and ran up the last of the stairs, leaving him standing there. I saw people glance my way when I charged out of the cafeteria and not knowing the reason they were looking at me made me think it was because they were all thinking about me being a disgusting person who slept with their stepbrother and cheated on her boyfriend. With a rising sense of panic I ducked my head and got out of there as fast as I could.
45
***Vaughn***
Ientered the house like a tornado, slamming open the door and banging around the kitchen with enough force to send a few of the barstools to the ground. I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer and slammed more doors open and shut as I looked for a towel to wrap around it. I wanted to break shit. I wanted to rip the cabinet doors off and build a fucking bonfire with them.
“Whoa. What’s going on, Vaughn?” Fisher stepped into the kitchen and raised his hands when I spun around to face him. “Shit, man. What happened?”
She wouldn’t cut him off. She wouldn’t tell him or Booth that they were a mistake. She would carry on with them. All because they hadn’t been a part of her family for a second in time a decade earlier. It was bullshit.
“Jesus, Vaughn. Talk to me. What’s wrong?” Fisher looked up as Booth walked in. “I don’t know what’s wrong but I don’t think I did it.”
Booth took one look at me and raised his eyebrows. “Who’d you bloody your knuckles on?”
“Billy Novak.” I spit out his name like it was actual shit. Glaring down at my bruised knuckles, I wished I’d hit him more.
“Billy? Okay, shit.” Fisher leaned against the cabinets and nodded. “I’m sure he was asking for it.”
“He had his hands all over her.” I braced myself against the island and couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to have to watch Ella continue to give herself to my best friends while I got nothing from her. I didn’t think I could do it. I would lose my mind.
“What? What are you talking about? He had his hands on Ella? Our Ella?” Fisher moved closer, his own anger flaring to life.
I laughed. “She’s not our Ella.”
Booth’s voice was quiet when he spoke again. “What do you mean, he had his hands all over her?”
I heard the worry in his voice and realized they thought I was saying something other than what I was saying. They thought I was implying it was mutual, the touching. I had every chance to correct them. I should’ve told them that she wanted nothing to do with Billy, the same way she wanted nothing to do with me. I couldn’t make my mouth form those words, though.
“Vaughn?” Fisher grabbed my shoulder and searched my face. “What happened?”
“She was with him.” I looked away, ashamed of myself and unable to face them. “I beat the shit out of him and she was pissed. She said this was a mistake.”
Fisher stepped back like I’d punched him. Booth shook his head and stared at me with disgust clear on his face. “She was with him. Where?”
“The Swamp. In front of a fuck ton of people. He was all over her.” I wanted to throw up. I could see that I was hurting my best friends but I couldn’t handle her shunning me and still being with them. I couldn’t be the one on the outside, wishing that she’d let me in. “I’m sorry.”
“She said this was a mistake?” Fisher rubbed his chest and deflated. “She said mistake?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yes.”
“I need a drink.” Booth moved past me to open the fridge. He leaned down and came up with three beers. “I thought we were getting somewhere.”
“Me too.” I downed half the beer in one drink. “I don’t want to be sober for this.”
Fisher shook his head and used his teeth to open his bottle. “I don’t want to be alone in this house tonight. Not when I thought… Never mind. It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
I finished the rest of my beer and threw the bottle in the sink, enjoying the way it shattered. “Then let’s not be alone.”
It didn’t take long for word to spread that we were throwing a party. The team showed up with a shitload of liquor and we took the challenge of drinking as much as we could before the party really even started. Booth and Fisher were drinking to deal with their feelings being hurt. I was drinking for that and for the suffocating amount of guilt I felt. I’d never done anything so selfish to my friends. Any time I thought I should tell them the truth, an image of them with Ella flashed through my head and I couldn’t do it, though.
By the time the party was in full swing, I was drunk enough that I couldn’t remember why I needed to be so drunk.
