Page 49 of Fake It For Him

I was on the hook, listening to every word with rapt attention. What she’d done was very different to what I’d done, but it was no less dark, the consequences no less serious.

“Spencer had done some things in his past he wasn’t proud of, but I knew about all of it. Obviously.” Her voice broke, but she pushed through. “For example, he had a DUI that he’d had removed from his record by friends of his parents who were in law enforcement. He also had some possession charges that he managed to evade.”

Ah fuck. All at once, I realized where this was going and my hand shot out, covering hers on the table. Ella glanced at it but didn’t pull away.

“He had a job lined up at this fancy law firm. It was his dream job, and I exposed him for all his wrongdoings in the past and his affair with my friend, effectively sabotaging his career and flushing it down the toilet. The whole thing became this huge scandal that ended up bringing my friend down, too.”

My heart was positively thundering now, beating harder and faster than it had in a very long time. Now that she’d actually said the words, I was speechless.

It wasn’t something that had ever happened to me before, but she’d managed to blow me away completely. This tiny slip of a woman had ruined a man and the woman he’d had an affair with and me? I’d never been so turned on in my entire goddamn life.

26

ELLA

Calan hadn’t said a word for at least a minute, and my heart was fluttering in my chest as I wondered if I’d made a mistake by telling him all of that. It’d felt like the right thing to do after he’d been so honest with me, and I’d meant it when I said it helped a bit to have people in your life who know all your deep, dark secrets and accept you anyway, but what I hadn’t considered was that he might not accept me now.

He could even contact Della and ask her to send him someone else, in which case, I’d just ruined my own future this time. I swallowed hard, my throat burning and my whole body feeling like one big exposed nerve.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this vulnerable, but Calan still didn’t say anything. He was just staring at me, those dark eyes boring into my soul as he sat there, silent and probably wondering how the hell he was going to get rid of me as his girlfriend.

Something on the stove hissed, and I caught a whiff of the acrid scent of something burning. Calan must’ve realized it, too, because he suddenly got up so fast that his stool fell over. He rushed over to the burner and hurriedly slid the pan that had held the sauce off it.

“Fuck. I only turned down one of the burners,” he muttered before checking that they were both off now.

With that though, it seemed the trance he’d been in was broken. As he turned back me, I saw righteous fire burning in his eyes. “Spencer deserved all of that, Ella.”

“Maybe.” I swiped my tongue across my lips, too nervous and still feeling too vulnerable. “I should’ve taken the high road, though.”

“Why? Something very few people will tell you is that you don’t get anything for taking the high road. At least you got revenge.”

“Yeah, I got revenge, but it cost me my dignity, my integrity, and my family. It also left me with this sucking, hideous wound of guilt that will probably never go away.”

His eyes settled on mine. “Did you think you could outrun it? Is that why you left?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I think so. I left because my life here changed irrevocably after I did what I did, and I thought it would be better to just go and never look back, so that’s what I did. It’s also why I plan on leaving again just as soon as I can.”

Calan’s dark eyebrows hiked up. “You’re planning on leaving again? Why?”

“My life isn’t here anymore. It took Spencer a lot of time to get his back on track and now that I’m here, I’m terrified of running into him. Or his family. Or mine, for that matter. I just don’t belong here anymore.”

He frowned. “Your own family? Why would you be terrified of running into them? Surely, they were on your side in all of this.”

I shook my head. “They hate me for what I did. According to my mom and dad, I should’ve forgiven him and moved on.”

“What?” The word fell out of him like a shot. “They wanted you to take him back?”

I gave him a sad smile. “You have to understand how much they love him. I mean, fine, they love me too, but they said that I had to understand that he just made a mistake. He grew up in front of them. They said that they knew his heart and that it belonged to me, and that I couldn’t blame him for one slip-up.”

“But it wasn’t one slip-up,” he said, eyebrows tugged together and his mouth all twisted and angry on my behalf. “It was an affair.”

“Exactly. At first, I did try to look past it, but I just couldn’t. I knew our families would be devastated, but I broke up with him and then I had to get even too. I couldn’t just leave it be.”

Calan shoved a hand through his hair, shaking his head. He scoffed back a laugh. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know how they could’ve expected you to just move on like it never happened. They should’ve had your back.”

I sighed. “It gets worse, though.”

“It does?”