Page 70 of Defying Ella
“This is on me, guys. I let him in when I knew better.” I squeezed Mel’s hand. My gaze travelled across all of their anguished and angry faces. “Nothing you could have done would have stopped this, so please don’t blame yourselves.”
Nia didn’t look convinced, but she nodded before following in Alys’s wake.
I turned to Sophie and Mel, determined to better channel an unaffected air. Maybe then they’d calm down enough to stand being in the same room as Jared without stabbing him with a passing object. The last thing I wanted was to put a strain on their relationship with their other halves or siblings.
“Honestly, I’m fine. It’s a shock but I’ll get over it, okay?” Neither answered me. “I’m just going to get school sorted and find a new job until it starts.”
“School?” Mel asked.
Her face creased with confusion, an expression matched by all the girls.
Had I not told any of them?
“I figured out what I want to do with my life, while I was locked in with him.”
“That’s amazing,” Nia shouted before diving in for a hug.
“So something good did come out of it?” Mel smiled and for a second all her concern for me faded from her expression.
“Yeah, seems so,” I said when Nia released me. “I’ve decided I want to teach primary school. At least for the next ten years or so, anyway. I’ve applied for courses, just waiting for interviews now.”
“I bet you’re relieved,” Alys said.
“Definitely.”
“And what about Jared?” Mel asked, those lines of concern forming again.
“What about him?”
“It’s just done?”
“There was nothing there to begin with.” All of the joy I’d felt talking about my new plans faded and the numbness eclipsed it.
“You spent a week with him,” she muttered, disbelief rising her voice, “sounded genuinely happy on the phone at points, and it’s just done?”
I shrugged, forcing the nonchalance back. “I’m not like Jared, okay? I don’t fear my future, so let me focus on the one thing he can’t taint.”
Sophie frowned while Nia and Alys nodded. “Does it all seem a little too well-timed to you guys?”
I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“The second you escape he hits on the first person he can find. No taking a moment to be relieved that you got out—his first thought is to hit on a stranger?”
“It’s Jared. It’s what he does.” I shrugged.
So what if I’d believed for all of ten seconds that he lied. I didn’t need to lose myself to wishful thinking.
“Yeah, but that fast? That’s not normal, right?” Sophie pushed.
My instincts begged me to snap at her to stop, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t do that to her. She wanted to help. So what if they weren’t words I ever wanted to hear?
“Thank you for trying to make it better,” I said, my tone carefully natural. “But he meant every word, Soph, I’m sure of it.”
“I don’t know what to do to help you,” Mel whispered. Moisture glistened in her eyes, threatening to throw me over the emotional cliffs. “Nothing we say is going to make you feel better, and we can’t even barricade him from our lives.”
“It’s okay. Seriously, I’m fine. He’s a manwhore.” I forced my strong-willed bravado to take over, bolstering the lie. Itdidn’t quite work but it was better than outright heartbreak. “I knew better, and I got burned.”
Their brows knitted together. Sophie slipped off the sofa arm until she landed at my side, concern written plain across their faces.
