Page 32 of Broken Saint
“Stop being a pussy, Rogers. Let’s fucking go.”
Movement over by the doors we just left catches my eyes, and the second I look up, I find Sawyer watching me.
My teeth grind as I remember them together all those years ago, only his face morphs into the image I’ve created in my head of what her soon-to-be husband might look like.
Yeah, fuck making it easy for him. If he wants her, if he’s good enough for her, then he’ll have to endure me and all the things I could tell him about his not-so-sweet future wife.
Fuck. My cock swells as I finally allow memories of my time with my little bombshell to flicker through my mind.
Hell, yeah. I need to see her again. And from the glimpse I got of her in the crowd earlier, it seems she’s just as mouthwatering as she was back in the day. No, that’s bullshit. She’s fucking better. She’s no longer a college girl. She’s a woman, and I can only imagine how breathing-taking Ella the woman will be.
Ispend the whole drive to Kane’s house lost in thoughts of Ella and me in college.
I was an asshole back then. Hell, I’m still an asshole now, but I’m a little more self-aware.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t warn Ella that there could never be anything between us, but like most of the girls in college, that didn’t bother her. She was happy for a night rolling around in bed with me. In my head, that’s all I thought it would be. Satisfy my curiosity, have a taste, and then be on my way. It’s how itwas with all the others. I never could have expected the two of us to keep finding each other. She was a habit I had a real issue trying to quit. And even though I knew she’d fallen deeper than I wanted her to, I still couldn’t stop. But I told myself that I never promised her a tomorrow or a forever, and she assured me that she understood despite the little heart eye emojis I could practically see in her eyes every time she looked at me.
Jesus, I really was an asshole.
It isn’t until I pull up behind Luc’s car that the doubt begins slamming into me again.
And as if he knows, Luc doesn’t go straight for the front door like Kane does. Instead, he lingers, waiting for me.
“You’re overthinking this,” he tells me the second I kill the engine, and he pulls the door open.
“Am I?”
“It’s Ella. She knows you as well as the rest of us. If she didn’t want to see you, she wouldn’t be here.”
“Did you know I fucked her the day she graduated?” I blurt, climbing from my car and standing in front of him.
He combs his fingers through his hair. “Uh…”
“Yeah, I dragged her away from her family and friends and took her where I shouldn’t because I was a selfish jerk, and I couldn’t stop myself. And because she’s Ella, she let me.”
“She’s not weak. If she didn’t want it, she’d have told you so.”
I shake my head. If I were anyone else then yeah, she probably would have said no. But she was powerless with me.
“Then I told her we were done. That she needs to start a new chapter in her life and put me behind her.”
“Ouch.”
I rub the back of my neck as shame burns through me.
“Her eyes were full of tears and her bottom lip was trembling as I walked away.” I hang my head. “I didn’t even look back when I heard her first sob.”
Luc’s jaw ticks as he stares at me.
Ella’s his friend too, and I half expect him to risk his right arm by taking a swing at me for that confession.
“You’re right; you are an asshole.”
His words press down on my shoulders, making them sag.
“Do you know what happened when she left that ceremony?”
I shake my head, feeling like the world’s most selfish bastard for how I treated her.