Page 23 of The Heartbreak Hotel

Ella’s gaze fixed on their perfect smiles, and tears pricked her eyelids. She homed in on the gigantic, beautiful rock on Annabelle’s finger. They were engaged? Maeve and Annabelle…engaged? Her mind couldn’t comprehend it, but there it was, right in front of her, in perfect filtered pixels.

A surge of emotion overpowered her, and she let out a sob. This wasn’t right. Maeve wasn’t supposed to marry Annabelle. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She brushed stray tears across the back of her hand, reading through the comments with blurry eyes. All the congratulations from her old coworkers, Maeve’s dickhead dad, Maeve’s friends that Ella had once considered her own friends too.

Truly, worst holiday ever.

She was never going to be good enough, no matter what she did.

She leaned back, letting the sadness consume her. Memories of their relationship played in front of her eyelids, the sinking feeling spreading into her chest like sludge and weighing her down, until it was all she could feel. All the words from Marco Marcos’s sheet swirled around her at once. Ella stopped squashing down the emotion and let it all out. She didn’t care anymore.

Too late to react, her phone slipped out of her hand. It clunked as it hit multiple branches on the way down, then landed on the hard ground with a smash.

“No! No, no, no!” She slammed her fist into the hard bark, instantly regretting it as pain shot up her forearm. With a heavy body, she lowered herself down to the ground, dropping clumsily onto her arse. She scrambled to her phone, pain throbbing up her back, and flipped it over. The black screen was shattered, and despite her pleas for it to work, it remained unresponsive.

How was she supposed to call Winnie? She was officially stuck here now. Permanently.

God. What a way to hit rock bottom. Arse first, falling out of a tree.

So she sat, cradling her smashed phone, and let the tears fall. She felt crushed. By all of this. Not even a bathtub of margaritas would help. And now she couldn’t even speak to Winnie about it. Another sob broke from her throat, and a shadow passed over her.

“Ellie, what’s wrong?” A tall man was approaching. She recognised him as Rick from her course. Those pale calves were bright enough to blind someone. “Are you alright?”

She sniffed, not having the energy to correct him on her name. She truly did not care. “I’m fine.” When he hovered, glancing around for some assistance, she added, with a little more bite than she intended, “Rick, please leave me alone.”

He took a step backwards. “Uh, sure.” He gave her an awkward salute and shuffled off.

Ella waited for his floppy head of hair to disappear down the hillside before groaning. She didn’t mean to be rude, but she only wanted to speak to Winnie. She always knew the right thing to say to pick her back up again.

But that wasn’t going to happen; she was on her own. And unless she wanted to follow in Pauline’s footsteps, she couldn’t just stay curled up in a ball and cry. Maeve had moved on. Ella needed to, too. She just needed to get up off the ground.

“Get it together, woman,” she muttered to herself.

With a heavy sigh, she forced her limbs to move and wiped her face, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Her mind was running in circles around her, and she pressed her palms into her eyes, overwhelmed.

“Ella?” another voice called behind her.

Ella didn’t have to turn to know it was Riley. Great. She didn’t need her adding to the mix as well. But Ella felt the woman stand next to her and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

Ella didn’t know how to respond. Truthfully, everything hurt. She didn’t know where to start.

“Ella, please. Talk to me. I’m worried.”

Ella didn’t want to open her eyes and see the sympathy no doubt showing on Riley’s face. Maybe if she squeezed her eyes tightly enough, she could rewind time and pretend none of this had happened. But she was done pretending. It didn’t get her anywhere.

“I swear everything I touch turns to shit or tries to kill me,” she started. “I was only trying to call my friend, and now…I can’t even do that. I’m just stuck here…”

Riley rubbed her back, and Ella just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Any minute chance she’d had of scoring with the beautiful blonde had officially leaped off a cliff to die forever. Just like her last pathetic attempt with Maeve.

“Come on,” Riley urged, trying to guide Ella towards her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Ella didn’t like promises. Maeve had promised her too many things that had fallen apart. Their own home. Being co-partners of Switch Studios. A whole life together. But there was something about Riley’s voice that made Ella drop her hands and open her eyes. When the kaleidoscopes focused, Riley’s steady blues looked back at her, and a cool balm spread across Ella’s chest.

Riley gave her a small smile, indicating behind her with the lift of her chin. “Come on. I have a phone you can use. You can call whoever you need to.”

Ella’s lungs heaved as an involuntary sob escaped. The idea of speaking to Winnie relieved some of the pressure in her head. “Thank you.” She sighed, her words coming out in a soft whisper.