AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh no.”Tessa squeezed Ellie’s arm.“Is she okay?”
“Are you okay?”Crystal asked.
“We’re both fine.”Ellie’s voice shook.Well, maybe she wasn’t as fine as she’d like to think.“I just needed to talk this out with someone, and I don’t have many friends.”
“You do now.”Sierra looked around the table.
“Thank you.”It was true.While Ellie had grown up close to Pleasant Valley, she didn’t have many friends in town, and those from her younger days had drifted away after she moved here.Not that she regretted it.Nope.
“So the ex came in…” Crystal prompted.
Ellie told them what happened, leaving nothing out, including that Logan was one of the responding officers, and how he’d stayed after her client left to help clean up before he got called away.
“Why do I think there’s more to this story?”Tessa commented.
Ellie blew out a breath.“My ex abused me.”The words came out without conscious effort.
“Fucker,” Sierra said.
Ellie blinked.She hadn’t heard Sierra swear before, at least not like that.
Crystal and Tessa laughed.“You should see your face,” Tessa said.
“I bet.”Ellie laughed.
“Do you want to talk about it?”Crystal asked.
“I think I do.I need this for myself, but also because I want to tell someone.”She’d kept this bottled up for way too long.“I was eighteen and too young to know what I wanted in life.”
“You must have loved him,” Tessa said.
“Maybe.I’m not so sure I was ever in love with Gary.I think I was in love with the idea of having a place and someone to call mine.”God, she sounded pathetic.
The women nodded.“Bad home life?”Crystal asked.
“Not really.Well, it wasn’t exactly stable.My parents were on the third marriage each, and…” Ellie swallowed.Even after all this time, it was still hard to talk about her brother.“My brother had just died.”
“Oh, Ellie.”Instantly, she was swamped with warmth from these women.Her friends.Ellie blinked away her tears.
“Tommy was ten years older than me, but he was the best big brother.”The memory of his dark wavy hair and blue eyes made her smile.“My parents seemed to move on after his death, but I was already floundering from being shuttled between them.”Ellie took a deep breath.“He was a police officer.”
“You said he died… Oh shit,” Crystal said.
“While he didn’t die on duty, he was shot while trying to stop a robbery at a convenience store he happened to be in.”Ellie blinked, trying to stop the tears.
“That’s horrible,” Sierra said.
“Logan is a police officer,” Tessa said softly.
“He is, and I had to think long and hard about that.However, he’s just my mentor,” Ellie said.She was bluffing, because she already knew she wanted more.
“Are you sure?I saw that scene Thursday night,” Crystal said.
“That’s all it can be.I can’t fall for a cop.I can’t.”Keep telling yourself that.The truth was, she was already.There was something about Logan’s protectiveness she liked.But it was more than that.Logan had found the hidden piece of her and brought it out in a way that no other man had, and he was patient and caring.
“We all think things can’t go any further than the club,” Sierra said, then glanced up as their food arrived.The women fell silent as they ate.
“How long were you married?”Sierra asked after a few minutes.
