Page 115 of A Vine Mess
“I gotta go,” I told my sisters and ended the call.
Liam and I merely stared at each other, his face stricken, mine surely red and splotchy from anger and tears.
“Wildflower,” he breathed. “What the fuck is going on?”
The moment Mellie pressedher lips to mine, I gripped her upper arms and shoved her away. I’d made it a rule my entire life to never take a rough hand with a woman, but when she refused to take no for an answer, drastic measures had to be taken.
“I told you no!” I shouted.
That was another of my rules: never raise my voice to a woman.
It seemed I was breaking all of them where Mellie was concerned. I should’ve known better than to follow her back here, to let her get me alone. I should’ve known she’d pull some shit like this.
“So you’re really happy with that…tattooed freak? You can’t be serious, William. There’s no way someone so common could be enough for you. She’s not good enough. And we were always so good together. Remember how perfect everything was? How good the sex was?”
I blinked at her slowly, then couldn’t stop myself from barking out a laugh, even though my skin was crawling at the memorythat I’d ever been inside this woman. God, I’d been such a fucking moron. And I wish I could chalk it up to being a dumb kid, but I’d spent the better part of my twenties with this person, and I’d never recognized how…rotten she was. Right to her very core.
“You know what your problem is, Mellie?” I said, removing my cufflinks and stuffing them in my pocket. Her attention remained on my forearms as I slowly rolled up one sleeve then the other, revealingmytattoos—way more than I’d ever had when we were together. I relished the way her eyes widened. “You think because you have money, you’re better than everyone else on the planet who is beneath your tax bracket.” I stepped into her space, glaring down at her. Mellie was so much shorter than Ella, I was nearly folded in half over her. “But let me tell you something,Merlot. That ‘tattooed freak,’ who also happens to be my girlfriend and the love of my life, has more money than you could ever dream of, and she’s a thousand times the woman you could ever hope to be.”
Mellie’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, searching for something to say, but I held up a hand.
“Now here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going out there to find my girl, and you’re going to stay the fuck away from us the rest of the night. Got it?”
She only nodded, and I chuckled. The woman who always had something to say was finally silent for the first time in her life, and the quiet was pure bliss.
Without a backward glance, I stalked from the room and made my way back to the reception hall, beelining for the table where Gramps sat alone.
“Where is Ella?” I asked him. Her empty margarita glass, filledwith half-melted ice, sat on the table in front of her chair. It appeared she’d been gone a while.
“She went to look for you,” Gramps said, lifting the sleeve of his shirt to check his watch. “She’s been gone maybe twenty minutes?”
“What the fuck,” I breathed, turning away from Gramps and sweeping the room, searching for purple hair and a pink dress.
But my girl was nowhere to be found.
“Do you know…did she see anything?”
“Do you mean did she see you leave with Merlot? Yes, she did.”
Fuck. Could she have found us? Had she heard the awful things Mellie was saying about her? Had she seen that kiss?
Fuck, I had to find her.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I clicked on her contact, but it went straight to voicemail.
Not a good sign.
I was frantic now, yanking at my hair as I willed myself to slow down andthink. Mom crossed my path then, and I pulled her to a stop.
“Have you seen Ella?”
“No, sweetheart. Not for a while. Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, waving her off. “Everything is fine.”
“Okay…” She definitely didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care much, tuning her out as she sat down next to Gramps and told him she was divorcing his son.
“About damn time!” Gramps cheered, and though a smile tugged at my lips, it was quickly wiped away by the panic seizing my chest.
