by T. S. Ryder
He took a box out of his pocket and slid down to the ground to get on one knee.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. You’re supposed to be freaked out and break up with me and run off.”
“To be fair, you tried to break up with me. But I don’t see any reason to end what we have. We’re great together, don’t you see that? And we can make a great family. Marry me. Let’s make it work.”
“I—I—I’m not sure.”
He let out a hard breath. “Normally, that response would have crushed me, but I guess given the circumstances, it’s to be expected. We’ve only been dating, what? Three months? It’s not like we’ve said ‘I love you’ or anything. But Ella, I want you to be mine. If you need to think about it, fine. But know that I’ll do whatever it takes to make you mine.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll marry me?”
“I meant okay that you’ll do whatever it takes. Can I think about it for a little while? I really thought you would freak out and disappear. All my plans were just me and the baby, so I need to get my head around this.”
“I understand.” He set the box down. “I’ll give you whatever time you need. I’ll leave the ring in case you decide to say yes. Call me tomorrow? Just to talk? You don’t have to give me an answer tomorrow.”
Chapter Seven
Charlotte arrived at Ella’s house shortly after Jesse left. She flopped down on the couch and demanded, “Tell me everything!”
“Well.” Ella took a deep breath and resumed the pacing she’d been doing. “I told him I was pregnant. He left for a little while, then he came back and brought those.” She pointed to the flowers and ring box, which were still sitting on the coffee table.
Charlotte’s face fell into horrified shock. She reached for the box and slowly opened the lid. “He proposed?”
Ella nodded.
“What?” Charlotte was on her feet, fuming. “That’s not what was supposed to happen! He wasn’t supposed to propose to you! This is a disaster!” She flopped back down, her head now in her hands.
“I know. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, there’s only one thing you can do. Turn him down and go through with the rest of the plan. If you refuse to marry him, and then keep his baby from him, it’ll still shatter him. And don’t forget, we have the video of him shifting to use as blackmail.”
“Oh, right. The video.” She’d almost forgotten about it.
“I just can’t believe he proposed. You must have done a great job of tricking him. You made him fall for the fake version of you.”
“Or maybe he just fell for me.”
“The version of you that you pretended to be, you mean.”
Ella glared, the accusation stinging. “I was pretty much myself. I didn’t pretend to be someone else.”
“But you looked different when you were with him.”
“So?”
“So, that makes a difference.”
“You know what, Charlotte, I think you should just go. I need to rest. This has all been too much.”
“Oh, stop it, Ella. You’re not actually pregnant, don’t pull that crap with me.”
Ella shook her head. “You haven’t once stopped to think about what all this was doing to me.”
“To you? What about me? I’m the one who had her heart broken!”
“You’re not the only one.”
Charlotte laughed. “You can’t possibly be upset over losing him. He was never really yours.”
“Yes, he was! He is!” Ella’s hands balled in anger. “Stop this. He fell for me. He proposed to me. You’re just jealous.”
“How dare you.” Charlotte got to her feet and snatched her keys from the table. “If he knew the real you, or saw the real you, he would be gone in a second.”
Charlotte spun on her heels and stormed to the front door, slamming it behind her. Ella had a good cry, then went upstairs to take a long bath. She had too many decisions to make and all she wanted to do now was go to bed early and not think about any of this. She didn’t know what to do. About Charlotte, about Jesse, about anything.
She had decided on one thing only. She opened her phone and deleted all the photos and the video of Jesse shifting. There could be no evidence of it. She would not do that to him. She’d already done enough to hurt him. She felt so bad about all of it, and that meant there was really only one solution. She had to tell him everything. And she would. Tomorrow. After she’d slept and could string together an intelligent sentence.
She got into her pajamas and lay down. It was far earlier than her usual bedtime, but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep. But after about half an hour, before she could fall asleep, someone pounded on the door.
Ella pulled back the covers and padded downstairs. It was probably Charlotte coming back to yell at her some more. She pulled open the door and came face to face with a furious Jesse.
“Is it true?” he shouted.
When she saw him, she burst into tears. “Jesse, I—You—We—” She couldn’t get a whole sentence out. She put her face in her hands and shuttered with sobs.
His face softened as he watched her cry. “Okay, let’s sit down and talk.”
He put his hand on her back and led her into the living room to sit. While she focused on trying to breathe, he got her a glass of water and brought it to her. She gulped it down and thought maybe she could talk now.
“I have to start at the beginning,” she said. She sniffled a few more times, then began. “It started with Charlotte calling me, crying, after you broke up. She was so heartbroken, I wanted to do anything to make it better. That’s what you do for your best friend. And so, when she said she wanted to get revenge on you for being such an asshole, it made sense. All I knew of you was what she told me, and she had nothing good to say. I thought I was getting back at a player, at some jerk who just uses women, not someone like you. But when I met you and got to know you, you didn’t seem anything like how she’d described you, and I started to have real feelings for you. That’s the reason I slept with you, even if there was another planned reason. She wanted to blackmail you for money and break your heart like you broke hers. And as her friend, I wanted to do anything I could to help her. But I’m so sorry I did it. I never should have agreed to it.”
“Wait a minute. Why did Charlotte say we broke up? And how long have you known her? I didn’t know you were friends.”
“We’ve been best friends for ten years. She said you had commitment issues and wanted to sleep around, but didn’t tell her that’s why you’d dumped her.”
He shook his head and pressed his lips together. “I broke up with her because she was the one who wanted to sleep around. And because she did.”
Ella gasped. “What?”
“She slept with two other guys while she was with me.”
“How convenient that she left that detail out.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“I was going to tell you, I swear. I was just so tired after dealing with everything, I wanted to get some sleep, then talk to you tomorrow.”
“I believe you,” he said.
“You have no reason to. I’ve been doing nothing but lying to you from the start.”
“I think it has to do with the way Charlotte burst through my gate and started screaming at me that you were lying and tricking me. It was pretty clear she wanted to turn me against you. And I’m not going to believe anything Charlotte says. She’s a liar and a cheat. And, apparently, not a very good friend. You’re not really a dog walker, are you?”
“I am. I get paid to walk dogs. Well, dog. Yours. You pay me to walk your dog, so that makes me a professional dog walker. But Murphy is the first dog I ever walked.”
He chuckled. “I should have known by the way you had trouble getting him to listen to you. Dogs need to be commanded, not pleaded with.”
She shrugged. “We seem to get along okay now.”
“What else about you isn’t true? How much did you make up?” There was a slight edge in his voice. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“I know.” She gave him a sad look. “The dog walking thing wasn’t true. And the pregnancy thing. When I was with you, though, that was me. I was being myself. I wouldn’t know how to hide that much of me. But there is one other thing.” She took a deep breath. “I can tell you this because you’re a dragon shifter. I’m a witch.”
He sucked in a breath. “Really?”
She nodded and got to her feet to stand in front of him. “It was going to be easy for me to fake a pregnancy because I have magic. Amongst other spells, I can change my appearance.” She closed her eyes and dropped her glamor. She looked down and saw all her curves and her voluptuous bosom. The skinny thing had been nice while it lasted. But this was the real her and it felt so good to finally look like herself and be herself.
He stared at her, blinking like he was waiting for something. “So, what do you really look like?”
She pulled her eyebrows together. “This is it. I just dropped my glamor.”
“You look the same as ever.”
“What do you mean? I’m not skinny.”
He scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Umm, you’ve never been super skinny. But that’s okay. I mean, I’ve always thought you were very beautiful.”
“But…” She pulled her eyebrows together in confusion. “Hang on.” She put up her pregnant glamor and rested her hand on her bulging belly. “Do I look pregnant?”
He shook his head and raised an eyebrow at her. “No.”
She changed her hair to be bright pink. “What color is my hair?”
“The same dark brown it’s always been. But you know, being a dragon shifter means magic works differently on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t be affected by magic without my will aligning with it.”
“Huh?” She sat back down, her mind whirling.
“Dragons use magic, too, even if not in the same way witches do. Someone can’t cast a spell on me against my will. I have to be in agreement with it in order for it to work.”
Her jaw hung open. “So, that means any spell I try to cast on you without your knowledge won’t work?”
“Right.”
“So you can’t see my glamor at all.”
“No.”
“But then…”
He raised an eyebrow. “I like the way you look. The way you really look.”
She couldn’t wrap her head around this. It was one thing that he couldn’t see the skinny version of her. That was enough for her to comprehend. He liked her as she really was. But that also meant that none of her other spells had worked on him, either.
“My glamor wasn’t the only spell I cast on you.”
“It wasn’t?”
Tears formed in her eyes again and the thing she’d been feeling, the thing she wanted to tell him, welled up inside her. She held it back, though. The time wasn’t right just yet.
“I cast a spell to heighten your feelings. I’ve been using it on you to make you have feelings for me.”
“But those sorts of spells don’t work on me.”
“Right. So that means…”
“That my feelings for you are real.”
She blinked at him. “But that can’t be right.”
He laughed. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t really have feelings for me like that. Or well, I guess I should say feelings that you had. After all of this, I don’t blame you if you never want to see me again.”
He pressed his fingertips together and took a long time to answer. “My feelings for you are strong. Stronger than I’ve ever felt for anyone. I really liked Charlotte, and I’ve really liked a lot of the women I’ve dated, but they’ve all been sort of like Charlotte, interested in money and games. But you’re not like that. Or at least, I thought you weren’t until—”
“I’m not, Jesse. I’m really not. I was just trying to make my best friend feel better. Or ex-best friend. I don’t think I can be friends with her anymore. She’s been horrible to us both. I hated lying and tricking you. I wanted to stop. I wanted to tell you the truth. But then I would talk to Charlotte and she would be so upset, and I wanted to make it better. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” She gave him a pleading look as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I know. And I’ve been trying to reconcile that in my mind and decide if I can trust you or not.”
“I understand. I’ve given you no reason to.”
“It’s kind of weird that you tried to lie to me and trick me into liking you when I did anyway, without the magic.”
“I find that hard to believe myself.”
“But it’s true. And the other thing is, when you told me you were pregnant and I left for a little while, I just kept picturing you with our baby and what that life might be like. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that’s what I wanted. That you were what I wanted.” He reached over and took her hands. “Ella, I love you.”
Chapter Eight
“What? You can’t love me. That’s not possible.”
“What do you mean? Why would that be impossible?”
“You’re so out of my league, Jesse. You’re rich and gorgeous, and I’m not. Men like you marry women like Charlotte, women who look and act like they fit. Not women like me who are perfectly comfortable in jeans and sneakers, walking the dog.”
“Don’t you get it? That’s what I love about you. And knowing that you’re a witch, it makes complete sense. You’re not focused on all that material stuff. I’m a dragon shifter. Don’t you think that maybe that means I’m more interested in the things you’re interested in? In enjoying nature and animals and just living a good life? I got lucky. I created a company that took off in a huge way and made me crazy rich. But I never started it to get rich. That was never my goal. Being with you is a relief. I don’t have to act all high society and fancy. I can be myself. And more than anything, that’s what’s different about being with you. You’re fun and energetic. You don’t let dumb things bother you. Like being covered in mud after my dog rolled in a puddle.” He paused to laugh. “I may have fallen for you that day, honestly. You weren’t upset that you were covered in mud. You were upset because you thought that I was going to be mad that Murphy was messy. That said a lot about you. And you’re the first woman I’ve been with who didn’t want me to buy her clothing and jewelry and other expensive things. You fight me just paying for dinner.”
“I think I felt guilty about the whole tricking you thing.” Ella hung her head.
“And you should. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. My trust in you has been shaken. But I really want to have a family. And I want it with you. I love you, and I forgive you. Just promise you won’t lie to me or trick me again.”
“I promise,” she said fervently. “And I’ll never let Charlotte talk me into things again.”
“I’m so disappointed in her. I did really like her. She hurt me, you know? I thought I treated her well. I thought we had a good thing going. But then to find out she cheated on me, with more than one man, it made me hesitant to trust at all. And now this. I’m not surprised that she’s behind it.”
Ella reached out and took his hands, squeezing them in hers. “I’m sorry she hurt you. And I’m so sorry that I did. There is one more thing I need to tell you, though.”
He took in a deep breath and gave her a wary look. “What?”
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, and I guess now is as good as any.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve never told anyone this, though.”
He squeezed her hands back. “What is it?”
“I’m in love with you, too.”
His mouth pulled into a half smile. He leaned forward and kissed her. “That was the best thing you could have told me.”
“So now what? Where does this leave us?”
“I gues
s we just go back to being together and being happy. And leave Charlotte out of it.”
“I like that idea. The last part especially.”
“About that…” He gave her a pained look. “I would never tell you who to be friends with or who not to be friends with, but after all she’s done, I really can’t have Charlotte in my life in any way.”
“After all she’s done to me, I don’t want her in my life, either.”
“But you’ve been best friends for a long time.”
Tears returned to her eyes. She thought of their long friendship, of all the ways Charlotte had changed over the years and become the bitter, selfish person she was now. She’d stayed with her friend out of loyalty, but Charlotte had given her nothing in return. There was no real friendship there. There was only Charlotte using Ella like she used everyone else in her life. It wouldn’t be easy to say goodbye after so many years, but it was time. If she was being honest, it had been time years ago, but until recently, Ella had always been on Charlotte’s side in her games. Now that things had turned, she didn’t think she could ever go back to being Charlotte’s friend. And if she was going to be with Jesse, Charlotte would likely never forgive her anyway.
“We were friends for a long time, but she hurt me really badly, too. And she hurt the man I love. I’m not saying I’ll never forgive her, but I don’t need to have her in my life.”
He nodded. “She’s done a lot of damage to us both.”
“But she can’t hurt us now.” Ella scooted closer to him. She wanted to kiss him but wasn’t sure if she should.
He put his hand on her cheek and smiled thinly. “Here’s to starting over?”
“Yes. Starting over.” She pressed against his hand and closed her eyes.
His lips were on hers the next moment. Warmth spread through her. Now that she knew he really loved her, and his feelings weren’t just from her spell casting, and now that she’d admitted that she loved him, and now that all the lies were out, she felt a new freedom. He loved her, curves and all. He loved every part of her. That freedom and that feeling of loving and being loved melted her from the inside out.