Chapter 4: The Wrong Road

Madonna's POV 

Ella Blake in full victory mode was a particular brand of poisonous. She glowed in ivory silk, a smile wide enough to swallow her face. Her two friends stood like useless brackets on either side.

“Congratulations, Ella,” I said flatly.

She tilted her head. “That’s it? No hug? No happy tears?” Her eyes swept my navy dress with open satisfaction. “You look tired, Madonna. This evening must be hard for you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Of course you are.” She stepped closer, voice dropping to a vicious whisper. “You’ve always had this habit of reaching for things that were never meant for you. It must be exhausting, always wanting what you can’t have.”

Something inside me snapped clean in half.

But I wasn't going to stay silent. And I certainly wasn't kind enough to let Ella believe she was the happiest woman in the world while she rubbed her happiness in my face like she'd won some kind of prize.

“You’ve been chasing Cal’s attention since the first year of college and he has never once looked at you. Not the way he looked at me in bed last night.

I stopped, breathed and smiled. “Congratulations on your engagement, Ella. I mean it.”

I turned to leave.

Her hand shot out and clamped my arm.

“What the fuck did you just say?” she hissed, mask shattering. “You and Cal fucked!”

Her grip tightened. I looked down at her fingers biting into my skin, then back up at her face.

“I’m going to say this once,” I said quietly. “Let. Go.”

She didn’t.

Her palm cracked across my cheek so hard my head snapped sideways. The sound sliced through the room like a gunshot. For one suspended second everything went deathly silent.

I turned slowly, eyes burning with rage.

She must have seen it in my face — she took one step back straight into the table behind her. The whole thing tipped. Glass, champagne, wine crashed sideways. Ella grabbed for the edge and missed. She went down in a shower of broken crystal and spilled liquor.

Her friends screamed immediately.

“She pushed her!”

“Did you see that? She shoved her into the table—”

“Someone call an ambulance—”

I hadn’t touched her. I was standing exactly where I’d been — one hand pressed to my burning cheek, watching Ella sit in a puddle of champagne.

Her friends descended on her, pulling her up and checking her over and shouting like something extremely terrible had happened, and that was when I felt the sting along my forearm. A piece of the glass had caught me on the way down and the blood was already running toward my wrist and dripping off my fingers onto the marble. 

My ankle burned too, and when I looked down there was a thin red line across it where another shard had sliced through my skin.

"Look what she did to her!" one of them screamed. 

"She's bleeding!"

Ella held up her hand and I could barely even see the scratch on it, but she was trembling like it had been cut off.

"It hurts so much," she whimpered. 

"Where's Cal? Somebody get Cal!"

He was already moving. His chair scraped back and he crossed the room fast, people stepping out of his way, and for one stupid second I thought he was coming for me, because his eyes landed on my arm and the blood and he stopped dead a foot away. His jaw locked and his hand lifted an inch toward me, and I swear I saw something break open in his face.

"Cal…" I said.

"Cal, please," Ella sobbed from behind him.

And he turned around.

He pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, then took her hand in both of his and checked it like it was made of glass.

"Where does it hurt?" he asked, his voice so soft I almost didn't recognize it.

"Everywhere," she cried, burying her face in his chest. 

"She pushed me, Cal, she just went crazy."

"I didn't touch her," I said. "You saw it, Cal, you were looking right at me!"

He didn't answer, and he didn't look at me either. He scooped Ella up into his arms and started for the door, and over his shoulder, she stared straight into my eyes and smiled.

It was more of a smirk than a smile, before she pressed her cheek back into his neck.

I couldn't help it, I was pathetic. My voice cracked and I said it anyway.

"I'm bleeding too."

He stopped at the doorway, his back to me, and I watched his shoulders lock up and his fingers dig into Ella's leg. The whole room waited, and I waited with it, my heart begging him to turn around, just once, just to look.

"Have someone look at it," he said, cold as ice, and walked out.

Nobody moved. A waiter stood frozen with a cloth in his hand and Ella's friend snorted behind me.

"Don't act like the victim, Madonna, it's embarrassing."

I ground my teeth so hard my jaw ached and walked out with my spine straight as a blade, leaving a trail of blood on the carpet behind me, and I didn't let myself cry until I reached the exit and disappeared into the night.