Chasing Ella (Love Ever After 1)

Clarissa throws her hands onto her hips, acting as if this conversation is beneath her, but she humors her daughters. “What was it?”

“A charm necklace. I didn’t see it, only heard about it. Apparently, Finch chased after the girl with a Cinderella complex. She ran from the house and left behind her metaphorical glass slipper. Now, he’s determined to find this girl.”

My heart sinks into my chest when I reach up to finger the necklace my father had given me and come up with only half of the heart charm. Losing the only thing I have left from my dad was not part of the plan. While I’m glad it ended up with Finch and not some random person, I cannot confess. It would be social suicide as if I’m not already enough of an outcast because of my stepsisters.

How can I get the necklace back without exposing myself to Finch? I don’t see any way around it, but I’m also not about to let him keep my most prized possession.

Clarissa snorts at Natasha and tips her nose to the ceiling. “He sounds like a fool if you ask me. I’m going to bed, girls.” She holds her hand up to her mouth and yawns and then turns to me. “I’d like pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Make sure you have everything prepared by the time I wake.”

“And fresh squeezed orange juice,” Anastasia adds. “I don’t like that bottled crap you served me last time.”

They take my silence as acceptance, and the three of them walk away without giving me as much as a second thought.

I wish I had a choice, but I never had much of one. My options were limited to the local homeless shelter or here. I checked the shelter before I committed to this life, and even they didn’t have a bed for me to sleep. My father’s marriage to my mother had gotten him excommunicated from his family. Everyone thought my mom was a gold digger because she had no money and no real skills to offer an accomplished man like my dad.

My grandmother more than disapproved of their union. Because of that, I never met anyone on his side of the family, and my mom didn’t have much of one. She was an only child, and her parents died when I was younger. I met a few relatives when I was a child but none that I could contact after my father’s death. This is my life, whether I like it or not.

I have less than one hundred days now that the clock has struck midnight and another day is upon us. I’m one day closer to getting the fuck out of here. If that means serving these trolls their food for a few more months and washing their clothes, then I can deal with it a little while longer. At least I have the memories I made tonight with Finch to get me through the days.

Shawn

Weird things are happening to me.

Lately, my fraternity brothers have used a few choice words to describe my erratic behavior. And they’re right. Desperate—a feeling I had never experienced until my Cinderella ran down the alley behind my house last week. Pathetic—what I look like right now, as I walk through campus, asking strangers for help and hoping that I don’t sound like a total loser. I sure as hell feel like one. Delusional—what I must be to seek her out as if I have any shot at finding her.

“Have you seen this girl?” I show a lanky boy with dark hair a picture of the masked girl.

He shakes his head and walks away.

Yup, I look like a total loser.

I repeat this process at least a dozen times before I swear people are dodging me as they pass. It also looks like I’m trying to find someone who’s legitimately lost—as in her face could be on a milk carton—when it’s not that serious. But I need to find her.

I lucked out by finding the heart charm on the ground. But my luck didn’t stop there. When the girl had walked into the house, a few people snapped her picture with their cell phones. She’s the kind of girl you want to photograph. A girl like that turns heads, even in a crowded room. Having the pleasure of kissing her, and then devouring her delicious body with my tongue was a bonus. I’d kill for one more second with her.

I haven’t been able to get her out of my head in over a week. That has never happened to me. With so many girls coming and going from my house, it’s not often that anyone, in particular, catches my eye. But she did. She has crept under my skin and made me feel something I’ve never felt before for a woman.

This compulsion forces me to search for the woman of my dreams and chase after her, even though she probably doesn’t want to be found. We had a deal—no names. She wanted it to be this way for a reason. But the connection we shared was so intense that I have craved it from the moment she’d walked away. I have to see her again. I need her back.

Scanning every face in the crowd, I study the curves of each girl and appraise their delicate features, all with one goal in mind—find my mystery girl. But, as each day passes, certain details are less clear, as if she were a drunken memory or an all too real dream I cannot shake. She was real. I wasn’t that drunk. In fact, I wasn’t drunk at all.

After Law and Ethics class, I meet up with my fraternity brothers. We share the same class, but they sit in the back of the auditorium, where I cannot see a fucking thing to take notes. Unlike my roommates, my grades in this class are shit. I’m not even sure why I chose law as a major. I was undecided until the second semester of freshman year. But I was not the same Shawn Finch everyone knows now. Nope, back then, I was still growi

ng into some of my weight and had no clue how to talk to girls.

Joining a fraternity came in handy. I learned a lot from Luca, Mark, and Hunter. Those guys could sweet talk a girl in a white dress into eating a ketchup popsicle. Bash and Clay are the same as my fraternity brothers. Scoring girls was never a problem for them either. Between football and fraternity life, my life was and still is good. But my lack of experience had made me awkward, to say the least.

I chose Law as a major because of a hot girl. Without thinking it through, I was like why the fuck not? She’s the reason I barely made it through my final years. I should have switched to business or something more practical.

Mark, Luca, and Hunter wait for me outside by the picnic tables. As always, Mark has his usual smirk plastered across his face, looking like the fucking Joker. We have been roommates long enough for me to know what he thinks before he speaks.

“What did you get on the test?” Mark asks, taking a seat on top of the table. He plants his sneakers on the wooden bench and leans forward.

I glance away from him, annoyed that he’s doing this in front of Luca and Hunter. He loves to embarrass me.

“Nothing good,” I spit back, pissed about the D I got on the test.

“Hmm…” Mark murmurs and doesn’t say another word. He’s such a dick sometimes that I want to knock him off the table.