“Ella?” the voice asked.
“Ella Warner,” I clarified. “Mr. and Mrs. Warner’s daughter.”
There was silence at the other end of the intercom. I waited, wondering what I should do if the voice didn’t come back.
Finally, I heard a female voice, “Can I help you?”
“Hi. I’m a friend of Ella’s. I wanted to know if she was here.”
“How do you know Ella?” the female voice asked.
“Are you Mrs. Warner?” I replied.
“Oh, no,” the voice said. “I’m the house manager.”
I decided to take a chance. “Ella’s my girlfriend,” I admitted.
Another silence. “I wasn’t aware that Ella was in a relationship.”
“My name is Lucas Young. I went to college with Evan Warner. He gave me his parents’ address.”
“You’re a friend of Evan’s?” the voice sounded a little less guarded when I mentioned Evan. Even though Evan and I were never friends, and I never said we were, I decided it was in my best interest not to clear up the misperception.
“I met Ella at Aaron Donovan’s wedding,” I added. I had a feeling throwing Aaron’s name in there couldn’t hurt.
And I was right. A buzzer sounded and the gate opened. I pulled my car through the gate and drove down the extremely long and beautiful tree-lined driveway.
The house looked like the photos of French Chateaus I drooled over in my French language textbooks in high school. I wasn’t sure exactly what the protocol was for parking. Should I just park outside the front door?
I finally decided to pull over to a side area under some trees and walk back to the front entrance.
A few seconds after I rang the bell, a woman answered the door. “Mr. Young?” she asked. It was the same voice I had heard over the intercom.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Would you like to come in?” she offered.
“Are Mr. and Mrs. Warner available?” I asked.
“On, no. Mr. Warner is in Asia on business and Mrs. Warner is working out at the club.”
“Evan said something about a tree house that Ella liked to spend time in when she was younger. Do you know anything about that?”
The house manager thought about it for a moment. “She hasn’t been back there for a few years. I can show you where it is if you’d like.”
“Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.”
The house manager joined me and the two of us made our way out toward the south eastern section of the large property. The house manager was a small woman, only about five feet tall, and she had to be in her late fifties or early sixties, but she could move. She walked like she was propelled by a rocket. I practically had to jog to keep up with her.
I was nearly out of breath when we stopped close to the tree line of the woods. She pointed at a small wooden tree house built into the side of an old oak tree. “That’s Ella’s tree house.”
Unfortunately, I could tell from where I was standing that the structure was deserted.
The house manager must have seen the disappointment in my face. “I’m sure you’ll find her. What’s that saying? Love conquers all.”
How could she tell I was in love with Ella? Was it that obvious?
“I’ve got to get back to my duties. We’ve got a big party on Tuesday evening and I’ve been having a terrible time with the caterers. If you’ll excuse me…”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you for all of your help.”
“Love conquers all,” she reminded me as she headed back toward the house.
I decided to sit in Ella’s tree house for a while to see if I could feel her presence. I knew it sounded stupid but I already missed her so much, I craved anything that would even make me feel remotely close to her again.
As I sat there in the old, decaying structure, I thought I heard a soft voice singing. I tried to gauge where the voice was coming from and I thought it was coming from deeper in the woods.
I extricated myself from the tree house and tried to follow the sound of the singing. As I made my way into the woods, I could finally distinguish the song, Asleep by the Smiths. When I realized it was Ella singing, my pace quicken to a near run as I hurried to her.
My breath caught when I saw Ella, sketchpad in hand, sitting on the edge of a small stream, drawing. She looked so peaceful, almost in a reverie, as she created art. I almost didn’t want to disturb her—almost. A much bigger, and more selfish part of me, wanted to take her into my arms and never let her go again.
I very carefully sat down next to her. At first, Ella didn’t react. She just kept sketching. Then after a few moments, she stopped midline and asked, “How did you find me?”
“I’ll always find you, Ella. You could go to the other side of the world, and I’ll eventually find you.”
She continued drawing and I waited, and watched her. When she finally realized I wasn’t going anywhere, she placed her pencil down and looked up at me. “Why are you here?”
I removed her butterfly heart pendent from my pocket and held it out. “You left something at my apartment this morning. I wanted to make sure you got it back.”
She shook her head. “I can’t take it back.”
“Don’t you want it?” I could hear my voice crack as the words came out.
She bit the side of her mouth. “I never said I didn’t want it. I said I can’t take it.”
I knew we were talking about more than just the pendent. We were talking about my heart—my love. “But I want you to have it.”
She looked down at the necklace and I could see she was blinking back tears. “You have to let me go, Lucas.”
“But why, Ella?” My words were a littler harsher than I intended.
She inhaled deeply then let out a long, slow breath. “You deserve to have someone who can be a perfect wife. Someone you can have a family with, who’ll be a good mother to your children. Someone you can build a life with. Not someone like me.”
“But I love you, Ella. I want to be with you. I want to build a life with you.” I felt like I was pleading but I didn’t care.
“Sometimes love isn’t enough.” Tears were now streaming down her cheeks.
I reached out and wiped away the tears with my thumb. “Love is always enough.”
Ella looked out at the stream. This clearing in the woods was bright and airy, almost serene. It felt like an ironic place to have such a heavy conversation.
Ella took my hand in hers but it didn’t feel comforting; it felt like she was about to tell me that she never wanted to see me again. When our eyes met, the depth of sorrow I saw in her was almost too much to bear. I wanted more than anything to be able to take that pain away from her.
“You need to tell me what the problem is, Ella. Whatever it is, I know we can fix it.”
She shook her head. “Not this.”
“Please tell me,” I begged.
She finally relented. “I saw the way your eyes lit up when Rainy said she was pregnant. I see the way you are with kids, with Cheyenne’s daughter at the museum and with the little girl at the zoo. You obviously love kids. You deserve to be with someone who can give you children, someone you can have a family with. I can’t give you that, Lucas, and it’s not fair.”
I could feel a lump forming in my throat but I willed myself not to cry. “Why not,” was all I managed to utter.
“My parents made me start using birth control pills when I was sixteen years old. I hadn’t been diagnosed with bipolar disorder yet but they always told me I was crazy. From the time I was about ten, I was crazy Ella. They told me I had to stay on birth control pills my entire life. They said they didn’t want any accidents. They told me that I could never have children. I was too wild and out-of-control. Too crazy. They convinced me that I’d never be a good mother. Later, when I was nineteen, and finally diagnosed, they told me I couldn’t have children because bipolar disorder was hereditary and they didn’t want any more fucked up Warners like me in
the family.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Her words held such pain and sorrow, they were difficult to take in. “What did your doctor say?” I finally managed to ask.
“Pretty much the same thing, just a little more eloquently than my parents. He confirmed that bipolar disorder is hereditary. That’s it’s a serious mental illness that currently can be treated but not cured. That I should think very seriously about bringing children into the world who would have a chance of being diagnosed with the disorder.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you left. Why didn’t you just tell me, Ella?”
“Because I knew you’d say you didn’t care, that you still wanted to be with me.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t want you take make sacrifices that big just to be with me. It’s not fair. You deserve to have a full and complete life and you can have that with someone else. Someone like Rainy. Someone who deserves to be with you. I don’t want you to settle for being with me and then later regret it. What about when we’re old and everyone else has kids and even grandkids and you feel badly because you chose me and couldn’t have those things.”
“Ella, I think you’ve making a lot of assumptions without us even having a chance to have a discussion. And to be honest, I’m a little angry that you made all of these decisions about our lives together without me. You didn’t even ask me how I envisioned our future together. You just assumed I want what everyone else wants.”
She looked down at her bare feet, which I noticed were muddy, probably from dangling them in the stream. “I’m sorry. I know I should have talked to you. But I wanted you to have a way out, just in case.”
“I don’t want a way out. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t have gone through Hell to find you. I punched Steel in the face, by the way, so that should tell you how much I want you. My hand is still sore.”
She inspected my face. “He didn’t punch you back?”
I shook my head.
“I can’t believe you did that. He could have killed you.”
“That should tell you how much I want to be with you Ella. Nothing, not even Steel, is going to keep me from you.”
“But you could have anyone, Lucas. Why do you want me? I’m like a broken toy that no one else wants. Why take me when you can get any toy in the store that you want?”
“Don’t you see you can’t make that decision for me? What if the only toy I want is the broken one? Maybe the broken toy is the most interesting, fascinating and beautiful toy in the world. Maybe I don’t even care that it’s broken.”
“Are you sure?”
I held out the pendent. “I gave you my heart, Ella. It’s not something you can give back. I hope you realize that.”
She carefully removed the pendent from my hand. She stared at it for a few moments then she carefully traced the outline of it with her index finger. “What about not being able to have kids?”
“Ella, I’m not even sure I want to have kids. To be honest, I haven’t given it that much thought. And there are other ways to have a family. We don’t have to have biological children. We can adopt kids who need a home. We can be an uncle and aunt to Rainy and Aaron’s brood. Something tells me they’re not going to stop at just one. We don’t have to make those decisions now. We have the rest of our lives to decide together. The only decision you have to make now is whether you want to be with me. Because I want to be with you, Ella. I choose you.”
She held the pendent up. “Will you help me put this back on?”
I took the pendent from her and she turned her back toward me. I carefully placed the heart around her neck and fastened the clasp. Then she turned around to face me. “I want to be with you, Lucas. And I won’t try to give you back the pendent again. I promise.”
“I told you I gave you my heart. It’s ours. You can’t give it back.”
She placed her hand on my cheek. “I love you, Lucas.”
“I love you, too.” I pulled her in a tight embrace. I didn’t plan on ever letting her go again.
Epilogue
Two Years Later…
My heart pounded as I stood in the blazing Hawaiian sunshine. I wiped at a bead of sweat that escaped down my cheek. I don’t think I had ever been so nervous in my entire life. As I stood on the beach, surrounded by family and friends, a local musician played the Wedding March on a ukulele.
When I saw Ella in her wedding dress, she took my breath away. The white sundress fit her curves like a glove and her hair was in an updo adorned with baby’s breath that accentuated her stunning natural beauty. The only jewelry she wore was her butterfly heart pendent that was now glistening as it reflected the bright Kauai sunshine. She kept her promise, and didn’t take it off again once I put it back around her neck.
I glanced around at the loved ones who made the trip to join us for our special day. Aaron and Rainy were there, with little Aaron Jr. on his daddy’s lap. My sister, Olivia and her girlfriend, Marney, who were giving serious thought to getting married themselves now that gay marriage was legal in our state. Ella even decided to invite her brother, Evan, and Keira, who was now his wife. I heard a rumor that they were trying to have kids. I couldn’t imagine having little Evans or Keiras running around.
Of course, my parents were there. They had finally warmed up to Ella, but it had taken time. They weren’t thrilled that she convinced me to travel around the world with her. We took two month-long trips: one to Europe and the other to Asia. My parents thought we should have saved our money for more practical pursuits, like our retirement account. Somehow, they never quite understood that Ella was wealthy and the trips didn’t even put a dent in the yearly interest payments from her trust fund.
The only sad thing was that Ella’s parents and her other brothers chose not to attend the wedding. When she told her mom and dad we were getting married, they told her that she was robbing me of my future. We couldn’t convince them that being together was both of our decisions and it was a future we both wanted and looked forward to.
The non-denominational minister gave a brief talk about love and commitment then Ella and I exchanged vows. The happiest moment of my life until that point had been when we stood by that small stream behind her parents’ house and she took my heart back.
Now my happiest moment was when Ella made the commitment to be my wife. When I took her in my arms, and kissed her for the first time as a married couple, in front of all of our cheering family and friends, I knew we would forever hold each other in our hearts.
Other Books in the MATCHPLAY Series
MATCHPLAY
The first novel in the MATCHPLAY series
A Girl, a Guy, a Tournament and a Challenge…
The Girl: At a time when most girls obsess about homecoming and high school prom, Rainy Dey spent her senior year caring for her dying mother. So when her father drops her off at college to start her freshman year, his words of advice to his bookish daughter are to start acting like a young person and finally have some fun.
The Guy: College senior, Aaron Donovan, aka Mr. Hot-and-Knows-It, is President of The Clubhouse, a social club for the college’s most wealthy and popular guys. Aaron can have any girl on campus except the one who challenges and excites him the most, Rainy Dey.
The Tournament: Every year, the senior members of The Clubhouse engage in a golf-inspired tournament to see who can sleep with the most freshman girls. When Rainy finds out about The Tournament, she believes Aaron’s only interest in her is to score points by taking her V-Card.
The Challenge: Can Aaron convince Rainy that his feelings for her are true and that she won’t be just another notch on his tournament scorecard?
FAIR PLAY
The second novel in the MATCHPLAY series
The Good-Girl, the Bad-Girl and the Boy-They-Both-Want…FAIR PLAY begins where the new adult romance MATCHPLAY left off.
Mean girls need love, too…
Keira Whitley is used to getting what she wants and what she w
ants is the sexy-and-smart Aaron Donovan. They’re both from extremely wealthy and prominent families and their parents have talked about getting the two of them together since they were kids.
The only problem is that Aaron recently got engaged to the girl-of-his-dreams Rainy Dey. But Keira knows she and Aaron are supposed to be together and she’s not about to let a little thing like Aaron’s declaration of true love for Rainy get in her way.
But is all really fair in love and war?
WARNING: This book is told from the perspective of Keira Whitley, a villainous Queen of Mean. If you’re looking for a story told from the point of view of a sweet Mary-Sue virgin, this book is NOT FOR YOU. Go read Fifty Shades of Grey again. If you decide to read this book anyway, DON’T say I didn’t warn you.
About the Author
Dakota Madison has been writing since she learned to read and fell in love with books. When she's not at her computer creating spicy new romances, Dakota is traveling to exotic locales or spending time with her husband and their bloodhounds.
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Final Play (Matchplay Series) Page 15
