For some reason, that surprised him. But then just because he’d only managed to stay in what he’d consider a serious relationship for a few months—one that ended disastrously—didn’t mean she was the same. In fact, he knew she was very different. Everything about their lives was.
“Can I ask you how many serious relationships you’ve been in?”
He waited, hoping this wasn’t too soon, but given the circumstances and how he’d been completely honest with her about his feelings, he didn’t think it an unreasonable request.
“You can ask me anything, Felix.” As usual, her response only further confirmed what he’d pretty much already known. He was falling for this girl hard. “I’ve had two of what I would consider serious relationships. The first was during my senior year in high school and lasted just under five months. The second was a couple of years later with Grayson.”
It almost hurt to ask, but he had to know everything. “So you’ve been in love?”
“I was with Grayson. And I thought I might be with Gabe, my first boyfriend, but in hindsight, I know now I wasn’t.”
Felix closed his eyes, still feeling the blow to his gut. She’d been in love with that asshole. Was she still?
“What happened with Grayson? What made you fall out of love with him?” He wanted to make sure he never made the same mistake if he was lucky enough to get that far with her, but mostly he needed to know. “Because you did, right? You’re not in love with him anymore, are you?”
“Um . . . no, I haven’t been for a while.”
Felix let out a long relieved breath, but it wasn’t quite as satisfying as he would’ve thought. The slight hesitation before she confirmed she wasn’t was enough cause for concern. Also, she hadn’t broken up with Grayson that long ago. The guy was still visiting her at the gym, and he clearly felt some kind of claim over her still. Why would she continue to have him in her life if things were really over and she no longer had feelings for him?
“My only relationship before Grayson was eye-opening. I’d known Gabe my whole life because we grew up in the same neighborhood. He still lives there. But by high school, he’d started hanging around the wrong crowd. Because of what happened with my sister and all the effort my mother put into keeping us out of trouble, my brother and I vowed never to get involved or hang around with people who were trouble, and Gabe was trouble. By the time I was a senior, Gabe seemed to have gone straight. He was staying out of trouble—or so I thought.” She paused and Felix was on his feet again.
The thought of Ella with other guys was one he didn’t even want to think about, but he hadn’t lied when he first asked her about her past relationships. This was something he needed to know the details of before he was in too deep. It’d been a long time since he’d dealt with feelings of insecurity, and it was probably why he’d been so against getting involved with anyone he felt any kind of connection with. Since his breakup with Bianca, there’d only been one other time he’d even come close to feeling what he thought he’d started feeling for Bianca way back.
“Gabe had always been such a hothead in the past,” Ella continued, “but he claimed he’d changed. He said he’d been in so many fights and stuff only because of the crowd he’d hung out with. Once we became a couple, the drama was never ending. Looking back, I realize now it was our age. All of it was so high school. He was good-looking, and his bad-boy image made him the object of many of the girls’ desires.”
“Yours too?” Felix asked. “Is that what attracted you to him?”
“No.” He heard her laugh softly. “I’d always had a crush on him even before he’d gone bad. His going bad was what actually made me not like him. It was something so deep-seated with me that the thought of hanging around with the likes of him and his friends was something I never considered.”
“So why did you?” Felix asked, sitting down again pinching the bridge of his nose.
This was fucking great. Not only did he have to deal with the fact that she was still very much in touch with her ex—an ex who she’d only broken up with a few months ago and admitted to having been in love with, a guy who no doubt was still completely into her—but now she’d just admitted her other ex, her very first serious boyfriend, was one she’d always had a crush on. Someone who still lived in her neighborhood and with Felix’s luck she was probably still on speaking terms with the guy.
“Because I could see the change,” she said. “He promised me that he had. He knew how I felt about his past. And because we held off letting anyone know we were seeing each other until I felt comfortable about it.”
“Sounds familiar,” he said, hoping she’d think he was feeling playful again, though that couldn’t be further from the truth.
She laughed softly again and he was glad. He didn’t want her to catch onto how fast this conversation had gone south for him.
“But as soon as people found out, the drama started,” she said without commenting on just how similar the way her relationship with her first bad-boy boyfriend was to their situation now. “It wasn’t too bad at first. He got into a few scuffles with some guys he’d heard through the grapevine were saying things about us—about me. Then the rumors of him with other girls started. Everyone knew my stand on not hanging around with anyone who was trouble. So then the rumors of him dealing weed started. I was convinced this group of girls, his ex and her friends, were behind it all. They were bound and determined one way or another to break us up. Am I boring you?” she asked suddenly.