Page 78 of Falling for Them

Setting down the guitar again, I grab one of the millions of composition notebooks that lie around my place.I turn to a page at random and find something I wrote last night.

Pursuing you

Is the only thing I’ve got

Your featherlight touch

Passionate moans

Memories driving me

Forward, forward

To you

Fixing the fight

Searching the night

Pursuing your light

Tortured by the chase...

I turn the page, and find similar lyrics.Then I go back a few pages, looking for something else.All of these pages are filled with yearning, frustration, even some anger.And a fuckton of loneliness.

The fuck.Everything I’ve written during the past week is about Ella.

I toss the notebook onto the coffee table in the middle of the room, disgusted.I’m not disgusted with Ella, but with myself.“Give her space.”Stupidest idea I ever had.

Time to fix this.

Picking up my phone, I intend to call Ella, but I’m hit with a whopping number of notifications from all of my social media accounts.

Oh, hell.The video of Ella and me is no longer only getting noticed by a few fans here and there.It went viral.

Even as I look at the screen, more notifications pop up.If Ella’s aware of this, she might be freaking out.I slide past them and open my contacts, then tapPrincess.

But instead of getting the ring tone, or being moved straight to voicemail, I hear an automated message.I’m sorry, but this number has been disconnected.

What the fuck?Did Ella give me a fake number?I replay the hour I spent with her in my head.Nothing in the way she acted made me think she didn’t want to be with me.There were no signals that she was hoping to get away sooner—in fact, I kind of thought that if I’d turned on the charm, or hell, just asked nicely for her to come home with me, she would have.

So why the fake number?No, wait.I texted her back.Her phone chimed when I did it.So the number she gave me isn’t fake, but it no longer works.

Is she getting tagged in the same notifications I am?Maybe she turned it off.Turning off the phone is not the same as the number no longer being in service, though.Shit.What would do this?

She wouldn’t change her phone number to avoid me and Kingston.I hate that it even occurs to me she might, but this isn’t making sense.

Several more notifications pop up while I’m considering the possibilities.I click over to the VideYou app and find the recording of Ella and me, right there on the home page.Shit.It has over a million views.

I text my driver, Kellan, to see if he’s still up.He usually keeps the same hours I do, and if he’s asleep, I’ll call a service instead.Sure enough, he’s awake.He has the car waiting for me by the time I reach the sidewalk outside my apartment building.

“Where to?”he asks when I slide in.

“The Tyler building.”Kingston will still be there, and I need to talk to him—face to face, this time.

The security guards nod at me when I enter the Tyler building.

“Is he still up there?”I ask.