Page 31 of Follow the Rhythm (Fairview City Omegaverse #2)

I was stalling. Even with a flight booked for L.A., even with the label making it very clear I needed to vacate the apartment as soon as humanly possible, I was making any excuse not to leave Fairview.

Some deluded part of my brain was convinced Jess would call, and I wanted to be close by when that happened. Just because it hadn’t happened yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t . Right?

There was another option, which I was choosing to think of as the nuclear option. And with each passing hour that my phone didn’t ring, I got closer and closer to pushing the big red button.

I broke down on a Friday afternoon.

“Hi, honey,” my mom said when she answered the phone. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“How’s everything going?”

“Oh, you know. As good as we can hope for. How are you doing?”

“I’m alright. I was thinking about coming up for a visit before I head back to L.A. Is it a good time?” I asked, already half hoping she’d say no.

“Of course, honey! We’d love to see you! Oh my goodness, Kristopher and your father are going to be so excited to see you,” she said.

I doubted my father would be that excited, but I didn’t correct her. “Great, I’ll take the train up tonight then.”

“Oh, we can invite Diana over tomorrow for dinner,” my mom gasped. I suppressed a sigh. I could handle one dinner with my perfect sister.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said, and hung up.

The late afternoon train would get me upstate to the historic resort town my parents had retired to before midnight. Which meant I had a couple of hours to kill before heading to the train station.

Almost against my will, I stared at the wall that my apartment shared with Ellis’s, like I might x-ray through it to see if he was in there.

I hadn’t seen him since that intense meeting at the label office.

I’d loitered in the hallway outside my apartment a little more than strictly necessary to try to catch him on his way in or out.

I was both furious at him for acting like such an ass and anxious about the path of self-destruction he was heading down, and it seemed important to tell him that.

He’s not yours to worry about , I reminded myself.

But if I wasn’t thinking about Ellis, I was thinking about Jess, and that was even more painful.

Why hadn’t I just spit it out? That I wanted to try again, without all this “casual” nonsense?

I had no problem being very clear about what I wanted when the stakes were just sex.

But now that I wanted more, all my confidence was gone.

Why had I even told her I didn’t want anything serious?

Pure cowardice? I tried to remember the reasons, but ended up just reading through our old text thread like a lovesick teenager.

I hoped Kieran was sincere about making her happy.

After a few more minutes of scrolling through my phone without focusing on anything, I gave up.

The hallway was empty when I peered out my front door. There was no sound other than my muffled footsteps as I made my way to Ellis’s apartment.

I was leaving in a couple of hours. He probably wouldn’t even be there anyway. There was almost certainly no point at all in trying to talk to Ellis, but I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t try.

I knocked, not expecting an answer. But after just a few moments, he wrenched the door open.

He looked surprised to see me. Unlike the last time I’d knocked on his door, he was fully clothed in gray sweatpants and a probably very expensive t-shirt, which was both a relief and a disappointment. But his black hair was damp, and he was barefoot.

“Oh. I thought you were my food delivery,” he said after a moment.

“No, sorry,” I replied. I tried to summon up the courage that had gotten me out into the hallway. Unlike my last encounter with Jess, I was going to say the words I meant to say to him. “Got a second?”

Ellis raised an eyebrow and let me in. I didn’t know how to start.

“Are you here to give me a bollocking?” he asked after another awkward silence. I wasn’t sure what the phrase meant, but his smug little smile pissed me off.

“You’re an asshole,” I said, startling that smile off his face. “You hurt a lot of people. A bunch of those crew members gave up other gigs to be on the tour, and you fucked it all up. Not to mention treating Grace like shit for no reason other than your stupid ego.”

Ellis looked like I’d slapped him. “Have you finished?”

“No. You need to get your shit together. Because I’ve seen the ending of this story,” I gestured to him, “and it’s not glamorous.”

“What do you know about my story?” he challenged, stepping closer.

“Do you think you’re being original?” I stepped into his space and prodded him in the chest. “Being fucked up doesn’t give you the right to treat other people like shit.”

Ellis grabbed my wrist. “And your daddy issues don’t give you the right to assume you know anything about my life.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Gladly, but the timing doesn’t seem quite right,” he said archly.

I jerked my wrist from his grasp. “I’m being serious. Call it daddy issues all you want, but I watched him have a stroke in front of thousands of people because he treated himself like shit. I don’t want that for you.”

Ellis’s brilliant blue eyes flicked up to mine. “But what if that’s what I deserve?”

“A public breakdown? No one deserves that,” I said, agitated. I rubbed at the skin of my wrist where he’d touched me.

He didn’t respond, but something in his eyes shut down.

“Why are you pushing everyone away?” I persisted.

Ellis sighed. “Darling, you aren’t my therapist.”

“No, but I’m trying to be your friend,” I said.

“Why would you want to go and do a thing like that?” he said, and seemed genuinely surprised.

“When you’re not being a drunken dickhead, you’re alright.” We were still standing too close to each other, but I didn’t want to back away.

Ellis’s eyes gleamed, and his mouth screwed to the side. I recalled that desperate look he sometimes had when he thought no one was looking. “You don’t want to be my friend. Trust me.”

I took his hand gently and rubbed my thumb across his palm. He looked down, staring at where our hands were joined.

When he looked back up, his startlingly blue eyes were swimming with tears.

“Too bad. We’re already friends. And lucky for you, I’m a great listener,” I said, squeezing his hand in encouragement.

“You won’t even want to speak to me,” he said. A tear rolled down his cheek.

“It can’t be that bad,” I said consolingly.

Ellis scoffed. His eyes flickered between mine, like he was testing me. After a moment, he pulled free from my grip and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

“Michael’s overdose wasn’t an accident,” he said.

My heart sank. I reached for him instinctively. “I’m so sorry.”

He stepped out of my reach and dropped his hands to his sides, looking defiant.

“Michael had been sober for almost six months. He and Kieran both stopped drinking and partying around the same time. And I hated it,” he spat.

“It made me feel even more like the odd one out, like the little brother tagging along. They were ‘sick of the lifestyle’ but I wasn’t. I was still having fun.”

He started pacing like a caged animal looking for somewhere to go.

“We didn’t know Michael was having such a rough go. If he sometimes disappeared for a few days, he told us it was just stress or that he needed space. But all the songs on Into the Garden … It’s hard to sing them now, knowing how much he was hurting.”

He trailed off for a moment.

“We had finally finished recording Reward , which was going to be the next album, and he said he wanted to celebrate. I didn’t question it when he didn’t invite Kieran.

We were having a laugh, and that turned into a late night.

And when he asked if I had any pills… It wasn’t like I hadn’t shared them with him before. ”

My stomach churned with a mixture of dread and sadness. I didn’t want the story to end the way I knew it would.

“He’s dead because of me. Because of my stupid, selfish decision. I left that night, and he took all of them; the entire bottle. They said he was dead within hours of me leaving.” Tears tracked down his face, and he didn’t bother wiping them away, still pacing.

“Ellis. You know that wasn’t your fault. He made a choice.” I wanted to grab him and make him listen to me. I couldn’t imagine how much this had been tearing him up inside.

Ellis looked at me, pain etched across his face. “It doesn’t change the fact that I should have known something was wrong. I should have seen it. How could I not have seen it?”

He sank onto the couch, his head in his hands. I approached cautiously and sat next to him. His orange and cinnamon scent was sour with grief.

“You can’t keep taking all this responsibility,” I said and tentatively stroked his back. He didn’t move away this time.

“The worst part is he knew I would give them to him. The pills. He knew I was such a worthless piece of shit that I would give them to him, even though he was sober. He knew I wouldn’t say anything to Kieran.” His voice was muffled behind his hands.

“No,” I said firmly. “He was sick, Ellis; he wasn’t thinking like that.”

“And I know I’ve been horrible to Kieran, and Grace, and Jess. And you. But you have to see why.” He finally looked up. His tears had stopped. “You are all far better off without me.”

“I disagree. Have you talked to Kieran about this?”

“No, I’m too big a coward, of course,” he said miserably. “But Bea knows. She’s been threatening to tell the press about it.”

I felt a surge of anger. I knew I was justified in hating her. “That’s incredibly fucked up.”

“Again, it’s no more than I deserve,” he said with a rueful smile. “So. Still want to be my friend?”

I could feel his ribs through the fabric of his shirt. He wasn’t taking care of himself, but I already knew that.

“Do you have anything to do for the next couple of days?” I asked.

He laughed bitterly. “I’m supposed to be working on the Ellis Fox solo debut, but that’s a lost cause. So no, not really.”

“Good. I’m going up to visit my family. You should come with me.”

He blinked at me. “What? Why?”

“Because you need someone right now, and I’ve already promised my mom I would go home tonight. So, come with me,” I said, as if it were that simple.

“You want me to come home with you?”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ve just told you my deepest, most horrible secret, so an invitation to the family home wasn’t first on my list of possibilities,” he said, a hint of his usual irony in his voice. “I was also a total dick to your Omega, along with all of our mutual acquaintances.”

“You know she’s not mine. But you have a point there. Are you sorry? About what you said? How you acted?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“Then apologize. You can start with me, and we’ll go from there.”

Ellis looked at me like I had three heads. “And you’ll just forgive me?”

“Sure. That’s what friends do. They take care of each other.” My arm was still around his shoulder, and I squeezed it.

He sighed. “I am sorry. For what that’s worth.”

I finally dropped my hand. Friends didn’t touch each other for longer than that, and the last thing Ellis needed was me making a move on him. “Good. So you’re coming with me?”

“You’re mad,” he said, shaking his head, then looked me in the eye. “But yeah, go on. I’ll pack a bag.”