Ellison
An app that helps place stray animals in foster homes and eventually their forever home—that’s what I decided upon. It’s ambitious, but I’m starting to figure out that ambitious might be who I am. It’s a Wednesday, a rare day off for both me and Drix, and I’m at his garage again as this is the only place besides the occasional hotel room during a campaign stop where we can be alone.
Thor is laid out on his side dreaming puppy dreams—if he’s allowed to be called a puppy anymore. I’m convinced he’s part border collie/half bear. His feet twitch as if he’s on a run. He’s big now. Too big for me to pick up, but not big enough that he doesn’t try to sit on my lap. While he likes me, he worships Drix. Though he’d never say it, Drix worships him in return.
As I try to program, I’m also listening as Drix talks about timing. He throws out words like four-four, three-four, six-eight, and nine-eight. I’m only half listening, and I’m pretty sure he’s aware. He’s this new force of nature behind the drums, and he wants me to love them as much as he does, but I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone to love it more than him.
I close my laptop and rub my eyes. “My brain is going to explode.”
“From which part?” he asks. “The four-four?” He plays that beat. “Or the nine-eight?” He pounds that count as well, and I have to admit, he’s extremely sexy. Sometimes, Drix can be quiet and internal, but the more time we spend together, it feels like he’s beginning to fly.
He stops playing, grabs the folding chair I’m on and drags it closer to him. In seconds his lips are on mine, and my body is the equivalent to a struck match. His hand is in my hair, and he tilts my head so that he can kiss me deeper. Right as I reach over to touch him back, his cell rings.
Just like that, he’s gone, and somehow I miss his heat even in the sweltering summer afternoon. My fingers brush my now swollen lips. This. This is what being with Drix is like. A couple of weeks have passed since we first kissed, and I love kissing Drix. We haven’t done more than kissing, as kissing is my comfort level, and Drix seems fine parking it here.
But here is a very lovely place. Here includes lots of kissing, and that I adore. I also love his hands on my body, I love how he smiles, I love his voice, I love how he talks to me, I love just being near him, and I wish I could spend more time with him than what I currently do. The only time we’re alone besides the campaign trail is when Mom and Dad are traveling without me, which may only be one day a week.
“It’s Drix.” He answers his cell, and he reaches over and sweeps a stray hair away from my face. His fingers linger along my jawline, and pleasing goose bumps rise on my arms.
His head inclines as if he’s surprised by whoever is on the line. “Yes.” A pause and a then he blinks. “Yes. That sounds great.” Pause number two, and whatever it is that’s being said is putting live electrical wires under his skin as he jumps to his feet and paces.
“Yes. Yes. Understood. I’ll be there and thank you.” Another round of pausing. “Okay. Thank you. Goodbye.”
Drix turns off his phone and stares at it as if it might ring again. He then blows out a long breath, and the anticipation threatens to eat me alive. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” He glances around the garage, and then he looks at me in complete shock. “I got the audition.
I can’t breathe. “You got the audition.”
“I got the audition.” Drix throws both hands in the air, and before I can get to my feet to celebrate with him, Drix takes two steps, and I yelp when he swings me into the air.
My feet off the floor, his arms two steel bands around my waist and he has me angled so that I’m looking down at him. I frame his face with my hands, and I drink him in with complete awe. Hendrix Pierce, the boy who a year ago was on a path to complete self-destruction, is creating a future molded just for him. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I knew I wanted this,” he says, “but I didn’t know how much until now. I want this, Elle. I want this spot in the school. I want to graduate from high school, and I want more. I can get out of this neighborhood. I can break the cycle. I can do this.”
“And you will.” I don’t know much about music, but I know when I’m in the presence of magic, and Drix is magic. Anytime Drix plays an instrument, anytime he’s behind his drums, he’s the most magical person in the universe.
I lean my head down, my lips whisper against his, and then my entire body shakes at the clanging in the corner. My hands push on Drix’s shoulders for release, but he keeps me steady against his body and off the floor as if I weigh nothing. “Chill. It’s Holiday.”
Thor pops his head up. At least I’m not the only one being awoken out of sweet dreams by loud sounds.
Drix’s sister dumps a bag of trash into the metal can and then places the top back on. “You two are so epically cute together, and just to let you know, Jeremy is on his way over.”
Drix lowers me to the floor, immediately takes my hand and guides me around all the instruments and out of the garage. With a bark, Thor is up and following. “I told you, he’s not allowed here while Elle is visiting.”
Jeremy: Holiday’s boyfriend who every male here hates with a passion and who Holiday appears to have some sort of emotional attachment with. She says she’s in love, but I’m not sure if I buy it. When someone brings him up, the smile on her face never reaches her eyes. In fact, she dulls out at the sound of his name.
I’m not seasoned enough to make a complete judgment on what love is, but I am secure enough in myself that I never want that to be my version of love.
“He won’t say anything, Drix.” Holiday wrings her hands together. “And if I don’t see him now, I won’t see him at all today.”
“Ask me if I care,” Drix mumbles as he pulls me into the house. Dominic, Kellen and Marcus are at the table poring over sheet music, and each offer me and Drix a colorful greeting, but I don’t have much time to offer anything back as Drix pulls me past them, down the narrow hallway and into the living room.
Once there, he drops my hand and collapses back against the wall. The TV is on, the evening news, and I have this awkward feeling that I’m taking up too much room because I have no idea how Drix and I just went from complete heaven to this cold place of purgatory. As if feeling the same way, Thor sniffs, probably wondering if a stranger has entered Drix’s body.
Light footsteps and Holiday creeps out of the hallway and into the living room, reminding me of how I used to feel when I’d sneak out of my bedroom at night, knowing my parents were going to be disappointed I was scared of the dark and of the monsters in my closet.
“Drix,” she says. “Please let me see him. It’ll just be for a few minutes, and I need to see him and tell him I’m sorry. We fought earlier today and—”
Drix cracks his head to the side. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen him today.”
“I meant I didn’t see him today when he was in a good mood. He’s going out with friends tonight, and I need us to leave on a good note, so I won’t worry about him going out.”
My soul twists with her words. It’s such a horrifying, dark and demented shadow that’s cast over Holiday that I step closer to the window for light. Is that how love feels to her? Because that’s not okay. “What will happen if he goes out mad?”
Drix’s eyes shoot to mine, and Holiday looks down at her feet. A pit forms in my stomach, and I wish I could disappear. “Oh.”
Oh. He’ll cheat on her.
“He’s not a bad guy,” Holiday suddenly says. “He’s just real emotional, and I know how to calm him down. I’m the only one who can. Even he admits it, and he tells me all the time he doesn’t think he can live without me. That without me, he’ll fall apart. He says I’m the only good thing in his life.”
The kitchen goes quiet, and she’s staring at me with such hope that I’ll tell her I understand, but I can’t because it’s like she’s speaking a completely different language. If I open my mouth, I know I’ll also be speaking in a tongue that will be incomprehensible to her.
Suddenly, my skin feels like it’s shrinking because being in the same room with Holiday is a type of suffocation. With her brothers, she’s light and love and confidence and beauty, but with the mention of this boy, she turns into a black hole, and that happiness Drix just had about the audition has been lost into the void.
Thor jerks his head toward the door. The hair on his back rises, and he growls. A menacing bark following every low rumble. A knock and a part of me feels like I should run while another part feels like I should throw myself in front of it to save Holiday from the Grim Reaper.
“Drix?” she asks.
He’s completely closed off. Head down, arms over his chest, one foot crossed over the other. “Elle has to leave in twenty minutes, so you have fifteen. You stay in the front yard as I don’t want him to see her car around back, and you two stay within sight.”
Thor keeps growling, keeps barking, and there’s no way that dog is letting anyone out.
“Thor,” Drix says, and the dog automatically glances back at him. Drix snaps his fingers and points at the floor. With ears back, Thor trots to the designated spot. Drix lowers to a crouch, pets the dog, and my heart hurts. It’s almost as if he’s touching the dog to keep himself from going out the door.
Holiday walks out and my stomach flips. Silence. There’s only silence in the house beyond the low voices of the news anchor on the TV. Then there’s two more voices coming from outside. One is Holiday’s, the other is her boyfriend’s, and within seconds those voices are raised and ominous. Like a lightning strike before a storm. They’re fighting.
“Why did you let her go out?” I ask.
“Why are you here, with me, working on a computer program? All three things your parents know nothing about.”
I flinch with his verbal attack, but he keeps going.
“Don’t take it hard because I’m not judging. I’m acting like a dancing monkey for your dad, and I’m keeping you and me a secret for the same reasons you’re keeping quiet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We all have somebody in our life we can’t say no to. Whether it be because they’re our parents, like you, or a person in authority, like me, or because that person makes them feel secure, like Holiday. Some choices, we have to make on our own. I can’t choose who Holiday loves. As much as I hate it, that’s on her, just like my choices are on me and your choices are on you.”
My spine straightens. “My situation is different. They’re my parents.”
“Ellison Monroe and Andrew Morton are turning heads again.”
At the sound of my name, nausea crashes into my system, and the urge is to vomit. On the screen are pictures of me and Andrew. Us together at fund-raisers, us together walking red carpets, us together in what should have been private moments outside of evening events. His jacket is around my shoulder on a cool night. And then there’s the pièce de résistance—the picture of Andrew leaning forward to kiss me at the ballpark.
What they don’t show is that I averted my head and kissed his cheek. His cheek. Sean’s still mad at me, but I don’t care. I couldn’t stomach kissing anyone but Drix.
“You choose to be seen with him, Elle.”
“He’s there to protect me.”
Drix stands, and he levels his dark, ice-cold eyes on me. “Then why aren’t your parents and your father’s campaign staff telling the media he’s not your guy?”
Hurt pricks at my heart and that causes anger to awaken within me. “You think I’m with him? Is that it? You think I’m cheating on you?”
He methodically shakes his head back and forth, pinning me in my spot with that frigid stare. “I think that’s who your parents want you with, and this is their way of making it happen. I also think you’re choosing not to see it.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, but it was more a whisper when I intended it to be strong.
“I’m not judging you,” he says softly. “I’m doing what I’ve been told to do, too. We’re both on a leash.”
“So what are my options?” I snap. “Holiday has options. She can leave him, and that is the best choice. Where’s my best choice?”
He merely shrugs like I haven’t asked the most profound question in my life. “Sometimes there isn’t a best choice. Sometimes we’re given two bad choices. That, Elle, is how life works.”
No, he’s wrong. I’m not on a leash. My parents are guiding me, they’re helping me, but I still have control and I’m going to prove Drix wrong.