Sinful Ella (Seven Ways to Sin 6)

“What are you doing here?” I asked, staring.

Darren rolled his eyes. “What did I just say? Looking for you! We’re all worried about you.”

“For the last time, I’m fine,” I said, I started to push past him.

He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “You’re clearly not,” he said, his tone gentle. “Will you come with me? The guys and I just want to talk to you.”

Impatient, I glanced at my watch. “I don’t—”

Darren interrupted. “I guarantee, the sex shops of DC will still be there when we’re done talking.”

I relented. “Fine,” I said, nodding toward the door. “Lead the way.”

“Wait!” A voice interrupted us, and I turned to find the pink-haired girl hurrying toward us. My spirits lifted; maybe she had remembered Ella after all! She came to a stop in front of Darren, cheeks flushing pink as she shoved a little slip of paper in his hand. “Call me,” she said, with a little giggle, before hurrying back to the register.

I stared after her. “Un-fucking-believable.”

Darren led me down the street to a nearby coffee shop, where the rest of the band had already gathered. Reluctantly, I squeezed into the booth next to Jason. “Does someone want to tell me what this is about?” I asked. “And you can skip the ‘we’re all worried about you’ bullshit; I heard you the first thousand times.”

“Did you?” Saul asked, his gaze intent. “Because it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it.”

“Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to say,” Darren broke in, giving Saul a look before turning back to me. “This is an intervention.”

I sputtered. “An intervention? For what?”

“You’re hiding something,” Jason put in. He glanced around at the others, biting his lip. “We can all see that there’s something you’re not telling us, and it’s eating you up.”

His words stunned me into silence. Shy, quiet Jason was the last person I’d expect to hear this from. “I’m not—”

“You’re not dealing with losing Bernadette,” Lester interrupted. “You experienced a traumatic loss, we all know that. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but instead of handling it, you’ve been pushing it down, making it worse. You’re not going to be able to keep this up much longer. Believe me, I know.”

“If you don’t make a change, and soon, you’re going to break up the band,” Chris added, his eyes fixed on mine.

I looked around at the guys, my closest friends. “Do you all feel this way?” I asked. One by one, they all nodded. “I see,” I said quietly.

“And then there’s Ella,” Saul said, and my hands clenched.

“What about Ella?” I demanded. “What does Ella have to do with this?”

Saul took a deep breath before continuing. “Has it occurred to you that maybe you’ve overreacted just a little to a girl you had a one-night stand with slipping away without leaving her number?”

“What are you suggesting?” I asked, jaw tight.

“I think that maybe—just maybe—you might be transferring your feelings about Bernadette to Ella. I mean you don’t even know the girl, and you’ve spent the day tearing through every sex shop in the city looking for her?”

Rage made my vision go dark, and I forced myself to take a few deep breaths before I responded, rather than flip the entire table, as I wanted to do. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.” I said.

“Is it?” Saul said. “You don’t know Ella, though.”

“Are you really going to sit here and pretend that you didn’t feel it too?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I was there. I watched you!”

Saul didn’t respond. After a moment, Jason spoke up.

“Grant is right,” he said quietly. “There was something different about last night, about Ella, and I think we all felt it.”

Slowly, the rest of the guys began to nod. Finally, Saul’s shoulders slumped. “Fine,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. What now? We keep searching sex shops?”

“No,” I said, defeated. “I’m pretty sure that’s a dead end.”

“We can go looking for her,” Howie said. “She told me some of the cities where her band is playing.”

I looked around the table, hardly daring to hope. “Is that something you’re all willing to do?” I asked. The guys glanced around at each other, then began to nod.

“Yeah,” Saul said. “I think we can do that.”

“This could take a while,” I warned. “More than a week. Valentina won’t be happy if we break our contract now.”

“So we don’t tell her.” Darren shrugged. He glanced at his watch. “She’s probably still asleep. We can head over to the Ball, grab our equipment, and take off before she wakes up.”

That settled, I stood, eager to leave.

“Wait,” Lester said, and my heart sank. Was he backing out? He looked at Chris, who nodded. Both of them?

“While we’re all being honest,” Chris said. “Lester and I have something to say.” To my shock, he reached across the table to clasp Lester’s hand in his. “We’re—well, we’re in love.”