Page 115 of Dirty Like Seth
“Yup,” he said, looking back at her, dead-straight. “If Jesse and Brody can get on board.” Then he looked at me, and I nodded. I wanted to thank him, really, but the words got stuck in mythroat.
Elle turned to Dylan. “Andyou?”
Dylan shrugged. “You know I’measy.”
“No,” Elle said, shaking her head. “That’s not good enough here. On this one, you have a fucking opinion, and you need to voice it now,Dylan.”
Dylan kinda inwardly sighed and looked over at me. He considered me for a moment, then said, “I’ll play with you. If Jesse’s okay with it… I’ll play with you anytime,Seth.”
And I really could’ve wept with relief. It meant a whole hell of a lot to hear those words out of Dylan’smouth.
But Zane… Zane pulled serious weight, with everyone—from the band to band management, from the fans to the record company—and I knew his support was probably the one thing I neededmost.
I also knew that if he went head-to-head with Jesse and/or Brody, it would not be good. For anyone. With Jesse alone it would be bad enough, though Brody could probably mediate that. I was pretty fucking sure Brody wouldn’t normally go against Zane, but when it came to Jessa, it was a differentstory.
Always hadbeen.
“Then let’s talk to them,” Zane said, his tone decisive. “Tell them what’s going onhere.”
“Yeah,” Elle said, and she gazed at me, a soft, proud look in her gray eyes. “Let’s dothat.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Elle
The next morning,I woke up feeling like shit. I felt sick, and I had no idea if it was legitimate nausea or if it was entirely self-manifested.
Late last night, after we left the studio, I’d had Flynn drop Seth back at his hotel. It was the first night in about a week-and-a-half that he hadn’t stayed over at my place, but I’d told him I was feeling shitty and needed to get somesleep.
He didn’t push it, giving me a sweet kiss on the cheek and telling me to call him in the morning when I feltbetter.
But now it was morning, and I did not feelbetter.
After we’d dropped him off, I’d made Flynn swing by a late-night drug store so I could grab myself a handful of pregnancy tests. Because sometime between Maggie arriving at the studio and the rest of us deciding to talk to Jesse and Brody about what we were doing, it had occurred to me, out of nowhere, that my period hadn’t come in awhile.
In the car on the way home from the drug store, I pulled up the calendar app on my phone and figured it out. I was usually meticulous in tracking my cycle—whether I was sleeping with someone or not—though sometimes it got away from me if I was crazy-busy. Usually, I marked the day I expected my next period to start on the calendar with anX.
But this past month, I’d forgotten to mark itdown.
As I totally fucking panicked, trying to remember when my last period was, it came to me. Midway through the very first week of auditions in Vancouver, before we headed down to L.A.; that was when my last period started. It stood out in my mind only because I’d been so caught up with the auditions that I’d forgotten about it, it had caught me unprepared, and I’d had to borrow a tampon fromMaggie.
Relief washed through me as I realized what that meant. I hadn’t had sex with Ash since the week before the auditionsstarted.
If I’d gotten pregnant, it had happened withSeth.
As Flynn drove me home, I’d let that sinkin.
I’d counted the days on my calendar three times to be sure. I was pretty sure it was day thirty-five of my cycle, and normally my period started like clockwork on day twenty-seven. A day or two early or late wasnormal.
Eight days late wasnot.
As soon as I got home, I’d ripped into the first box of pregnancy tests, promptly peed on a stick—and just about threw up when the little pink line appeared in the window. I compared it to the instruction sheet, and rationally accepted the fact that the test was telling me I waspregnant.
However. These things could bewrong.
The instructions also said first morning urine was best. So I went to bed, went to sleep, and as soon as I woke up, I stumbled into the bathroom and peed on anotherstick.
This one adamantly agreed with the firstone.
