Page 2 of Defying Ella
I wouldn’t even touch the weirdness of working for my sister, but Mel needed me and I’d been rather absent the last year. Guilt could be a powerful motivator.
Yes, the sister who invited Jared into her flat like it was no big flipping deal. She let the manwhore touch my niece with those hands that had been god knows where. It made me want to wipe Phoebe down with alcohol wipes.
I still kicked myself for not knowing, for not connecting him to Phoebe’s dad.
And then I would tell myself to chill out because how could I have known?
We hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time together growing up. Sure, we went to the same school but he played no part in my sister’s or Dan’s lives then and with five years between us, he wouldn’t have paid me any attention anyway.
I might have purposefully avoided asking the obvious questions — where are you from, where did you go to school, do you know X? Every time those words left my lips, I’d learn something off-putting and at the time, I just wanted to get off. I didn’t need to know his connection to an ex or a former best friend, or worse, childhood enemy.
Rhiannon hadn’t formed until years later. The first time I laid eyes on their drummer, it was through a press still after they signed with a label, and let me tell you, the images did not match reality.
What the hell happened to the scrawny, lanky kid with bedraggled hair?
I could have resisted that person with ease.
Plus I’d been blissfully unconnected for a year. I never concerned myself with the whereabouts of Wales’s latest hit band, even before catching a plane off the island. Of course, just because I didn’t pay attention to them, didn’t mean the universe had any issue messing with me.
Was it too much to ask that I be allowed to enjoy my life without the consequences of rash actions coming back to bite me at the most inappropriate of moments?
But enough of Jared. I had a small child to locate.
“Has anyone seen my sister?” I shouted above the ruckus of the black-shirted crew rushing around me.
“Phoebe, no!” Mel’s voice echoed down the hallway before any of them could answer.
A loud crash followed and everyone around me winced.
“Try the stage,” a black-haired guy with a goatee called over his shoulder.
“Thanks,” I muttered. Not that I needed help now.
Why was she on the stage when she had work?
Frowning, I headed in that direction.
I stepped into the auditorium and groaned. Half the drum kit lay on its side and Mel stared at it, red-faced, dragging her hands through her hair while roadies were picking up the pieces. Phoebe danced around her feet, gleefully oblivious to the destruction she’d wrought.
“Now don’t you wish you left her with me?” I called from the side of the stage.
Mel spun to face me, her light brown hair whipping around her. Despite her being three years older than me, we generally looked alike. Lately, we’d diverged quite a lot. I’d lost the will to wash my hair with the back-to-back tour stops. Dry shampoo was my friend while Mel somehow maintained her denial.
I shouldn’t chuckle at the pained grimace on her face, but we’d had this conversation so many times at this point, we had a script. Mel had spent the first four years of Phoebe’s life a single parent before she let Dan back into her life. Taking her eyes off my hyperactive niece might have been a challenge for my dear sister.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Auntie Ella,” Phoebe screeched, throwing herself at me. I grunted, too slow to catch her before she whacked me in the stomach. “I played drums. I was great. Right, mam?”
Mel bit her lip. “Sure, just don’t tell your dad.”
“You really mean don’t tell the band, right?”
It didn’t look like Jared’s kit but he’d probably still lose it. Unpredictable piece of work.
Just the thought of him being pissed off filled me with joy. I spun the little delinquent in a circle as a reward and she squealed in delight.
Mel smirked, seeing right through me. She’d clocked our bitter familiarity that first day in her flat and spent the next few months trying to get the whole thing out of me. I refused to give in. There was no need to drag a mistake into the openlike that. No, it could just fade into the past. One day, I wouldn’t feel disgusted whenever he opened his mouth or aroused when he stepped off stage, topless and plastered in sweat.
