Nine

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Auriella Everleigh Soleil

This man was by far the best teacher I had come across all day. Mr Fitch was an eccentric man, full of colour and sparkles and I was honestly fully engaged and enjoying his class. Granted it was a music class so not necessarily a repeat of what I had already learnt but I already knew this was going to be my favourite class while I was here.

I giggled a little as the man entertained the class as he made his way around the class greeting each student by name, he looked like he genuinely cared for each person in the class.

"Grayson." He stopped in front of my older brother, who was sitting next to Ezra and I but surrounded by a couple other boys including Liam Walker. "Have you figured out the melody?"

"Almost there, Sir." Grayson answered with the most respect I had seen him speaking to an adult with.

The man nodded, moving through the boys and then coming to Ezra, who they easily chatted about the music Ez was writing. He grinned at me when he first caught sight of me.

"Ooh, a new face. What's your name?"

"Everleigh Taylor, Sir." I smiled back.

"My sister." Ezra spoke proudly and my heart melted a little right there.

"And do you have any musical experience Miss Taylor?"

"Umm, I play guitar, violin and piano and a little bit of drums." Xander knew how to play drums and I had learnt a little from him but I wasn't too interested in it like the other instruments.

"Quite the musical genius, aren't you." Mr Fitch grins.

"Not just a musical genius, an all around genius." Ezra explained, his blue eyes wide. "She can sing too, Mr. F."

"Well then it's a pleasure to have you in my class Miss Taylor."

"Just Everleigh's fine." I laugh amused by this man's personality.

I wasn't a Taylor, by blood, sure, but by everything that mattered I wasn't.

I was a Soleil and I was extremely proud of that and maybe sometime in the future I would be a Rozzi and with everything that name stood for I wouldn't mind taking that one either.

"Well then Miss Everleigh, it's a pleasure to have you in my class."

"He seems cool." I whisper to no one in particular but Ezra's the only one close enough to me to hear what I had said.

"Yeah he's the best."

"Okay everyone, as I mentioned last lesson we will be starting our term group project that will make up your pair, and unfortunately it's compulsory for me to put you into pairs rather than choosing so listen to your names please." We all listen for our names. "Okay, group five will be Ezra and Everleigh Taylor."

"Well that makes life easy, come on let's go choose instruments first." Ezra pulls me with him.

"Slow down dude, you're trying to pull my arm off." I whine and the idiot rolls his eyes at me.

"You're fine, stop being dramatic."

"Ezra whatever your middle name is Taylor." I chide like a parent.

"My middle name's Sullivan." He answers, looking through the guitars hung on the wall.

"Oh." I pause before asking. "Wait, what's my middle name?"

"You don't know your middle name?" Liam laughs, him and Grayson coming up behind us.

"Sorry I didn't ask my kidnappers for that information, I happened to be too busy trying to stay alive."

That was a bit harsh, normally I try to kill people with politeness and smiles but Liam had just hit a bit of a sore spot.

"Your middle name's Sapphire." Grayson answered, his voice quite, only loud enough for the three of us to hear."

"Oh." That's all I could get out. It's weird not even knowing things as simple as your middle name.

"Yup." Ezra says with more enthusiasm than the rest of us have. "Everleigh Sapphire Taylor, Elijah Sebastian Taylor, Emmeline Savannah Taylor and me, Ezra Sullivan Taylor."

"Matching letters?" I muse. "If I have multiples in the future, which is more than likely considering I'm a quadruplet, I want them to have matching initials."

"No way." Ezra disagrees. "If I have multiples their names are going to be in no way correlated, no matching letters or sounds, completely different."

It was funny seeing Ezra and I's different perspective on the situation, he had grown up a multiple but I hadn't. He would want his kids to have the individuality he never had himself but I had always planned for my kids to follow the pattern with Xander and I as well as our father's. I had a list of baby names for both males and females and every single one of them started with 'A'.

"What song do you want to sing?" We had to do two covers, both with different types of techniques. We had both grabbed acoustic guitars.

"I don't know, but I was thinking we can both strum for the first song but in different frets and for the second one picking, you can do finger picking and I can do fingerstyle?"

"That's good." I agree. "I might be a little rusty though, I haven't played much guitar in the last two or three years."

"You'll be fine, I was thinking yellow by Coldplay, it's one of my favourites and I think it would be awesome played as a duet."

My eyes brighten and I can feel a smile lifting onto my face. "My dad used to sing that to me."

"Oh, we can change it if you like." He offers genuinely.

"No." A small way to honour his memory. "He'd like it, do you know the chords already?"

"Yeah, you."

"Uh huh." I nod distracted as I made sure the guitar was in tune. "How do you want to split the verses, we can sing the chorus together."

"We can do that, I'll do the first one and you can do the second." He nods then he marks out the sign with a thoughtful look on his face. "You know how every fourth line has a slight variation of 'it was all yellow.' why don't we sing those together as well except for the one right before the chorus."

"Okay." I agree, moving my fingers to the first chord as Ezra starts counting softly and it's not long before both of us are playing in sync, better than I have ever played with someone before.

Honestly he is so much better than me and both playing and singing so I was extra attentive so I didn't mess up. Ezra's husky voice sings the song like he was the one who wrote it and even though my fingers were moving with muscle memory I almost forgot to start singing when it was my turn.

My eyes closed as we started harmonising in the chorus, our voices hitting the same note in but different octaves. Our voices mixed perfectly and I felt the pressure of perfection, there was no room to mess up when Ezra was pouring his heart and soul into this performance. But performing under pressure was a specialty of mine, I never crumbled under it, rather I always rose to surpass the bar.

I sang by myself for the next part of the song and Ezra watched me until we got to the chorus. And it was like a switch was flipped and we both put everything we had until we could feel everyone else's eyes on us but we didn't care, our voices went even higher than our normal ranges, our fingers playing the matching higher notes as we strum in sync.

Until we both stopped playing, just singing to the last chorus, our voices were now louder and filling every inch of the room we were in, harmonising in notes far higher than we had planned and then we introduced the guitar resuming together like we hadn't stopped for a playing minute and then we were done. Both of us were breathing like we had run a marathon, a look of understanding passing between us, we got each other.

We both had hurt and trauma, so very different from each other's pain but one thing brought us together, one thing that was a crucial part of our healing.

Music.

We didn't process the loud clapping from everyone in the room, or the bell ringing, singlanling end of the class and we're only brought out of our small bubble by my boyfriend's brother saying.

"Damn if that's the bar then all of us are failing this class miserably."

<><><>

"I'll be fine.'' I promise and Xander scans my face.

"What's wrong?"


"Nothing." I reply honestly.

"There's something wrong." Xander says with a finality that has me rolling my eyes. He acts like he knows my emotions better than I do, well maybe sometimes he does.

"No. I'm just tired and I played music with Ezra today, you know that music where it's so emotional that it makes you feel like crying and sleeping." He doesn't look convinced but it's the truth. "Go learn how to play American football and call me later if you want me to pick you up."

"Aren't you going to ballet?" He replies crossing his arms, knowing I couldn't pick him up if I wanted to as I had a class around the same time he was finishing. He leans down so his lips are at my level and presses a kiss to my cheek and leaves his lips my ear as he whispers to me. "I'll catch a ride with Liam, have fun at your class and if someone bothers you kick their arse."

"Got it." I laugh giving him a thumbs up and we both turn towards the older Walker brother as he walks towards us.

"You coming Nathan?" He asks Xander and Xander nods but his eyes don't stray from my face.

"Don't get injured." I warned him.

"You either." He warns, hating the many times I have injured myself at dance practice. You would think you would get injured more at your many martial arts classes or at horse riding, but nope, I always got hurt at ballet.

"You're brother's waiting." I motion to the other version of my boyfriend and he nods, pressing a quick, soft kiss to my lips before following the older Walker to the field.

Xander had been invited to try out with the football team even though he had no idea what he was doing, and he thought it would be fun. Like me he loved trying new things, especially things we hadn't been exposed to before and this was new.

I waited a few seconds before heading to Xander's car, moving the seat forward a lot and waiting for Elijah since he was the only one heading back with me. Ezra was staying back for someone and he assured me he didn't need a ride back, he said there was always someone to give him a lift and if he couldn't get one the house was only a fifteen minute walk.

"Hey." I greet Eli as he slides into the passenger seat, the seat I had occupied on the morning ride over to the school.

"Hi." He nods back. Elijah was the one who seemed to not know how to communicate with anyone other than his brother's and maybe the two friends I had seen him with during our time at school. We sat in silence and for once Elijah was the first one to try to strike up a conversation, even though I knew he preferred the silence. "How was your first day?"

"It was okay, different from what I'm used to."

"Good or bad different."

"Just different." Different to the school I had been going to for just under a decade. "How was your day?"

Eli looked stunned that I had asked before stammering out that he had had a good day as well, and another piece of my heart broke for these boys. All they need is a little of love and I hope they can get it before they start looking for it in the wrong places like I had seen happen to so many people.

"Oh by the way I wanted to mention to you that Emmeline is trying really hard to get with your boyfriend. I cut in when she was trying in class earlier but if Em is one thing, she's extremely stubborn and determined and gets what she wants, and oftentimes mom and dad enable her so just watch out."

"Thanks for the warning, but Nate won't let anything happen between them." I nod, fully trusting Xander.

"I know, we all see the way you look at each other, it's like you hold so much love for each other that it spills out around you and everyone can feel it. I just thought I would warn you."

That's one of the sweetest things anyone has said to us.

"Thank you Elijah."

"Just Eli."

"Thanks Eli." My phone ringing cuts the conversation and I send Eli an apologetic look which he waves off as he unlocks the phone swiping through it. I answered the number that had been trying to call me all day and I just knew this call was going to annoy me. So Elijah doesn't hear anything he's not supposed to. I place an earbud in my ear and talk to the exasperating man on the other side of the line.

"The information has not changed since the last meeting, William. And if you have any further concerns may you please contact Sandra who is the head of the operation. And if it is imperative that you contact me, an email should suffice." I replied to the man who had been blowing up my work phone.

"But Miss."

I cut him off. "You are not paid to whine to me William, you are paid to do your job. And I must add it is incredibly unprofessional of you to contact me multiple times outside of working hours. I'm not paying you to work those hours so work should be the last thing on your mind until you arrive at the building in the morning."

After a few more brief conversations I cut the call. It amazed me sometimes how incompetent grown adults are, especially when they ring my number a dozen times in a row just because they aren't happy with a miniscule detail.

"You know even though that was all English I did not understand one single bit of that conversation." Eli brings me out of my head and back into the present.

I let out a light laugh. "Yeah, corporate is basically its own language at this point."

"Was that for your job?"

"Sort of." I answer. "He works for my father's company, technically my cousin's in charge of it until I'm eighteen but I pretty much run everything since it's mine anyway."

"You have a lot more money and power than you've let on." Eli says with finality and I glance at him.

"I told you I have money."

"No, you put it forward that you have family money, that your family is rich. You have self earned money, you don't seem like the type to live off a trust fund." I had thought I had to watch out for assessments from Grayson and Ezra but Eli is a lot more observant than I thought.

"I told you I have a job.'' I tested him, putting forward one of the half-truths I had told.

"You don't just have a job, I don't see you taking orders from anyone. You're the CEO. You have the intelligence, you had preparations from your father and family members who own their own companies and you had the funds." He doesn't even pause, Elijah jumps out of Xander's car and heads up the stairs to the Taylor house. "See you inside Ev."

Thank you for 30k reads on this book. I love every single one of my readers and love bein able to write something that will at least make one person happy, even if that's only me.

Hope you liked quadruplet minus Emmeline bonding, I have some family bonding with all of them planned soon minus the older group as well as Grayson/Everleigh content which I can't wait to write.

After Ella and Xander, Grayson's my favourite character followed easily by Ezra.

Who are your favourites of the book so far.

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Please don't forget to leave a comment and a vote and I will see you next chapter.

Ara <3 


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