Page 121 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

Some nights, I knew the limits of the crowd. A Tuesday crowd might not be as ready to party as a Friday one. Sometimes the ratio of reserved fans to the outward rockers tilted the wrong way.

Tonight, had been a good night. We’d had them in the palm of our hands, but even Jamie was maxed out at this point. We’d given them everything.

I could literally squeeze sweat out of my jumpsuit. Ugh.

“Lindsey, you have a man waiting for you.”

My heart tripped. I glanced over at Shannon, one of our backstage techs. “Who?”

She shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. He was wearing a lot of black and a scowl.”

Again, my heart kicked. It couldn’t be. I’d been begging Alex to come out and see me for days. That stubborn man wouldn’t budge an inch to text me when he was working, let alone travel out of New York to come to Washington, DC.

At least he was replying now, more or less. Not always, especially when aforementioned work was involved. But since I’d received that gorgeous bouquet from him, he’d been trying.

I knew the man waiting for me probably wasn’t Alex. I still wanted to race out and check.

Damn him.

I flipped my huge halo of hair over my shoulder and smiled at Shannon. “Let him know I need to shower and change.”

“He’s in the green room and seemed very impatient.”

Another point that it could be Alex. I’d held my ass for weeks, so he could too. But the burst of energy from knowing it might be him was welcome.

Jamie came up behind Shannon, her height dwarfing our little blue-haired dynamo. Shannon jumped and Jamie bared her teeth.

Shannon scurried off. “I’ll tell him you’ll be a few minutes,” she said from halfway down the hallway.

“Must you scare the crew?”

Jamie shrugged and collapsed on the couch beside me. Her wet hair was twisted into a braid, her face scrubbed free of the little makeup she did allow Genie to put on her. Her post-show ritual was an immediate shower. Then again, it was way easier for her to strip out of her stage clothes.

Me? I had to peel out of a catsuit and my stage makeup was more in line with a clown’s at this point.

Another reason I wanted to strip stage Lindz off. I didn’t want Alex to see me all exhausted and drawn.

My skin started to buzz. Could he really be here? I’d told him I was off for a couple of days. Not that he’d bothered to text me back after I’d dropped a hint the size of a Volkswagen.

“Yo, earth to Lindz.”

I glanced over at Jamie. “Huh?”

She shook her head with an eyeroll. “I said, I thought we could hit a few of the clubs tomorrow downtown. See what’s what in the nightlife.”

Jamie loved to check out the local clubs, the more underground the better. Usually, I didn’t mind hanging with her. We’d found our last opening act that way, and now Take Three was burning up the club circuit with their first headline tour.

Not as big as the shows we did, but they had that killer hunger and the drive to find their audience. Oh, to be new and not jaded. I loved going on stage—it was still the biggest thrill of my life—but I missed being hungry.

Well, for something other than Alex. Unfortunately, that hunger was gnawing and way more distracting than it should be.

“Hello.” Jamie snapped her fingers in my face.

I shoved her hand away. “Quit it.”

She sighed. “You are totally not coming out with me.”

“I’m just not feeling it.”

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