Page 13 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

“What the fuck?”

“Fly.” She rolled to her back and stared up at me. She was wearing a skirt—if you could call it that. It was dangerously short.

“Jesus.” Her eyes were beyond glassy and she was feeling no pain. I knew that look. Craved it every fucking day. Sweet oblivion.

“Fly with me, Al?”

“Get the fuck up,” I snarled.

Memories were so ripe and raw that my voice was harsher than it should have been.

Instant tears flooded her huge, tilted hazel eyes. She shook her head. “I like it down here.” She drew her fingers down the cherry red finish of the electric guitar she’d dragged down to the floor with her. The squeak of her fingers followed by the metal twang as a string snapped was like a trigger.

I hauled her up off the floor and set her on the couch. She shook her foot to get the guitar off her heel, but gave up and flipped the shoe free. Her tear-stained face twisted into an ugly clown-like smile as she laughed. Streaks of purple makeup dripped down her cheeks and snaked down her neck. “Stupid shoes.”

She shook her head in some internal song only she knew. The words fly angel fly on constant repeat.

I ground my molars together to tamp down the rage building with each echoing word. Her low hum floated into an off-key childlike voice.

“Enough,” I roared.

Her tears rolled again. “Why are you so mean?”

I bent down to look her in the face. “Why are you high?”

“I need it. You don’t understand.”

“I don’t fucking care. What’s my number one rule? My only fucking rule?”

She slumped back on the couch and gave me an insolent shrug. “Rules. Wh’ver.”

I set Logan’s guitars into holders. One was beyond fucked. The other was a mess of broken strings.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

Voices from upstairs in the main part of the house started to bleed into the white noise attacking my ears. The noise threatened to drag me under as she slowly slid down the couch. The nonsensical mumble of words had me tripping back on my feet.

“Get out of here.” My voice was shattered glass. I rubbed my throat, the scar tissue growing more irritated with each octave I climbed.

“But I can’t. He’s flying and I can’t catch him.” She dragged at her shirt until the pale skin of her chest was on display.

I slammed my eyes shut. She was barely more than a kid.

Bella’s voice, sharp and panicked, chased by Logan’s rumbling deeper voice. The shriek of a child, then the quick pound of feet.

“Get out of here!” My voice was raw. “How dare you bring that here?”

Angel’s tears turned to sobs as she curled into herself. Her once strange and individual hair was now a stringy white and green tangle of unwashed knots.

Twenty and innocent.

Or she had been.

Twenty when she came to me with hope and so much talent. She’d broken me down with her hope. With her sweetness, no matter how many times I shut her down. She wanted to work. Wanted to find her true voice.

She was well on her way to being one of the few who were brave enough to share it with the world.

Now?

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