Page 176 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

Thirty-Four

I didn’t remember getting upstairs or my room. I was glad to have a solo room for once.

I stumbled to the bathroom and didn’t bother looking at myself in the mirror. I knew it was going to be bad. Right now, I wished for the oblivion of Jamie’s whiskey. To black out the pain like a heavy Sharpie marker over words.

Our words.

Given to another artist.

Another woman.

I tried so hard to ignore that part.

Younger. More broken.

Did she tap into that part of him he felt I couldn’t understand?

I stepped into the luxe shower and pointed my face to the blasting heat. Also not good for my skin or hair, but I didn’t give two flying fucks about beauty regimens right now. The hurt was sitting on my chest like a trunk full of Jamie’s guitars.

How could he do that to me?

To us.

Things were still so fragile between us, barely a verse in a song, and he had to display us like that? Not the good parts of us. No, the hate-filled shades we’d started with. Did he really believe that was who we were still? So much poison for him?

Maybe it’s a misunderstanding.

Except I couldn’t even think that way through the shocking pain.

I lifted my face to the spray and let the tears fall. I added the body jets on the controls until I was being pummeled with water. It wasn’t soothing. It was fiery needles attacking me everywhere, reminding me what I should have stayed away from.

Angel’s voice climbed into my brain. Her haunting vocals with so much talent, so much agony.

My words—his words—our words rolling off her tongue.

Overlapping the version I’d heard the night of the rooftop.

Dragging me back to my dark

Don’t need a new drug

To crave

When everyone wants you on stage

Gets their piece for the price

Of a ticket

Obviously, there was no room for the love I’d offered him if that was what he saw between us. What he really felt. Even if I craved the other half of him, there was too much darkness. Too much destruction lived under his skin.

I’d thought we were bigger than that.

He’d finally shared about his accident, and the guilt with Kyle. We’d been so much more than just two people rubbing up against one another because it felt good. It wasn’t like that between us anymore.

At least I thought we’d been more.

I could feel him pulling back when I left, but that was typical Nash. I knew things were going to take time with us. That fairytales weren’t in my reality. I’d never wanted them even before he’d come into my life.

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