Page 206 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

I touched the side of my head where everything seemed to throb the most. “About the accident?”

“Ah, but did he tell you all of it? Just how gleefully he ruined me and mine?”

“It was an accident. A terrible mistake.”

“Did he tell you that he tried to kill me?” Kyle tilted his head. “High as my ma’s favorite clothing line off the roof. Truth be told, he was probably even higher. Hitting airplane level by the time he spun us out on that rain-soaked road.”

I swallowed back the urge to bolt. The way he was pacing in front of me made everything jangle inside me. And yet it all felt a little padded. A little distant. But there was no denying Kyle wasn’t quite right. Maybe hadn’t been for a good long time.

Even the first time I met him, he’d been…off.

He stopped pacing and snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Keep up, duchess.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Oh, right. Only Nash calls you that, right?” He smiled that oddly blank smile. It was as if his face didn’t really move.

I reached my hand out and he reeled back. “No. You stay there, duchess. You can’t be trusted.”

“What’s wrong with your face?”

His hand came up to his cheek. “What do you mean? I fixed it. Isn’t it more pleasing now?” He patted the edges of…was that skin? Makeup? He rushed over to a large black bag. “Look at what you made me do. I had to haul your pretty ass up those steps and I ruined my makeup!”

I covered my mouth with a trembling hand. “It’s fine.”

“No.” His voice was a roar. “No, it’s not fine. It’s ruined.” He scraped his fingers through the almost plastic looking skin. Adhesive came free with it revealing his scarred cheek and spotty shadow of a beard.

I scrabbled back on the seat, trying to curl my feet into a ball, but they didn’t work right. My heel kept slipping back down.

“Now don’t get all frightened, duchess. It’s just a few scars. You’re used to them right. Nash’s face is maybe a little prettier, but you still touch him with all the reverence in the world.” He tried to pat it back in place, but it kept flapping down. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

He ripped it off and I turned my face away.

“No, you look. See what he made me. I tried to make it better for you. Hoping maybe you’d see me. Listen to me.”

I turned back to him. “That’s not what scares me. Your scars aren’t all that you are.”

“Easy for you to say.” He reached behind him and pulled out small but wicked looking knife. “If I slid this down your pretty cheek would you be so quick to say scars don’t matter?”

I shut my eyes against the fabricated blue of his normally dark eyes. The madness creeping so close. “Please don’t.”

“See, not so fun playing beauty and the beast when you’re the beast, now is it?” He laughed and the sound grated through me, leaving behind a sheen of cold sweat.

“Kyle, we didn’t do anything to you.”

“Are you kidding me? You took him away from me.”

I shrank back into the couch cushions. “No.”

“We were doing just fine with our lives. We understood each other. We were mates closer than anyone else. Then you.”

I gripped the arm of the couch. I had to keep my voice steady, even. I wanted to scream at him, to defend, but that wouldn’t help me. “Why can’t we be both? Just because I love Alex doesn’t mean I got rid of my friends. My band.”

“Doesn’t it? I don’t see you with that Amazonian woman anymore. Always with Nash. Every moment with Nash. Your face is practically Velcroed to his lips or his cock.”

“No.” How could he know any of that?

“Oh, I’ve heard you. I know it’s true. Quite the symphony between you two. You like when he’s the monster.” He tilted his head, his unreal eyes shining. “I can hear it, you know. How you beg for it. Like a bitch in heat. You two are always on each other. You’d think the world was about to end. Are you clairvoyant, duchess?”

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