Page 49 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

For one of the few people who’d stuck by me when I literally crashed and burned. Even if Logan didn’t really know all that had gone down on the night that changed my life.

Changed two lives.

I brushed my hand over my throat to the scars that climbed up my left side and teased my neck. So minor compared to Kyle’s scars. Reminders of all I’d lost and didn’t deserve.

“Can you believe him?” Lindsey stalked up the aisle to the stairs on the side stage. “Does he think we’re two, for God’s sake?”

I blinked out of the way, way back, but The Barn’s hooks wouldn’t quite let go of me yet. The screams were embedded in the seats and the rafters. In the kaleidoscope of lights that had twirled drunkenly as Aimee came completely unhinged onstage.

As she’d killed one of Logan’s best friends to get to him.

No one had believed him. She was just as famous as he was. Rich and entitled in ways that should have given her the world. But all she’d wanted was a man who didn’t want her back.

The parallels made my head swim. I’d been just as wild and rage-filled.

Or fucking close.

“Alex?”

My spine snapped straight at Lindsey’s use of my given name. No one else did.

She came up to me and touched my upper arm. There was a softness to her eyes I didn’t want any part of. “Are you all right?”

I took a large step back. “I’m fine, duchess.”

Her chin lifted. “Can’t control that dickishness for a second, can you?”

I leveled my gaze at her. “I can control it just fine if you remember correctly.”

“Pig.”

I walked across the stage to the tented piano. It wasn’t Matilda, but Logan’s upright was always a welcome friend. I snapped the canvas cover off, then lifted the key guard and drifted the tips of my fingers over the mahogany finish, picking out a few notes.

“Do you have any idea why Logan would lock us in here? Besides his masochistic tendencies.”

“Know him well, do you? Can’t say I have such carnal knowledge.”

“Carnal? Are you high?”

“Nope. Not for ten years and seventy-eight days-ish.”

“Ish?”

I shrugged. “Give or take a timezone.”

She tilted her head. “That’s quite specific.”

“I like specifics.”

I actually hated them, but facts and figures, and harmonies and words were always fresh in my mind. Once upon a time, I’d loved that part of myself. I could learn any song and call upon it whenever I needed it. A cover song at a club, at a party, on a large stage. To show off for a woman. To show off, period.

The problem with that was that I also remembered every detail of my mistakes.

Of a crumpled car.

Of my best friend’s screams while he burned.

Of a stage filled with chaos.

---