Page 65 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

To see how we blended beyond the physical.

Too soon, his singing had ended. Then we’d had that instant where he turned into my arms. So brief. I’d touched the ends of his soft hair, fighting every urge to slip my fingers through it. To draw him even closer.

Before I could, he’d hauled himself back in line and pulled away. Retreated back into the music.

He never got past my part of the song.

He tweaked and improved upon the lyrics I’d scribbled down on the fly, writing notes in the margin with the pink floppy-haired pen in between run-throughs. I would’ve laughed if I wasn’t so wrapped up in watching him work. That lock of dark hair that always fell across his forehead into his eyes until he flipped it out of his way. The way he gripped the pen, no longer noticing its ridiculousness, his brow furrowed as he wrote and crossed out and returned to playing again.

Every time, he demanded more from me. Even as I demanded everything from myself.

I wasn’t one for vocal tricks. For him, I showed off my range. Deliberately. Straining to hold notes I wouldn’t have tried in a rehearsal otherwise to save my vocal cords.

There was no way to protect myself here. In any way.

After we’d gone through the beginning of the song what felt like fifteen times, I blew out a breath. “Let’s move on. What about your lyrics? Can we rip those to shreds for a change?” I snatched the notebook before he could argue with me.

As hard as it was to keep my face emotionless, I tried. I wasn’t sure I pulled it off. Probably didn’t even come close.

While I’d been ripping myself open for him, he’d written about brushing me off.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was what he did. We hadn’t had much of a relationship thus far, but what we’d had mostly consisted of fighting, tension, blow-the-roof-off-sex, and then an Irish-flavored boot.

He wondered why I ran. Try self-preservation.

I wasn’t going to do that this time. These were just lyrics, written in his precise handwriting. Tiny arrows that couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t allow it.

Just words on a page.

I started to sing, connecting the lines he’d written to what I’d composed so far. Well, before he’d annihilated what I’d done with his brand of improvements.

That made the song better, dammit.

Just as his lyrics worked for the kind of fuck you anthem that played well to the fans. Everyone knew what it was like to want the wrong person.

Did they ever.

The more I sang, the angrier I got. I didn’t have to feign the growl in my voice. It wasn’t sandpapery like his when he started to sing with me—again—but the kind of pissed off every woman could relate to.

Oh, yeah, don’t want this? Don’t want me? Then never again for you too.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“That’s it. Exactly it. Christ, that was magnificent.”

I cut myself off mid-note, my head thrown back as I shouted out my displeasure to the rafters. I hoped it wasn’t actual shouting, but I couldn’t be sure.

And that was what he called magnificent?

“Sure your ears are still working?”

He was back writing in the notebook again. Playing with one hand, messing around with the lyrics with the other. His hair was disordered, as if he’d been running his hands through it while I was rage-singing. Or maybe that was still left over from me.

From us.

Fucker.

“This isn’t even what we’re supposed to be working on,” I muttered, picking at my nail polish. I didn’t do that anymore. I’d left that bad habit behind in high school.

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