Page 9 of Play Dirty (Brooklyn Dawn 1)

Brooklyn Dawn was at the height of success now, but it had taken sacrifices to get here. In a hard rock landscape dominated by male voices, I had to prove over and over again I wasn’t just a pretty face. That our band deserved to be here.

I ripped open my chest to belt out the haunting lyrics until my crystal-laden glider touched down on the main stage. I opened my eyes to take in the sea of faces. Signs that always ended up being snuck into the venues cried out their pleas for songs or their undying love for someone in the band. The rapt attention of some fans was peppered in among the wave of cell phones raised to take in the moment.

Hands unfastened me from the back, releasing me to fly to the front of the stage to finish the song—to hold the long note and combat the cries from the crowd. My chest heaved as I drew a greedy breath and gripped my crystal-encrusted microphone stand.

My face split wide with a joyous smile. “How are we tonight, San Francisco?”

I touched a finger to my chin when the volume of the replies didn’t quite suit my mood.

“I know you can do better than that.” Jamie came up beside me and hooked her arm around my waist. I tossed my long, lavender-tipped blond curls over my shoulder. “James, does that sound like a welcome to you?”

Jamie leaned into my mic. “Sounds like a fucking whisper to me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go with whisper. I mean, they tried, right?”

Jamie swung her guitar around behind her. “That’s why people call you the nice one. I tell it like it is.”

The crowd rose another decibel in volume. From the back of the house, they started chanting Jamie’s name.

Zane and Oz walked up to meet us. “You having a party without us?” Zane said into the small headset microphone he preferred.

“Lame party,” Jamie quipped. “These guys don’t know how to have fun.”

The crowd booed good-naturedly. Jamie shrugged and pulled her guitar back around to the front. “Maybe they need a little music to get them going?”

“Is that what you think they’re here for?” Cooper interjected from the back. “Maybe a little bit of this…” He slammed on the skins with a blend of Dave Grohl and John Bonham intensity.

“Or this?” Teagan said huskily into her microphone as she chased Cooper’s beat with her keys.

We exploded into the next song, scattering around the stage to cover every inch. To engage and delight the crowd with favorites, new additions, and cover songs when the temperature of the crowd required it.

Tonight, San Francisco was living for us, for our music, and the emotions we dragged out of each screaming fan.

By the middle of the show, my chest was on fire. I’d reached for notes I’d pay for tomorrow, but tonight, it was worth it. I had a week to rest my vocals and I was treating them like a muscle that hadn’t been to the gym in a year.

I was wild and the crowd fed off of it.

I curled my arm around Jamie’s neck and dragged her close to whisper in her ear. “‘Barracuda’?”

Her dark eyes lit with the devil. “Fuck, yes.”

It had been a damn long time since we’d done the song. It had been a staple of our tour when we first started out, but we’d left it behind for new songs and multiple albums. For a catalog of music we all loved.

I stopped at the microphone tucked away near Cooper and flashed him a huge smile. One eyebrow shot up. I said, “‘Barracuda’,” into the mic and he twirled a stick into the air.

“Fuck, yeah.”

Drums and guitars on the grittiest end of the spectrum were Cooper’s favorite part of a show. Calling an audible was asking for trouble when it came to the lighting rigs and smooth sailing show our stage manager lived for.

I was about to fuck up her day.

I locked eyes with Jamie and we both ran for her glider.

“Goddammit, Lindz.”

I grinned at Darcy’s voice coming through my in-ear monitors. She liked to break in and give me a piece of her mind sometimes. I mostly let her. She was all bark. I reached behind for my battery pack and gave it a double tap to let her know I still loved her and that I wasn’t changing my mind.

Teagan was getting used to our ways and spun out the end of the song as one of our techs locked us in on Jamie’s glider. The crowd kept craning their necks to find us on the stage, but we were swallowed in shadows. Slowly, the arm activated and pushed us out over the crowd.

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