Page 18 of Play Fast (Brooklyn Dawn 2)

I laughed and sang along, surprised by how many of the lyrics I remembered.

Even more surprised when he wrenched off the radio and cut me a look as I finished off the end of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” without the radio accompaniment. My voice wobbled but I made myself complete the song. Talk about nerve-wracking. Me and my bedroom warbling on display before a bona fide rockstar. One who had rocked on stages across the world while I was doing prom updos and party makeup at a small salon in Queens.

When I finished, he switched into the fast lane again and hit the gas. He didn’t say anything for so long that my face went from warm to agonizingly hot.

So what if he didn’t think I could sing? I did hair and makeup for a living. I rocked at those things, and I was learning more all the time. Singing and dancing were just what I did for fun. I didn’t party anymore, so now I found freedom in forms of expression that didn’t make me pass out at the end of the night.

I shifted on my seat, uncomfortable with the silence. I didn’t know if he’d grown tired of the music or what. I was also freezing. The early May night was warm, but inside the truck in my painfully brief outfit, I was on the verge of shivering. So, I fiddled with the heat, half expecting him to bark at me to leave it alone. Most males seemed to be perennially overheated.

We went another couple of miles, and then he jerked over to the side of the road and flipped on his hazards. I didn’t have a clue why until he pulled off his seatbelt and hauled off his hoodie from behind his head, swearing under his breath when his hand hit the ceiling. I smothered a giggle that disappeared entirely when he dropped it in my lap. The material was warm from his body and smelled like him—balsam and woodsmoke and sweat, an oddly alluring combination. I wanted to bury my face in the fabric before I wrapped myself in its warmth.

Instead, I stared at it as if he’d tossed a python in my lap.

“Put it on,” he commanded.

“You’re too big.”

“So I’ve been told.”

I was not touching that one. But I was also cold and the gray hoodie was so soft. I undid my belt and pulled it on, letting out a sigh of pure pleasure as the warm fabric slid against my skin. As I’d suspected, the thing was about five sizes too big, but I wrapped it around me and snuggled in.

“Better? Can I turn this down before my nuts roast?” He was already doing it, his big arm stretching toward the dials and buttons on the dashboard and absolutely dominating the space.

The leather vest he wore from the stage only accentuated his size. In the shadows of the front seat, I couldn’t see much clearly, but I remembered how he’d looked in it earlier. He’d nearly busted out of the damn thing. The sides were held together in the front with just a couple of small hooks that stretched and gapped when he played. His long hair had streamed behind him, making him look like a demon sent to earth to drive women crazy before they became his willing sacrifice.

“Yes, please, don’t want to be responsible for you being out of commission for any length of time. Your many admirers would be brokenhearted. I half expected you to show up with one or two hanging off you when you came looking for your keys.”

He didn’t say anything as he turned off the hazards and shifted back on the road. Then he turned up the music again.

So much for conversation.

Then again, what had I expected from that little fishing expedition? It was a damn miracle he hadn’t left me at the rest stop and called Lila to have a car come pick me up. He hadn’t wanted me on this trip to his swanky digs, and he’d made that clear enough. I’d just tagged along like the pesky kid sister he probably saw me as.

God knows he’d never given much indication he’d even noticed I was a woman, other than the occasional quick comment or lingering look. He’d even nicknamed me “sprite” tonight.

A nickname, always the surest way to my foolishly lonely heart. Even if it was akin to a gnome or a troll. Something little and adorable.

Yay me.

“To anyone who isn’t a giant, I’m actually a bit over average height for a woman, you know.”

He didn’t appear to hear me, just stomped on the gas. We rocketed forward, although we weren’t anywhere near my earlier speeds. Just enough that the wind slicing through the sliver of window I’d left open streaked through my hair and made me shiver again. But now I had his hoodie to drag even tighter around me.

“Belt,” he snapped out.

“So bossy. Is that why you don’t have a girlfriend?”

I didn’t expect an answer to my question, and I didn’t get it. I had no explanation for why I kept circling around his love life. In the little over six months I’d been doing hair and makeup for the band, he’d never let me touch him. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to refuse those services, since everyone was supposed to be stage ready at all times. But Oz did what he wanted, whether it was going onstage sans any makeup but his own or tossing a guitar into a hot tub at a hotel party. I’d only heard about that secondhand from Teagan, who’d tried to smooth over my hurt feelings the first time he’d pitched a fit about sitting in my chair.

“He has issues,” Teagan whispered conspiratorially. “It’s not you.”

Except it was me. The couple of nights I’d been off with the flu in December, he’d let the woman who filled in for me do his hair. She’d gone on and on about how she’d buried her hands in it and just let herself pretend they were in a much different scenario. He’d been nothing but charming to her, which I knew because I’d asked.

I’d needed to know, even if now I wished I didn’t.

At some point, I started singing with the music again. Low at first, then losing myself in the songs that Kerry and I had listened to so often in high school. She’d been all about the retro hair bands, and I’d learned to love them too. Oz had been doing his share of rocking back then himself, and he’d always had longer hair—the kind a budding hairstylist would’ve loved to get her hands on. Even back then, he’d acted as if my hands were poison.

Now they were radioactive.

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