Page 49 of Play Fast (Brooklyn Dawn 2)

“When did you get this?”

“Before.” I knew what she was getting at.

“Before your mom too?”

“When she was sick.”

She combed her fingers through my hair, pushing it away from my face. The wind kicked it right back, so she did it again.

I grabbed her wrist and kissed it. “Do you have any tattoos?”

“No. There was nothing I ever loved enough to put it permanently on my body. Except maybe something for Ker, but I don’t know what would be right.”

“When it is, you’ll know.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. Your gut is never wrong. It’s just a matter of choosing whether or not to listen.”

Exactly why I’d been avoiding this woman for months. And for years before that, though I would’ve sworn I hadn’t thought of her in forever before she showed up in that conference room last fall.

Lies.

I was the king of them.

“My gut always chose you,” she said, her voice barely audible over the breeze, the rocking water, and the thunk of the ropes against the side of the boat. “Why I followed you even knowing you might hate me for it.”

I slid my arms around her waist, bringing her flush against my chest. My teeth caught her lower lip. “See this? This is me hating you.”

The phone buzzed in her hand and she sighed. Heavily. She flicked off the torch and turned the cell screen toward me.

Lila. Guess she wasn’t waiting for me to call her back.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry to interrupt your evening. I’ll be brief. I trust Noah or Daisy conveyed the message about the venue.”

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Just some minor destruction, graffiti and the like. Some of the equipment was tampered with. I let the others know, but you were the only one left.”

“Tampered with?” I repeated, my gaze connecting with Daisy’s in the moonlit dark.

Out here, we were in the center of tranquility. But back in the city, shit was going crazy.

Or was it? Maybe Lila and Noah were just being overly paranoid. People had died before at a Ripper show. I supposed that would make anyone overly wary.

Yet that whole gut thing I’d just mentioned to Daisy was working overtime.

“Minor tampering.” Lila’s voice never so much as rippled. She could’ve been discussing a summer day. “I know you all wanted to rehearse at the venue the night before rather than simply doing soundcheck, and sadly, that won’t be possible.”

“Which Daisy told me. Did you not trust her or Chuckles to relay the message?”

Daisy stiffened in my arms.

“I trust them both implicitly, or they wouldn’t be in our employ.”

I knew Daisy heard her because she bit her lip and turned her face away.

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