Page 74 of Play Fast (Brooklyn Dawn 2)

A block away, I got a glimpse of the encampment out front. Tons of people, cameras, equipment trucks. Great.

In times like this, it wasn’t hard to see why I didn’t spend much time there.

I veered into the next lane and turned off without a signal to a chorus of horns.

Shit, was Daisy dealing with this? Had I run off and consigned her to facing that alone?

Not alone. Noah was there. He would protect her. Far better than I could. He had a hell of a lot more control than I did, that was for certain.

My left hand tightened around the wheel. The right was in my lap, because it hurt like a bitch after the dual battles of fighting with a photographer and making love to Daisy.

Fucking. We’d fucked. End of story.

I circled around for a while, finally giving in to the urge to call Lila. She could check in with Noah for me if nothing else.

“Hello, Osmond. I’m going to assume you aren’t in jail again.”

I was in such a funk that I didn’t even care she’d called me my given name. “Not yet, but it might happen. My place is infested.”

“I know. We have someone on their way over, since you left your security guard with Daisy.”

“He’s her cousin. Or something. Besides, she might need security, but I don’t.”

“Right. You can clearly handle large crowds of paparazzi, since you did so well yesterday.”

I slammed my horn as someone cut me off, swearing a blue streak.

“I can tell you’re much calmer now,” she continued. “So, the security guard will meet you around the corner. Let me give you exact coordinates. Please hold.”

Coordinates. Only Lila, man. Sometimes I wondered how she’d ended up corralling crazy rockstars instead of working in air traffic control or something that dealt with life and death on a daily basis.

Then again, with all this security secretiveness, maybe she had more to do with such things than I fully realized.

“Li, wait. You talked to Noah. Is it a mess at the cabin?”

“Define mess.” Her voice cooled, telling me Noah had informed her what had gone down. I couldn’t even call him a traitor, since his allegiance

was clearly to Daisy, not me.

It wasn’t as if I thought I’d bought his silence with premium sausage links. Bad enough he’d sent me on a grocery store run as if I was an errand boy when I was making my dramatic exit. I’d been foiled by him doing his ridiculous ab crunches in my living room.

“Look, you’ve probably figured out Daisy and I had a thing.”

“A thing.” Considering Lila’s frosty tone, I almost expected to see icicles dripping from my in-dash screen.

“It’s nothing to concern yourself with. It’s over.”

“Oh, thank God. I’d hate to have anything else to be concerned about.”

“You know, your husband offered to be my friend. Does he know you have such a disdain for me?”

She didn’t hesitate. “If I truly had a disdain for you—which I do not—that would not influence Nicholas in the slightest. Because he’s an adult, as I am. We choose our own friends without checking in.”

“This is why I don’t do relationships,” I muttered.

“No, you don’t do relationships because you have to risk more than your hair.”

I skidded into a space a block from where I was supposed to meet my sanctioned lackey. “How come women all stick together and men don’t?”

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