The Prospect

THE PROSPECT: CHAPTER FIVE

Kiddo

I watched Tricia, in awe as she finished her set.

A chill rocked through my body as she sang, her brown eyes hooded and dark with smoky eyeliner. Her red lips were parted, jaw trembling with the long note she held and she gripped the microphone tightly in one hand, her mouth open and dangerously close to brushing against the head of the mic.

My cock stiffened in my pants and I inhaled sharply through tight lips.

It was all too goddamn similar to the look of a woman ready to open her mouth to my dick. Everything from her wet, parted mouth, to her grip on the microphone, to the way she stared at me with a needy, wanting gaze in her eyes.

Dude, back off my fucking sister.

Sam's voice echoed in my head and I couldn't help the smile at his memory. Like an angel on my shoulder, that guy was always with me. My guiding force ever since we were seventeen and he died.

Yeah, yeah. I thought back to him. I'll look, but I won't touch.

On stage, it was like Tricia was this entirely different person. Not the shy girl next door I had kissed at the top of a hill. And definitely not the angry girl at the cafe who made me my Americano each morning and could hardly make eye contact with me.

Not that I blamed her.

She had every right to hate me.

Hell, I hated myself for what I took from her; from her family.

If I hadn't been so reckless, Sam might still be alive.

Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins accepted my apology too damn easily if you asked me. They hugged me; forgave me years ago when I finally completed rehab and gained the courage to approach them.

I deserved worse. I deserved to be screamed at and shoved out of their home. But they did the opposite of that. They held me. Forgave me. And invited Rig and me to stay for dinner.

Fucking hell. At least Tricia's anger made sense to me. And I would spend my life trying to make it up to her. Trying to make her life easier if I could. It started small... tipping five bucks daily for an Americano that cost three. Now? If this gig could get her a record deal? Maybe I could finally sleep easy at night.

She deserved this. This and so much more.

Yep. So much more than you, asshole, Sam said.

Wasn't that the goddamned truth? I knew it wasn't really him, but rather an extension of my subconscious. But I didn't care. It sounded like him and I was going to fucking cling to that.

I looked down at my ratty flannel beneath my leather cut and sighed. I probably looked like a psycho compared to those pretty boys on stage with her.

Oh sure, they dressed themselves up in punk gear—they had a couple tattoos and some piercings and different colored hair. They wrote and played hardcore music, but those assholes weren't hardcore.

Hardcore wasn't a tattoo on your knuckles and black dye in your hair. It was stealing a car and racing it ninety miles an hour down I-93. It was slamming your fist into a client's eye socket until he agreed to pay the balance he owed the garage.

I knew it was some fucked up shit, but that adrenaline rush of going ninety in a forty zone? Or getting in a fight and feeling the physical power over someone else? That shit was a whole other kind of high. It gave me a taste of my old life and I relished in it.

Beside me, Rig put his fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle. Then, looking around at the crowd, he lifted an eyebrow in my direction. "Good crowd you pulled for this girl," he said. "How'd you manage to get so many of the brothers here tonight?"