Page 75 of Never Sleep with the Enemy

“IdespiseCriminal Records.”

Katrina playfully smacks my arm. “I’m serious!”

“So am I.”

“Why?” She squints, all playfulness fading in favor of genuine need to know. “What don’t you like about us?”

“Where do I begin?”

“Is it our music?” she asks. “Our style? Or are you one of those guys who hates popular stuff just because it’s popular?” she adds with a roll of her eyes.

“Oh, you got me,” I say. “I’m that guy.”

She levels me with a glare.

I chew my cheek a moment before replying. “I don’t hate you,” I say. “I just feel that your success is... unearned.”

“Unearned?” she repeats, demanding more.

“Everything can be bought.”

“And you think we bought our success?”

“Youdohave a billionaire for a bassist,” I say, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m hardly the first to say this out loud. You know that.”

Katrina pauses, a line creasing between her brows, holding for long enough for me to think her next words will be to boot me off this bed and out the door. But she softens after a breath.

“No,” she says. “I guess you’re not. But I think that they, and you, just don’t know us very well.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure, Jonah has money and influence, but he never wanted it. Not really. He only ever uses it to help his friends.” Her lips twitch. “That’s kinda what made me like him, at first. But me and Knox? We came from nothing. Bronson and Addison did, too.”

I arch a brow.“Addison?”

“She never knew who her father was,” she argues. “And when she found out, he rejected her. Hell, the rest of us didn’t even know until this summer.” She gives me a smile, one of hope and friendship. “You don’t know Criminal Records as well as you think you do, Logan.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I say. “In fact, I’ve warmed up to the Botsford boy already.”

Katrina gives me a questioning look.

I lean close enough to kiss her, hovering over her on the pillows. “If he’d chosen differently, I wouldn’t be here now.”

I kiss her softly, delighting in the way her lips part to accept mine.

“But, also…” I add, drawing her eyes up to mine. “Your brother is a fucking idiot.”

Katrina laughs, the sound piercing my chest with warmth. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, he is. A little.”

I feel her warm hand on my face as I kiss her again and again. “There is one thing I’d change about your music, if I could.”

“What?” she asks.

I kiss the tip of her nose. “More of you,” I whisper.

I don’t elaborate. I know I don’t even need to when Katrina smiles.

We lie like this for a long time, the conversation never straying too far away from music, our bands and tours. Slowly but surely, Katrina drifts off, her body growing heavier against the mattress.

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