Page 8 of Dash

I snap my gaze to her, scowling at her smirk. “Oh, come on. I know you play for the other team, but even you can appreciate the man is hot.”

I join her teasing tone, even though my body is humming. It’s forgotten that men aren’t meant to awaken me. They’re a tool, something to get lost in for a time. They’re not supposed to give me belly flutters or a racing pulse.

It’s just the sinfully attractive thing, nothing more.

I like that bad boy with a good heart vibe, so fucking shoot me.

“He’s hot,” Katie agrees, “but you’d eat him alive.”

She’s joking and yet the words land like a bullet to my chest. I don’t blame her for thinking that. I’ve spent the last year fucking and chucking men like they were disposable.

Like I am too.

I slip on the mask they expect and laugh. “Of course I would, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Ivy watches me, and for a terrifying moment, I swear she sees beneath my facade.Don’t look too close… you won’t like what you see.

“I can ask Riot if he’s single,” she says finally, slowly. As if she’s measuring how each word will land.

“Babe, I appreciate you being my wing-gal with this, but trust me, I can walk Dash into bed without help.” I reach for the cocktail pitcher in the centre of the table. “Now, how many drinks are you bitches ahead?”

THREE

DASH

Her laugh cutsthrough the music, and my gaze finds her before I realise I’m looking.

She’s fucking magnetic.

Black hair, full lips painted blood red, and eyes that scream trouble. That tiny fucking skirt shows creamy thighs that are begging to be wrapped around my neck. Drama isn’t my thing, but with her…fuck, I’d risk it.

I sip my drink, watching out of the corner of my eye as she laughs again.

It sounds real, like she’s dancing on top of the world, but I hear the brittleness beneath the fakery. I saw it in her eyes, too.

Something about that vulnerability cracks open that soft part of me I buried afterher. I haven’t thought about Kendall in years.

Ten fucking years…

And I still won’t say her name out loud, won’t let her poison sit on my tongue for even a second.

I shove the memory back where it belongs—six feet underground—and bury the ache for the kid I never got to meet.

This woman isn’t her.

I don’t even know her name—just that she’s Ivy’s friend.

“You speak to Rav?”

I’m jolted out of my thoughts. My gaze snaps to Mace as he leans against the bar next to me. His shoulders are tense, like his nervous system is walking a tightrope.

We all are.

I knew shit was fucked-up in the club. It’s why I wanted to patch into another chapter. Crank and Grub are burying us in blood and dirt that we’ll never wash off. It’s not what I signed up for. I was ready to leave, and then I stepped off the fucking ledge into the unknown. I’ve been free falling ever since.

“Yeah.” I tear my gaze from her and focus on the brother flexing his fingers next to me.

“And?”

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