Page 33 of Dangerous Pursuit
I open another drawer while glancing at the clock that's ticking too fast, cursing myself for not keeping the place tidier. I know it's in here somewhere. Finally, my fingers encounter something long and thin and plastic. Bingo. I grab the eye pencil that's probably long expired, given I got it—and by got, I mean stole, most likely—freshman year and then almost poke my eye out trying to put it to use.
How the fuck do people do that?
After several precious minutes of trial and error, I finally manage to put on two messy and completely uneven lines on my lower eyelids. I use my pinky to smudge them. No one's gonna know.
Once I'm done, I step back to give myself a full body look, and… Well, fuck. I look more punk than I do metal. Still, at least it's not jock anymore.
I nod at my reflection, grab my phone, my wallet and my car keys, and glance at the clock before I lock the door behind me.
Check me out. Only ten minutes late.
Chapter Twelve
Xander
"I SEE YOU'VE got some issues with time management," Liam greets me as I scramble into his car just ten short minutes later, because I may or may not have forgotten whether I locked the doors once I was already in the lobby. Twice.
I don't respond until I'm fully settled and my seatbelt is fastened, making sure to take my time as I pretend to check if it's, in fact, working. "What can I say? I'm a very busy man. Besides—" I pause when I meet his gaze and catch him staring.Intensely. "What?"
He shrugs, holding back a smirk. "Nothin'."
"What?"
He bites his lip and eyes me up and down, deliberately slowly, making me question my choice of wardrobe, and all my life choices in general. I glance to where his regular khaki t-shirt hugs his muscles in a usual way.Shit. "Too much? I can go change."
"Oh, hell no," Liam says and immediately starts the engine. "We're running low on time as it is, thanks tosomeone. Besides," he shoots me a side glance after he settles in the right lane, "I never said I didn't like it."
"That's convincing," I mumble.
Liam laughs. "You don't really strike me as someone who needs validation. Ever."
"Pffft. Of course I don't need it. I want it, though."
Liam smiles, eyes focused on the road as he slaloms his way downtown. It's not until he stops at a red light a couple minutes later that he says, "I like it. A lot," eyes still on the road.
I make sure not to smile. Too much.
***
"HOLY HELL," I mutter when Liam drives by the venue for the third time, trying to find a parking spot, the crowd outside the gate seemingly doubling every time we pass it. "You said they werelocal."
The car comes to an abrupt stop, my body jerking forward, before Liam puts it in reverse and somehow, against the odds, manages to squeeze his SUV into a spot that has no business fitting more than Sawyer's bike. "It's still the Sunset Strip."
"Right," I say, pretending to know why the fuck that matters.
Liam sees right through me and chuckles as we exit the car, late afternoon unusually hot for this time of year, the heat contrasting with the cozy chill of the AC. I eye the crowd skeptically as we make our way across the street, an ocean of people narrowing by the gate only to drip inside in a tiny stream. "There's no way that club can accommodate all of"—I gesture around—"this."
"You worry too much," Liam says, the last of his words barely registering, drowning among the noise, the talk and laughter as we approach the mass and take a spot at the end of the…well, I'm not sure what this is, but it sure as fuck isn't a line.
Surprisingly, it only takes a couple of minutes until we step inside, and I'm relieved once I get the chance to eye the crowd. Some of them, yeah, total metal heads, long hair and army boots omnipresent, but there's a whole assortment of different types of people around,includingjocks.
Liam puts his massive arm over my shoulders and leads me forward, as the crowd gets thicker and thicker the closer to the stage we get, until he decides walking any further would be a hazard and we settle somewhere in the middle between the front and the back of the room.
He brings his mouth to my ear and says something I don't quite catch. I look at him and shake my head, so he repeats. Same effect, his words distorted by the noise of the crowd. He then waves me off and apparently decides that whatever he has to say can wait until after the concert. And it hasn't even started yet.
The overhead reflectors go out and the entire room grows dark, while the stage lights up with about a million different points of light, thick streams of photons forming giant tubes over the mic stands, some amps and the drum…set…area. I take a mental note to actually learn some nomenclature for the next time and turn to Liam, about to ask him how long till the band starts, before I realize he wouldn't be able to hear me, anyway. I make anever mindmotion once he looks at me.
He winks, and I smile back, and the band, the fucking Ducking Quacks who are apparently out to get me choose this exact moment to materialize out of nowhere and hit their firstnotes with might so strong it makes me jump in place and let out a sound no one can hear, fortu-fucking-nately.
