Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

“Seductive,” she said.

I gave her a look like What the hell? and pointed at us laying on the bed together.

“Just because I felt bad for spying on you,” she said.

My ass. I leaned forward until I was almost touching her lips and I could feel her breath on my face. She smelled like blueberry pancakes and girl sweat. Her muddy hazel eyes kept looking back and forth between mine and she was barely breathing. I licked my lips, brushed her hair away from her ear—

Then I put the earbud in and laughed at her.

Desty slapped my arm.

“Jerk.” But she was trying not to smile. She took a deep breath through her nose. “You smell like toothpaste and showers.”

I must’ve made a face.

“Not like that’s a bad thing,” she said. “Just weird.”

In the middle of the day it was weird, she meant. Not much I could do about it, though—I hadn’t felt like seeing her with trick on my breath.

“Really,” Desty said. “I like the shower smell.”

Beats NP bitch any day, I thought.

I hit play and the music started up again. Desty adjusted her earbud and laid her head down on the pillow. For a while, she listened to the rest of “Harper’s Song” with me.

Then she said, “You weren’t listening to this before.”

I nodded.

“This isn’t funny. It’s—” She looked up at me. “It hurts to listen to.”

I shrugged. I guess you had to be there.

Desty closed her eyes and listened to the next few songs. I put my pick between my teeth and laid my head down, too, kind of getting off on watching her reactions. She knew when I was joking and you could tell she really felt the heavy stuff. I think “Losing Blood” was the one that gave it away because it’s about Mom and Dad, but Desty let the playlist get all the way to “The Hell Alone” before she said anything.

In the pause between songs, she opened her eyes.

“This is you.”

With my tongue, I switched my pick to the other side of my mouth and nodded.

“Jax said you were good, but…” Desty looked down at my mouth, and for a second, the bottom dropped out of my stomach thinking somehow she might know about the Matchmaker—you can’t keep a lid on shit in this town—but she just asked, “Do you chew?”

I was too relieved to do anything but shake my head no.

“What’s this about?” She touched Ryder’s Copenhagen-can-ring on my back pocket.

I wanted to touch, too, so I reached down and traced the outline of a cellphone on her empty front pocket.

“These aren’t my shorts,” she said. “Or shirt. Or boots.”

I shook my head and tugged at the waistband of Ryder’s left-behind jeans. Mine either.

“What’s in your mouth, then?”

I stuck the pick out like a tongue. Desty smiled and touched it with the tip of her tongue.

“I like you, Tough,” she said. “I just had to make sure you didn’t chew, or I couldn’t like you.”

Hot damn. Just in case she couldn’t tell I liked her, too, I kissed her. She laughed when I slipped the pick between her lips and she pulled it away from me. Her laying there with that pick between her teeth, the point making a little indentation in her bottom lip was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. All I could do was stare.

Then Desty took the pick out and held it in front of her face to study it. I always have three or four picks floating around my pockets, but that one is agate and shark-finned, with Tough on it in silver letters. Colt got it for my thirteenth birthday, so I don’t take it anywhere but in and out of the case in my room.

“Last night a foot soldier told me you tried to kill a guy in Nashville,” Desty said, turning the pick over so that the lettering faced her. “Do you wish you would’ve done it?”

That depended. If Mitzi hadn’t walked in ten minutes into what should’ve been a two-hour beating and I couldn’t have made Jason give my voice back, I probably wouldn’t have stopped until I had stomped his heart out.

“My mom isn’t right anymore,” Desty said, making a motion toward her head. “She just spiraled when my dad left her. But I’m not sorry I left her to come after Tempie. I had to try. Even if I can’t get either of them back, I won’t be sorry.”

That made me smile because she was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She was one of those girls who wanted to fix everything and it would probably kill her if she couldn’t.

“You’re not sorry, either, are you?” she asked. “About anything.”

I shook my head.

“And screw them if they think they can make you sorry,” she said.

I think I love you. I wished I could say it out loud because I knew Desty would get it.

I kissed her again and that turned into making out. It was kind of awkward—I think because we were on our sides and she was trying to keep her boots off the bed—and it was too hot and sticky to be touching anyone, but it felt too good to stop. After a while I remembered the earbuds. We took them out and sat the mp3 player on the nightstand so we could get closer.

Neither one of us noticed it getting dark until the screen door banged downstairs.

“Logan gave me the night off. We’re going to the bar.” Harper’s voice was loud because of how quiet it had been in the house.

“I have one objective left.” Jax’s voice was loud because he was pissed.

“Well, if you want