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

to finish it, you better do it in the next forty-five minutes because we’re leaving here at nine.” Harper’s sandals flip-flopped up the stairs to the bathroom. “I am not missing Tough play two nights in a row.”

“One objective!”

“Forty-five minutes!”

The bathroom door slammed and the shower started.

Desty laughed in a little puff of breath against my face.

“We just made out for three hours,” she whispered.

I need to get ready, I thought, but I didn’t move. My lips felt chapped and they stung from sweat. Even as dark as it was getting, I could see a red spot on Desty’s neck that would probably turn into a hickey. I liked that. It was like she had Tough written on her, like my agate pick.

“I guess you need to go, huh?” She sounded disappointed.

I nodded. I didn’t want to go, though. I had a weird feeling that if I got up, I’d never get to do this with Desty again. Like when you’re flipping through radio stations and you hear a song you don’t know, but you can tell right away it’s good. Even if the song’s almost over, you don’t want to change the channel in case they never play it again.

***

The dance floor stayed packed until the first set was over, then filled back up again as soon as we started the second. Even though Desty wasn’t dancing, I could see that she wanted to. Every time I looked over at her, she was keeping time and moving in her seat. She probably would’ve been burning up the floor like Harper and Scout if she’d had someone to dance with. I wished Jax would take her out there, at least for one song, but the only dance Jax had ever done in his life was when he beat the Legendary setting on this medieval game he had.

Sometime during the second set, I started daydreaming about dancing with Desty. I could hook the speakers up to my mp3 player and we could push the bed over and dance in my room. And since the bed would already be in the room anyhow…

“Free Bird” has always been pretty high on my list of songs to have sex to, and Dodge and Owen both knew it. When I played the intro, Dodge looked over at Owen and shook his fist back and forth in the international sign for jacking off. I took my middle finger off my pick and gave them the international sign for “Mind your own damn business and play what I tell you to.”

Dodge was still laughing when he had to start singing. It didn’t sound right with the tone of the song, but that turned out not to matter because in the middle of “tomorrow” Dodge stopped singing like someone had cut his throat. Owen and Willow dropped off, too. I palmed my strings and looked up.

Kathan had come in first with Desty’s sister hanging on his arm in this short blue dress that showed off tits and ass to spare. Mikal was right behind them, wearing a shimmery red dress and strappy hooker heels. The light from the stage sparkled off of her dress and onto the leash.

Shit.

Colt. Dressed in some fancy suit, acting like it wasn’t no thang to be on a fucking leash where everybody could see that he was Mikal’s first-prize coon dog.

I swallowed. I felt sick. I wished I didn’t know him or that everybody in this bar didn’t know he was my brother or that— Dammit, the least he could do was look bad, tore up and starving, like he was fighting for his life, not going out with his dominatrix girlfriend. I knew Colt didn’t get a choice. I knew that, but seeing him… It was like the night the Tracker brought me back from Nashville. I knew Mikal was doing it, but I blamed Colt.

Someone was talking. I could hear the voice buzzing around. Then Dodge bumped my arm and I snapped out of it.

“I was just saying, Tough, that we didn’t want to interrupt anything,” Kathan said. “We heard you were back at Rowdy’s and we wanted to catch a show.” He looked around at the crowd. “For those of you visiting Halo, Tough Whitney is our local star. You’ve probably already been enjoying his music this evening. He used to sing, too, but from what I understand, his wild youth came back to bite him. Now he just plays.”

Mikal smiled at me and made a big show out of scratching behind Colt’s ear.

“Colt’s especially been looking forward to hearing you,” she said.

“Yeah, Tough,” the thing that used to be Colt said. “Play something.”

I tried not to look at the collar. Colt had Whitney eyes—all us kids did—kind of blue-green, but Colt’s were always the darkest ones, like Dad’s.

Dad had never liked Southern rock or country, so he probably wouldn’t have cared for my stuff. Other than Christian, Dad didn’t really like any music but Mom’s, even though when the Lost Derringers, her band, were popular they were playing some pretty dark songs. Christian rock and Mom’s hardcore battle-punk. Kind of a weird combination, but I knew Colt—the real Colt, not Mikal’s dog—would recognize it because it came from back before he got so obsessed with Soldier of Heaven crap that he forgot about things like music and movies and non-tactical books.

While I was standing there wishing music was actually powerful enough to reach down into someone’s brain and dig out anything that was left of them, my favorite Derringers song came back to me and I started playing.

The guitar part to “Out of Spite” walks the line between pissed and laughing. When I was little, I thought Mom was the only person in the world who could make a guitar sound like that, but this time I hit the tone dead-on. Getting it