Playing You
Players to Lovers, Book 4
Ketley Allison
Contents
Easton
1. Easton
2. Taryn
3. Easton
4. Taryn
5. Easton
6. Taryn
7. Easton
8. Taryn
9. Easton
10. Easton
11. Taryn
12. Easton
13. Taryn
14. Easton
15. Taryn
16. Easton
17. Taryn
18. Easton
19. Taryn
20. Taryn
21. Easton
22. Taryn
23. Easton
24. Taryn
25. Easton
26. Taryn
27. Easton
28. Taryn
29. Easton
30. Taryn
31. Easton
32. Taryn
33. Easton
34. Taryn
35. Easton
36. Easton
37. Taryn
38. Easton
Sneak Peek of Play the Man
Also by Ketley Allison
About the Author
Copyright © Ketley Allison LLC, 2019
Cover Design © 2019 Mayhem Cover Creations
Editing by Madison Seidler
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Easton
They wait in the dark.
The floor thrums underneath my feet. I chug an iced-over water bottle while pacing, my other hand running through my hair.
“We ready?” Rex asks from his seat, legs splayed and his palms on his thighs, ready to pounce.
“Hell yeah.” Mason flips his guitar around to his back, the diagonal strap creasing his basic white tee. He claps his hands together and rubs. “We got an amphitheater to attend, pretties. A fucking crowd of ten thousand people.”
“Shit.” I say it under my breath, but body language gives me away, loud and clear.
“East, don’t freak on us now.” Our bassist, Wyn, claps me on the back as he passes by and shoves a whiskey bottle in my hand. “Liquid courage, my friend.”
I toss the empty water bottle somewhere in the corner. The liquor takes its place against my lips.
“There we go,” Rex says approvingly as he stands. “Let’s fucking do this.”
A third of the bottle’s finished before I peel it away, throat burning. But then the fire turns into a heated coat, a tropical balm on my nerves.
I follow the guys out of our dressing room, propping the liquor bottle on a side cabinet as I head out the door and down a dark corridor painted black. Pictures adorn on either side, but I’m not focused on the bands of the past. I want us, what we’ve been waiting for.
People dressed in muted clothing and headsets usher us through another hallway, the noises getting louder, the demand heavier, our footsteps drowned out by the vibrating calls.
“All right.” Rex, our lead singer and guitarist, turns on his heel to face the group, grinning like a maniac. “Our destiny awaits.”
He stands in front of a black curtain separating us from the audience, fluttering with sound waves. The noise should be deafening, and my bandmates adjust their earpieces against the penetrating rumble. I leave mine alone.
We stand in a circle, fists bumping, and instead of a prayer, we scream at the top of our lungs, “Yell, motherfuckers! Rrrrrrah!”
Open fists smack against backs, arms, tops of heads. Filing into a line, we each peel back the velvet curtain and step into the blinding, pulsing white light. This shit never gets old.
We’re living, and we still get to see the light.
I pull my drumsticks out of my back pocket. “Let’s. Fucking. Own it.”
Rex spins, gives me the thumbs up, then grabs the mic. “What’s up, New York City!”
The city roars its approval.
Wyn swings his bass guitar to the front of his chest, taking his place to the right of me. Mase takes position with his keyboard on the left. I shake out my hair and step up to the drums, wielding my sticks and beating out an epic solo pattern to kick off our latest single.
The audience—our fans—freak out as I unleash, and I think to myself: This is where I’m meant to be.
But ain’t that the kicker?
No one cares where you want to be.
And life.
Yeah, life.
It’ll kick you in the ass and send you right back to where you belong.
And set you up for a long, hard fall.
1
Easton
The concert keeps wreaking its havoc in my mind.
Thoughts of the music, the notes, the interconnection of all our instruments, sends shivers down my spine and stretches my balls tight. I twist the throttle of my bike, speeding faster down a deserted city street.
NYC isn’t ever really empty, but there are certain side roads, the named streets like Crosby or Sullivan or Prince, that gift me with quiet at three a.m. and let my wheels take flight. They’re narrow, trickier than flying down FDR drive, a straight tail of road all the way down the east side of Manhattan, but I enjoy the challenge, especially when I’ve retained some adrenaline, some fire, from our show.
Nocturne Court is rising in the ranks, making number five in the top billboard charts this week. Throughout the years, we’ve gained a following, mostly through free bar gigs by begging the owner. Then came the paid gigs in obscure parts of Brooklyn. Social media is the master, though, and the reason for our recent celebrity status. We gotta thank the chicks obsessed with Instagram that populated those dank, wooden bars, and now faithfully attend our sold-out concerts.
It happened quickly, the rise. Last year, we caused an overflow in the venues we played at, even the ones we did solo, as most of the guys, including me, play more than one instrument and have decent pipes in our throats. Fire Marshals seriously cramped our style when bar owners decided they couldn’t contain us anymore.
Turns out, that caution was needed, once I got a taste of what could happen with too many occupants. The rioting, the injuries, the mass panic. My friends were nearly hurt in the process, and it was then my band had a meeting, decided to get true management and a publicist, and suddenly, irrevocably, I’m here.
Easton Mack, drummer of Nocturne Court, prince of the city before dawn, fans beating down my dressing room, tearing at my shirt and jacket, as I try to leave the concert halls, and screaming after me when I rev my bike and depart. There are even a few vehicular stalkers, hence my bumps and dives within the narrower, cobblestoned parts of the city, where one-way signs and threading side roads allow me to shake the determined drivers and regain the peaceful mindset I require after a particularly mind-blowing set with my drums.
My bike dips and weaves with my chest as I round tight corners, speed through intersections, and own the island before screeching onto the ramp to the bridge and cresting over the East Ri
ver to Brooklyn.
The city carves its fame against the night sky, landmark buildings and skyscrapers lighting their dominance over the natural dark, its prolific image remaining steady as the bridge’s suspension cables flash by my vision. I accelerate until the lights become a blur, smiling wide, laughing within my helmet, unleashed and free.
New York, I love you.
I don’t hear the screech behind me.
The smell clues me in—the burning strain of rubber against asphalt.
Too late.
The front hood of a car kisses my back wheel and that’s all it takes to throw my bike sideways, smack my body against the metal side rails, and toss me over the side.
2
Taryn
Motherf—
“Taryn!”
The voice at my office doorway chastises my thoughts and I look up, relieved to see my fellow associate attorney, Astor Hayes, and not my supervising one as I fumble with my stack of files and pray I didn’t miss the motion deadline that my computer says I did.
“What’s with the yelling of my namesake?” I ask, pushing the files aside so I can place my head on the desk instead. “I hear just fine, thank you.”
“I’m screaming at you with urgency because you’re about to miss the huge croissant breakfast a client just sent to our department.”
Astor steps in to my office, her brunette bob smooth and sleek against her angular face, and her navy suit falling in line with the same mandatory requirements.
“I’m not hungry,” I mumble into the wood.
“Sure you are.” Astor rounds the desk so she’s standing beside me. “You’ve been in here since five in the morning and I haven’t seen you eat a thing.”
“There’s been no time.” I moan, then lift up enough to peer at her. “You know that feeling you get sometimes right before you fall asleep? That heart-palpitating image of clarity that makes you believe you’ve screwed up your life forever?”
Astor tilts her head. “Sure. Happened to me after I took the bar for a whole month. All the answers I missed suddenly appeared in my dreams. But let’s go back to why you’re just starting to fall asleep at dawn.”
I don’t go into the details of what kept me up or why. Astor, while my closest co-worker in the firm, is still a co-worker. We’ve yet to cross into the friend zone, if we ever do, and she doesn’t seem the type to willingly suffer through my family issues. Plus, the last thing I want is to be part of office gossip. Astor doesn’t seem the type to blast my business across the 45th floor, either, but everyone knows, walls have ears. Especially bored ones sitting in front of their computer all day reading block paragraphs of case law.
I sit up enough to slump against my chair. “Well, it happened to me in the early hours. I suddenly realized I’d completely neglected a deadline on a case.”
“Shit,” Astor says, then at my panicked mewl, amends, “It can’t be that bad, can it? I thought the paralegals were always on top of the mandatory filings.”
“You forget, Yang fired Susan last week.”
Albert Yang, partner of Costello, Wine & Cottone and self-proclaimed supervising attorney, had a habit of letting go of our support staff without asking—or notifying, the attorneys. With Susan gone, so was her calendar, and while it was supposed to be synced with ours, for some reason this deadline wasn’t recorded on the office schedule.
“Guess that’s why she was fired,” Astor surmises.
“I’m screwed. You know Yang doesn’t care who does what or why, never mind any legitimate excuses. If I can’t beg, borrow, steal or sell my body to opposing counsel to get them to stipulate, I’m a dead woman walking. No croissant can save me.”
“This happens all the time. You get on the phone with opposing counsel, and I’ll draw up the stip. We’ll have this done in fifteen minutes max, and maybe there will be a few grapes left over for us to pick at in the conference room.”
Through my open door, the billowing scent of fresh-baked goods hits us at the same time. Suits pop out of cubicles and offices and sprint in the direction of the conference room.
Lawyers. The way to their hearts can be through billable hours or fresh bread.
“Damn it. Word’s gotten round. Come on, Maddox. Move.” Astor ushers me out of my chair, her famous Hayes blue eyes fired up with determination. “Get on your cell. I’ll pull up the file.”
Her fingers clack way on my keyboard as I find my phone underneath another tower of paper. I look up the last email I received from my opposition, find his number in the signature line, and make the call, my stomach sinking the longer the ring tone continues.
I hate screwing up. Really, freaking hate it, and in those rare times I do, all I want is to find a toilet and throw up.
He picks up on the sixth ring with an unhurried, “Randall speaking.”
“Hi, Mr. Perkins. This is Taryn Maddox from CW and C. I’m defense on the Caruso case, and I was hoping … “
I continue my monologue, but my attention is drawn to Astor as her phone rings and she pulls it out of her blazer pocket. She glances at her phone’s screen offhand, with a telling don’t bother me look that can only mean it’s either her boyfriend or her brother.
When she answers, Astor’s cut off at, “Locke, I don’t have time to—” and whatever’s being communicated to her on the other end has the color in her cheeks depleting.
“Oh … Oh, my God,” she says. Astor huddles over the phone like the slim metal case needs comfort. “Are you sure?”
“Miss Maddox? Are you amenable?”
I tear my attention off Astor to say into my phone. “Yes. Yes, sure. Tomorrow will be great. Thank you so much.”
When I disconnect, my phone is loose in my grip. I know the expression on Astor’s face. I recognize it, because I’ve worn it too many times to count. “Astor? Everything okay?”
She glances over but continues to mumble into her phone. “Right. Okay. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“What’s happened?” I ask as Astor stands on shaky legs.
“Uh.” Blinking, she brings herself out of whatever shocked fugue she’s fallen into. “My friend. Easton Mack.”
“I remember him,” I say, mostly to keep her talking. It’s all too easy to fall silent and let shock overtake the body. Astor, known for her sharp skills, won’t be any good to anybody if that happens. “He’s part of that band, right? Nocturne Court?”
I don’t tell her that the band plays on a consistent loop in my apartment, the thin walls thriving with the beats, usually ending with the neighbors pounding the ends of their broomsticks against our ceiling, plaster raining down as they implore us to shut the hell up.
Astor nods, then massages her throat, staring blankly at the opposite wall. “He got into an accident. On the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Oh no,” I breathe.
“He fell off it.”
“He what?” Immediately, I lower my tone. “Are you saying he fell off the bridge?”
“Well. Not exactly.” Astor shakes her head. “I mean, he did, but the netting against the pedestrian walkway caught him.”
“Jesus Christ.” I’m wishing Astor wasn’t taking up prime real estate in front of my chair, since I really want to fall into it right now. “You gave me a heart attack. I thought he was dead.”
“He’s alive, but badly hurt. I have to go to the hospital.”
The words seem to give Astor the push she needs. She steps away from my desk and passes me, her stride determined. “I have to figure out what the hell happened.”
“Do you want company?” I ask.
Astor pauses, a hand on the doorframe as she peers over her shoulder. “It’s all right. All of his friends will be there. We’re like a little family. I’ll be okay.”
“If you’re sure,” I respond.
I wonder what it would be like to have such a containment of love, so many bodies to protect and surround and help rehabilitate at your worst moment. I can count on one finger how many of tho
se I have in my life.
“I’ll text you with an update,” Astor says. “If you could tell Yang—”
“I’ll cover for you,” I say.
“Thanks. I mean it. And—oh, shit. Your stip. I’m supposed to help you draft it.”
“This is a helluva lot more important, wouldn’t you say?” I try on a smile. “It’ll be fine. I’ll have it completed in a few minutes. Randall said he’ll give me until tomorrow to write the opp papers. It’ll be an all-nighter, but I’ll get it done.”
“Good. Though try to get some sleep, will you?” Astor says before she leaves.
I nod, not really committing to it, but Astor doesn’t see it, anyway. She’s torn around the corner and yanked her things from her office, giving proof to her reputation as she storms toward the elevator and attempts to figure out why a rising rockstar fell off a damn bridge.
3
Easton
Voices are nothing but clouds floating above. A clogged sort of mumble, circling my head like those birds that always pop up around a cartoon character after they do something stupid.
“Ungh,” I think I say, but I don’t hear it. Only a vibration in my throat as I blink heavy eyelids and attempt to focus on my surroundings.
Playing You: Players to Lovers, Book 4 Page 1