Blur (Changing Colors Book 2) by N.A. Alcorn Read Free Book Online

breathe.
    And why is she trying to make small talk? Is that really what we’ve been reduced to?
    This. This fucking impersonal bullshit. My anger and frustration fuel my lungs’ ability to breathe again. “Who knows?” I shrug. “Once I hit the bottom of the bottle, the night’s a fucking blur.”
    Warring emotions pass through her eyes. Relief? Anger? I don’t understand. Why would she have any of those feelings? Maybe it’s the remnants of whiskey still seeping out of my pores that has me seeing things, making something out of nothing.
    She steadies her gaze to a nonchalant expression. “Well…can I get you something?” she asks quietly. “Coffee? Water? Hair of the dog?”
    Yeah, you can get me some coffee, a bottle of water, and tell your fiancé to go fuck himself because you belong with me. “Coffee and water will do. Thanks.”
    Within a few minutes, she sets the coffee and bottle of water on the table in front of me. “You really must have had quite the night to feel this horrible.” She sits beside me on the leather sofa.
    I laugh, but it’s humorless. “Yeah.”
    “I’m sure once you rehydrate, you’ll be good to go.”
    This small talk is doing nothing but pissing me off. The last fucking time I saw her, she was introduced to me as someone else’s fiancé. The time before that, we were in Paris and I was loving every single inch of her gorgeous body, ready to lay my heart on the line and tell her exactly how I feel about her. But she didn’t let me. Stopping me before I could utter a word, whispering , “I feel it too.”
    And now, I’m just supposed to sit here and play nice with her, making small talk, and ignoring the giant elephant in the room? Ignore this tension that pulses between us?
    Fuck. That.
    I lean forward, whispering into her ear. “Please, excuse me, but I can’t sit here any longer and act like nothing happened between us. I can’t sit here and act like I don’t know every fucking inch of your body. That I don’t know what you feel like when you come on my cock. Or that I know what your pussy tastes like on my tongue. So, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll go sit over there, where I don’t have to act like a fucking liar.”
    Ignoring the shocked gasp and hurt expression covering her face, I get up from the couch, moving across the room. I hate that I just lashed out at her. I hate that I just said those words. But I couldn’t stop myself. They just flew out of my mouth, and I had no power to stop them. Maybe I’m a bastard, but anyone who feels the way I do would understand. Anyone who has had to work side-by-side with someone who literally tore their heart out of their chest and then, for good measure, stomped the life out of it, would get it.
    Standing beside Jesse and the guys, I keep my back to Brooke. It’s the only way I can maintain a smidgen of sanity. The only way I can prevent myself from losing it in front of everyone. My brother flashes a look of concern, but I just shake my head, letting him know that I’m okay, that I can handle this.
    We’re sitting around the soundboard, while Nigel, the other record producer we’re working with, is listening to a few of our tracks. He’s nodding his head to the beat, seemingly enjoying the scratchy, poorly recorded live versions of our songs.
    “All right, I’d like to hear you play Moan and Lovely Calamity first. I think we can do some bloody good things with those two songs,” Nigel instructs. He’s mid-forties, a straight shooter, and born and raised in Manchester. I already like him.
    “We’ve got a couple versions of each song,” Zach announces, hands sliding into his pockets. “Do you have a preference?”
    Lots of bands first show off their songs on an album, but we’ve already played a lot of our songs live in a variety of settings and formats, especially Moan and Lovely Calamity . It’s given us the opportunity to refine the feel, nuances, and riffs we like most for each song, and to gauge