Dare to Play (Blackwell Hawks #1)

Chapter 1

CASSIE

I wasn’t scared of the Orpheum, but I knew that was on account of Bram. Lots of people wouldn’t have been caught dead at the defunct theater after dark, but my brother ran Blackwell Falls.

Owned Blackwell Falls.

No one was going to touch me here. Not until I got to the Hunt anyway.

Blackwell Falls was small: a handful of residential neighborhoods surrounding Main Street, which was split into the gentrifying north side of town and Southside.

Tourists pretended Southside didn’t exist — some of the locals pretended Southside didn’t exist — but anyone who’d grown up in Blackwell Falls knew it was the beating heart of the town.

I’d walked there from my apartment above the coffee shop Bram had bought for me after I graduated high school, catching glances from some of the bikers and gang members who congregated in Southside after dark.

Some of them lifted a hand in greeting. Others smiled nervously.

Still others looked away, like even seeing me in this part of town was enough to make them complicit.

I didn’t take it personally. I wasn’t supposed to be here.

The closer I got to the Orpheum, the busier it got. Denim- and leather-clad men stood around in groups, smoking, talking, and laughing, a handful of women mingling among them. Some of them were there for one of the events that took place at the Orpheum but some of them were just there to socialize.

Motorcycles roared past, their riders wearing leather jackets emblazoned with the logos of the Blackwell Blades or Blackwell Barbarians while an occasional souped-up car competed for attention, their drivers waving to people through open windows in the warm summer night.

Music blared from the cars, multiple bass lines beating through the air, an undercurrent of excitement that was thrilling and unfamiliar.

Normally I’d have been holed up in my apartment over the coffee shop, binging my latest TV obsession with takeout. Or maybe I’d be up at Daisy’s house watching a movie while her three men took turns obsessively checking on the baby.

I definitely wouldn’t be here, making my way closer and closer to the Orpheum in a bid to close a chapter of my life that had haunted me for the last ten years, hoping to ditch my cumbersome virginity along the way.

I was glad it was only June. I’d left my hair down, and it wasn’t warm enough to sweat in my jeans and tennis shoes, something I would not be able to say in another month when the air got oppressive and sticky with summer heat.

And I’d had to wear jeans, to bring the hoodie I’d wrapped around my waist. It would have been foolish to expose my skin any more than was necessary.

I felt dumb just thinking it. Who was I kidding? If I lost the Hunt, I’d be totally exposed — in more ways than one.

The Orpheum’s neon sign cast pools of multicolored light onto the pavement as I approached the old theater. I didn’t know when it had last been open for movies, but I’d lived in Blackwell Falls all my life, and as long as I’d been alive it had always been a social hub for Southside.

Still, it was all new to me. After the death of our parents, Bram had taken care of me, and once I was old enough to get curious about where he went when he worked, he made it clear that I was never, ever to go to Southside at night.

And I’d listened.

I’d listened because Bram was my older brother and because of so much more.

Because he’d protected me when I’d been sad and devastated after the car crash that had killed our parents, even when he’d been recovering too, both from the crash he’d been lucky enough to survive and from the shock of suddenly being responsible for another person when he’d been only nineteen.

He was the one who’d bought the building on the north side of town that housed my coffee shop, Cassie’s Cuppa, and the apartment where I lived.

He was the one who gave me all the money I needed to get the shop up and running, the one who’d paid for my business classes at Blackwell Community College so I’d know what I was doing.

But for a thousand different reasons, I just couldn’t listen to his warnings about Southside anymore.

My stomach twisted in knots as I reached the entrance to the Orpheum. No one was guarding the door, but I knew that luck wouldn’t hold. I wasn’t getting into the Hunt without passing through one of my brother’s henchmen.

I joined a stream of other people making their way into the theater.

Most of them went left past the concession stand, toward the music blaring from the open doors of a theater at the end of the hall, but it only took me a minute to know that was wrong: the music was too loud, the cheering of people from inside the theater making it clear that was where Fight Night was held.

Not why I was here.

“Cassie?”

I turned to find a hulking man in a leather vest, his shaved head gleaming under the lights, staring at me like he’d seen a ghost.

“Uh… hey Aloha.”

He leaned back and frowned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Cass, but what the fuck are you doing here?”

I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry even though my palms had started to sweat. “I’m looking for the Hunt.”

He looked like he was about to pass out from the sheer horror of my statement. “The Hunt? Cass… you can’t…” He laughed and I was pretty sure it was the only time I’d ever heard the bald giant, a hacker who I was pretty sure did work for Bram, be nervous. “You can’t go to the Hunt. Come on now.”

My face flared with anger. This was how it was in Blackwell Falls: everyone treating me like a baby, like I had a million and one big brothers instead of one incredibly annoying and stubborn overprotective one.

“I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want.”

He laughed a little, glancing around like he expected Bram to appear out of nowhere and rip his heart out of his chest. “I mean, sure… yeah, I know you’re an adult and everything. But why would you want to go to the Hunt?”

Because I want justice. And because while I’m at it, I want to feel alive for once in my fucking life.

I tried to channel Bram by making my voice hard and cold. “That’s none of your business. Are you going to tell me where to go or am I going to have to ask someone else?”

He ran a hand over his face before lifting a finger toward the dark hall to the right of the concession stand. “That way. But Cass…”

“Thanks.”

I turned around before he could say more. There was no point.

I’d already made up my mind.