The Betrayal Between Smoke and Glitter

Prologue

Sam

Summer comes in before the first act. I catch the door opening while I'm pouring a beer and reach for the bourbon before she makes it to the bar.

When I first met her, she used to come through that door looking like something the river had spit back out, take the corner stool and stay there through every show.

Now she walks in with her head up, already laughing at something, and that's when I notice she's not alone.

There's a woman beside her I've never seen.

Red hair, long and loose, dark at the roots. She's in the middle of a story, hands moving while she talks, mouth curved around whatever she's saying. Curves, confidence, black clothes that make the red brighter. She walks into the room like the lights came up because she did.

I have Summer's bourbon in my hand.

The redhead turns slightly as they work their way through the crowd, and I catch green eyes, the line of her mouth, the easy way she moves through a room full of people without checking to see who's watching.

I'm watching.

I set the bourbon down when Summer reaches the bar. "Thanks," she says, still smiling, and I barely get out a "Yeah" before the woman beside her turns toward me.

Then I'm looking straight at her.

Fuck.

It's a half-second, maybe less. Long enough for her eyes to settle on mine and stay there instead of doing what people usually do when they realize I've caught them looking.

There's nothing shy about it. She looks at me like she's trying to figure something out, and for once I have no problem letting somebody take her time.

My hand finds a glass while I'm still looking at her.

I could ask what she wants. That's what I should do.

Instead, I reach for the mezcal.

Not the bottle we burn through on busy nights. The good one off the top shelf, smoky enough that half the people I pour it for make a face on the first sip. I pour it and set the glass in front of her before I've given much thought to why.

Her eyes drop to it, then come back to me.

"I didn't order this."

Her voice is lower than I expected, rough around the edges, and that doesn't help anything.

"You didn't have to."

One eyebrow lifts. "That's a hell of a thing to say to a stranger."

"You're not a stranger. You're Summer's." I tip my chin toward the glass. "And you're a mezcal. I'd put the bar on it."

The woman beside Summer studies the glass for another second before picking it up. She doesn't knock it back. She takes a slow sip while she watches me over the rim, and I find myself waiting to see what happens when the smoke hits.

Her eyes water a little, but she doesn't flinch.

"Okay," she says, and the corner of her mouth moves. "Okay, Sam."

I glance at Summer.

She takes a drink of her bourbon like she has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this woman knows my name.

I look back at the redhead.

Someone farther down the bar lifts a hand for me, but it takes me a beat longer than it should to notice.

Then I go see what they need.

Autumn

I'm mid-sentence when Summer pulls open the door to Vibes, and I stop talking.

That almost never happens.

I had it wrong. I had it so wrong. I'd pictured a basement with a sticky floor, a fog machine, and six sad men nursing the same warm beer while they gawked at people dancing onstage.

Nope.

It's full. Every seat taken, people standing two deep along the back wall, and up on the stage a woman in green sequins is doing something mesmerizing with a folding chair.

She isn't revealing herself so much as controlling exactly how much of her the room gets to have.

Every face is tipped toward her. Nobody's leering.

They're watching like she's made the entire room forget there was ever anything else to look at.

She's got them. She knows she's got them, and she is in absolutely no rush about it.

Power. That's what she has up there. Sex isn't where it comes from. Sex is just what she's chosen to do with it, and I have never seen a woman that in charge of a room while wearing so little.

The whole place is humming with her. You can feel it rising through the floor.

"Oh," I say. "Oh, this is amazing."

Summer grins. "Told you."

"No, babe, you undersold it. You have been criminally underselling it. I asked you three times, and you said it was a club."

"It is a club."

"It is not a club. It's a coronation."

Summer laughs, head back and wide open, filling the doorway while the cold comes in behind us. I haven't heard her laugh like that since before everything went down in Charleston with Colt.

She says hi to the girl taking coats, then to a server, then to somebody at the end of the bar who calls her by name.

I have known this woman since we were nine, and I don't know one person in this building.

We're halfway to the bar when I see him, and my entire brain goes offline.

Absolutely not.

Because that is not a bartender. That man is a structural hazard.

Tall. Dark hair shoved back from his face like he did it once and couldn't be bothered to check the result. Black shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows. Tattoos down both arms, across the backs of his hands, more ink disappearing beneath his collar.

I want to know where it stops.

That is the first complete thought I manage.

He has both palms flat on the bar, leaning toward a woman on a stool while she talks with her whole body. He's listening like she's the only person in the building, except his eyes keep moving.

Not to the stage.

To the door. The dark corner where a man is one drink past charming. The girl sitting alone with a soda water she hasn't touched. A server weaving through the crowd with too many glasses balanced on one hand.

He catches everything and brings his attention back to the woman before she realizes it ever left.

He's running the room, and nobody in it seems to know.

Reading people before they know they're being read is literally my job, and I'm watching a man do it in a black shirt without breaking a sweat.

Competence has never done that to me before.

Then he pushes away from the bar and spots Summer coming through the crowd. Something in him loosens for a beat before he reaches for the bourbon, and I catch it. He's glad to see her.

Summer catches his eye and he tips his chin.

Suddenly I'm not wondering where the tattoos stop.

I'm wondering who the hell he is.

Summer says something to him over the noise, and he looks past her at me.

I have a line ready. Something about the marquee outside, something easy.

Gone.

I'm used to men looking at me. I know the quick once-over, the lingering one, the look that waits for me to notice before it turns into a smile.

Sam doesn't do any of that.

His eyes settle on mine, move over me once, then come back to my face.

There's no little flash of satisfaction when I catch him doing it.

No invitation. He just looks at me like he's already noticed something I haven't told him yet.

By the time he turns back to the bottles, I'm still looking at him.

The room keeps moving around me. Green sequins. Someone laughing farther down the bar. Music coming up through the floor and into my feet. Meanwhile, my mind is blank. I have been rendered speechless twice in my life, and both times somebody had died.

I need to do something with my hands, so I put them flat on the bar.

Am I nervous?

I don't get nervous.

Then he reaches for a glass, and for one small, stupid moment, I feel better. A man reaching for a glass is a man about to ask what I want. I know this part. I know what I want. I've been ordering it so long I could say it in my sleep.

The glass lands in front of me before I get the word out.

Smoke reaches me first. Campfire, something sweet underneath, poured from a bottle nobody knows enough to ask for.

He sets it down and goes back to work like the decision was made before I ever reached the bar.

He's testing me. That's what this is. He's decided something about me and is waiting to see whether I'll cop to it.

My ears go hot.

I have been handed bourbon in every city I've ever worked, usually by men very pleased with themselves for guessing. I say thank you. I mean it. The wrong drink is easier than the conversation.

Bourbon neat. Sleeves rolled. One of the boys.

He looked at me once and skipped the entire performance.

I leave the glass where it is.

"I didn't order this."

"You didn't have to."

His voice is low and completely unbothered.

"That's a hell of a thing to say to a stranger."

"You're not a stranger. You're Summer's." He tips his chin toward the glass. "And you're a mezcal. I'd put the bar on it."

Then he goes back to work.

He isn't flirting with me. He says it like he might tell me the kitchen is closed, and then he's gone, like seeing me correctly wasn't difficult and he doesn't expect anything in return.

What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I pick up the glass because my hands need a job, and standing here holding nothing feels worse.

I take a slow sip and watch him over the rim.

Sam holds my gaze without leaning closer or saying something to rescue either of us from the silence.

I've never met a man who could stand there and do nothing that well.

Smoke climbs the back of my throat. My eyes water, but I don't blink.

"Okay," I say.

It comes out lower than I intended, rough around the edges in a way I didn't authorize.

"Okay, Sam."

He holds my eyes for another second before somebody farther down the bar raises a hand. Sam turns away, already reaching for a bottle.

I'm still holding the mezcal when Summer catches me watching him go.

"Don't."

"You didn't have to."

I give her a look and take another sip. The smoke catches differently now that I'm expecting it.

"Point me toward your choreographer."

Summer's smile gets worse.

"Autumn."

"I'm serious."

"I know you are."