A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

by Michelle Hazen

  His eyes linger on the line of my throat, and then he’s the first to look away. The leather cuff on his wrist flexes along with the muscle beneath in the first unguarded show of emotion I’ve seen from him.

  A pang of totally unexpected sympathy drops down through me at how protective he is of his band. They’re in foreign territory now, but he still thinks they can do it all on their own.

  “Deal.” I stand, refusing to dwell on his reaction, or mine. Neither are as important as the endless scroll of the to do list waiting on my phone. “You make the music and I’ll make everything else happen.”

  This time, he offers his hand. My eyes flick over it without reaction.

  He takes it back, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners in something that could be amusement, respect, or possibly anger. And then, quietly, he smiles.

  Every part of my being squeezes and then goes totally, wordlessly limp.

  Turning my back on him before he can see my response, I head toward the crew in my best, no-I-don’t-need-to-change-my-panties-I’m-a-professional-woman stride. Whatever he’d like to think, Mr. Sexy Tattooed Fingers will need my particular brand of managerial magic if he wants this tour to get past its first date without devolving into chaos. And I could definitely use his band’s rising popularity to jumpstart my career.

  But I’m not going to convince anyone that I’ve got ten years of experience packed into seven years of resume if I can’t keep my hands off the damned bass player.

  PLAYING THE PAUSES

  Available 3.5.18

  Click here to order your copy today!

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Hoku, for being a shimmering beam of light into every single one of my days, including the ones where you’re working 36 hours per day being everything to everyone. Your enthusiasm for this project was...yeah, I don’t have a word awesome enough. *makes note to learn more foreign languages* And besides that, I couldn’t have written it without you because Every. Music. Reference. Would. Be. Wrong. Thank you so much for being awesome and talented, and also my friend, and also for making my song more like a song and less like a dictionary threw up into my laptop, with a refrain.

  Thanks to Muse Baby, for thinking grass is funny, and for convincing me that babies can be cute.

  Thanks to Sandra, for saying that some books need to be written, no matter what’s on the to-do list, and screaming for Danny’s book. Thank you for refusing, when I asked you to talk me out of self-publishing. There’s a darn good chance this book wouldn’t exist without you.

  Thanks to Alf, for showing me all the good rock moves, letting me play roadie for a day, and not laughing when I asked why no one ever played an acoustic bass. Also for not kicking me out when I wore a cable knit sweater and slacks to your heavy metal show, and that weird couple humped in my lap. Because that shit was awkward.

  Thanks to Jade, for being my self-publishing guru and letting me overload her inbox with questions.

  Thanks to Layla Reyne, for all the useful business advice and recs for so many things I needed, including my incredible cover designer.

  Thanks to Stephen Morgan, for pushing me to write the new climax of this book. It fits so much better.

  Thanks to Michelle Fairbanks, for my completely gorgeous covers, and for not killing me for being so picky. And for bending the time/space continuum in my favor.

  Thanks to my husband, for truly endless support and understanding of the insanity that a writing career wreaks on a life. If it weren’t for him frequently feeding me like a pet goldfish, I might have wasted away at a computer by now. And if it weren’t for him making me laugh when I really was not at all in the mood to laugh, I’d likely be a much sorrier person.

  Thanks to Andrea, for deciding to stick around in my life after reading the first chapter of this very book, and being my rock when I was not so very rocklike myself. You are amazing at being my better nature, and telling me the correct thing to do (and being annoyingly right!) even when I don’t want to hear it. Thanks for always being around, and for editing with supernatural speed, and for the years of your life that you’ve given up in exchange for not sleeping and working on my stuff instead. My words are glad you are my CP, and I am glad you are my friend.

  Thanks to Katie, for editing a million versions of this book, and for knowing exactly the right name for my character (because really, no other name but the right one will do, but how on earth would I have guessed Jera on my own?). Thanks for accepting my Modest Proposal. Thanks for fanfic and Macomber and always caring about what I’m doing, even when it’s dumb, and also when it’s quite possibly crazy. You’ve been here for every day of this book, for all the joys it brought me and the many many tears. It’s taken me more places than any other book I’ve ever written, but I couldn’t have gotten to any of them without you.

  I may not have a Danny, but I have an incredible group of people in my life. I have a mom who said there were more fish in the sea until she and I were both sick-unto-allergic of fish, right before I married the king of the damned ocean. I have a brother that I love unreasonably much, and if anybody said I couldn’t hang out with him anymore, I would snip their fingers with something dull and awful. And then he would come up with something better that I could have snipped their fingers with. Because he’s like that. I have, literally, the best sister-in-law on the planet. Case in point? The fallen pizza. Off the deck. With crackers. Enough said. I have a critique partner with whom I’ve mind melded to the extent that we cook the same thing and write the same sentence on the same day (the Plagiarism Police are, unsurprisingly, horrified). I have a best friend who has known me through every version of myself I have ever been. She is 90lbs and packs 180lbs of punch. Mean reviewers, take note. Also, I’m sorry about your noses. Really. At least a little sorry.

  A non-comprehensive listing of people who have helped me along the way: Julie Mianecki, Maggie Stiefvater, Becky Hazen, Kelly Siskind, Heather VanFleet, Michelle Iannantuono, Gwynne Jackson, Holly Stubbs, Becca Wolf, Colleen McCoy, Michael Mammay, Jenna Goldstein, Colleen Halverson, Sheila Athens, Author Accelerator, Keyanna Butler, Naomi Hughes, Inkslingers Publicity, Barclay Publicity.

  And to my fanfic readers, who started everything.

  About the Author

  MICHELLE HAZEN IS A nomad with a writing problem. Years ago, she and her husband ducked out of the 9 to 5 world and moved into their truck. She found her voice with the support of the online fanfiction community, and once she started typing, she never looked back. She has written most of her books in odd places, including a bus in Thailand, an off-the-grid cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains, a golf cart in a sandstorm, a rental car during a heat wave in the Mohave Desert and a beach in Honduras. Even when she’s climbing rocks, riding horses, or getting lost someplace wild and beautiful, there are stories spooling out inside her head, until she finally heeds their call and returns to her laptop and solar panels. Find out more at http://michellehazenbooks.com/

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  Also by Michelle Hazen

  Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll

  Fill Me

  A Cruel Kind of Beautiful

  Playing the Pauses

  Watch for more at Michelle Hazen’s site.