Brit with the Pink Hair (The Rockin' Austen Series, #1)

by Bryan, Rebekah N.

  “Yeah let’s go. I hear the DJ’s pretty great.”

  “That’s my brother.” Cord stuck his hands in his pockets and scuffed the ground with his tan dress shoe.

  “Your brother? He’s...black?”

  “Stepbrother,” Brit explained.

  “He’s not actually a DJ. He’s a big deal talent manager, but he’s doing this as a favor to a friend.”

  Brit pushed Cord’s shoulder playfully, and flushed when her hand closed around a knot of muscles. Had he always been that muscular? “No one’s saying Lander’s just a DJ. He owns his own management company.”

  “Youngest ever—”

  Brit put her hand up to stop the beginning of his diatribe. “He is a big deal. We get it. Daisy?” She spun around and led the girl inside.

  “Unlike Vincent Gordon.” Brit heard Cord get one more jab in before the girls were enveloped by the undulating crowd inside.

  “Who’s that? That African-looking guy?”

  Brit scanned the crowd, trying to avoid any more creeps. Or Rube. He had saved them earlier, but that didn’t mean Brit wanted to run into him twice in one night. Putting her hands up protectively, she pushed through body-glitter and heavily perfumed bodies on the way to the bar.

  “The DJ? That’s Lander, Cord’s brother, remember? He’s engaged to my sister though, so don’t bother.” There weren’t a ton of black guys in the club that night. It should’ve been obvious the man under the spotlight was the DJ.

  But Daisy wasn’t looking at Lander. The meandering spotlight panned over Daisy’s face in time for Brit to see her attention on the bar.

  “Huh, they have Isaiah working the bar now? They must’ve been desperate.”

  “Isaiah?”

  As they edged toward the far end of the club, the decibels increased, and Brit had to yell louder to be heard. Her throat was starting to get that familiar scratchy feeling. She rubbed the dip at the base of her neck to soothe it.

  “Isaiah Cox. He’s our liquor rep. Where are all the regular employees? He doesn’t even work here. This is not normal.”

  But Daisy wasn’t listening anymore. The disco balls overhead reflected in her pupils as she beheld Isaiah’s smooth dark skin from afar.

  “Daisy, no.”

  “I’m just going to say hi.” She floated away before Brit could grab her arm.

  Brit caught Lander’s eye, and he nodded and gave her a quick salute under his baseball cap before he went back to bobbing his head to the beat.

  Cord had found her again. This club was huge and crowded, but Brit guessed there weren’t many people with bright pink hair. And with his white-blond hair and height, she could just as easily see him coming too.

  “What do you think of Daisy?” she yelled to him.

  He leaned in close so she could hear him, and the vibrations of his voice tickled her already throbbing ear. “She’s fine. Was that your doing?”

  He pointed to where Daisy was leaning with her elbows on the slick surface of the bar. The spaghetti strap of her tank dress slipped off her shoulder, and Isaiah’s finger grazed her skin to put it back in place.

  Brit rolled her eyes and pressed her fingers into her pounding temples. “No.”

  “I can see it. They look good together.”

  “No. I need water. Can you get me water?”

  “Yeah, be right back.”

  Brit lifted the back of her hair off her neck and fanned herself. A dancing couple bumped into her, and she fought the urge to scream. A frosted glass of clear liquid appeared in her hand, and she took a deep gulp. The chill ran down her throat, burning on the way down. That was not water. Her eyes flew open. That was not Cord either.

  “What the hell did you give me?” She tried to shove the glass back into the stranger’s hand, but he lifted both his palms in defense.

  “I heard you tell your friend you were thirsty. Just wanted to buy the pretty lady a drink, damn.”

  “Take it!”

  Before she knew what she was doing, Brit flicked her wrist and sent the contents of the glass onto the stranger, ice and all.

  “You bitch.”

  The room spun, and she felt arms around her waist. Cold night air hit her face as she was dragged outside.

  The last thing she heard before she was stuffed into a car was a muffled Lander saying from inside the club, “Yo, yo, yo,” before he dropped the next beat. And then the car door slammed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BRIT WAS SUPPOSED TO go on a date today, but all she could think about at the moment was what happened last night.

  She had somehow gotten home, undressed herself, and gotten in bed.

  Oh crap. Had she peed in the jumpsuit? Barbara had warned her that wearing a jumpsuit was a bad idea, but Brit hadn’t listened. A hot up-and-coming designer had sent it to her, and she was determined to wear it. She wasn’t exactly sample sized, but she liked how the jumpsuit hugged her hips.

  The jumpsuit, which Brit was pretty sure she was supposed to return to the designer, was balled up in the corner of her bedroom, feet away from the hamper. She couldn’t even hit the hamper? She sat up gingerly and pressed her fingers into her temples to sooth the throbbing in her head. Her ears were still ringing from the pumping bass Lander had been spinning.

  Who the heck had tried to roofie her, and who had saved her? She hoped she was saved although by her current state of undress, she couldn’t be sure. Maybe Lander had called Barbara to come get Brit.

  Spotting her purse next to the bed, she fished through it, and her fingers came into contact with something soft and chalky. With some grossed-out confusion, she checked her fingers and found them to be brown. Her shoulders sagged. It was the stupid chocolate from the peanut butter cup she had thrown in there the other day. That’s what she got for eating junk food.

  Brit’s ears pricked painfully as something crashed outside of her bedroom. Her body jolted, and she pulled her comforter around her shoulders, shrouding herself completely in down feathers and satin.

  Please don’t let it be a rapist, please don’t let it be a rapist, she chanted to herself.

  Her eyes darted around the room, praying that she would spot her phone, but it was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t climb out the window—her apartment was too high off the ground.

  She heard a small, raspy voice outside her door say, “Sorry about that.”

  Oh, thank God. It was Daisy.

  “Come on in.” Brit let the satin duvet fall from her shoulders and tested her footing before standing and doing a full body stretch with her arms straight above her head. Her muscles sang at the release of tension.

  But when the door opened and another set of eyes peered in behind Daisy’s dreadlocked head, Brit dove back under the covers.

  “Isaiah? What the hell? What are you doing in my apartment? Who invited you two here anyway?”

  Isaiah’s face fell, and he disappeared from view, muttering an apology before sneaking one more glance and dipping away from the doorway completely.

  “Yeah, I bet you enjoyed the view.”

  Daisy went to leave too, but Brit jumped out of bed, this time dragging her duvet with her like a regal red satin cape, pushed open the door, and pulled Daisy into her room. With squinted eyes, she glared at Isaiah and slammed the door behind Daisy.

  “Listen, I’m sorry for yelling, but I’m a little freaked out right now. What the hell happened last night?”

  Daisy looked uncomfortable and pointed her thumb toward the door. “Do you want some coffee? I could have Isa—I mean I could whip us up some in your expresso maker thing.”

  Brit cringed at Daisy’s incorrect pronunciation of espresso, but she tried to pass the reflex off as a symptom of her headache by clutching the side of her head.

  “I don’t think coffee is going to help me right now. I need water. Or some form of electrolytes. You think if I told Isaiah to run to the market down the street that he would do it?” Brit was so pissed at Isaiah’s presence that she had to
fight the urge to command him to go down to the market. She didn’t want to seem like a monster in front of Daisy, who Brit thought must be becoming her friend after whatever went down last night.

  “Of course he would! He’s such an angel like that.” She clasped her hands together and moved toward the door, clearly relieved that Brit had given her an escape route.

  “Come right back!” Brit called after her.

  She heard Daisy and Isaiah talking in hushed tones. Isaiah harrumphed, and Brit was about to yell to just forget about it when Daisy appeared back in the room, closing the door behind her back.

  “So, what’s the last thing you remember?” She didn’t move from the door, like she thought Brit might try to escape.

  Brit was sure she could take Daisy’s frail frame any day of the week if she wanted to get past her. She did take a kickboxing class after all. At least she had gone a couple times. But she was meaning to go back. Maybe if she had gone more often, she could’ve prevented whatever had happened to her last night. Not that kickboxing could prevent getting roofied, she guessed.

  Dropping the duvet, Brit hurried to her closet and draped her cozy white robe around her body. There was a faint stain on the collar from when she dyed her hair blue for Halloween the year prior, but she wouldn’t get rid of that robe. It was the comfiest thing she owned. She pulled the thong off under the robe and threw it in the hamper—direct hit—before she tied the robe around her waist.

  “The last thing I remember is asking Cord to get me a drink.”

  “You don’t think—a”

  Brit interrupted her. “There’s no way it was Cord. I saw him again before I passed out, for a split second. Someone handed me a clear-colored drink, and at that point, I didn’t know it wasn’t Cord, so I drank it. Then as I was screaming at the guy, I saw Cord across the room. Or at least the top of his head. That’s it.” Brit loosened the collar of the robe. With memories of last night beginning to come back, she was feeling more suffocated than comforted at the moment. “Wait, I remember someone grabbing me around the waist. Who was that?”

  “That was Isaiah!” Daisy said as if it was information Brit should’ve already had.

  “Did you tell anyone I left? Did you tell Cord or Lander? Or even Rube?”

  “There wasn’t time. Paparazzi were starting to swarm. Isaiah said you wouldn’t want to be seen like that, so he swept you away and stuffed you into a car before any photographers could get a good look at you.”

  “So he’s good for something.”

  Daisy looked like Brit had just called her puppy ugly.

  “I’m kidding. Daisy, I’m kidding. Can you thank Isaiah for me? And apologize for how I yelled at him?”

  Daisy smiled without showing her teeth, and she turned the doorknob with her hand that was still behind her back. “Sure. Anything else you want to know about last night?”

  “Yeah, what’d you think of Cord?”

  “Cord?” Her hand slipped from the doorknob with a dull metallic clap.

  “Yeah.” Brit’s legs were weak from lack of food, so she sank back into her bed and sat with her legs crossed.

  “He seems really nice. Are you two together?”

  Brit laughed once and put her hand up. “No. He works for my dad. That would be weird. Which reminds me, have you seen my phone? I have a date later today, and I think I’m going to cancel it.”

  Daisy swished her head back and forth as she scanned the room. “Oh, we dropped it in the entryway. I’ll be right back.”

  Brit eagerly took it from her and found nineteen unread texts waiting for her. She groaned. Most of them were from Barbara. One from Lander. Two were from Cord. Then there was one from the guy she was supposed to be going out with that day. She ignored that one for now and went to Cord’s first.

  CORD MCCUTCHEN: Where’d you go?

  CORD MCCUTCHEN: Are you OK? :-(

  Leave it to Cord to spell out all the words correctly. He couldn’t resist adding a frowny faced emoji to the end of the second message though. Something about the innocence of it coming from his manly figure turned Brit’s hard-to-impress lips up into a smile.

  BRIT: Fine. Talk to u tomorrow.

  He would be at the club Monday for work. The club part was closed most Mondays unless there was a special show going on, but the office workers still showed up. He would probably be there today, too, but Brit didn’t want to face the rest of the staff.

  Brit realized Daisy had left again, so she called for her. “Hey.” She put her phone down to show that she was going to say something serious. “Really, thanks for taking care of me. You didn’t have to stick around all night, and Isaiah really didn’t have to stick around, but I’m glad you did.”

  “Of course. I was terrified for you!” Daisy left the doorway for the first time since entering Brit’s room and rushed to her bed. “Seriously, so scared. Whoever did this to you should pay. If you knew who it was, I would totally help you press charges. Isaiah is friends with an attorney, and he was telling me all about the consequences this guy would get if we turn him in.”

  Brit smiled and waved her hand. “It was some random guy. Believe me, if I knew who he was, I would be reporting him.”

  “We could check the security footage,” a voice said from the hallway.

  Isaiah was back, but he didn’t stick his head into the room this time.

  “Really, I’m good,” Brit called. Then, quieter, to Daisy, “I’m fine now. You guys can go. I want to get some more sleep before I decide whether to go out with this guy tonight or not.”

  “I think you should,” Daisy said with a little bounce on the bed. “If you’re up for it, of course.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  A brown arm appeared through the doorway as Isaiah set a gallon-sized container of neon-yellow liquid on the floor. Then he and Daisy left with a click of the front door.

  Brit picked up her phone again to find a couple more texts from her sister.

  It took all the effort Brit could muster to type, “I’m good, Barbie,” before she leaned over her bed and vomited into her wastebasket.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BRIT LEFT HER SISTER hanging for more details right up until Brit was leaving her apartment to get to her date. She had spent an hour trying different clothes on, throwing things on the bed. She didn’t want to come across too desperate, not that she felt desperate in the least. But she didn’t want to look desperate either. She also didn’t want to come off too conservative or boring. Cute. Cute was the right adjective for a first date, she thought.

  With the word cute in mind, Brit zeroed in on the meager pink section of her closet. It was girlier than her normal aesthetic, but her normal aesthetic was also kind of tough and intimidating. Sometimes if she really wanted to test a guy, she’d wear her clip-on nose ring that went between her nostrils.

  In fact, it was a test she had tried the first time her father introduced her to Cord. She distinctly remembered Cord simply saying, “Nice nose ring.” Just that, with no sarcasm in his voice at all. Honest, direct, like he really meant it. His simple three words were going through her head when Brit was deciding whether she wanted to test this guy or not. She didn’t want to deal with it tonight if the guy didn’t have the right answer though. She didn’t want to deal with the sarcastic, “Nice nose ring.”

  As she tapped her phone to find her sister’s number, Brit hummed J.J. Mack’s song she heard the other day. She didn’t bother hitting Call until she was in her car and out of her enclosed underground parking garage because she knew she didn’t get the best cell reception there.

  “It’s about time!” her sister yelled into the phone.

  “Well, hello to you, too.”

  “Britnee Angelina Byers. I thought you were trapped in some creepy ex-frat-bro’s house or something, bound and gagged.”

  “OK, Mom. Settle down.”

  Barbara just groaned. Brit knew why. The truth would’ve been too painful. Their mom didn’t want harm t
o come to her daughters, but she was never around to prevent it either. Brit had fended for herself for a long time.

  “So what happened?”

  Brit relayed what she remembered, filling in the details of what Daisy had told her too.

  “Brit, I am so sorry. Are you going to press charges?”

  “No, I don’t know who did it, and besides, our vodka rep pulled me away before any real harm was done. I just want to put it behind me.”

  “You should at least report it to the club, so they can watch for it in the future.”

  “Barbie.”

  “What?”

  “That’s never going to happen.”

  “Sure it will. I’m going to suggest it to Lander. He’s DJed there quite a bit in the past. He’s got some pull. He can tell them to shove any further DJing gigs up their rear ends if they don’t come down on the right side of this issue.”

  “That’s never going to happen—they won’t do anything to upset the vibe. All they’ll do is show Lander the door and tell him not to let it hit him where the good Lord split him. That club is a big deal. Do you know how many A-listers turn up there? And that vodka rep guy was still all worried that people would want to take my picture.”

  “You are a socialite.”

  “Hardly. I’ve been interviewed on a few blogs before, and I have a famous father. Whatever.”

  “What are you up to today?” Barbara asked, changing the subject.

  Brit checked the rear-view mirror and flipped on her turn signal. She couldn’t remember exactly where the cafe was that they were meeting.

  “I’m headed to a date right now.”

  “A date! Tell me, tell me, tell me! Where’d you meet this guy?”

  “On Slammer.”

  “Is that some bar I don’t know about?”

  “Jeez, Barbara. You’re not that old. It’s a dating app.”

  “Oh wait, I did hear about that one. I heard about it on the news, I think. That’s not a dating app. That’s a hookup app. Not that I’m judging. You do whatever, or whomever, little sis. Just be careful.”