Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing (Hautboy Series Book 3) by Anne Berkeley Page A

let you live it down.”
    God, he was right, and I hated that.  Pax and Peter would never let me out of the house again, even if it was my house.  I was torn.  I couldn't leave.  I didn't want to stay.
    Marshall smiled, aware that he was winning. “Come on, kid. Let's go have a few drinks. At least stay and watch our boy Jaxon play.”
    “I'm not a kid,” I argued.  I had to win some small concession, no matter how petty or insignificant.
    Once again, we began winding our way through the crowd.  Marshall had to shout over the din so I could hear him.  “Can I call you pipsqueak then?”
    “Not if you like your testicles intact.”
    “There's no need for violence.”
    “There won’t be as long as you don't call me that.”  I almost tripped over the stray feet of some chick moshing.  Jake caught me from behind and set me straight.  But when she stepped on my foot a second time, I gave her a hard shove.  In some mystic feat of intuition, Marshall turned around at the right moment and tugged me in front of him, preventing any further discord.
    “You're a surly little shit, you know that?”
    “I was defending my feet!”
    “Just do me a favor,” Marshall pleaded, “don't wander off unless one of us is with you.”  He gave me the palm when my mouth popped open in objection.  “Don't get all bent out of shape; I barely turned my head for a second when Coop was attacked.  It’s not something I care to repeat.  Crowds…they tend to make me nervous.”
    I bet. “Ok.  Fine.  I’ll behave.”
    As we broke through the crowd and approached the booth, Carter Strickland’s face brightened.   “Look!  Violet’s back!”  He slung his arm over my shoulder and passed me a beer.  “How was Cade the Cock ?”
    “Shut up.”
    “Hey,” he said, tightening his arm and pulling my ear closer, “I told them you were looking to nurse your broken heart but they weren't having any of it.”
    “That’s so considerate of you.”
    “What can I say—I’m an upstanding guy.”  Who slept with eighteen-year-olds.  “What?  What’re you rolling your eyes for?”
    “I didn’t roll my eyes.”  I totally rolled my eyes.
    “You did too.  I saw it.  You rolled your eyes.  There—you just did it again!  That’s a terrible tell you’ve got there, Violet.”
    I rolled my eyes a third time.  “Did you really sleep with two eighteen-year-olds?”
    “Are you judging me?”
    “Come on.”
    “You chose Cade the Cock Mathers over my boy Jake.”
    My face flushed with color.  Was he serious?  No, Jake wasn’t really interested in me.  Carter was just fucking with me.  “There was no choice.”
    “You say so.”
    “Are you going to answer the question?”
    “Who said there were two?  Maybe there were three of them.”
    “Don’t retort and feed his ego,” the brunette told me.  “Do what the rest of us do and tell him to fuck off.”
    “That’s not very devout of you, Emster.”
    “Like, OMG, did you hear something?” the brunette said to me in the best valley girl impression I’d ever seen.  “No?  Me either.  Just a bunch of, like, hot air.”
    This, for some reason unknown to me, pissed Carter off and sent him stalking off into the crowd.  The bodyguard with the crewcut named Evan followed him.
    The brunette slid down from her stool.  “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.  My name’s Emelia.  You can call me Em.”
    I took her outstretched hand and shook.  “Paisley.  Nice to meet you.”
    “This is Shane.”  She gestured to her left, at the drummer with the black hair.  He’d gone short recently.  I’d seen the before and after in the tabloids.  I had to admit, he looked much better.  He looked reasonably healthy compared to a few months ago.  I wondered if his most recent overdose had scared him and set him straight.
    Surprising me, when I shook his hand, he leaned in and kissed one cheek and then the other.  It wasn’t a real kiss, like