Razing Ryker (Dissonance Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

should have made John angry by throwing her arms around him and whispering her thanks for everything he’d done for them. He’d find more work – he was a fantastic director with a strong following – but the rest of them would be in and out of auditions for months.
    Cameron took hold of her and hugged her when the stage went dark. She grinned, hugging him back hard and loving the familiar feel of him. Damp with sweat from his final number, tall, solid. It was his strength that brought her here.
    “We’re gonna be fine,” he whispered to her. “I’ll make sure of it.”
    “Cam, I can take care of myself. You don’t have to worry about me.”
    He pulled back, his hands taking hold of her shoulders as his eyes bore down into hers seriously. “But I always will,” he swore.
    She smiled, stepping up on her toes and kissing him on the cheek. “We’ll take care of each other. How about that?”
    “You know what I want to do right now?” he asked abruptly.
    “What?”
    “Get drunk.”
    Greer laughed, nodding emphatically. “Fuck yeah, let’s do that. This is all way too real and vivid for my liking.”
    “Meet you by the door in ten?”
    “You got it.”
    By the time she was in her street clothes and wearing far less makeup, most of the cast was in for drinks. They set a plan to meet at a bar in the area and people trickled out slowly, everyone a little reluctant to leave the theater for the last time. On her way out, Greer snuck away from the herd and headed for the stage. The curtain was still down and she stepped in front of the thick fabric to stand face to face with the empty seats. They stared back at her blankly, expectantly, and she wondered what offering she could give them. What part of herself she could leave here in this place to make it real and hers. To make the memory solid and something she’d never be without.
    “Old McDonald had a farm,” she sang softly, her eyes scanning the dark as her voice quietly pinged and danced off every surface. She’d never had a solo before, certainly not on a stage on Broadway, and it felt good to take one now. Even if it was to an audience of none. “E-I-E-I-O.”
    Smiling at how ridiculous she was, Greer turned to leave the stage.
    “And on that farm he had a hen,” a man’s voice suddenly sang back.
    She spun around, scanning the darkness again and coming up empty. And yet the voice was there. Someone was out there.
    “E-I-E-I-O,” the voice continued.
    Whoever was singing was good. His voice was low and rough, rugged in a way that was both intentional and learned to the point of being natural. It was also vaguely familiar in a surreal sort of way. They way you’d recognize Santa Claus if you found him in your living room one Christmas morning. He had no business being real, but there he was.
    “With a cluck-cluck here,” she sang back, squinting into the dark. A shadow was forming in the aisle. “And a cluck-cluck there.”
    “Here a cluck. There a cluck,” he sang, stepping closer to the stage and into the meager light sneaking and snaking past the curtain from the back. “Everywhere a cluck-cluck.”
    “Old McDonald had a farm.”
    “E-I-E-I-O,” they finished together, their voices falling into a perfect harmony as he came to a halt directly at her feet at the edge of the stage.
    “Holy shit,” she breathed.
    He smirked at her response and she died a little inside. She knew that face. Knew that voice, and she definitely knew that smirk. It was the same one that had looked out at her from the poster propped on her pillow the first time she’d ever put her own hand on her body. The first time she’d ever spiraled out of control, hot and flushing with fluid desire – the same desire that rushed to her core now the instant she laid eyes on him.
    On Jace Ryker.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked bluntly, stunned into stupid amazement where all social construct was tossed out the window.
    “I caught the show,” he answered,