When I came back in the kitchen with an armful of food, Noah stood at the kitchen sink, staring at his phone. The gentle gray light from outside lit up his gorgeous naked body; he looked like a marble statue of a Greek god. But the look on his face didn’t make me feel good.
I put the plates down on the counter and walked up to him, sliding a hand up his shoulder. “Everything okay?”
Noah started, like he hadn’t heard me walk up. He inhaled sharply. “Yeah. I just…” He looked at his phone again. “It looks like Gavin finally got a hold of Duke. We’ve got a meeting planned for tomorrow morning in the city.”
A jolt ran through my nerves. A million questions raced through my mind—questions for my story. The ambitious woman in me was starving to know what was about to happen in that Seattle conference room. Everything that had been building for Cut Up Angels over the past seven years was on the line, and could be decided in that room.
But Noah’s face broke my heart. I expected to see anger, but instead it was something else—a deep, heavy despair. It unnerved me more than his anger would have, and the thought struck me that if I had ever seen this face on a man I was dating before, that probably would have been our last date. My reputation as a commitment-phobe, while not entirely my fault, was not undeserved.
And what I told Noah in bed wasn’t a lie. In fact, nothing that I told Noah was a lie, except the superficial point about moving to Seattle. When I told him about my problem keeping men interested, it was the straight-up truth; and the ones who didn’t reject me ended up being another in a long line of ex-boyfriends. Men were afraid of me, or they couldn’t keep me interested. And I certainly never cared about any of them enough to want to help them through their emotional baggage.
In that moment, though, every thought in my head was of Noah. I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to wipe that despair out of his eyes.
Slowly, I ran my hands around his chest and held him. I pressed myself against his naked back and felt him breathe against me. His heart pounded under my palms, underneath the cheek I laid on his back.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a whisper.
For a moment, Noah didn’t move. He just leaned there, hands against the sink, watching the green trees in the backyard. Then he took a deep breath and stood. He ran his hands down my arms until they covered mine, and tangled our fingers together. I tightened my grip on him and he sighed.
“Me too,” he said. “Everything is in ruins.”
I nuzzled my face against his skin. “Nothing’s over. If you didn’t get buried by Thornwood or fighting up from the underground scene, Noah, then you’re not going to get buried by fucking Duke Rogers.”
Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt him let out the tiniest chuckle underneath me. He tilted his head over his shoulder to look down at me. “You’re something else, you know that, Laurel?”
I wanted to love his words. On the surface, they soothed like balm on sunburned skin and made my stomach go crazy with butterflies. But my goddamn brain, ever the wet blanket, could only remind me of the years’ worth of echoes just like Noah’s compliment from men who loved and left me.
Still, looking up at his crystal blue eyes and gorgeous half-smile, it was too much. I couldn’t ruin it. I just smiled back up at him and tried to scratch the truth deep in my own heart that Noah Hardy was never really going to give a fuck about me, no matter what his smile said. Besides, I didn’t deserve it anyway. Not while I had my own secret agenda. I may not have lied, but I was definitely holding back something that would change the way Noah was going to feel about me. Even if he wasn’t planning on rejecting me for all of the normal reasons, he sure as hell might do so when he learned the whole truth about how and why I ended up in his life in the first place…
~ TEN ~
Noah
I had barely made it off the elevator of the record label headquarters in Seattle when I felt a headache pulse at the base of my skull. I took a deep breath as Quinn led us down the hallway toward the conference room, wishing I had bothered to get stoned before we took the drive from Thornwood.
But there was no way I was dulling even a modicum of this anger in my first face-to-face with Duke since his announcement. I wanted to feel every fucking inch of it—and I wanted him to feel it, too.
The second I saw his smug face rocking back and forth in one of the high-backed leather chairs, my mind flooded with daydreams of jumping onto the shiny conference table and rushing him, kicking his fucking teeth in with my steel-toed boots, pounding his face until there was nothing recognizable for his family to identify. But I held in all my murderous rage as best I could when he locked eyes with me and smiled.
“Nice of you to join us, gentlemen,” said Duke. Every word out of his ugly mouth made the blood rush in my ears.
Gavin was on his phone in the corner of the room, but he suddenly whirled and pointed at Duke. “You, shut your fucking mouth,” he said. “Noah, close the door behind you, please.”
Quinn shut it before I could even move. He watched me carefully. He’d seen the way I was looking at Duke before. Quinn had broken up more of my fights than he’d been in himself, so it didn’t surprise me when he refused to sit at the table until I did first.
Ash, our short, Italian drummer, stood near the window overlooking the beautiful elevated view of downtown Seattle. He was the last to sit down, and huffed like a petulant child into the chair at the other end of the table. Jeff, our bassist and ever the wallflower of the band, sat next to Duke, and this made me uneasy.
“All right,” said Gavin as he leaned, exasperated, between two empty chairs. “Let’s just jump right the fuck into this can of worms.” He again pointed his thick finger across the table at Duke. “What in the ever-loving fuck were you thinking with that little show you put on, huh?”
“I think you know exactly what I was thinking,” said Duke. The tone in his voice betrayed that this, like everything else, seemed to be a goddamn game to him. “Just like the rest of the guys in this band, I’ve just about fucking had it with babysitting this Neanderthal.” He nodded at me and my hands clenched into fists before I could stop it.
“Speak for yourself, asshole,” said Quinn immediately.
“Oh, excuse me, the rest of the guys except Noah’s boyfriend Quinn…” said Duke, waving his hands sarcastically.
“Fuck you, Duke, you homophobic piece of shit,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s the behavior I’m talking about,” said Duke.
“Both of you, shut the fuck up!” shouted Gavin. The room fell silent.
Gavin waited a few moments, taking deep breaths. “Duke, I get the capitalistic instinct, even from an artist, no sweat. However, what I cannot fucking wrap my head around is why you think it would be a brilliant idea to drop a bomb like this on the rest of your band now—and on yourself! You may have just destroyed any chance we had of having a controlled descent on this fucking disaster, and if you think it’s not going to cost you—cost all of us—in both reputation and cold, hard money, then you are living in a fantasyland, my friend.”
Watching Gavin work was like watching a master conductor in front of a symphony. He was a powerful man in the industry, but smart enough at business that we rarely had problems, or had to see him in any kind of damage control mode. This was unprecedented, and Gavin wasn’t pulling a single punch anymore.
Duke didn’t immediately fire back at him, which all of us recognized as him being more full of shit than he wanted to admit. Still, he kept that shit-eating smirk on his face, and scoffed in his chair. “Like I can’t afford to take a hit if it means getting me out of this disaster of a band as fast as humanly possible. I’m not doing jail time for this son of a bitch.”
Before I could snarl a reply, Gavin had his hand raised in my direction, but he was looking at Ash. “How about you? What the fuck’s the deal with you and Jeff ducking me since the interview? Let’s get all this hot garbage out on the table right now.”
Ash and I h
ad always gotten along, but we still weren’t close. He had moved to Thornwood a year before he joined Quinn and I in a band, and Cut Up Angels got signed only two years after that. We had great chemistry in the studio, but my bond with him wasn’t anything like it was with Quinn. Seeing him huddled there in that office chair, fuming with his arms crossed, it made me very nervous. Ash always divorced himself from band drama. But he didn’t look divorced from this one.
“Duke’s not wrong, you guys,” said Ash, and I felt my heart sink into my stomach. Next to me, Quinn started muttering to himself and shaking his head. Ash continued anyway. “How many times now have we had to deal with bailing his ass out? And now this? Now—now you’ve fucking killed a guy, Noah! I mean, what the fuck!”
“Don’t you sit there and act sanctimonious,” said Gavin, turning his wrath to Ash. “You can bitch all you want about Noah’s reputation, but that reputation has put money in every single one of your bank accounts. We’ve all benefitted from Noah, and now that shit’s getting a little real, all of you are jumping ship like fucking cowards? Is that what the hardcore scene is teaching kids these days?”
“Oh, suck my dick, Gavin!” yelled Ash. Everyone fell silent, surprised.
Gavin pushed away from the table in anger, but still controlled enough to respond. “You are a fucking coward, Ash, period! And so are you, Duke! Jeff, you wanna chime in and tell me which team you’ve chosen to back?”
“He’s not stupid, he’s with us,” said Ash with a snarl.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Jeff?” said Quinn, throwing his hands up in the air. “We’ve known Noah since high school! You’re gonna let him face this alone now?”
Jeff shifted in his chair like there was a fire underneath it, trying to make himself as small as possible. He pushed his hair out of his face. “Ash is right… I mean… Noah, you killed somebody, man. You killed a guy. I can’t… how are we supposed to be okay with that?”
That was it. I couldn’t take it anymore. “I already fucking told all of you why you should ‘be okay with it,’ ” I said, rising to my feet. “I didn’t just shove some random fucking fan off-stage to be a dick—that motherfucker had a blade, and he was going straight for Quinn!”
From his seat, Duke let out a sarcastic, exaggerated groan. “This bullshit again? You are so fucking full of shit, Hardy!”
“Why in the hell would I make it up?” I said. “I’ve never blamed anyone else for my fights before.”
“To save yourself from getting the lethal injection?” he snorted.
Quinn leapt to his feet. “Don’t you even fucking joke about that, you piece of shit!”
“Who’s joking?” said Duke. “Your boyfriend is a goddamn murderer, Quinn, whether you choose to accept it or not.”
“The motherfucker had a knife,” I said again. “Crazy assholes rush stages all the time, you fucking know that, Duke. Remember Dimebag Darrell? Remember Gordy? This isn’t even the first time Quinn and I have been attacked!”
Duke threw his hands in the air like a preacher. “Then where’s the fucking proof, Noah? Where’s the knife? How come in every single video that has come out of that goddamn festival, not a single one shows us he was carrying a knife?”
“I don’t have any goddamn clue, I’m not a psychic! But I know what I saw—and I know what the truth is. And I will fucking prove it. I’m not gonna sit here and lie to appease a bunch of fucking cowards who I thought were my brothers. I did what I had do to, and if I got a chance to do it over, I would fucking do it again.”
Duke got up and shoved his chair into the table. Gavin shouted at him, asking where he thought he was going, but Duke just bored his hateful glare into me as he straightened his jacket and stalked around the table.
He came to stand three feet in front of me, a death wish if I had ever seen one. I felt, but didn’t see, Quinn hop to his feet next to me.
Duke’s voice was low. “You’re a fucking animal, Hardy, and you always have been.”
Anger fueled adrenaline roared through my muscles like molten heroin. My vision darkened to a tiny tunnel, and suddenly it was Duke, and only Duke, that existed in my universe. And I wanted to destroy him.
Quinn’s hands dropped on my shoulders, and I heard his voice in my ear. “Noah, don’t. Don’t let him win.”
If he hadn’t had his hands on me, Quinn couldn’t have stopped me. His words meant nothing. But in that moment my rage was so consuming that if I moved, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t hurt him in the process. And he damn well knew it, too.
Against every instinct screaming in my lizard brain, I shut my eyes and forced myself to not give a shit about painting the walls with Duke’s blood. It wasn’t exactly working, but I also wasn’t moving. That’s a win, in my book. I wasn’t a fucking miracle worker.
In the dark of my mind I heard Duke laugh at me before he walked out of the room, and my teeth clenched so hard at the sound, my jaw began to ache.
By the time I felt calm enough to open my eyes again, Ash and Jeff had scurried out of the room, too. Quinn’s hands were still on my shoulders. He waited with patient eyes when I turned around. “You all right?”
“Not even a little,” I growled.
“You handled that like a champ, Noah,” said Gavin. He stood by the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the line of yellow sunrise trying hard to burst its way through the gray cloud cover. “You putting him in the hospital is the perfect origin story for Duke’s solo career. You can’t engage his bullshit. There’s no way for you to come out of it clean.”
“I will break the teeth of the next man who says his name,” I said. As I dropped heavily into one of the chairs, Gavin and Quinn exchanged a glance, but neither of them fought me.
“So, what the fuck do we do now?” said Quinn, crossing his arms.
“This band is done,” I said. “There’s no coming back from this. It’s over.”
When Gavin didn’t break in to correct me, Quinn got an ugly look on his face and punched me in the shoulder. “Don’t fucking say that man, this isn’t over. Are you quitting?”
“Do I have to quit?” I said, waving an arm around the empty room. “Quinn, you’re the only one still here! This band was over the minute that motherfucker crawled up on our stage.”
Quinn shook his head and paced along the table. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He turned to Gavin. “We have to get Noah on TV to tell everyone his side of the story! Let’s end this stupid press moratorium and get him out there. People will understand once they hear it was in self-defense.”
Gavin sighed and looked at Quinn in a way that made my headache flare behind my eyes. “Buddy, look, I know this is frustrating to hear, but it’s not that easy. Noah’s not just facing the end of his career; he’s possibly facing a prison sentence for manslaughter. He might be looking at ten years inside. You get that, right?”
Quinn only stared at him.
“Every single thing we do or say about what happened at the festival has the potential to come back and ruin Noah’s trial. Unintended consequences, kid—what we do to save the band might end up sending Noah to prison. I know you want to go toe-to-toe with Duke over this, but we have to face it, boys—he has the drop on us. He has more room to maneuver and less to lose. What we have to focus on now is keeping Noah safe and out of prison.”
Prison. Fucking hell, what if I went to prison? How long could I even survive with my level of fame? Something told me most of the dudes inside weren’t eager to be friends with some jet-setting rock star.
“Noah saved me,” said Quinn, quietly.
“I know,” said Gavin. “I know, Quinn. I’m sorry. I wish that mattered like it should.
“Everyone thinks Noah’s the monster, when it’s been Duke this whole time. Who gives a shit about your old bar fights? I can’t believe that’s all it takes for people to think he would murder someone.”
“I know,” said Gavin again. “I still wish I had had more power over that deal you si
gned with him. Somehow I saw something like this coming.”
“We all did,” I mumbled. “It was just always a question of when, and what.”
“But it wasn’t your job to keep away the industry predators, it was mine. My failure,” said Gavin. When both Quinn and I looked up at him, he turned toward the window. “I’m good at this business because, really, the music business is about people—knowing what they want, what they need, and what they're going to do next. My point is it's my job to know people, and I know you, Noah—this isn't you. You are a good man. And Duke is not. I saw that, and I should have put a stop to it. I should have kept him away from both of you."
Gavin’s words filled me with an unnamed, difficult emotion. I couldn’t look at him.
Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance Page 27