We make a chain, the six of us, with me in the lead, and start to work through what's left of the crowd. I notice one woman, older, face lined and withered, sitting at the bar and sipping a green drink from a martini glass. She doesn't look at all concerned by the melee. Good for her. Standing in the middle of that nightmare, I almost wish I was still the apathetic asshole that walked in on Turner fucking Hayden Lee.
“Naomi!”
It's Brayden Ryker, dressed in what looks like black SWAT gear, a massive gun in his hands, a breathless look on his face. There are people lying on the ground around us, but he almost looks like he's smiling. I have to fight the urge to punch him right in the fucking face.
“What the fuck is going on out there?” Turner snaps, clenching my hand so tightly in his that it almost feels like my bones are going to break. “Are those gunshots?”
“There are snipers on the surrounding roofs,” Brayden says and I feel like my jaw is coming unhinged as I gape at him.
“More fucking snipers?!” I shout, trying not to get hysterical. Because, I mean, how many snipers should one person have to deal with in their lifetime? “The Washingtons sent people to light up their own club and shoot their own customers just to get to us?”
“The Hammergrens,” Brayden says, almost breathless. “And they're not just here for you. Albin Washington was shot in the back of the head trying to flee the building.” He lifts up a hand and waves over a few of his men. “Just stay here and do what my guys say. If we play this right, we can nail that fucking family in their own coffin.” Brayden's moss green eyes sparkle as he clutches his gun tight in his hands and looks back down at my face. “We can end this, finally fucking end this.”
And then he takes off, the sound of screaming, the smell of blood, the stench of the fire … all of it too much for me to even wonder if this is the price the world has to pay for me to get lucky.
Naomi's beautiful white fairytale dress clings to her skin as she dries her blonde hair with a towel, those orange-brown eyes focused on my face. They're definitely not desert dry anymore, not even close. But right now, they're almost too liquid, like they might drip at any moment, slide down her face in the tears she's long overdue to shed.
“You want to get changed for the concert?” I start, but Naomi just stares at me, her breath falling in a slow, controlled rhythm, her hands steady and her face stoic. I rub my finger surreptitiously over the sore surface of my wedding ring.
“Actually, no,” she says, dropping the towel into her lap, her eye makeup smeared, lipstick gone, the black musical notes on her forearm stark against the paleness of her skin. Naomi adjusts the wrinkled wet folds of her dress and notices a spattered red stain on one side. I have no idea where it came from. I mean, there was a lot of blood out there when we made our way to a waiting van and got the hell out of Dodge. But we didn't have to see anyone get shot, so I'm not sure how it got there. “I want to go onstage in these fucking clothes. I want the whole world to know the bullshit that we've been through tonight.”
“At least you've got good old Mr. Knox here with you, right?” I say, standing up and moving over to kneel next to her, putting a hand on her knee. Naomi smiles tightly at me and cups the side of my face. “Hey,” I say, pausing for a moment and flicking one of my lip rings with my tongue, “who gave you the name Knox? Is it your birth mother's name?” I know the story of Naomi's birth mom, the woman who was raped and gave her baby up for adoption, and then later told that same baby to get the fuck out of her life. I don't blame the woman; it is what it is. But fuck, poor Naomi.
“The family that adopted me as a baby,” she says with a small sigh, “the ones that died in a car accident when I was seven. They named me. Knox is their last name.”
“They were good to you?” I ask, knowing this probably isn't the best time in the world to dive into this, but suddenly just, like, fucking desperate to know everything there is to know about my new wife. This afternoon scared the shit out of me.
“They were,” she says with a long sigh, closing her eyes briefly. “Those seven years with them are probably the only reason I'm an even semi-normal human being.”
“At least you're not too normal,” I say, pushing forward between her legs, laying my cheek on her thigh. “Because I'm too fucked-up to be with a totally normal girl. We work just right together, you and me, Knox.”
“Is it over, Turner?” she asks on the end of a long breath, stroking her fingers through my hair, her voice echoing in the walls of the empty bus. Ronnie took Lola back to our bus, and Dax and Sydney are backstage with Wren and Kash. It's just me and Naomi in here now, just me and my wife.
“I don't, know,” I say, because we had a seriously fucked-up afternoon, but not fucked-up enough, right? “I wish. But no, I don't think so.”
“So what comes after tornadoes and comas and fires? What's the next awful fucking thing they can throw our way?”
“I have no idea,” I say, my mouth moving against the silky wet fabric of my wife's dress. “No fucking clue.”
“I can't believe they're asking us to put on a show after all that,” Lola says, scanning the news reports on her phone. And there are a fucking crap ton of them. Thirty-four people were killed at that club and as far as I know, only one of them deserved it. Albin Washington is dead, but so are a bunch of young people in wedding dresses and suits. It's fucking sick.
“The show must go on,” Naomi says, smoking a cigarette, her gaze distant and far away. Brayden Ryker is nowhere to be seen, but his people are here; the camera crew is here. It occurs to me then that I didn't see them in the Chapel. Not once. Was I too wrapped up in Naomi Knox to notice them? Or were they just conveniently absent? I decide to pay more attention to the assholes in the future. “I wonder where Paulette is?” she asks mildly, ashing her cigarette in a trash can, looking dope as fuck in that torn up, fucked up wedding dress of hers.
I glanced in the mirror before we left the bus and saw that I was pretty fucked up, too. My white dress shirt is still wet in places, grimy looking from the climb up to that window, sliding my body along the dripping walls of the bar. I notice then the little dots of blood on my arm and realize where the blood on Naomi's dress must've come from. I got cut when I punched out the window.
Our backstage here is really just a tent with a chain-link fence around it, the hot desert heat leeching away as the day bleeds into night. We've got a stage set up outside this time, right in the middle of the damn desert, just below some mountain called Sheep Peak. I took a quick look out at the crowd and felt this … God, this deep sense of wonder. They stretch out as far as the eye can see, this massive heaving, screeching horde of humans. At first I was surprised to see such a turnout, but then as Lola scrolled through the news of what happened at the club, we realized there was no mention of us. Not one single sighting or rumor.
So here we are, outside, underneath a starry sky that stretches up and up and up, like the arms of God wrapped around the desert. I'd stare at it more if I wasn't so fixated on my wife. My wife. My fucking wife. I try not to feel triumphant at the fact that I made this impossible woman love me again, after all the shit I put her through. It's nothing short of a miracle that we're standing here together tonight, the air warm, in the low seventies, a slight breeze tangling Naomi's blonde hair around her face.
After this, I think we'll skip the bus ride home and hop on a plane. Just some shitty commercial flight back to LA, something we can slip onto before anyone knows we're there. I need to give my wife a proper wedding night, not just some quick rut in the back of the van. I need to hold her and caress her, worship her with my hands. We've been traveling so much lately, I don't want to travel for my honeymoon. I just want to jam and hang at the house in Beverly Hills, maybe get a chance to enjoy some of this fucking money that I've made. Oh, and I want to make a little rockstar with Naomi Knox. Maybe if I sweet talk her enough, she'll give in and let me, you know, get her pregnant the right way this time?
“Turner and
I are playing together,” Naomi says, turning to face me, pointing at the other members of Amatory Riot with her cigarette. Kash rolls his eyes; Wren's too high to give a lot of fucks about anything. Dax and Lola, of course, were expecting this. “Ronnie, you stay with Sydney, and keep on your toes. What happened today was … fucking awful, but I'm sorry. I don't know what Brayden Ryker can do with that when it comes to the Hammergrens, but Paulette's not done with me.”
She glances over my shoulder and I follow her gaze, over to Trey and some roadie chick he's flirting with. Jesse stands close to him, smoking a joint.
“You might want to keep an eye on your friends, too,” she says as Milo catches my eye and tries to give me a look. But he knows better than that. Turner Campbell can't be tamed, baby. Well, maybe by Naomi Knox, but uh, that's a different story altogether.
She walks over and kneels down next to a guitar case, snapping it open and pulling her Wolfgang out from inside before any of the roadies can get to it.
“Are you sure you're ready for this?” she asks me as I drop my cigarette to the ground and crush it out with my boot. I make my way over to her and take her face in my hands again, slipping my tongue between her lips, teasing her with my tongue ring and drawing her body to me like a flower straining toward the sun. And that's what I want to be for her, her light, her warmth, her source of comfort.
“I'm ready,” I whisper against her lips, my cock stiff as diamond inside my still damp slacks. Perfect. Exactly the way I like to present myself onstage. A grin takes over my mouth as I hook an arm around Naomi's neck. “Let's do this shit, Mrs. Campbell,” I say, pulling her toward the steps and up across the newly constructed stage. As soon as we crest the edge of the platform, the crowd goes batshit wild.
Naomi and I walk casually past the equipment, the soaring amps and speakers, the metal scaffolding holding the lights. Down below, more speakers dot the landscape, stretching back, corralling the crown in a fairly neat rectangle across the brown desert floor. I have no idea how many people are out there, but it's a fucking scene.
As soon as we pass by the sea of equipment and enter the stage area proper, the lights flick on and the crowd gets its first proper look at our clothes, my suit, Naomi's dress. I don't know if they can tell how dirty and damp and blood spattered we are from all the way down there, but it doesn't matter. They know. They see us and they fucking know.
I smile as I pick the mic up from the stand in the center of the stage, the echoes of our opening band, Torn and Toxic, still lingering on the lips of the audience. They're warmed up just enough, slicked up and wet, ready for me to slide in and fuck them the way I'm going to fuck my wife when all this shit is over.
“So, uh,” I start, grinning wide as Naomi plugs her Wolfgang in and Dax takes his place on the dais in the back. Lola joins us at her keyboard while Wren and Kash pick up their own instruments. I slide a pair of shades from my pocket for old time's sake and Naomi plucks them from my fingers, slipping them onto her own face. “If you haven't figured it out already, we've had a busy, busy afternoon, haven't we, Mrs. Campbell?”
“It's still Knox,” Naomi says in another microphone, scooting the stand closer to the center of the stage and pausing to take a deep breath. The sound echoes across the desert, the voice of a goddess risen from beneath the sand. An icon. An idol. The focus of all my worship. Naomi is my heaven, my hell. Her words are my commandments, her voice in song my hymns. She's also my devil, my succubus, the demon that tempts me.
I grin.
“But, uh, we've run all the gamuts up here,” Naomi continues, walking in a slow circle, trailing the mic stand along with her, boots loud against the stage. “Dax Charell-McCann. I'm sure you've all seen the infamous Tin Dolls cover by this point. Today, our drummer married a stripper.” She holds her hand up to indicate the emo douche that I actually kind of like, the chatter of the crowd an excited bubbling murmur at the news. “And our new keyboardist—” Naomi's voice breaks for a second and she turns away. I know she's thinking of Blair right now.
“Lola Saints is now Lola McGuire, and I—I am still Turner motherfucking Campbell.”
I raise my arms up, letting the excited flail of the crowd wash over me. I can still smell the smoke of the fire on my clothes, taste the acrid bite of fear on the back of my tongue, but I wouldn't be a rockstar if I didn't know how to put on a show.
“We had a triple wedding in your, uh, lovely little town today,” I say as Naomi makes her way back to me and we exchange a look, one that sizzles and burns, cuts right through the bullshit. This girl right here, she's more than just my soul mate. She's my redemption, the end to my story, my reason for everything.
“Went down to a shitty little commercial chapel, paid a paltry fee and let some guy who thought he was Kurt Cobain marry us.” Naomi smiles, a truly genuine smile that fucks me all the way up inside. “My only regret is that one of our best friends wasn't there to see it.” Naomi puts her mic back in the stand and tilts the neck of her guitar up in salute. “This song is dedicated to the memory of Blair Ashton.”
Naomi looks back up at me, the shades slipping down her nose just enough that I can see her eyes peeking out above them.
“This is called Diverging Trails,” Naomi says as she stares at me and I nod my chin slightly. Any songs of hers I didn't know before we moved into the mansion, I know now. We've been spending a shit ton of time practicing together, melding our music the same way we've been melding our bodies. Sometimes it's soft and loving and easy, and sometimes it's just wild angry fucking. I'm a big fan of both, baby. “Every second that we missed, I will miss you,” Naomi whispers into the mic, teasing her guitar gently as her foot taps out an easy rhythm underneath her full skirts. “With every breath that I take.”
“From your ashes I'll rise,” I sing in the background, dragging out the notes as Naomi continues with the main part of the song.
“In my memories I'll find strength, and honor you with every move that I make.”
“UNTIL I CONQUER ALL AND WATCH THE WORLD QUAKE!” I scream, letting myself double over as the rest of the band jumps in with both feet, Dax's drums shaking the wood floor beneath my boots. The notes from Lola's keyboard are soft and easy, contradicting the wild quivering of the guitarists, the thready humming of the bass. It's a good song to relate to grief, but I know who this song is really about.
It's another one about me, written in fresh pain and immortalized for the world to see.
But that's okay. I'll own this shit.
“I won't let you win, I won't let you go,” Naomi says, her voice thick with emotion, her lips pressed to her mic as I run my tongue across my lower lip and break in to sing the last line with her. “You won't see me CRY, not HERE, not even from your FUCKING GRAVE!”
“Moving slow, you still can't outrun me. I'm on my way, so I'll kill that pain. But the memories, I'LL LET THOSE STAY!” I take the words from Naomi's lips as she sinks into her guitar and I spare a glance for the audience, enjoying the color and the sound, the way our music sinks into the earth and dives straight to hell. But it also lifts up, floats into the heavens, taints the stars.
That's what happens when Naomi and I make music together: we trans-fucking-cend.
“Every second that we missed, I will miss you,” we repeat together as I step close to her, feel the desert breeze against my face, watch it swirl her hair and stick loose strands to her lips. I hold the microphone with one hand and use the other to tease them away with my thumb, freeing that gorgeous mouth of hers. “With every breath that I take.”
“From your ashes I'll rise,” Naomi sings, and as I pull the shades from her face, I see that her eyes are closed, the word rise falling from her lips in a long, interrupted note.
“In my memories I'll find strength, and honor you with every move that I make,” I continue, loving the way this moment mirrors our first time onstage together. But it's different this time, too. Back then, it was mystery and sex and lust that was holding us together. And I mea
n, there's that too—my dick is painfully frigging hard right now—but there's a whole shit fuck else going on.
Romance bleeds from my mouth as I sing to her.
“UNTIL I CONQUER ALL AND WATCH THE WORLD QUAKE!” I growl, sliding my fingers along her jaw as she sweats and kills that guitar with a shiny silver pick that matches her nails, fucking it as hard as she fucked me in that van today. And dude, I'm not too macho or whatever to admit it. My wife fucked the shit out of me.
And I loved it.
The lyrics stop for a while, the music twisting together into this tangled ball of rock 'n' roll that we toss out at the audience, see if they can hit it back. They're so vast out there, it's a different experience than it is in a smaller venue. It's like … instead of stripping them of their humanity, watching them evolve backwards and descend into madness, they're already doing it themselves. This time, we're up here shaping it, making something new out of all that chaos.
I let go of Naomi's face and turn back to the audience, moving to the front of the stage and bending low, so low that Naomi puts her boot on my back for balance and keeps playing. I just grin and keep singing her song, a song about my own fuck-up transformed into a growling lullaby of good-bye for her friend.
That's my girl.
I notice part of the camera crew at the front of the crowd, just past the security fences and the row of Brayden's men in black jackets, the word Security etched across them all. Or at least I think they're Brayden's people. They could very well be Paulette's.
Fuck, she was a crazy bitch before. What's she going to be like now that her husband's been killed?
“Don't forget that plea, that final last sad goodbye I made. If you hadn't stood up and walked away, we might've gone on to fight together through the rest of our days. So watch me conquer, watch me bleed.” My voice blends in with Naomi's, this ragged call to rock, like two sirens beckoning in a ship full of sailors. They might all be doomed to their deaths, but they are happy as fuck.
Get Hitched (Hard Rock Roots Book 9) Page 18