Screw Up (Hard Rock Roots Book 10)

by C. M. Stunich

  “No, but that,” Trey says, leaning back against the door in that slouchy, casual way of his, “definitely is.” He gestures to the black van behind us. Most of the windows are tinted, but I can see through the front windshield that there are at least two bodyguards inside.

  The thing is, two guards isn't enough.

  “There's a woman in the back seat with arms the size of tree trunks,” Trey assures me, like he can sense the direction of my thoughts. I turn back to look at him, studying the easy expression on his face, the cocksure smile, the tight jeans and the boots. He looks like someone cut out of a glossy magazine ad—definitely not like my husband.

  No, in my world, husband is a dirty word, this awful reaching thing clawing at me in the dark with sweaty hands and dank, sour breath. Husband is a force I can't control, a nightmare I can't escape. Husband is the person I fought with every ounce of strength I had, ran away from, put behind bars.

  Husband is an inevitable doom, chasing me like a dog after a bone.

  As soon as it catches up to me, I'll be torn apart.

  Treyjan meet my gaze and I see his brow crinkle slightly. I'm confusing to him, weird, clumsy, awkward as hell. Does he actually see something in me? Or is he just curious? Maybe I'll never know.

  “Are you going to show me a good time?” I ask, and watch as his lips pull back in a smile. For a second there, it looks almost genuine. But no, he's still just a shit-eating asshole.

  “Babe, you can get your life on it.”

  Trey might think he's being slick.

  He has no idea how eerily true that statement really is.

  Growing up, I got used to crowds. My family was big, huge, monstrous even in its scope. But while I'm used to rubbing elbows with people, I'm in no way ready for this.

  The converted warehouse is almost beyond the scope of my imagination, a venue twice as large as the rock concert from two nights ago. Two nights … and everything I've worked so hard for is resting on a precipice, a dark raven made of omens. If that shadow sweeps down and over me, I'll die. No, no, I'll die fighting.

  “Come on,” Trey says, reaching down to take my hand so he can lead me through the club. It's a mess of wild lights and glittering people, their half-naked bodies dressed in fluorescent body paint. As we pass through the entrance (one that completely and utterly bypasses all the plebeians in line, obviously), Treyjan grabs a pair of bottles from a girl in a neon yellow Afro. In the blacklight, her lips shine an unnaturally vibrant pink.

  Three steps into the room, my skin is already covered in sweat—but not just from the crushing press of people around me. Like I said, all in all I have literally dozens of siblings … but what I've never had before is a reaction to a guy like I'm having with Treyjan.

  “Alright, pick your poison,” he says as a woman clears a barstool and he grabs onto it, gesturing for me to take a seat before any of the other patrons waiting around the curved glass of the bar have a chance to steal it.

  “My poison …” I start, but I know he's talking about alcohol. Honestly, I don't really have a poison since I don't really drink. What I want to say is: whatever it was that stole my pain away, took away my fears and my past, whatever it was that convinced me to walk down the aisle with an asshole rockstar. “Something that tastes like shit,” I say when I see flamboyantly painted man three stools down from me order something pink with a glow stick stuffed into it.

  “Uh,” Trey says, giving me that look again. What the hell are you? it asks, but I'm not about to explain my reasoning. I figure if I order something that doesn't taste like liquid candy in a glass, then I won't end up naked in a stranger's bed again. Sounds logical, don't you think? “Is that a joke? Because if so, you either have crappy delivery or a weird sense of humor.”

  “It's not a joke,” I tell him, and I think my face is serious enough that he almost believes me.

  Trey just looks at me for a moment, pushes some brunette hair away from his forehead, and shrugs his muscular shoulders.

  “Just make us something good,” he tells the bartender, and I narrow my eyes as I see the man go straight for something red, vibrant, and shining in the blacklight. “Now pick your color,” Trey continues, showing off the two small bottles of paint in his hands. One's pink, the other yellow.

  I go for the latter and he gives me another brief hint of a real smile. Some strange part of me gets the urge to reach out and run my fingertips across his mouth, see if I can catch it before it falls, hold it in my palm like a shooting star. I don't know why I keep looking for something to like in this guy. I don't need to be looking at him at all. There are so many other priorities I should be dealing with. First and foremost: loose Jessop's trail and pray that he and his 'warriors of God' don't catch my scent.

  Instead, I just sit on the chair as Trey pops the top on the paint, revealing a soft round end.

  He leans toward me, this auspicious smile easing its way across his face.

  “May I?”

  Looking at the bottle in his hand, it's obvious he wants to paint me up like the rest of the people in the club. I stare at the glowing tip of the bottle, held in Treyjan's inked fingers and I have no idea what to think. Back home, a wild night out would include heading to one of the other wives' houses to watch one of the prophet's officially sanctioned movies—there weren't many.

  Mm.

  I blink slowly and then nod my head briskly. I ran away from home to try new things, to live a different life. Maybe it's no spiritual awakening to don body paint and dance in a club, but at least I have the freedom to try. Freedom. It's the headiest drug.

  But only because I've never been in love. Now, love and freedom mixed—that's a cocktail for euphoria.

  Treyjan leans in close to me, licking his lower lip in concentration as studies my face. After a moment, he very gently presses the paint to my left shoulder, leaving a bright yellow splotch. As our our eyes meet, he drags the paint over my flesh, this slow agonizing movement that makes my heart flutter wildly. My already hot skin gets even hotter and my breath refuses to obey, coming in ragged fits and spurts. When Trey lifts the paint up from the back of my palm and moves it to my thighs, I do the unthinkable and spread them automatically.

  He doesn't hesitate, starting at the uppermost portion of my thigh and putting the bottle right up against my panties. The heat of his knuckles is fucking excruciating. As Treyjan slicks the yellow color down my leg, I start to shiver.

  “Relax,” he says after a moment, leaning in close to me, so close that his lips stir my hair. He sounds almost gentle when he breathes those two syllables against my lobe. “You're trembling.”

  Trey rests the fingers of his left hand against my knee, sending shooting stars out from each of his fingertips. My eyes drop to those five small spots where his skin is touching mine. Like lightning in the darkness, a flash of brightness lights up the recesses of my brain. For an instant, just an instant, I can remember what it was like to be touched by this man, played by the skillful manipulations of his fingers, brought to vibrant, brilliant song.

  I push Trey's hand away and exhale sharply, my heartbeat this incessant flutter in my throat.

  For a moment, we both just stay where we are. Me, sitting with my thighs spread. Trey, standing between them. Close. Way too fucking close.

  “Can I do your mouth?” he asks, and the innuendo dripping from his lips is like acid, eating away at me, stealing my apathy and my indifference. The prophet's wife, sitting in the middle of a Los Angeles nightclub, in a den of sin—with a man made of sin.

  “Yes.”

  Just that one word.

  It's all I've got.

  Treyjan swirls a fingertip around the soft circular pad of the paint bottle, lifting it to his mouth and smearing yellow color on his lips. In the blacklight, the whites of his eyes turn the caramel mocha color of his irises into an ebony sky devoid of stars.

  Trey tosses the paint onto the counter and leans in, curling his tattooed hands around my shoulders. In a hot, s
lick crush of lips, he kisses me and smears the paint across my face, darting his tongue into my mouth and giving this sharp, little flick that steals a bite of breath and soul from me.

  “Ready to dance?” he asks when he draws away and stands up, the bottom half of his face this yellow splash of color that makes me think of spilled paint. It mars the perfection of his features, gives him this very human sort of look that makes my skin feel tight and achy.

  “No,” I say, as I reach out and take the pink paint from the counter. Popping the top off, I scoot to the end of the stool use one hand to push Treyjan's unbuttoned shirt open. As soon as the sweaty rise and fall of his abs is exposed, I press the paint to his belly button … and then work my way up, noticing as I go that Trey's breath is coming in faster and faster bursts.

  Watching and waiting, he doesn't say a word, just lets me manipulate his body until it's as bright and erratic as the room around us, until we're both just living canvases. From where I'm sitting, I've got a pretty good view of Trey's denim covered crotch, the hard bulge inside it drawing my hand in an inexplicable motion. I palm the hardness of his cock through his pants and listen as he exhales sharply out his nostrils.

  “Fuck,” Trey curses, lifting his gaze up to the pitched metal roof. It's been painted black, with stars and constellations drawn in vibrant blacklight reactive paint. Strands of colored lights swoop down in strands, wrapping some of the massive columns.

  The moment doesn't last nearly long enough, but when I withdraw my hand, there's a definite heat that comes with it, meeting up with the shooting stars from my knee, the vibrant shimmer of our kiss. It's like I've captured a piece of ardor and tucked it in my pocket.

  “No mmm this time?” he asks, and his voice is playful enough that I can see why he's got so many friends. I bet Trey's fun to hang around with. If only I had the time … or the leisure to get to know him.

  I give a tight smile, but there's this dimpling in my cheeks that drags the expression even further, into something real, something that almost scares me.

  “You mentioned dancing?” I ask as our drinks appear in front of us, colorful and blended and smelling like fruit. Reaching out to pinch the crazy, crooked blue straw from my glass, I take a sip. Jus as I'd feared, it's delicious—and very dangerous because of it.

  Kind of like Treyjan Charell himself.

  “Let's go,” he says, taking a sip of his own drink and dragging me into the wild fray.

  Music blares through the speakers in a throbbing, almost neurotic wave, like a hypnotizer's voice lulling the crowd into a strange, zen state where individuality bleeds away and we became a crowd. The very first song we dance is a jumping, hopping mess of legs and feet and flailing arms.

  So not my scene.

  Remember: Netflix, cat, club soda with grenadine as a treat.

  But Treyjan has an infectious spirit and he doesn't let me hold back, moving my body with his, refusing to let my shyness get in the way. And anyway, what's the point of trying something new while holding back? That's like going for the end of the diving board and coming up short. The only result is that you trip and fall in an uncontrolled twist of thrashing arms and legs. But if you put those hands together, aim, execute … there's not much of a splash.

  The DJ cycles through bouncy pop, throbbing dubstep, slick hiphop tunes, and grinding grimy rap hooks. After a half-dozen tracks, there's a pause and then an old nineties pop song comes out, sending the crowd into a tizzy.

  “Fucking goddamn Backstreet Boys,” Trey says, smiling at me. But I was raised on a compound where secular music was banned. If I wanted to listen to music, I had two choices: an old Dolly Parton record I'd found on a dusty player in the basement or a tape of the prophet's sister wives singing hymns.

  And I was almost one of them.

  Trey grabs my right hand before I can protest. The way everyone around me is singing and swaying, I feel like I'm standing on the side-lines looking in. This is a joke I'm not a part of, something I don't understand. I've been doing my best to catch up with mega hits from the last few decades, movies, books (I read Harry Potter for the first time last month and cried the whole way through it I was so damn happy).

  But this …

  “Come on, Netty Forester, dance with me,” Trey pleads, pulling me close. I don't resist. I don't really want to. Our bodies come together, front to front, the full mounds of my breasts against Treyjan's flat chest. I let him keep one of my hands tucked in his, the other rests on his shoulder. As douche-y as he is, Trey certainly has a lot of charisma. I recognized it the first second I saw him.

  In here, in this hot sweaty room with all these strangers, the bitter taste of the paint on my lips, it carries me into the moment with a strange sort of excitement building in my belly. It could be because of the closeness of Trey's body, the faint scent of sweat and soap that emanates from him, the faint whisper of remembered closeness between us, some strange but inevitable pull that drew two strangers together.

  If I felt at all like this the night of the concert, it's no wonder I ran off and married him. I just met the guy and yet … I can feel a smile teasing the corners of my lips. Especially when I realize he's mumbling the lyrics to the song under his breath. When I throw a look his way, he doesn't seem even the slightest bit guilty. Instead, he sings louder, loud enough that the people around us start to join in, and then so does the rest of the crowd.

  The song comes to a close with a good portion of the club chanting the lyrics.

  Treyjan twirls me around one more time, one last spin that shows me a familiar face waiting in the crowd.

  I gasp and step back as Jessop Barlow, my fiancé, comes straight for me.

  Netty's face tightens up as the man from the diner makes his way toward us, looking so out of place in a black coat and a white button-up, I'm surprised they even let him in the door. He's like a kill switch for all the energy in the room, a cold, wet rag dousing out the fire between me and Netty.

  And fuck, but I need that fire, that flame to warm my cold hands. I mean, shit, I'm happy my best friends are finding love and starting families and all that crap, but where does that leave me? What do I do when I'm not the lead guitarist for Indecency? When I'm not just Turner's shadow?

  Jesus, I know some weird, accident prone chick isn't the answer to all my problems, but I'll also be damned if I let some fucker intimidate my wife.

  I move to step in front of her, but she puts out a hand and lays her palm on my belly.

  “Just wait,” she breathes, and as packed as the club is, as much as the room is bouncing and gyrating and sweating all around us, I swear I'm like picking up on the wild, violent sound of her breathing, the racing of her heart. Or maybe the old romantic in me is imagining the whole damn thing? Hell, it would make more sense in the scope of my life if I were just fried off my fucking face and imagining that Netty was even real in the first place.

  “Sister Izatt,” the man says, and I swear to god, if I like, believed in spirits and premonitions and all that crap, I would see darkness billowing out of this man's mouth.

  “This dude's your brother?” I ask, but Netty ignores me completely. I realize as I look down at her, that she's shaking all over—but not like she was on that stool, when I was slicking body paint across her pale skin. This is different. This whole interaction, it reeks of fear.

  And still, the short little brunette keeps her chin raised, shoulders back, and stares down this man with a gaze that could rival Naomi Knox at her worst. Netty might be scared, but she's not about to back down either.

  “Mr. Barlow,” she replies, her voice as cool and frosty as the dry ice coming off the drinks in a nearby club-goers hand. Somehow, there's a small bubble forming around us, like nobody in their right mind wants to get involved in this toxic shit. Considering how last year went—the tour from hell, an explosion at one of our concerts, all of the secrets that came bubbling up from the past to poison us—you'd think I'd be running, too, getting as far away from 'Netty Foreste
r' as I could.

  Instead, I can't make myself move.

  Looks like I'm not fucking going anywhere.

  “Would you like to step outside so we might have a word?” the man asks, his lips crooked and his nose slanting to one side. The fact that Netty said he was her fiancé is disturbing since, you know, this guy looks the damn Crypt Keeper. What is he, like, a hundred years old or some shit?

  This primal sort of protectiveness surges up in me, making me grit my teeth and curl my hands into fists by my sides. On the one hand, this guy almost definitely knows Netty a hell of a lot better than I do. On the other, we are technically married and all that shit. Shouldn't I be defending her or something? Or is that not feminist enough of me? Shit, am I supposed to let her handle her own shit?

  All I know is that I really like it when someone has my back in a fight.

  “Actually, no, I'd rather not. Based on my actions, don't you think it's clearly obvious what my position is here?” Netty swallows and glances my direction, her blue eyes dark and shadowed in the strange light of the club. But her mouth is thick and full and lit up from the paint. The way it smears across her chin is like a marker, a physical reminder of our kiss.

  Based on the disgust etched across his face, I think Gramps has some idea of what we were up to. Good. Maybe then he can see there's no way in hell he could satisfy this woman like I could.

  My mouth curls up to the side in a sly smile.

  “Besides,” she says, turning her attention back to him, keeping her voice strong and steady. “I'm having a night out with my husband.”

  “Your husband is dead,” the man—the fuck if I can remember his name—says, and his voice is as cold as stone. Now I'm like, seriously confused. We got fiancés and dead husbands? The hell is going on here? “And you have an obligation to your prophet and your sister wives to be resealed—”