Dirty Jock

by Sienna Valentine

  Maria nodded firmly. “This place is in tight with the cops. We have to be, really. I suppose we’re in the same business, when it comes right down to it. But there’s a lot of personnel crossover, too. Officers use these gigs as an easy way to make money on the weekends because their skills transfer so easily.”

  “Was one of those men on the front lines of the Cut Up Angels set that day?”

  “Yes,” said Maria. “A couple of them.”

  I said nothing, but felt disgust riling up in my gut. Even though the men were just protecting each other, exactly how I was trying to protect Noah, it still felt like an abuse of power I couldn’t excuse. Having a brother-in-blue directly threatened by this failure of duty would make it pretty damn easy for local cops to want to play along with the security firm’s cover-up. After all, they both had something to lose from exposure.

  And Noah was just their spoiled, rock star patsy.

  “What was on the videos you took?” I asked on the edge of my chair. “How did that guy get past security?”

  Maria’s eyes grew wet. “One of the guards at the end of the line got distracted by the show, and that was all he needed to crawl over the barricade. They didn’t even see him until he was on the stage, and by then, it was too late.”

  “Maria,” I said with a firm gaze. “Did he have a knife?”

  Something like horror and relief mixed together washed over Maria’s face. “How did you know that?”

  Adrenaline pumped through my veins like a shockwave of sunshine. I rushed to my feet and leaned over the desk. “You mean there was a knife? That man was trying to attack the band?”

  “I didn’t tell anybody but Rory that!” said Maria, shocked. “I showed him the videos and he told me we couldn’t tell anyone, because… because how would we ever get hired for a job again? We would all look like complete fools and lose everything. He even went out and found the knife where it fell under the stage mechanisms before the police could collect their evidence.” She put her head in her hands. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I didn’t mean for this to frame somebody. I thought we were doing the right thing for my workers!”

  When Maria looked up at the smile on my face, she gave me eyes like she thought I was crazy. I just leaned over the desk and took her by the shoulders. “Maria, you beautiful angel. Tell me you saved one of those videos that shows the knife.”

  “We saved all of them,” said Maria. “We saved them on a secure hard-drive only Rory and I can access.”

  I scrambled in my pockets for my keys, and the spare USB drive I always kept attached to them on a ring. “Give me a copy, please—just one video, one with a distinctly clear shot of the knife.”

  “Oh, no, please… this is already too much!” she said, worried.

  I fumbled for my wallet and threw the rest of the cash on the desk. Maria gasped.

  “No one will ever know it came from here,” I said. “You said yourself you didn’t get all the phones from the crowd. For all anyone will know, a fan sat on this video and waited to sell it to the press. Delete the firm’s copy of it—they have plenty of other incriminating evidence, anyway, and they’ll probably be deleting it themselves once this drops.”

  At first she just whimpered, unsure, debating.

  “Maria,” I said quietly. “This will save his life.”

  She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

  “Please,” I said. “I can’t let that happen to him.”

  Maria’s expression changed slowly, like something came over her. Somehow the fear fell from her eyes. But she still bit her lip when she nodded at me and blinked a few times. “Okay. Okay, I’ll help you, as long as you keep your promise to protect me.”

  “With my life,” I said and dropped the keyring in her hands.

  Ten minutes later, Maria was a thousand dollars richer, and I had the key to Noah Hardy’s salvation literally in the palm of my hand. I made Maria double and triple check the integrity of the file on the drive before I gave her my unlisted number and told her to call me if anything at all spooked her. She actually gave me a shaky, awkward embrace after she called me a taxi, and waited out front with me until it arrived.

  “Take me to LAX,” I told the driver. No way was I staying in this shithole any longer than I had to; I’d use the expense account to buy a quicker flight back to Seattle.

  I sent a text to Steve that just said “You better get your hands on the finest whiskey your bitch ass can afford.” After a few anxious minutes with no reply, I huffed and put my phone away. He must have been busy.

  A screaming part of me wanted to call up Noah right then and give him the incredible news, instantly putting his troubles behind him. But as I sat in the back of that taxi and held the USB drive in my hand, I realized the labyrinth of a mess I’d gotten myself into didn’t have an exit so simple.

  Old stories about wishes and being careful about making them, they all felt a little too real in that moment. I had everything I wanted in my hands. I had my bombshell story; I had the mea culpa to my journalistic missteps; and I had the key to making sure Noah could at least escape this nightmare without having to endure prison. He could start healing, moving on, find a new band that didn’t treat him like shit the way Angels did. Noah could be free. I really had found the magic bullet.

  But there was no way in hell Noah would ever forgive me for what I was, and how I got here. And the only way I could get us both what we wanted was to blow the cover on my true self. Salvation required a sacrifice, just like in the old stories.

  I had to lose Noah to save him.

  Suddenly, I was wracked with sobs so intense, the taxi driver asked if he needed to pull over and get help.

  Ashamed, I kept my face down and told him no. Keep driving.

  He threw a box of tissues from across the passenger seat. “Everything will be okay, miss. We will make your flight.”

  “It won’t be okay,” I said, gasping in breaths. The words came out before I could stop them, so desperate for escape that even a stranger hearing them was better than no one at all. “I love him, and I have to ruin everything.

  Chapter 17

  Noah

  I got off the phone with Kevin and contemplated rolling over and going back to sleep. There really didn’t seem to be much fucking point to getting out of bed, not today. The weight of the impending criminal charges against me had become too much for me to fight against, at least on my own. I needed a boost and nothing was working.

  Deep down, I needed Laurel.

  But I could only whisper that to myself, and the fabric of my pillowcase, as I lay in bed and let the day swing by without me. Kevin had called because of the shows I had missed the past couple nights. He pretended he wasn’t worried, just gave me some shit about shacking up with Laurel, but then again that was his way. He knew more than he said, and he cared too damn much.

  My numbness frightened me, but I tried to tell myself it was just temporary. It was normal to feel outweighed by something as huge as what was going on right now. I wouldn’t be here forever; I would get up.

  Just not today. Not right now.

  The silence of my empty house seemed to tell tales of its own, taunting my anxious brain as I lay in bed, too tired to escape them. Whispering that it was always supposed to be this way, somehow. Like deep down, I knew one day, all the rough edges I had tried so hard to sand off would end up cutting my jugular. The demons I had hog-tied would get free and catch up to me. Maybe that’s why I was here alone, now, in a small empty house. Maybe that was why I was the only member left in my band who hadn’t settled down and found at least a steady, long-time girlfriend to weather the storms with. Jeff even had a couple of kids, now. As rough as it was, somehow they had made it work, and found a partner even within the chaos of the rock star life.

  But not me. It was like I was off the rhythm of things in my personal life, always late or early to the party. Whatever success I found in my career, I found the same failure in the simple human connections I tried t
o establish. The wrong women got close; the right ones slipped through my fingers, or couldn’t see me to begin with.

  Some pragmatic, probably nihilistic part of me was glad I was alone to go through this. The thought of having a wife… maybe a wife like Laurel… having to sit back and watch me endure the misery that was sure to be my trial and conviction, and then wait for me while I serve out a prison sentence, it made me sick to my stomach. The thought that I could so thoroughly destroy the life of someone I loved just by proximity… it horrified me.

  Suddenly all my isolation had this paranoid look of being self-imposed. Had I really created some self-fulfilling prophecy, ending up alone in this empty house because I expected to be? Was I afraid to get close because I couldn’t take the weight, the power, of influencing their life? Maybe that’s why I liked performing; it was a place I felt comfortable taking that power. It was power I enjoyed wielding, power I was good at wielding. On stage, looking out at a wave of people, some of whom were bigger and stronger than I would ever be, and yet they’re listening to me, obeying me even—I loved it. I belonged there. I knew how to translate that power into something positive for people’s lives through my music.

  But when it came to power over just one person… when it came to knowing I held someone’s delicate heart in my hands… I didn’t feel powerful at all. I felt terrified. Now, with a prison sentence looming over my head, that terror was justified. If I had ever let any of my past girlfriends close—as terrible as some of them were—now, they’d be going through a world of hurt with me. I was right to push them away.

  The terrifying thing was, I wasn’t sure I could do the same to Laurel. The idea of not having her around was indescribable.

  Wet tears hit the pillowcase under my face. The whole world felt as small as my room.

  Time melted away for a while, until the quiet was broken by the ringing of my phone. I almost ignored it, but after a few indecisive seconds, I finally rolled over to grab it from my bedside table.

  Laurel’s beautiful face was staring back at me from my phone screen. Fuck… Laurel. I missed her warmth so much. I hadn’t even thought about how I was going to break this news to her. Part of me worried she wouldn’t even care… but the deeper part of me knew she would. And that was the part that was afraid I was about to break her heart.

  Really, it would almost be better if she didn’t give a shit about me. Then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for that too, at least, and she could go on about her life. Of all the times to find myself hopelessly attached to a woman, why did it have to be now, when everything was falling apart? I didn’t want to take Laurel down with me.

  The doubt in my mind almost kept me from answering her call. But I felt helpless. I wanted to hear her voice. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey, Noah,” she replied. “I’m sorry I haven’t called in a…”

  “No, no, don’t apologize. It’s fine. You have a life.”

  There was a heavy pause. “You sound really down. What’s wrong?”

  My face scrunched up as tears threatened again. Of course she could hear it, this flawless woman. But I never wanted her to see me weak. “It’s nothing. I didn’t sleep well. Where are you? I want to see you.”

  “I-I want to see you too,” she said. Wherever she was calling from, it was noisy and scattered in the background. “Are you busy right now?”

  “Never too busy for you, sugar.”

  Her voice sounded much sadder when it came back on the line. A flash of worry lit up in my brain. “Can you meet me at that beach you took me to in, like, half an hour?”

  I glanced at the clock at my bedside table. It was already well into evening; I hadn’t even had a meal yet today. “Yeah, sure. Is everything okay with you?”

  “Yeah, just… I’ll tell you when I see you. Half an hour?”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Emotions battled in my brain, both relief and concern, unable to decide which was more accurate. Really, my brain was just too tired to give too much of a fuck. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the news I’d already gotten, and at least I could finally hold Laurel in my arms again. Our brief time apart felt like it had been much longer.

  It only took me a few minutes to get dressed and brush my teeth. The guy looking back at me from the mirror was a little worse for wear, and it was the first time I remember actually seeing signs of stress on myself. I ran a comb through my hair and splashed cold water on my face, hoping it would tighten things up and help the dark circles under my eyes.

  A light rain began to fall on the drive over, and a bunch of idiot tourists held up part of the road when they wheeled off to the side to get a glimpse of some deer tromping through the neighborhood. By the time I pulled my truck up to the gravel lot near the small little beach I had taken her to before, Laurel was already there, her car parked haphazardly. I left my truck next to it and tromped down the small slope toward the river.

  Laurel sat on the giant piece of driftwood, throwing tiny rocks into the water. When she heard my footsteps approaching, she leapt to her feet and turned to face me. Her face looked puffy, like she had been crying not too long ago, but she still looked beautiful as ever, wearing the sweatshirt I had given her before. Between her swollen eyes and my sleepless circles, we must have looked like quite the pair, if anyone was watching.

  My heart froze when she hesitated. But it was only a second or two, and then she was racing up to me, throwing herself into my arms. Her hair and sweatshirt were wet from the rain, and cold pressed up against my skin, but it didn’t stop me from lifting her off her feet and holding her as tightly as I could as she buried her face against the crook of my neck. Warmth and sweet relief rolled down my body and suddenly my aches and fears became a distant memory.

  “I can’t believe how much I missed you,” she said into my skin.

  I inhaled deeply, my nerves instantly soothed by her words. “Fuck, I missed you too, sugar. I missed your smell.”

  She pulled back from my neck and took my face in her hands. Her kiss was sweet and powerful, a message without words. I bent my forehead against hers when it was over.

  We stood there holding each other and listening to the river until I finally lowered her feet to the ground. She kept her body against mine as I stroked her hair from her face.

  “Noah, I have to talk to you about something, and I have to do it before I lose my nerve.” Laurel looked up in my face with a determined brightness in her eyes, shifting from foot to foot like she was standing on hot coals. She grasped at my jacket almost unconsciously.

  “You can talk to me about anything,” I said, cupping her cheek in my hand. “What is it?”

  Laurel lowered her gaze for just a moment and took a few deep breaths. Then she met my eyes again. “I have something for you.” From out of her pocket came her hand, and in it was a small, black, plastic rectangle. The lid of the USB drive had been secured with bright red tape. When I didn’t react, she lifted one of my big hands in her tiny ones and placed it in my palm, then closed my fingers over it tightly.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s your proof,” said Laurel, blinking up at me through the light rain.

  “It’s… what?” My words came out in one great exhale.

  “I found your proof, Noah. Proof about the knife, it’s on that drive. It’s a video. It proves you acted in defense of Quinn. You… you don’t have to go to prison,” she said. Her words came in short spurts, like she was holding back tears.

  The closed fist holding the drive trembled. Was this possible? Laurel—could she have saved me?

  My knees felt weak. I gripped onto her shoulder. Suddenly everything felt far-away and dreamlike, and for half a second I expected to wake up. “Laurel, what… I don’t understand….is this real?”

  “It’s real,” she said, but something fearful was in her teary smile. “It’s real, Noah, all you have to do is show the DA and this will be over. This is where I had to go, and what I’ve been wo
rking on. I’ve been hunting this down.”

  Confusion coursed through my mind. So many questions tried to force their way out of my mouth. “I can’t even… this can’t be real. What do you mean, you’ve been hunting this down? Why?”

  “Noah,” said Laurel. Tears had begun to run down her cheeks. She put both hands on my shoulders to make sure I was looking at her. “Noah, I have to tell you something else, please. Just hear me out, okay?”

  I was already too stunned to respond.

  “I found the proof because I was looking for it, Noah. I’m not…” She looked down at her feet and cursed under her breath. “Noah, I’m a journalist. I’m a writer for Slipstream.”