Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (29 page)

“Guys, they don’t stick around me,
either,” I told him. “I seem to be this… unicorn to them. They all think I’m
great and love the work I do, they love how deeply I care about the scene. But
they only ever get close enough to be my friends. They don’t dare come closer.
And the ones that
do
dare to date me usually end up hating me because I
always care about my job more than them.” After a pause, I added, “I suppose I
deserve that one.”

“I don’t get that at all,” said Noah.
His eyes wandered over my face like he was trying to commit it to memory.
“You’re exactly the girl we’ve all been dreaming about ever since we joined the
scene.”

“Apparently, no one knows what to do
with a dream once they get it,” I scoffed. “Because I can’t even get myself a
date most of the time.”

“Well,” said Noah, leaning closer to
me. “You don’t have to worry about that as long as you’re in Seattle. Because
I’m laying strict claim to your time… and to that delicious pussy.”

Jolts of desire shot through my body.
“Is that right?”

“Try letting anyone else near it and
see,” he said. Noah ran his palm up my calf and thigh, stopping just short of
touching my center. He smirked at me with a glow in his eyes.

As I leaned down to kiss him, the
patter of rain began to sound on the leaves overhead, and it wasn’t long before
our exposed skin started gathering raindrops. Noah grunted, annoyed, into my
mouth at the distraction, and our kiss quickly dissolved into giggles. Together
we got up and started gathering up the picnic. I watched Noah’s ass as he went
into the house ahead of me and wolf whistled after him with a laugh.

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 had 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.”