Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (36 page)

“Noah, I never lied to you about who
I am. None of the stories we shared, none of the memories I told you or the
things I shared about myself, were a lie. The only thing I kept from you was
what my job was.” She rubbed her face. “I know that doesn’t make it better. I
don’t fucking deserve your forgiveness. You are the realest man I’ve ever met
in my life, and you have to know that the Laurel you’ve seen is really me, even
if I’m just another bullshit poser on your list. I deserve to be there.”

My heart was screaming at me,
cursing, calling me a fool. Of course Laurel didn’t give a shit about me. Of
course the only single positive thing in my pathetic fucking life was an
enormous joke, another thing that pretended to be real but wasn’t.

When I finally found the strength to
look up at her, Laurel’s face was a mask of pain and shame, her eyes wide,
waiting for me to seal her fate.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,”
I said. A tear trailed down my face, disappearing into my beard.

Laurel dropped her gaze and cried a
little, then looked back up at me. “I know. I’m sorry. But I’m not going to do
this to you… not anymore.” She gestured limply toward my clenched fist that
held the hard drive.

I frowned at it, and then back at
her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She waved again at my fist. “I’m not
writing my story. That video is yours to save yourself. I’m going to tell my
editors I couldn’t find anything, and you’re going to release this for yourself
on your terms. No one will know I was here. You’ll be safe. So will Kevin and
the club.” She licked her lips and looked at the river, then back at me. “I
didn’t expect this to happen, Noah. I didn’t expect to find…
you
. And
I’m not going to betray you like everyone else.” A pause. “Nothing would ever
make me.”

Part of the panic in my mind died,
hearing her words. “Is that right? Miss Ambition, and you expect me to believe
you’re giving up this career move for me?”

Laurel nodded. “I promise,” she said.
“No one else has anything, and they never will. I’ll leave town, and you can
forget that any of this ever happened…” Her voice trailed off at the end of her
sentence, too overcome to finish.

Seeing her standing there, cold and
crying, it amazed me how strong the urge still was to take her in my arms and
make it all go away. I never wanted to see Laurel like this. But her confession
changed everything. What moments were real, now? Had she faked our passion, our
connection? Did she really show me her true self with those stories from her
younger days, or did she research those, too?

Yet part of my heart, it couldn’t
keep the bitterness alive, and laughed at me that I knew the truth—I knew the
Laurel that I had held in my arms, and in my bed, was really her.

But that didn’t mean I could forgive
her for this. She was the last ray of sunshine in my world, and now she was
dashed against the cold dark of the storm clouds like everything else.

Suddenly the rage was just too much
to take. I looked at Laurel for a few moments, watching her eyes as they begged
me silently to answer her. But I didn’t. I whirled without a word and stalked
up the beachfront until I was in my truck.

As soon as it roared to life, I took
off for the highway, leaving Laurel behind me.

~
EIGHTEEN ~

Laurel

After Noah left me on the beach, I spent two days in
the hotel bed, only getting up to answer the door for room service or make use
of the facilities. I slept so hard the first day, I didn’t bother to plug in my
phone. When it finally came back to life on the second, there was a giant list
of messages from Steve, demanding I explain the e-mail I had sent him before I
met with Noah. The messages grew less angry and more worried as the hours had
passed, until finally the last one said,
Do not kill yourself in a tacky
Seattle hotel. That’s so grunge and you’re better than that.

I texted him to tell him I was fine,
but to leave me alone another day. After making damn sure I didn’t have a
single text or missed call from Noah—which, of course, I didn’t—I shut the
phone off again and left it ignored on the bedside table.

Hours passed blankly as I stared at
the TV, barely even caring enough to change the channel when something shit
came on the air. The only thing I cared to see was news that Noah had released
the video and that everything would be okay for him. It was the only good thing
that was going to come out of this garbage fire of a life decision I had made.

I fell in and out of sleep, and
picked at the room service food when I got hungry. The minibar was toast. I was
determined to spend every last dime cleared by the magazine for my expense
account before they fired me for losing this story.

My dreams were of Noah. I could smell
him on the beach as clear as day. I could feel the firm contours of his muscles
under the palm of my hands, and his soft lips on mine.

After two days of depressed
wallowing, I found the strength to drag myself to the shower and clean up the
hotel room. On my invitation, Steve met me downstairs in the hotel lobby for
breakfast at the complimentary buffet. We grabbed a table in the corner, away
from the smattering of tourist families and old timers traveling cross-country who
got up with the sun.

Steve looked more worried than mad as
he shook salt and pepper over his eggs and said my name with a sigh. “Are you
all right? You look like hell.”

“I’ll live,” I said, even though I
felt exactly the opposite of that. “But you wanted to talk about the email, so
let’s talk.”

“Let’s talk about what’s going on
with you, first. What the hell?”

“Look, you were right,” I said,
leaning back in my chair. I couldn’t look at him as I shook my head. “You were
right. I was… I
am
in love with Noah. I fucked up and I got too close.”

The snarky reply I braced for didn’t
come. Steve only watched me with curious, sort of sad eyes. “I was just trying
to give you shit. I didn’t mean to make you feel ashamed for having feelings
for someone.”

Raising a hand, I said, “It’s not
that. I just want you to understand why I did what I did with the video. Yes,
it was a huge loss for both of us and our careers. I know that, and I’m sorry.
I don’t have any excuse for it.” I shrugged and poked at the food on my plate
with my fork. “The moment came and I couldn’t do it to him. Even if it was
going to save him at the same time, I couldn’t also exploit him… couldn’t
unearth and give to the public everything he’s tried to keep for himself, just
so I could make some tiny gain in my bullshit career.”

Disappointment was apparent on
Steve’s expression, but so was something else. His mouth pursed in the corner
and he put down his fork. He reached a hand across the table and held it out
until I took it. “He didn’t take it well when you blew your cover, did he?”

I shook my head. Steve’s image began
to blur in my eyes. “No. Not that he should have.”

Steve squeezed my hand. I used my
other to fumble for a napkin and wipe my eyes.

“I just wish you had come to me
before you did this, that’s all. I thought we were in this together. Maybe
together we could have found another way.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. It is
on the long list of unprofessional behavior that is probably going to end my
career once we get home.”

“You’re just human,” said Steve as he
squeezed my hand once more and released it. “And even if we didn’t get the
scoop, you did save an innocent guy from getting sent to prison. That’s a good
day for any journalist, Laurel.”

I guess he wasn’t wrong there. I would
always hold that action close to my heart as one to be proud of. “Can you
forgive me?”

“Yes, but only because you’re going
to owe me a massive,
Godfather
-sized favor in the future. I’m talking,
like, disposing-of-a-body massive.”

I wasn’t joking when I said, “Deal,
Steve. Anything.”

“And, of course, you have to be the
one to call Domino.”

I sighed and stared at the waffles on
my plate that were slowly getting cold. “Yeah, I know. Let me have my goddamn
breakfast first so I can have something to throw up afterwards.”

“I don’t understand. When I talked to
Steve a few days ago, he said you were both onto something… and I quote,
‘bombshell as fuck.’ Was Steve just blowing his load too early?”

My editor, Domino Baptiste, was a
beautiful woman from the West Indies who worked her way up through the East
Coast punk scene during a time when both women and black people were not nearly
as welcome. There was no fucking with her. Not that I’d want to—I respected
Domino and used her as a template for what I wanted to become. But I had failed
that template, and myself. I didn’t realize until I heard her voice over the
line how deeply it was going to cut me to disappoint her.

This was all a fancy way of saying I
couldn’t keep my tears in my eyes as I told her I didn’t have the story I had
promised her. My voice stayed even though sheer determination, so maybe she
couldn’t hear my pathetic crying, but it was happening regardless.

“No,” I said. “No, this isn’t on
Steve, he was only following the information I got. This isn’t his fault.”

“So this is your fault? What
happened, Laurel? The fire under your ass in your pitch meeting wasn’t a lie.
You were hungry for this.”

“I was. And please believe me when I
say I did everything I possibly could to get to that information I needed. But
it was just… beyond me.”

Domino hummed into the phone, a sound
she made when she wasn’t buying what I was selling. “Nothing’s beyond you,
Laurel. The Tusk story was a disaster, but it wasn’t because you lack ability;
it was because you didn’t use your abilities properly. Is that what’s happening
here?”

I didn’t know what to tell her.
Already confessing the truth to Steve had drained me. How could I tell my
mentor why I failed? “I don’t know, Domino. I just know this story isn’t… it’s
not happening like I thought. And I’m sorry. I fucked this up.”

“And you’re sure you can’t find any
way to salvage it? The mag will pay for more time out there, if that’s what it
takes.”

“No,” I said immediately, shutting my
eyes as I did. “No, this can’t be salvaged.”

Domino was quiet for a moment. She
had to have known there was something I wasn’t telling her. “We’ll talk about
all this when you get back into town. How long do you need to wrap things up
there?”

I need to stay forever
,
said one part of me.
I want to be teleported out of here immediately,
said the other. The idea of having even just one extra day to try and get in
contact with Noah and soothe the deep pain in my heart was intoxicating, but
fortunately, I was at least mature enough to recognize what a mistake that
would be. Noah had made it very clear at the beach how he felt, and hadn’t
contacted me since. I was the invading force, here—the conquistador who came to
pillage for my own benefit. I had no right to demand his response. And I loved
him too much to disrespect him that way.

It was over. The white flags had to
be raised.

“I can be ready to fly home tonight.”