Dead Serious (19 page)

This isn't my fight. I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't fucking understand why so many people have to be involved in a dispute that only pertains to two. America and Stephen. And I thought Turner and I were the main characters in this story. That's fucking hilarious.

“That's true,” he says, but he doesn't push me any further. When I glance over at his face, the bright neon lights of the nearby club signs light him up like a Christmas tree. If I squint at him, the light limns his head like a halo.
Angel.
“But only because we know the truth. America and Stephen think this show is about them, but it's not. This is
our
concert, Naomi. Yours and mine.”

“I don't understand you when you talk like a normal human being.” The words slip from my mouth before I get the chance to stop them. But instead of being mad or throwing a snippy comment back at me, Turner just throws his head back and laughs until I can't stop my lips from quirking up into a small smile. A
reluctant
smile.

“What do you want me to say, Knox? That I like your style? That I think you're fuckin' fly?” Turner stops walking, grabbing my elbow to keep me standing next to him. The leather jacket I grabbed on the way out crinkles under his touch, his fingers caressing the fabric affectionately. I look away from his face, at the buildings around us, the traffic crawling by. I have no clue where we are right now. Turner just turned down Brayden's offer of an SUV and started walking. I presume he knows where he's going. He better. He's the one that promised me a good fucking time tonight.

“I don't know how to process what we just learned.”

Turner leans in close, his breath brushing against my ear, sending shivers down my spine. Unconsciously, I reach inside my coat pocket and finger the condoms and the eight ball that I confiscated off the table before we left.

“That's okay, Knox. This is real life. Sometimes we don't get all the answers. It's what we do with what we know that fucking counts.” I catch sight of Brayden's people hanging out on the street corner up ahead, smoking cigarettes. They're not even looking this way, but I know they're watching, maybe even waiting for us to try something. I don't know what plan Turner's formulated for us to slip away, but I just don't see that happening. Doesn't matter anyway, I guess. I'm going to do what I want to do tonight, regardless of those assholes.

“Stop talking like that,” I tell him, pulling my arm from his grip. “You make too much sense that way. It pisses me off.” He laughs again and shakes his head, going for a box of cigarettes in his sweater pocket. The stupid fuck decided to wear an Amatory Riot sweatshirt unzipped over his Indecency T-shirt. Very subtle. I'm sure nobody will recognize. I take another look around, just to make sure we're not going to be swarmed again, but I guess America's decided we've had enough for one week. Nobody even glances our way. In the sulking shadows of evening, we're almost invisible here. There are a dozen girls with tattoos paired with a dozen boys with lip rings, all of them laughing and hanging off one another on the sidewalks outside the clubs. In the distance somewhere, I can hear the pounding beat of one Indecency's songs throbbing like a pulsing heart, ripped straight from the chest, nice and fresh and bloody.

Turner lights up a cigarette and hands it to me. I take it with a nod of thanks as he gets one for himself.

“Were you surprised?” I ask him, taking a drag and watching as he scans the street, looking around at the unfamiliar landscape. Well, to me it's unfamiliar. Turner says he's a fucking expert on the nightlife scene around here. We'll see about that. “By anything we learned. Did it surprise you?”

“Nah. This story is fucked six ways to Sunday. Almost makes me miss the trailer park.” He grins, and I return the smile, mesmerized by the way the smoke curls in and out of his lip rings. Knowing him, he probably plans it that way. I don't know how, but if there's anyone on this planet that can figure out how to manipulate smoke into making himself more attractive, it's Turner. I try to one-up him by blowing a smoke ring in his face. It's dark out, so I'm not sure, but I'm fairly positive I saw his pupils dilate in response. A quick glance down tells me that's not the only part of his body that thickened up at the sight.

I smirk and take a step back.

“It is our show, isn't it? Even if they're trying to use it as a massive chess board. I'm nobody's fucking pawn.”

“That's the spirit,” Turner growls, holding out his arm for me. After a moment of hesitation, I take it. For the first time in a while, I feel like I finally understand the rules of this game. When my turn next rolls around, I'm going to make sure everybody's aware of that.

Turner takes us to this place called Slick's. It's a ratty ass little bar with a small stage in the front, currently occupied by a couple dozen drunk coeds, shaking their tits and sloshing bright blue drinks down the front of their dresses. The clientele in here consists primarily of kids so green behind the fucking ears, they don't even know how to set up a tab at the bar. I watch in barely veiled disgust as a blonde in a pink halter top yells at the bartender for taking her credit card away.

“Turner, this isn't exactly what I had in mind when you said you were taking me out.” I'm not trying to sound like a bitch. I'm just a little … underwhelmed.

“Ah, Knox. Come on. You're killin' me smalls.” He nods his chin at some tables in the back, bypassing the bar completely. If we're going to be in here for any extended period of time, I want a fucking drink. Or ten.

Turner guides us around the crowd of people dancing in the center of the room, shaking their shit to some annoying hip hop tune that I've never heard before. My tastes run in a slightly different direction. For example, rock 'n' roll, rock 'n' roll, and rock 'n' roll. I'm cool with the lack of variety.

Turner pauses in the back, next to a black curtain. After slipping the man standing nearby a wad of cash, we pass through and into a different room. All the while, my gaze is whipping around, just waiting for somebody to notice us, to start snapping photos while squealing like a stuck pig. A few gazes shift our way but nobody gets up. Outside, I could believe we were hidden in the shadows, obscured by the lights of traffic and the general gathering of people from the wrong side of the fucking tracks. In here? Sure, it's smoky and the lighting's a little dim, but there's no mistaking Turner's swagger as he leads us over to a spot in the corner.

The booth's tucked in the back, with tall, leather seats and a small round table outfitted with a
Reserved
sign and a silver tray decorated with alcohol. I watch as Turner scoots into the booth with a sigh and leans his head back.

“Bottle service, huh?” I say, still slightly confused at his venue of choice.
You know what, Naomi. Shut the fuck up. Just be glad you're out of that Goddamn hotel and away from America and her tangled up shit. A child. A kid. Another fucking one. Seems like we all have some intense baggage hanging off our asses.
I pause next to the table and look around for our bodyguards. For a moment there, I wonder if they're just going to wait outside the black curtain for us. Of course, that wishful thinking is crushed a moment later when the female guard and her faux lover enter the room. There's a second bar in here and they take a seat there.
Guess
they
don't have bottle service.

I turn back to Turner and let America's words flicker through my mind one more time before I push them away. On the tail end of that, I get a nice, clear shot of Katie's face smiling as she choked on her own blood. What, exactly, America did to convince two people to take their own lives, I don't know, but that's scary. Terrifying, actually. But if I let myself get overwhelmed, I'll be useless. At this point, I don't even really care
what
the story is behind all of this bullshit, I'm just going to take care of it. I refuse to think about my plan for tomorrow, letting it formulate in the back of my brain as I slip off my jacket and take a seat across from Turner.

He's got this smirk on his face that both flusters and infuriates me. What a smug fucking asshole. He watches me watching him for a moment before lifting his hand and signaling an employee over. The woman doesn't even give him a second glance, just appears like magic at our sides.
She's not fawning over Turner,
I think, leaning back and looking at her like she's crazy.

“Vodka and Red Bull, please,” he says, waiting for the woman to mix us up our drinks and back away. I take my glass in tentative fingers and slide it across the table, giving Turner a raised eyebrow and a look. He tips back his drink and I watch hungrily as his throat moves while he swallows. My gaze moves down, finding the slightest peek of tattoos trying to climb out the top of his shirt. But just because he's pretty doesn't mean I'm not suspicious.

I cast a glance around the room, fully aware that I'm on high alert mode. Maybe I have been for a while now and just haven't realized it? It's exhausting. I toss my own drink back and wrinkle my nose at the taste. Just because I can hold my fucking liquor doesn't mean I have to like it.

“These bitches will keep us up all night with energy to spare,” Turner says, grabbing a vodka bottle off the tray and mixing up his own drink this time. “Even if they do give us fucking heart attacks. At least I'll die happy knowing I'm going out with you at my side.”

“Cute,” I say, passing him back my glass. Turner trades it for his own and hands me the amber liquid with another smirk. I clutch the cup in my fingers, waiting for him to drop the punch line on this joke. He's smiling too big not to have one. After we left the hotel, he went through a quiet process of his own. I think all of this is meant to distract him just as well as it's meant for me. I can tell he's still having a hard time accepting that Travis was
anything
at all to America, let alone the father of her child.

Turner finishes making his drink and then lights up another cigarette. I take a look around and notice that pretty much everyone in here is smoking – and not all of them are smoking cigarettes. I know for a fact that California has crappy ass laws about smoking indoors, even in bars.

“This isn't your average run of the mill bar, is it?” I ask, leaning forward a little and letting my voice get lost in the surge of music blaring from the speaker. A second later, I get out a cigarette of my own. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a dude laying lines of coke out on the bar. Okay. Definitely not a normal bar then.

“Think of it like a doorway,” Turner tells me as I wait for the alcohol and the energy drink to take hold in my veins. I want to get fucking
trashed
tonight, let everything I've learned settle into my subconscious.
I can do this. I can get through this. Just like I make it through every March 15
^th
. Just like I'm learning to forgive Turner. I'll cope. It's what I fucking do.
“You still have our phones in your jacket?” I nod and blow a few smoke rings at his face. Turner's lip wrinkles and he scoots across the booth to sit with his thigh pressed into mine. “You keep doing shit like that and we won't even make it to our real destination.”

I knew it.

“Where are we going?” I whisper, letting smoke kiss his ear as I breathe against the ebony hair he's worked so hard to style for me. My hand finds Turner's thigh, and I can't help myself from digging my fingers into his jeans.

“To have the best fucking night of your life, Knox.”

“Okay,
Campbell
,” I say, putting out my cigarette in the ash tray I hadn't noticed was sitting on our silver bottle tray. “I'll trust you.” I hold up a finger and take a sip of my drink with my other hand. “But just for tonight.” He grins big and slides his tongue over his lips. God damn. “Now tell me why we're not being swarmed by psychotic fans?”

“This place, I learned about it way back when, when Indecency really started climbing the charts. I mean, we weren't anything like we are now, but we'd get recognized. This one night, I met a girl in a club.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I tell him, feeling a small surge of jealousy. How stupid is that? “Let me guess the rest of this story. You fucked her?” Turner shrugs and leans over, lifting up some strands of my hair in his fingers.

“If it makes you feel any better, she couldn't hold a candle to you.” I let him kiss my throat and let my eyes flutter closed. The pain from Hayden and Katie's deaths starts to fade into an annoying buzz, buried in alcohol, tobacco, and raging lust. I don't have to think about real life shit when I'm drowning in this instead. “Anyway, afterwards, she told me about this place. She said she'd been trying to get in for years. I thought, what the fuck, I'm hot shit now. I'll check this place out, I'll get in.” Turner chuckles roughly and sends my entire body into overload. Before I get a chance to jump him though, he's digging the eight ball out from my jacket and tossing it on the table. “They told me to get lost.”

I lean back and watch his face, both brows raised this time.

“I can't imagine you taking rejection well, Turner Dakota Campbell.” I wonder briefly what would happen to my career if the press got a hold of a picture of me and Turner snorting blow at a seedy ass little bar. I decide that Amatory Riot's next single would probably end up at the top of the charts.
God, this world is so fucked.
Besides, nobody here really seems to mind if
legal
is an applicable adjective to their current activity. Fuck it.