Hard Rock Roots Box Set (65 page)

“What the hell?” Cohen asks, wrinkling his nose up and backing towards the door. “Are you fucking nuts?” Ronnie sniffles and cracks his neck, letting his head fall back while he takes a deep breath. When he drops his head back down, he has an angry smile on his face. It's like a slash of fire in the snow. My eyes widen and my knees feel weak from a rush of hormones.
Holy hot shit. Hellllooo, Ronnie McGuire.

“Watch the rings, babe,” I say, figuring out far before Cohen ever does that he's about to get his ass kicked. And from a guy who usually drags around his very own storm cloud. How poetic. Ronnie lifts a hand to acknowledge me, and his smile gets just that much wider.

The bells at the front of the shop jingle and Treyjan Charell walks in, eyes widening when he sees his friend standing shirtless in the front window of a children's clothing store. Not an easy thing to explain, that one.

“Ronnie, shit,” he says, biting his lip and lifting his shoulders up to his ears. “Dude, don't. It's not worth it, man.” From the way he's staring at his friend, I'm guessing this is something he's seen before. The missing shirt must be a dead giveaway.

“Take your shirt off,” Ronnie says, face still, voice low and dark. Cohen gives him a once-over that says he's not impressed. But he should be. Ronnie's got a nightmarish pall hanging over him right now. That bottled anger is just
waiting
for any chance to pop out and tell the world how pissed he is, how unfair life is, how fucked over he's gotten by fate. Cohen “Chode Holder” Rose is about to get a tiny taste of it, just a driblet.

But it is going to
hurt.

“Why?” he retorts, feeling threatened more by the guy at his back than the one in front. Treyjan, however, simply steps aside and leans against the wall with a sigh. Ronnie adjusts his pants and meets Cohen's eyes, holding him there.

“Because I wouldn't want you to get blood on it.”
Hold, two, three, and … four.
Ronnie closes the distance between the two of them in a split second, snatching Cohen up by the front of his black
A Good Girl for Every Bad Boy
T-shirt. He walks them backwards and then shoves Cohen through the door, sending him stumbling across the pavement until his back slams into a silver SUV. I watch through the window, hands shaking, desperate to go out there but unwilling to make Lydia suffer through anymore traumatic events than I already have.
You're a bad person. One that's even worse than most because you can't and won't accept it. That's the scariest fucking thing there is.

“He only goes shirtless for the good stuff,” Treyjan says, sticking a cigarette in his mouth and smiling at me. He moves out the door before the shop owner can focus her screeching on him. She's yelling something about the fight, and the police, and hoodlums, but I'm not really listening. I dig around in my jacket pocket, come up with a couple twenties and toss them onto the counter.

“Keep the change, okay mate? G'day.” I pause. “Oh, and calm the fuck down.” I flip her the finger, run over to Ronnie's shirt and grab it. By the time I get outside, the boys have already migrated down the street a ways. And it's not because they're locked in mortal combat, no. Cohen's trying to make a run for it.

“Fucking psycho!” he's screaming, blood pouring from his nostrils in two miniature waterfalls. Ronnie's not running after him, just walking, moving like a fucking predator who already knows he's caught his prey. When he catches up to Cohen again, Ronnie grabs him by the shoulder and flips him around, shoving him up against the wall of a nearby building. All around us, people are starting to stare. Unlike the whiny pussy bitch running the clothing sore, it only takes them a second to start making connections. After all, we're less than three hours away from Oklahoma City.

“Is that … ” a girl with a shopping bag starts, stops, licks her lips and gets out her phone. “Is that Ronnie McGuire?” she asks, tilting her head to the side like she can't quite possibly be seeing what she thinks she's seeing.

“Who?” her friend asks, squinting.

“The drummer,” Shopping Bag Chick replies, exasperated. “From
Indecency.
Duh.” The friend's hands clamp over her mouth and she lets out a little shriek that kind of makes me want to strangle her with the skanky panties she's got sticking out of her jeans. “Don't just stand there, film it!”

I ignore them and take off running, heels clacking along the pavement, baby clothes flapping on my arm. Lydia's still laughing which is a freaking miracle. I don't know what I'd do if she was bawling her eyes out over this. I keep my hand on the back of her head to keep her from seeing what's going on down the block from us. Seeing Daddy beat the ever living shit out of some scum bag might not be the best way for the two of them to get acquainted.

I pause a few feet away, next to Treyjan. He's just standing there, smoking a cigarette, completely unconcerned. I mean, I won't say I'm not enjoying watching Cohen get what he deserves, but there's already a crowd gathering around us. As soon as they see Lydia and figure out who she is, they'll be swarming. This kid doesn't need reporters. What she needs is her dad.

“Here,” I say, knowing that Ronnie trusts his bandmates completely. Treyjan stares at me like I'm crazy. I just sigh and snatch his cigarette away, tossing it on the sidewalk and putting the baby in his arms as gently as I can. He takes her, but he doesn't look happy about it. “She's just a kid, don't be a pussy. And she doesn't bite.” I pause, tossing a glance and a wink over my shoulder. “Hard.”

I take off towards the two men, nearly tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. Fuck, it's not easy to run in heels. Fashion over function I guess.

Right now, Ronnie's on top of Cohen punching the fucking shit out of his face. He's not holding back. The muscles in his arms are quivering, and his face is stoic, frozen and far away, like he's not even here anymore. The crunching sound of his fist hitting Cohen's nose, lips, jaw, it's painful just to hear. I've got to stop him before he takes it too far, before there's no coming back. Once you cross that line … something happens inside. I can't describe it, but it feels like I'm rotting, pieces of me blackening and dying every damn day.

“Ronnie!” I scream, grabbing onto his neck, tossing my arms around his throat and pressing my lips against his ear. “Ronnie, can you hear me?” He stops swinging and for a second just sits there like a statue with Cohen groaning and writhing underneath him, bloody and bruised and quivering. I think I even smell piss. The fucker's gone and peed himself.
Pathetic.
“Ronnie, come on, your daughter needs you.”

“Asuka,” he whispers, and the word is so powerful it hits me like a train. Angels would weep for this man if they heard him speak her name again.
Asuka.
Ronnie's my target, the one member I'm assigned to make suffer, to bring down as low as I can get him. He doesn't have to die, not like some of the others, but they want him smashed and destroyed. They want me to take whatever's left of his soul and grind it to dust beneath my heels.
They. They. They.
But not me. Not me.
I can't go through with this.

“Ronnie, come on, we've gotta go.” He lets me pull him off Cohen and wrap my arm around his waist. I can't even enjoy the feel of his body against mine. The weight of his emotions, the weight of mine, they're mixing together until I feel like I shouldn't even be standing, that I should just collapse to the ground and let myself go. But that's never really been my style.

“You okay, man?” Treyjan asks as we pass, turning on his heel to follow us. Ronnie doesn't look at him, doesn't even look at his daughter. He's in a completely different world right now, one where we're all just distant dreams. For him right now, it's just Asuka that he sees. There's blood on Ronnie's face and neck, blanketing his tattoos in a thin layer of crimson that drips down his chest with the beads of sweat that are cutting pathways across his skin. At least none of it's his, not that I can tell.

I guide him down the street and to the doors of the café where Turner Campbell sits pouting, nursing a cup of coffee and staring at the street with eyes that promise there really is some sort of intelligence burning there. Who knew the rock star was a real boy, huh?

When he sees us, his eyes get huge and he shoves his chair back, limping to his feet and scrambling around the table towards the door. He's got a pair of shades pushed up on his forehead and a baseball cap covering his hair. No, not
a
baseball cap.
The
baseball cap. The one I had to find by searching through old pictures of Travis Gaborone.

I feel sick.

“What the fuck? What the fucking fuck?” Turner opens the door for us and lets us in, just in time for a group of girls to catch up to us and point their phones like weapons. Campbell sees them and goes berserk, shoving his shades back into place and kicking the door back open. The groan of pain that escapes his lips is almost enough to make me cry.
Ouch.
He stumbles over to the scabby little hos and snatches their cell phones, one by one. “No flash fucking photography, bitches,” he says and then tosses the phones out into the middle of the street. He flips them the bird and then spins right back around and limps inside, locking the door behind him.

The employees in the shop don't seem to mind. They're all gawking and grinning and whispering about us.
Here we go,
I say to myself.
This is exactly what Tyler Rutledge wants, isn't it? This attention, this fame?
I wonder if anyone recognizes me, or if this is all about Indecency. It's always all about Indecency. And Amatory Riot. I try to summon up some of that old anger, that jealousy and ambition that spurred me here in the first place, and I can't find it. All I can focus on is Ronnie's face and the silent tears that slide down his cheeks, slicing through the bloody splotches as they go. He looks like he's in a fucking coma or something, sitting there like that, eyes cloudy and unfocused.

I reach out a hand, and Turner stops me.

“Leave him alone,” he says, scowling at the growing crowd outside the window. This is certainly a different side to the man. I've only ever seen him eating the crowds with a spoon and going for back for leftovers. Right now, he just looks pissed off. “When he's like this, there's nothing you can do. Wait for it to pass.” I look up and see Treyjan staring at me with a blank expression. His mouth is pressed in a thin line, and he's rocking a softly sobbing Lydia. I'm not sure when the giggles changed to cries, but it breaks my blackened, decaying heart. I run a hand through my hair, sliding my fingers through the brunette strands for comfort.

“We should talk to him, try to snap him out of it,” I say, wondering where their ubiquitous manager is now. Off to the shitter, maybe? Seems like the only time he ever leaves the boys to their own devices is when he's in the toilet.

Turner rolls his eyes at me and throws his hands up in the air.

“We've uh, known you for like a day, princess. What makes you the big fucking expert?” I poke him in the chest, right in his stupid pink shirt and lift my chin up a bit. Makes me seem taller, you know? And right now, Turner's towering over me like a grizzly bear. I can see that he loves Ronnie a whole hell of a fucking lot, but just because someone's doing
their
best doesn't mean it's
the
best. Besides, they're men, what do they know about talking someone through their feelings? The guys in this band are the epitome of the socially stunted male that doesn't know how to process his emotions. They've all got three states as far as I can tell: pissed off, horny, drunk. Except for Ronnie. His dark emotions seemed so one-dimensional to me at first. I don't know that that's the case anymore.

“For your information, Mr. Campbell, we met on the third night of this tour. I had too many beers; you had too much cocaine and God knows what else. We fucked on the floor of your tour bus, and then you promptly fell asleep.” I smile at his baffled facial expression, and point at Ronnie. “Two days later, your friend here was stumbling around backstage. I pushed him into a closet and sucked him off, hoping to get a fuck out of the deal. Guess what? I got nothing.” I grab one of Turner's lip piercings and wiggle it around a bit. “So suffice it to say, I've had my eye on you all for awhile. You're emotionally stunted beings, and you could use a bit of help.” Turner smacks my hand away.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he growls, getting up in my face. He lifts the sunglasses up, so I can see his eyes, narrowed and suspicious, zoned right in on me. “This is
my
tour, check the posters, sweetheart. And this, this is my fucking
brother
right here. I don't know what your deal is with him, but I don't like it. Doesn't sit with me right.” He pauses and I can see the next thing he says is hard for him to admit. “The way he looks at you is just … Why do you think I gave him the condom?” Turner sighs and turns away, limping over to a chair and flopping into it, panting. His hand hovers over his thigh as he sucks in a massive breath. I can hear the crowd outside the window multiplying, like a virus or something, replicating, reproducing.

“I don't know what you're going on about,” I start, but our argument's interrupted by the reappearance of Milo, coming out of the bathroom looking like he's about
this
friggin' close to blowing off his own Goddamn head. He pauses next to a glass display full of croissants and looks up, pale face turning corpse white.

“Ronnie took his shirt off,” Treyjan whispers to his manager, wincing like a kid who's about to be scolded by his daddy. Fucking Christ, these guys are all twenty-eight years old. Time to grow a pair of big ones.

“My ex-boyfriend insulted Asuka to Ronnie's face,” I say, and all three of the men turn to me and just stare like I've sprouted horns out of my ass or something.

“Why?” Turner asks, voice quiet as I've ever heard it. It's probably the nicest thing I've heard him say yet. “Where is the little cocksucker? I'll crack his jaw in half, fuck that fucker up so hard, he'll be slurping Jell-O through a tube in his asshole.”