Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (25 page)

“Betrayal? By whom?”

Duke sighed. “I can’t get into
details, Bryan. Suffice it to say I am just damn tired of certain members of
this organization passing the buck and inventing insane delusions and stories
instead of taking responsibility for their actions.”

“Inventing stories?” I said. He had
to be talking about Noah—but what story? Steve just shrugged at me with raised
eyebrows while he chewed.

The interviewer tried to get Duke to
elaborate, but it seemed like the guitarist had said all that he had planned to
say on the subject. The rest of the interview was basically a promotion for
Duke’s new project, as-yet-unnamed, but with the polite reminder that he was
one of the key songwriters of Cut Up Angels. It was another dig at Noah, whom
most people assumed had little to do with anything but the vocals. A glance at
their liner notes told otherwise, but Duke was clearly far more media-savvy
than any of us had realized.

I sat back in the chair and listened
to Steve eating. Something dark and dreadful was brewing in my gut.

“So,” he said, “thoughts?”

I shrugged. “What we get has to be
big enough to overshadow that exclusive. That was a hell of a get.”

“My first thought, too,” said Steve,
scooping eggs into his mouth. “Will it be?”

Noah. When I used to think of him,
all I saw was concert footage, publicity photo, or paparazzi flash bulb
versions of him. But something was different now. I felt his breath, his hands,
his lips. I saw him in the mosh pit. It was disorienting. It was making it
difficult to think clearly about my job.

I cleared my throat before I answered
Steve. “Yes. Look, a man is dead, and there’s practically no question Noah
Hardy killed him. The question now is why, and we’re going to figure that out.
And then
Slipstream
is going to publish it before anybody else in this
fucking industry has a clue. I’ve gotten in with Noah. It’s just a matter of
time now.”

Steve grinned suggestively. “Yeah?”

“Hell, this Duke announcement
probably helps us. Every other rag will be busy trying to speculate on that
bullshit.”

“And while they’re distracted, we
kick ‘em in the dick with the first exclusive words of Noah Hardy about being a
goddamn murderer.”

“
Alleged
,” I said with a
sarcastic wag of my finger. “Press ethics, dear Steve.”

“Right, alleged,” he said. “This is
seriously going to send your stock through the roof, Laurel.”

He meant well, but Steve was cutting
open old wounds that instantly sent poison through my mood. “Shit, it better,
or else I’m gonna be serving you coffee at the lobby Starbucks by next year.”

“It’s not all that bad,” said Steve
with a sour face. “Domino loves you way too much to throw you to the curb.”

Even hearing my editor’s name sent my
pulse racing. “But not enough to have my back when I make a mistake or two,” I
complained before I could stop myself.

“Laurel,” said Steve. He had that stern,
rational voice I’d heard him use on his ex-girlfriend’s kids a time or two. “I
love you, girl, but don’t fool yourself. That Tusk story was not just a
mistake.”

I sighed, angry, ashamed at his
words. I turned my gaze out the window. “So you think I went in to write a hit
piece, too, huh?”

“No,” said Steve. He put down his
fork. “But I think it’s clear that you went in with an
agenda
, and when
it didn’t go your way, you just chopped up the story to make it look like it
did. You lost your objectivity, Laurel. It happens to all of us—you can’t
pretend you’re above it. And we all have to pay for it when it happens. The key
is not to make that same mistake twice.”

I knew what he was alluding to. If I
was sleeping with Noah, then there was a chance my objectivity might get lost
again. He was right, of course, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Maybe I
was being childish, but that old wound still festered and burned. Being here,
now, in Seattle, chasing Noah Hardy—this was the salve to that wound, and I wasn’t
going to let Noah’s big dick change my opinion of what happened. I was sticking
to the facts this time, whatever they may be. This story was going to fix all
the shit I had broken, and undo all the bullshit heat I’d taken in the past six
months. The past didn’t matter when I was in the middle of fixing it, right?

“Laurel?”

Steve was looking at me curiously. I
sighed. “Fine. Right. You win. I’m paying for my past sins, like I deserve, so
all is right with the world. And I won’t make the same mistakes again.” I got
up from the chair and started digging through one of my suitcases for clean
underwear. Even though I had just showered a few hours ago, suddenly I wanted
another one.

“You didn’t even touch your
breakfast!” Steve called after me as I shut the bathroom door.

Just before the door clicked shut, I
said through the crack, “I’m not hungry.”

~ SIX ~

Noah

Laurel
…

She writhed underneath me, her
beautiful body glistening with sweat, pressing her ass against me as I drove
inside her only made my cock sink deeper. She leaned back with my name on her
lips and I kissed it off of them until she was moaning into my mouth. In one
hand I held her neck gently, forcing her to face me as I fucked her from
behind. I kept the other wrapped tight around her waist, holding her close.

In the back of the room a phone rang,
distant and foggy.

Laurel…

The dream began to break up in my
mind like smoke rising into the sky. Every chime of the phone yanked me further
into consciousness without mercy. The warmth of Laurel’s skin faded away,
replaced with the cold white sheets of my own empty bed. The only sweat was my
own.

I should have turned my fucking phone
on silent before I crashed, but I was so deliriously drunk on both booze and
lust that it slipped my mind before I fell into bed. I hazily remembered
ignoring its beeping hours earlier, rolling over and going back to sleep. But
there was no ignoring it this time. The ring was incessant.

I rolled until the bedside table was
within reach, and pulled my phone to my face. A picture lit up of my guitarist,
Quinn, standing with a beer bong next to angry tourists at the Christ the
Redeemer statue in Rio. My thumb slid across the screen. “What?”

“Dude,” said Quinn, “I’ve been trying
to reach you for hours.”

Quinn grew up with me in Thornwood,
and there wasn’t a single band I had ever been in without him. He was as close
to a brother as I was ever going to get, and currently the only fucking member
of my band who gave a single shit about me.

Even being a hardcore kid, Quinn had
never been particularly alpha. He’d fight if he had to, but he was a worrier
before he was anything else. Something in his voice today sounded very worried,
even by his standards.

“I had a long night. What’s going
on?” I said, checking the clock on my bedside table. Man, when was the last
time I slept past noon?

“So you haven’t been online yet
today?”

I rubbed my face and ran my hand
through my hair. “You literally pulled me out of a wet dream, bro, so in
consideration of that, maybe we could get to the point…”

Quinn sighed and muttered under his
breath. “It’s Duke. He says he’s going solo, starting his own thing. It’s all
over the fucking Internet.”

My blood stopped pumping for a split
second. Skin cold, I said, “He fucking said
what
?”

“That’s why I’ve been trying to call
you, man! He did an interview with Roc, said he’s gotta look out for himself
and find a lifeboat off the Titanic before whatever happens to you goes down.
What the fuck are we gonna do, Noah?”

I sat on the edge of my bed and tried
to pull in all my focus from the remnants of sleep, the memories of Laurel, and
the hangover threatening the horizon of my mind. “He’s not supposed to be
talking about any of this shit—how did he get away with it? Where’s Gavin?”

“That’s the thing, dude—technically,
he didn’t talk about it. He talked about everything he could without breaking
the agreement like the fucking little troll he is.”

Rage bubbled up in my gut, under my
skin. I never should have ignored my instinct the day we met Duke Rogers at
that studio in New Orleans. Life to him was a Shakespearean drama and he was
just trying to stab his way to the top of the mountain. He didn’t give a single
fuck about anyone who was in his way. I never should have trusted him with my life’s
work.

I rubbed my hand over my face. “He’s
doing this to undermine me. He can’t talk about the festival, but he
can
do something that says what he would’ve said, anyway. This is him finally
throwing me under the fucking bus.”

“He’s a cowardly prick,” growled
Quinn. “And he’s gonna get what’s coming to him.”

“We’re too famous to be beating the
shit out of dudes anymore, Quinn,” I said, but it was with a bitter laugh.
Quinn’s loyalty and fire for his friends went a long way on a dark night.

“We can’t do
nothing,”
said
Quinn.

I didn’t reply. I wanted nothing more
than to agree with Quinn and dive head-first into a black revenge fantasy, but
it wasn’t there. My mind felt like a raging storm, formless.

Quinn was quiet a moment. Then he
said, “I don’t fucking get why they don’t believe you, Noah.”

I sighed. Of all the thorns splitting
open my proverbial flesh through this whole nightmare, that particular thorn
was buried deepest, threatening arteries and organs. At first it had felt like
only blind anger, but now… now it was starting to feel like numbness. Like
death.

And I knew that numbness would be
death if I didn’t find a way to stop it. A cornered animal only has two
options, when it comes right down to it. They can either lie down, hoping for
the mercy of a quick death, or they can charge and fight with every last
breath. The former option was despair, and the latter required anger.

Anger has always kept me alive. And
it was going to keep me fighting now. Even if I had to start imagining Duke’s smug,
stupid face every night before I went to bed, I was going to find a way to stay
angry and save myself.

It was getting tiring, carrying all
this weight alone. In all the chaos… in all the confusion and horror of what
had happened at the festival and since, not a single person—not even Quinn—had
even bothered to ask me how I’m handling the fact that I’ve taken a fucking
life.

People think I’m just a cold-blooded
killer because that’s what they want me to be. They’re all wrong, but they
don’t care. Truth doesn’t matter to them. They’ll take what makes them feel
good to think about. And somehow, I’m the fucked-up one in this equation.

“Noah?” Quinn’s voice broke through
the cloud of thoughts swirling in my brain.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I don’t
know why they don’t believe me, Quinn.”

We both fell silent. I guess Quinn
wasn’t eager to talk about the answer to that, either. He knew me better than
anyone on this planet knew me, and I know it killed him to see what was
happening. We were both equally powerless—and we were not men who were used to
being powerless.

“Look, I’m going to hit up Gavin and
find out what he’s doing about all this,” I said. “I’ll call you a bit later
and check in.”

“All right, man.”

I hung up with Quinn and dialed our
manager, Gavin. After a few rings he picked up, sounding somehow both relieved
and stressed. I could hear his assistant in the background, angrily talking on
the phone with someone else. “Good goddamn, Noah, where in the hell have you
been?”

“Jesus, you guys act like the
planet’s exploding because I can’t be reached twenty-four-seven.”

“The planet
is
exploding.”

I sighed and ran a hand through my
hair. “Yeah, I heard. That’s why I’m calling.”

“I’m trying to call an emergency
meeting together in the office in Seattle right now, but Mister Hot Shit can’t
be bothered to answer his phone since his interview went live,” said Gavin,
venom in his voice like I’d never heard before. “And it’s the same story with
Ash and Jeff.”

Even though I knew it was bullshit in
my gut, I tried to stick up for the other guys. Nothing in our past suggested
Ash and Jeff had it out for me like Duke did. We didn’t always get along, but
no bands did. You were lucky to keep your shit together long enough for a few
good albums and enough industry recognition to get you into another band or a
respectable job behind the scenes when it all inevitably fell apart. The only
way bands like Sabbath and Metallica and Motörhead made it through
half-centuries of success was by being filthy rich, and completely fucked up
all the goddamn time. And depending on the musician, that level was either
their ultimate Valhalla, or a shitty purgatory of walking death. For me, it was
certainly the latter. I’d rather have something short and meaningful than vapid
and endless.

“We are technically on break,” I said
to Gavin. “They could be legitimately relaxing somewhere away from all this
bullshit.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” said
Gavin. The question wasn’t accusatory, but he was trying to make a point regardless.
“Do you feel relaxed, Noah? Like you’re on vacation?”

“Fuck no.”

“Neither do the rest of us. If those
guys aren’t answering
my
calls, it’s strategic. They don’t want to
answer,” said Gavin.

“Why wouldn’t they want to answer
you?” I asked.

Gavin spoke quietly to his assistant
in the background for a moment, a mumbled gibberish I couldn’t hear. He came
back to the phone. “Probably because they’re planning a coup.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “What?
Like you’re a fucking dictator, or some shit?”

“Duke’s pulling the rug out from
under you by doing this, Noah. You see that, don’t you? He’s declaring he has
no faith in your innocence.”

“Of course.”

“And now, two of your other bandmates
aren’t getting back to their manager—even in this time of crisis when their
very jobs and futures are at stake. It means they’re making their own plans,
and they don’t want me, or you, in on those plans.”

Gavin had a flair for drama, and we
had all gotten used to it. But this felt different. The truth of his words
descended down on me like a heavy gray cloud. “You think maybe they’re… working
with Duke against me?” The thought was frankly almost too much to bear.

“Maybe,” said Gavin. “Or maybe they
saw the video this morning like the rest of us and are starting to think he’s
at least got the right idea. Whatever it is, they’re not confident enough to
face me over it. Something’s wrong, and we need to figure out what it is before
the rest of the fucking world does. We cannot afford another sneak attack like
Rogers pulled today.”

My stomach felt empty and hollow. The
soft pitter of the rain outside made it feel like the room was closing in on
me.

Anger. Find your anger.

In my mind, I replayed the day of the
festival. Traumatic as it was, it also galvanized me. The truth had to be the
fire that kept me raging on.

“Let them run,” I said. “I don’t
fucking need them. Quinn has my back, and you have my back. The truth will come
out.”

Gavin sighed. “I want to believe
that, Noah.”

A sour hollow opened up in my gut. “Gavin,
if you’re telling me you don’t believe me…”

“Hey, whoa, that’s not what I’m
saying at fucking all,” said Gavin, and I believed him. I trusted him
completely. He had never done me wrong, not for a single second since he found
me in the Graveyard Club almost fifteen years ago. “What I want to believe is
that everyone else will get on board. I don’t know that they will. Every day
that passes is going to make it harder and harder to convince people of your
side of the story. People are eating this story up.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, of course
they are. Every single bar fight and bullshit tussle with the cops I’ve ever
been in has just been a step toward this moment to them. It’s high fucking
drama.”

“I’d agree, and even be a little
thrilled at the exposure, if I wasn’t sincerely concerned about you spending
time in a federal prison,” said Gavin. Hearing the words said out loud made me
drop my head in my hands, sick to my stomach.

Gavin continued. “There are things
that even I can’t untangle. But we’re going to fight tooth and nail to keep
that from happening, Noah, all right? I have your back. I’m not just going to
let you fall down for this without drawing blood.”