Bad Day (Hard Rock Roots) (23 page)

I smile.

If anything I have to show them that he's mine.

The crowd titters and chirps, like a flock of birds with a cloth thrown over their cage. Until we remove it, flood them with light, they'll stay calm, domesticated. As soon as the darkness dissipates and the stage lights burn our skulls with bright as fuck light, they'll start to curl over, spines twisted, and then they'll raise their muzzles to the sky and howl. We'll make them forget they were ever human, and have them crawling back for more.

I force myself to take a deep breath, drawing hot air into my throat, doing my best not to suffocate myself with panic and worry and future fears. I can't think about any of that right now. All I can do is deal with this, right here, right now. America knew if she got us here quick, that Stephen wouldn't have time to plan anything. I think she was right. The atmosphere doesn't have that desperate bite that it did in Little Rock. Tonight, we're going to be okay. Tonight, we're going to continue on in the direction we started that night and run with it. That was our make or break moment. This here is our fuck-the-world moment.

“Hello, St. Louis,” Turner whispers, the
S
slithering out of his mouth in a hiss. The crowd rumbles like the ground before an earthquake. They don't know who we are or why we're here; they don't know anything. The studio simply opened the gates and welcomed as many people in as they could. No tickets, no anticipation, no expectations. Just people, sex, and rock 'n' roll. “Do you know who I am?” he asks, his voice smooth and perfect, all devil, no angel. Wicked. Sinful. Pernicious. This poor crowd has no idea they're about to be blindsided.

I wait with my hands on my guitar, absorbing the dark magic within the instrument. The Goddess of Guitar is smiling down on me right now, grinning maybe. I feel good, ready for this. I answered their interview questions, took their pictures, but that wasn't the real me. This is the real me. I square my shoulders, push my feet into the stage, ground myself. And then, as an afterthought, I put my shades on my face with a slick smile. I'm not hiding from anyone, but a little mystery never hurt, did it?

“
Turner Campbell!
” I hear shouted from random spots out in that sea of darkness. “
Turner Motherfucking Campbell. Indecency.
” I even catch a few snippets of my name.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Turner chuckles, tearing up the speakers with his laugh, drenching them in sex. It just oozes from his pores, and even though it's pitch black in here, I know the crowd can
see
it. “I can't hear you. What was that?” I hear the shuffle of his clothing through the mic as he leans forward.

“
Indecency! Indecency! Indecency!
”

“Are you ready for this fucking insanity, St. Louis?” The audience gurgles and bubbles like a kettle on the stove, ready to explode and tear this place apart. I close my eyes and get ready, diving inside of myself and dragging that other me up to the surface so fast she bursts from my lips with a small gasp, breaking into the microphone that's been set up for me. My own voice echoes around the auditorium while people scream and hearts pulse and spirits sing. “You hear that?” Turner asks, and I just know I'm going to want to kick his ass after this is over. “That back there, ladies and gentleman …”

The light above Turner kicks on, just that one light, bathing him in brightness. I fall in love along with the rest of the people there, gazing at an angel fallen from heaven, celestially beautiful, ethereally tragic. His blue-black hair shimmers like dark feathers on a dancing demon, and his body is absolute perfection in that suit. He paces the edge of the stage like a general surveying his army, preparing himself to give the order that will send them into battle, bleed their souls dry and destroy them from the inside out. And he doesn't let his injury stop him, doesn't even act like it bothers him. There's no limp in that fluid gait, no ripple in this sea of performance perfected. Turner knows exactly how to move, how to take his fans on the ride of their life, make them puke up their insides and come right back for a second helping. I want to be like that. I do. Despite what I've been telling myself, he's still my idol.

And I intend to overthrow him.

Or at least reign alongside him.

“That back there is my girlfriend.” Turner spins around with a grin across his full lips. I can't see his eyes, but he can't see mine either. Good thing because when the light above my head comes on, I have to squint it's so bright. I don't look out at the crowd; they'll be even harder to see now. They're wrapped in darkness, protected by anonymity, and me, I'm front and center, sharing the stage with the world's biggest asshole. My … my
boyfriend.

“Fuck you, Turner Campbell,” I say into the microphone, and I love how wicked sharp my voice sounds, severing arteries and bringing men to their knees. I feel a trickle of sex seep down my spine and into my fingers. Of their own accord, they start to move. Everything's impromptu today, no set list, no time limit, no worries. Today, we control it all. And it's live. And we're being streamed across the country into fuck only knows how many households, across so many screens, so many phones and tablets and computers. I block that all out and growl out the beginning of my favorite Indecency song, the one they ended their show with the night I lost my virginity –
Pretty Girl Won't Break.
“That's it. Just fuck you.”

“
What a day,
” he sings, still facing me. “
It was when I met you.
”

I snarl out some chords and then pause, waiting for Jesse to come out to play. I don't know him very well, but I know this song. And we both have a pretty fucking awesome mutual acquaintance: a fucking guitar. So I play, and then I wait until he responds. Back and forth, a conversation clawed out with picks and amps and dirty intentions.

“
What a day,
” Turner coos into the mic, voice so soft and angelic, it makes me want to weep. If I was capable of that sort of thing I mean. “
And what a night when we first made love.
” He turns back to his audience, cradling the microphone in his hands so lightly it looks like it could drop from his grasp at any moment go hurdling onto the black hole of the audience. It feels like time and space are shifting right now, ebbing and flowing, changing the laws of physics. The darkness stretching out beyond the stage is a black hole, a place where no living thing resides.

I strum my black and white beauty, tasting the Wolfgang's sighs and snarls through my ears, swaying back and forth with shuttered eyes. Honestly, I'm glad to be out here opening with Indecency. Normally, Amatory Riot would be up first, but Milo and America both agreed that getting both me and Turner out here for the start of the show was necessary. I don't even know how I'm going to survive this. I have to play with
both
bands, have my heart ripped out and smashed into pieces for the entire concert. It's just us, just our two bands. There's no Terre Haute, no Ice and Glass. Just us. Us. Us.

“
And oh,
” Turner sings, dragging out the last note longer than I know I could. He sounds so smooth and male, his voice bringing my nipples to attention, wetting my panties with desire and frenzied desperation.
I want to fuck the shit out of him.
“
Oh,
” he continues, pulling that sound out, stretching it around the listeners below, corralling them in before they start to stampede. I wonder if he's hard for me, if his dick is aching painfully, crying out for me the same way his voice is.

He ends that note on a laugh and spins his mic around his hand, catching it with a self-assured head nod at the crowd. “What. A. Fucking. Night.”

Ronnie kicks his kit into gear and Josh climbs onboard. It's different, playing with them. Makes me miss my own band. Other than Hayden, of course. Not that she doesn't have a beautiful voice, but to reach your full potential, to make music that transcends existence, you have to trust the people you're playing with, and I don't trust her as far as I can throw her.

“
This, this is truth. This is pain. This is us. Can't break what ain't fixed, can't mend what's not torn.
” Turner screams this next part, bending low at the knee, hovering over the crowd, pumping his hand for emphasis. “
CAN'T BLEED FOREVER. CAN'T WEATHER ANY STORM!
” His scream drops into a low growl, a snarl torn from his throat by force, ripped out by the angry hand of rock.

He stands up and bounces on his toes while I smash back and forth, breaking the stage into bits underneath my borrowed gray boots. I didn't pick them out, but I decide then that I like them. They look good when the light hits the silver buckles, reflects off of them and makes star patterns on the back of Turner's black suit jacket. I spin in a circle, jumping around with the rest of the band, like we're all on fucking crack or something.

Turner jumps back a few steps and presses his mouth to his mic, eating it out, making it come as he continues into the next verse. “
Gotta find a way, gotta know a way, gotta go away. Baby, I'm torn 'cause this pretty girl won't break. And in this bed, there isn't room to say, but fucking Christ, I love you anyway.
”

“
This, this is truth. This is pain. This is us. This. Is. US!
” I scream the lyrics into the microphone, wrapping my voice around Ronnie's, Jesse's, Josh's. And then I move away, detaching myself from them, spinning in another circle and ending up center stage with the spotlight eating away at my soul. I forget about the cameras, the crowd, the threat of danger looming low. My head moves with the rhythm of the music, and my fingers dance like the devil, moving so quick I can't even make out what they're doing. I don't even know what
I'm
doing anymore. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and let it all take over.

“
And oh, what a night, what a fucking night, oh.
” Turner trills, making my insides flutter and sending the crowd into such a massive clusterfuck that their cries break through my trance and open me back up just in time to see that my shades are slipping off my face. Like he did in the bathroom that first day we had sex, Turner tosses my sunglasses away, stripping me bare, leaving me open. “
And oh, can't forget that blessed day. CAN'T FORGET EVER. CAN'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THERE. My pretty girl won't break, and she won't let me bend. That pretty girl knows the truth, the pain. She knows it's US.
” Turner shouts this last part, taking off his own sunglasses and dropping his jacket to the floor.

My skin prickles, sound driving into my pores and ripping me open, splitting my soul in half and leaving me bare and panting before Naomi Knox. The world spins like one of the cameras turning on a track above my head. I drop to my knees because when I look at her, I find myself humbled and awed. Yeah. And I'm not ashamed of that. Not one little fucking bit. I've spent years searching for respect only to find that the one person I really needed it from was her. A lover. An equal. My soul crawls around the stage, searching blindly for her, for my other half, while the song dies down and my hand slides along my soaking wet belly, teasing my tattoos, dipping just the slightest bit under the waistband of my pants.

Naomi punches her guitar one last time and turns away, putting her hands on her forehead. When she turns back around to look at me, she's smiling. I watch as she backs up a few steps and scoots her microphone forward.

We face each other from opposite sides of the stage while the silence between songs is filled with crying and wailing, moans and whimpers, blood bubbling from the lips of the damned. But I don't worry about them. They belong to us, and they know it. They always have. I grin. I want Naomi onstage with me permanently. We're going to have to figure out a way to integrate, take on an unprecedented place in the music world. Next fucking album we record, she's on it. No ifs, ands, or buts about that.

“Do you have an idea for a song, Naomi Knox?” I ask, out of breath, panting, teasing my hot body with my hand. If it wouldn't get us kicked off the air, I'd pull my damn pants down right now and fuck the shit out of myself with my hand. And I wouldn't apologize for it either. Instead, I put on my best grin and hope Stephen what's-his-name is watching this, realizing that he can never beat us, no matter how hard he tries. Travis was a better than him, and he knew that. Was so desperate to fight the truth that he'd rather kill him. While, what now, Stephen? You can't still Travis's words from my throat, can't stop him from speaking from beyond the grave. “Because I do,” I say, licking some sweat off my lips and rising to my feet. “How about
Lost not Found
?” Naomi shrugs like she doesn't give a shit, but I can see her chest rising and falling, my eyes tracing the shimmer of moisture on the broken heart tattoo on her chest, the
Real Ugly
tattoo on her belly. I wish I could see her
Turner Dakota Campbell
tat, but then, maybe that's something that should be saved for private time. I smirk, and give Josh a look. Travis wrote this song way back when, and I know the bass parts are tough. Josh has practiced them with us, but can he master them? Not like Travis could, I bet, but it'll have to do. I think now's the most appropriate time to play this – the
only
time.