Hard Rock Roots Box Set (124 page)

“They'll let you in there?” Sydney asks me, and I nod. It's kind of sad, but the people who work with Tara could give a shit less who goes in there. Besides, her family never comes. I've asked the staff. It's just me. Only me.

I look up, searching the cluster of buildings on the next block. The facility's easy to spot. It has this peeling blue-gray paint that seems like it's frozen in time. No matter how many years pass, it stays in the same state of deshabille. It never gets repainted, but it doesn't seem to deteriorate either. Frozen in time. Like Tara.

I pause at the sidewalk and wait with bated breath for the light to turn red, to cross, to walk down those halls and introduce Sydney to Tara. The only people who know what happened are her family and my family and none of them have ever come here with me before. My palms start to sweat.
Just push a little harder, Dax. Once you do this, reveal this, Stephen won't have anything to throw at you.
As soon as I get back, I'm going to tell everyone in Amatory Riot
and
Indecency the story. If Turner cracks an emo joke though, I might have to smash his face in. I rub at the bruises on my arms, and thank the Gods of Rock for the first time ever that I lived through that tornado. If I hadn't, I would've died with secrets in my veins and unrequited love in my heart. This thing with Sydney, whatever it is, is much better. Much, much better.

“Ready?” she asks, and I nod again, breathing out my trepidation in the late evening air. We finish the walk to the building and move inside. There's nobody at the counter, but that's not unusual. I sign us in and we mill around the waiting room for awhile. I'm too nervous to speak, so I don't. Sydney fills the silence for me, examining the patients' paintings on the walls. There are none from Tara.

“God, fuck this,” I say after a few minutes, moving down the hallway towards her room. All the windows are open in the hallway and the sound of birds chirping fills the quiet spaces between doors. I look at the placards as I pass, searching for her name.
Tara, Tara, Tara.
Tara. I pause outside of room 115 and breathe easier for a moment. I had this panicked feeling that I was going to walk in here and she was going to be gone. But Brayden said the Hammergrens didn't have it out for me, that I was an aside to the fact of their revenge. That, and I just had to deliver my mother's bones to a man that hates my guts, that raised me grudgingly and out of a sense of duty instead of love. Fuck.
Okay, I can do this.

I look back at Sydney who's smiling again. I could get used to seeing that look.

“Do you mind if we check out the room first?” one of the guards asks, tilting his head to the side. He's young, a lot younger than the other two, but he's good at what he does. He wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom in the club by myself. But this, this my secret. I don't want their help. If there's a man with a gun in there, so be it. Fuck him.

“Actually, yeah. I do.” I grab the handle before he can stop me and push open the door. Tara's room is filled with bright sunshine and even though it's drab, even though the walls need to be painted and the décor is older than I am, there's a general feeling of contentment in the air, like spring is just around the corner.

So why the fuck is there a pool of blood on the floor?

Brayden's men move into the space, pushing me out of the way, guns suddenly at the ready.

And they're all pointing them at the back of a brunette, a girl with hazelnut hair and a slender body.

Hayden Lee.

“What the fuck?” I ask as she turns around. Her blue and white dress is stained with red. It's smeared across her face and fingers, across the knife she has clutched in her hand. When she sees me, she drops it with a sad smile, the metal clanging across the linoleum to land at my feet. Sydney moves up beside me and freezes there, her eyes drawn to the wash of dark hair on the pillow of the room's single bed.
Tara.
She's soaked in red, drenched in Hayden's ministrations. My knees go weak and I collapse against the door frame. “What … what have you done?” I ask, my voice broken and scattered. I look into the blue eyes of the girl I tried to save and I mourn more for her than I even do for Tara. Tara was trapped and now she's free. Did I want it to happen this way? Fuck no. But Hayden? She had every reason to want a life, and now she'll never have one. Murder is murder.

“Dax,” she says, her voice beautiful and soft. I don't know how she even knew to come here. Like I said, I've never told a soul, not a single soul. “You're carrying around guilt for no reason. You shouldn't have to worry about this. You shouldn't have to worry about anything.” Hayden sighs and glances back at the bed while one of the security guards makes a phone call. And it's not to the police. It's to Brayden. I listen while he relays the information, my mind a swirling blank of
why, why, why.

“Hayden,” I whisper back at her. I don't know what to say. Is there anything I
can
say that'd be appropriate? She smiles at me and tucks some hair behind her ear before reaching down and grabbing something from under the blankets. It's a gun.

“Put the weapon down!” one of the men screams, but Hayden doesn't listen. Instead she stares at the metal with a blank face.

“I loved you, Dax. I loved you, and it's too late, and I tried.”

The gun comes up, the barrel slides under her chin, and blood explodes across the ceiling.

Hayden's body slumps to the floor at the same moment mine does, my fall slowed by Sydney's arms around my waist.

She's dead. I can't even fucking believe this. She's fucking dead.

In the midst of the pooling ruby red, the pain, and the misery of wasted life, the Hammergren family crosses a name off of their list. And adds another.

To Be Continued...

The following pages include over 24,000 words of bonus material in three short stories. First up, we have the infamous first meeting between Turner and Naomi (my absolute favorite piece ever!), followed by the quick, hot tangle that is Ronnie and Lola, and ending with a little foray into Hayden Lee's world. I hope these shorts give you a little more insight into the characters, the world, the experience that is Hard Rock Roots. Happy reading!

Six years before “Real Ugly”…

Fuck.

Every good story starts off with the word
fuck,
doesn't it? I mean, who wants to read about humdrum dull and boring everyday. If the characters aren't really and truly fucked up, then what's the point, right?

I stare at myself in the mirror and slather another ring of red around my lips, drenching my mouth in hot color and leaning back to examine my makeup. I have to look perfect tonight. Have to. Have to, have to, have to.

Because I am fucked. And tonight, that's going to be a good thing. Tonight, I get to meet my idol, my god, the man who's going to change everything for me.

Turner Dakota Campbell.

A shill travels down my spine as I spin the lipstick and dash another splash across my mouth. I need Turner to see that I have a story, that I am really and truly fucked. I just know that if he looks at me, he'll see it, he'll know. Me and him, we're the same deep down. I know it; I get it.

Now I just have to make sure that
he
does.

I lean back and blink at myself in the mirror, my eyes wide and ringed in liner, my lashes dripping with mascara, my blonde hair wet and hanging around my shoulders. I had to wash it in this dirty sink in this dirty bathroom. My new foster family has so many goddamn kids that the wait for the bathroom is like, an hour or something. Besides, it's not like I could tell them where I was going. After tonight, I'm not coming back. Not ever again.

“You're going to take me away,” I whisper, running my fingers through my hair, knowing that the competition tonight is going to be fierce. There'll be a hundred girls, maybe more, and they'll all be standing in that crowd praying that he picks them, that he sees them.

But they're not as fucked up as I am.

Nobody is.

I shove my makeup back in my bag and take a step back, examining my black and red miniskirt, my
Indecency
tank with the goat's head logo. I have an armful of spiky black bracelets, a throat draped in chains and a bad attitude.

I think I can handle myself tonight.

I move over to the door of the bathroom and kick it open with my boots, flipping off the owner of this dump as he glares at me. So what if I didn't order a slice of pizza? It's not like I was hurting anyone in there. Hell, that sink's twice as clean as it was when I started. If someone owes anything, it oughta be him giving
me
a free slice.

Slinging my guitar over my shoulder, I head out the front door and pause. It's raining now, fifty degrees and cloudy, but none of that matters. Right now, I could walk through a tornado and come out the other side smelling like roses. For the first time since that …
night
… I feel like I have a goal, something to live for, strive for.
Fight
for.

I take a deep breath and step up to the curb, hooking out my thumb and hoping some perv doesn't pick me up. I can take care of myself or whatever, but that's not the point. I don't need some asswad staring at my tits for the whole drive.

Three more hours.

That's it. In three hours, I will be standing at the feet of a god and everything will be okay again.

No, not again. For the first time
ever,
things will be okay. Things will be right.

I stand up on my tiptoes and crane my neck out, hoping that somebody's willing to have a little mercy for the girl in the leather boots with the guitar on her back. The girl that nobody wanted, the girl with an impossible dream.

The girl with blood on her hands.

Inside my bag, there's a pair of scissors that weigh as much as the world.

And only one person that can help me shoulder that burden.

I manage to snag a ride with some lady and her kids. I noticed that she moved her purse to the back when I climbed in, but that's okay. She might be scared of me, but I can also see in her eyes that she feels sorry for me. Must be why she picked me up.