Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (13 page)

I wondered if Noah had been forced to see what
happened to the man he attacked. I hoped not.

“It was chaos for the first hour after it happened; I
can barely remember doing my job. But the body was removed and we got most of
the close cell phones locked up in the security trailer on site. Rory took the
crew from the main stage and tore them a new one for letting something this
explosive happen on their watch. He put me on the duty of uploading all the
cell phone footage for archiving and destroying the phones after. I was up all
night while he ran around trying to do damage control.”

“I know you’ve got beat cops on your payroll,” I said,
recalling the names Steve had texted to me on the plane ride over. “Perkins,
Dylan, Martinez… is that why it was so easy for you to keep the news about
confiscating the phones quiet?”

Maria nodded firmly. “This place is in tight with the
cops. We have to be, really. I suppose we’re in the same business, when it
comes right down to it. But there’s a lot of personnel crossover, too. Officers
use these gigs as an easy way to make money on the weekends because their
skills transfer so easily.”

“Was one of those men on the front lines of the Cut Up
Angels set that day?”

“Yes,” said Maria. “A couple of them.”

I said nothing, but felt disgust riling up in my gut.
Even though the men were just protecting each other, exactly how I was trying
to protect Noah, it still felt like an abuse of power I couldn’t excuse. Having
a brother-in-blue directly threatened by this failure of duty would make it
pretty damn easy for local cops to want to play along with the security firm’s
cover-up. After all, they both had something to lose from exposure.

And Noah was just their spoiled, rock star patsy.

“What was on the videos you took?” I asked on the edge
of my chair. “How did that guy get past security?”

Maria’s eyes grew wet. “One of the guards at the end
of the line got distracted by the show, and that was all he needed to crawl
over the barricade. They didn’t even see him until he was on the stage, and by
then, it was too late.”

“Maria,” I said with a firm gaze. “Did he have a
knife?”

Something like horror and relief mixed together washed
over Maria’s face. “How did you know that?”

Adrenaline pumped through my veins like a shockwave of
sunshine. I rushed to my feet and leaned over the desk. “You mean there
was
a knife? That man was trying to attack the band?”

“I didn’t tell anybody but Rory that!” said Maria,
shocked. “I showed him the videos and he told me we couldn’t tell anyone,
because… because how would we ever get hired for a job again? We would all look
like complete fools and lose everything. He even went out and found the knife
where it fell under the stage mechanisms before the police could collect their
evidence.” She put her head in her hands. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I didn’t mean for
this to frame somebody. I thought we were doing the right thing for my
workers!”

When Maria looked up at the smile on my face, she gave
me eyes like she thought I was crazy. I just leaned over the desk and took her
by the shoulders. “Maria, you beautiful angel. Tell me you saved one of those
videos that shows the knife.”

“We saved all of them,” said Maria. “We saved them on
a secure hard-drive only Rory and I can access.”

I scrambled in my pockets for my keys, and the spare
USB drive I always kept attached to them on a ring. “Give me a copy,
please—just one video, one with a distinctly clear shot of the knife.”

“Oh, no, please… this is already too much!” she said,
worried.

I fumbled for my wallet and threw the rest of the cash
on the desk. Maria gasped.

“No one will ever know it came from here,” I said.
“You said yourself you didn’t get all the phones from the crowd. For all anyone
will know, a fan sat on this video and waited to sell it to the press. Delete
the firm’s copy of it—they have plenty of other incriminating evidence, anyway,
and they’ll probably be deleting it themselves once this drops.”

At first she just whimpered, unsure, debating.

“Maria,” I said quietly. “This will save his life.”

She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

“Please,” I said. “I can’t let that happen to him.”

Maria’s expression changed slowly, like something came
over her. Somehow the fear fell from her eyes. But she still bit her lip when
she nodded at me and blinked a few times. “Okay. Okay, I’ll help you, as long
as you keep your promise to protect me.”

“With my life,” I said and dropped the keyring in her
hands.

Ten minutes later, Maria was a thousand dollars
richer, and I had the key to Noah Hardy’s salvation literally in the palm of my
hand. I made Maria double and triple check the integrity of the file on the
drive before I gave her my unlisted number and told her to call me if anything
at all spooked her. She actually gave me a shaky, awkward embrace after she
called me a taxi, and waited out front with me until it arrived.

“Take me to LAX,” I told the driver. No way was I
staying in this shithole any longer than I had to; I’d use the expense account
to buy a quicker flight back to Seattle.

I sent a text to Steve that just said “You better get
your hands on the finest whiskey your bitch ass can afford.” After a few
anxious minutes with no reply, I huffed and put my phone away. He must have
been busy.

A screaming part of me wanted to call up Noah right then
and give him the incredible news, instantly putting his troubles behind him.
But as I sat in the back of that taxi and held the USB drive in my hand, I
realized the labyrinth of a mess I’d gotten myself into didn’t have an exit so
simple.

Old stories about wishes and being careful about
making them, they all felt a little too real in that moment. I had everything I
wanted in my hands. I had my bombshell story; I had the mea culpa to my
journalistic missteps; and I had the key to making sure Noah could at least
escape this nightmare without having to endure prison. He could start healing,
moving on, find a new band that didn’t treat him like shit the way Angels did.
Noah could be free. I really had found the magic bullet.

But there was no way in hell Noah would ever forgive
me for what I was, and how I got here. And the only way I could get us both
what we wanted was to blow the cover on my true self. Salvation required a
sacrifice, just like in the old stories.

I had to lose Noah to save him.

Suddenly, I was wracked with sobs so intense, the taxi
driver asked if he needed to pull over and get help.

Ashamed, I kept my face down and told him no. Keep
driving.

He threw a box of tissues from across the passenger
seat. “Everything will be okay, miss. We will make your flight.”

“It won’t be okay,” I said, gasping in breaths. The
words came out before I could stop them, so desperate for escape that even a
stranger hearing them was better than no one at all. “I love him, and I have to
ruin everything.

~ SEVENTEEN ~

Noah

I
got off the phone with Kevin and contemplated rolling over and going back to
sleep. There really didn’t seem to be much fucking point to getting out of bed,
not today. The weight of the impending criminal charges against me had become
too much for me to fight against, at least on my own. I needed a boost and
nothing was working.

Deep down, I needed Laurel.

But I could only whisper that to myself, and the
fabric of my pillowcase, as I lay in bed and let the day swing by without me.
Kevin had called because of the shows I had missed the past couple nights. He
pretended he wasn’t worried, just gave me some shit about shacking up with Laurel,
but then again that was his way. He knew more than he said, and he cared too
damn much.

My numbness frightened me, but I tried to tell myself
it was just temporary. It was normal to feel outweighed by something as huge as
what was going on right now. I wouldn’t be here forever; I would get up.

Just not today. Not right now.

The silence of my empty house seemed to tell tales of
its own, taunting my anxious brain as I lay in bed, too tired to escape them. Whispering
that it was always supposed to be this way, somehow. Like deep down, I knew one
day, all the rough edges I had tried so hard to sand off would end up cutting
my jugular. The demons I had hog-tied would get free and catch up to me. Maybe
that’s why I was here alone, now, in a small empty house. Maybe that was why I
was the only member left in my band who hadn’t settled down and found at least
a steady, long-time girlfriend to weather the storms with. Jeff even had a
couple of kids, now. As rough as it was, somehow they had made it work, and
found a partner even within the chaos of the rock star life.

But not me. It was like I was off the rhythm of things
in my personal life, always late or early to the party. Whatever success I
found in my career, I found the same failure in the simple human connections I
tried to establish. The wrong women got close; the right ones slipped through
my fingers, or couldn’t see me to begin with.

Some pragmatic, probably nihilistic part of me was
glad I was alone to go through this. The thought of having a wife… maybe a wife
like Laurel… having to sit back and watch me endure the misery that was sure to
be my trial and conviction, and then wait for me while I serve out a prison
sentence, it made me sick to my stomach. The thought that I could so thoroughly
destroy the life of someone I loved just by proximity… it horrified me.

Suddenly all my isolation had this paranoid look of
being self-imposed. Had I really created some self-fulfilling prophecy, ending
up alone in this empty house because I expected to be? Was I afraid to get
close because I couldn’t take the weight, the power, of influencing their life?
Maybe that’s why I liked performing; it was a place I felt comfortable taking
that power. It was power I enjoyed wielding, power I was good at wielding. On
stage, looking out at a wave of people, some of whom were bigger and stronger
than I would ever be, and yet they’re listening to me, obeying me even—I loved
it. I belonged there. I knew how to translate that power into something
positive for people’s lives through my music.

But when it came to power over just one person… when
it came to knowing I held someone’s delicate heart in my hands… I didn’t feel
powerful at all. I felt terrified. Now, with a prison sentence looming over my
head, that terror was justified. If I had ever let any of my past girlfriends
close—as terrible as some of them were—now, they’d be going through a world of
hurt with me. I was right to push them away.

The terrifying thing was, I wasn’t sure I could do the
same to Laurel. The idea of not having her around was indescribable.

Wet tears hit the pillowcase under my face. The whole
world felt as small as my room.

Time melted away for a while, until the quiet was
broken by the ringing of my phone. I almost ignored it, but after a few
indecisive seconds, I finally rolled over to grab it from my bedside table.

Laurel’s beautiful face was staring back at me from my
phone screen. Fuck… Laurel. I missed her warmth so much. I hadn’t even thought
about how I was going to break this news to her. Part of me worried she
wouldn’t even care… but the deeper part of me knew she would. And that was the
part that was afraid I was about to break her heart.

Really, it would almost be better if she didn’t give a
shit about me. Then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for that too, at least, and
she could go on about her life. Of all the times to find myself hopelessly
attached to a woman, why did it have to be now, when everything was falling
apart? I didn’t want to take Laurel down with me.

The doubt in my mind almost kept me from answering her
call. But I felt helpless. I wanted to hear her voice. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Noah,” she replied. “I’m sorry I haven’t called
in a…”

“No, no, don’t apologize. It’s fine. You have a life.”

There was a heavy pause. “You sound really down.
What’s wrong?”

My face scrunched up as tears threatened again. Of
course she could hear it, this flawless woman. But I never wanted her to see me
weak. “It’s nothing. I didn’t sleep well. Where are you? I want to see you.”

“I-I want to see you too,” she said. Wherever she was
calling from, it was noisy and scattered in the background. “Are you busy right
now?”

“Never too busy for you, sugar.”

Her voice sounded much sadder when it came back on the
line. A flash of worry lit up in my brain. “Can you meet me at that beach you
took me to in, like, half an hour?”

I glanced at the clock at my bedside table. It was
already well into evening; I hadn’t even had a meal yet today. “Yeah, sure. Is
everything okay with you?”

“Yeah, just… I’ll tell you when I see you. Half an
hour?”

“I’ll see you there.”

Emotions battled in my brain, both relief and concern,
unable to decide which was more accurate. Really, my brain was just too tired
to give too much of a fuck. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than the news
I’d already gotten, and at least I could finally hold Laurel in my arms again.
Our brief time apart felt like it had been much longer.

It only took me a few minutes to get dressed and brush
my teeth. The guy looking back at me from the mirror was a little worse for
wear, and it was the first time I remember actually seeing signs of stress on
myself. I ran a comb through my hair and splashed cold water on my face, hoping
it would tighten things up and help the dark circles under my eyes.

A light rain began to fall on the drive over, and a bunch
of idiot tourists held up part of the road when they wheeled off to the side to
get a glimpse of some deer tromping through the neighborhood. By the time I
pulled my truck up to the gravel lot near the small little beach I had taken
her to before, Laurel was already there, her car parked haphazardly. I left my
truck next to it and tromped down the small slope toward the river.

Laurel sat on the giant piece of driftwood, throwing
tiny rocks into the water. When she heard my footsteps approaching, she leapt
to her feet and turned to face me. Her face looked puffy, like she had been
crying not too long ago, but she still looked beautiful as ever, wearing the
sweatshirt I had given her before. Between her swollen eyes and my sleepless
circles, we must have looked like quite the pair, if anyone was watching.

My heart froze when she hesitated. But it was only a
second or two, and then she was racing up to me, throwing herself into my arms.
Her hair and sweatshirt were wet from the rain, and cold pressed up against my
skin, but it didn’t stop me from lifting her off her feet and holding her as
tightly as I could as she buried her face against the crook of my neck. Warmth
and sweet relief rolled down my body and suddenly my aches and fears became a
distant memory.

“I can’t believe how much I missed you,” she said into
my skin.

I inhaled deeply, my nerves instantly soothed by her
words. “Fuck, I missed you too, sugar. I missed your smell.”

She pulled back from my neck and took my face in her
hands. Her kiss was sweet and powerful, a message without words. I bent my
forehead against hers when it was over.

We stood there holding each other and listening to the
river until I finally lowered her feet to the ground. She kept her body against
mine as I stroked her hair from her face.

“Noah, I have to talk to you about something, and I
have to do it before I lose my nerve.” Laurel looked up in my face with a
determined brightness in her eyes, shifting from foot to foot like she was
standing on hot coals. She grasped at my jacket almost unconsciously.

“You can talk to me about anything,” I said, cupping
her cheek in my hand. “What is it?”

Laurel lowered her gaze for just a moment and took a
few deep breaths. Then she met my eyes again. “I have something for you.” From
out of her pocket came her hand, and in it was a small, black, plastic
rectangle. The lid of the USB drive had been secured with bright red tape. When
I didn’t react, she lifted one of my big hands in her tiny ones and placed it
in my palm, then closed my fingers over it tightly.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s your proof,” said Laurel, blinking up at me
through the light rain.

“It’s…
what?
” My words came out in one great
exhale.

“I found your proof, Noah. Proof about the knife, it’s
on that drive. It’s a video. It proves you acted in defense of Quinn. You… you
don’t have to go to prison,” she said. Her words came in short spurts, like she
was holding back tears.

The closed fist holding the drive trembled. Was this
possible? Laurel—could she have saved me?

My knees felt weak. I gripped onto her shoulder. Suddenly
everything felt far-away and dreamlike, and for half a second I expected to
wake up. “Laurel, what… I don’t understand….is this real?”

“It’s real,” she said, but something fearful was in
her teary smile. “It’s real, Noah, all you have to do is show the DA and this
will be over. This is where I had to go, and what I’ve been working on. I’ve
been hunting this down.”

Confusion coursed through my mind. So many questions
tried to force their way out of my mouth. “I can’t even… this can’t be real.
What do you mean, you’ve been hunting this down? Why?”

“Noah,” said Laurel. Tears had begun to run down her
cheeks. She put both hands on my shoulders to make sure I was looking at her.
“Noah, I have to tell you something else, please. Just hear me out, okay?”

I was already too stunned to respond.

“I found the proof because I was looking for it, Noah.
I’m not…” She looked down at her feet and cursed under her breath. “Noah, I’m a
journalist. I’m a writer for
Slipstream
.”

The sound of the river got louder in my ears. I could
feel the closed fist over the hard drive getting clammy.

“When I said I was here for my job, it was true. I
came here to find you—to find out what happened at the festival. I came here
for a story. But… but something happened…” Her eyes darted around. “I came here
to find out why that man died. I expected you were just going to be some
asshole guy who finally lost touch with reality, but… that’s not… that’s not
what you are. That’s never been who you are.”

Now the sound of the river was competing with the
pounding of my own heart. Embarrassment and rage started to bubble up under the
skin at my neck, flushing my face with heat. I had to close my eyes; I had to
look away from Laurel. “So you… This was all a trick?”

“No,” she said firmly. “This was not a fucking trick,
Noah. None of this was a trick.”

“But you didn’t come here to find me because you gave
a shit about me. You came here to find me to use me for your story,” I said,
pieces coming together in my mind. “Everything you did was just… was just to
get close to me?” Tears stung my eyes and blurred the river rocks at my feet
into a mess of gray-black splotches.

“Noah, I never lied to you about who I am. None of the
stories we shared, none of the memories I told you or the things I shared about
myself, were a lie. The only thing I kept from you was what my job was.” She
rubbed her face. “I know that doesn’t make it better. I don’t fucking deserve
your forgiveness. You are the realest man I’ve ever met in my life, and you
have to know that the Laurel you’ve seen is really me, even if I’m just another
bullshit poser on your list. I deserve to be there.”

My heart was screaming at me, cursing, calling me a
fool. Of course Laurel didn’t give a shit about me. Of course the only single
positive thing in my pathetic fucking life was an enormous joke, another thing
that pretended to be real but wasn’t.

When I finally found the strength to look up at her, Laurel’s
face was a mask of pain and shame, her eyes wide, waiting for me to seal her
fate.

“I can’t believe you did this to me,” I said. A tear
trailed down my face, disappearing into my beard.