Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (9 page)

Gavin’s words filled me with an unnamed, difficult
emotion. I couldn’t look at him.

“If we had some proof of the truth of what happened,
things would be different. But we’re shooting blanks here.”

“Ten thousand people at that festival and we can’t
find a goddamn lick of proof,” I said to myself. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I guess it was just the angle. Most people could only
see the guy on stage from behind, wouldn’t have seen him holding a knife in
front of him,” said Gavin.

The three of us fell quiet and listened to the
high-rise wind blow by the window. Sunlight crept across the harbor, glittering
off the water.

“Try to keep your mind off things,” said Gavin
finally. “Get some rest, you two. Stay off the Internet. I’ll have someone keep
an eye on the other guys. Let’s just try to have some peace before we find out
the real damage.”

“Meaning?” I said.

“Whether or not they’re going to file charges against
you.”

Glad I asked.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Quinn. “Not
like this.”

~ ELEVEN ~

Laurel

I
was a bundle of nerves as I waited for Noah at the Graveyard Club that night.
The day he got the call about the band meeting, he was so despondent afterwards
that he didn’t want to fool around or play like goofballs anymore. He seemed
like he wanted to be alone, so I excused myself for my imaginary job in the
city and went back to the hotel. I’d spent most of last night and all day
looking for more news about Noah’s charges, or Duke’s announcement, but nobody
had a scent on anything fresh. I seemed to be the only one who even knew there
was a meeting happening.

There was little chance anything good was going to
happen at a meeting like that. When Noah showed up—if he showed up at all—he
probably wasn’t going to be too happy. But I’d be here, anyway.

My nerves were on fire for a secondary but equally
important reason—important, at least, to myself, and my sanity. After I left
Noah’s and returned to the empty, anonymous solitude of the hotel, a sense of
pain and loneliness washed over me that was unlike anything I’d felt before.
Loneliness, of course, was never new, not to me or any professional. But that
night, something was deeper about it; more permanent. Maybe it wasn’t that the
loneliness was any greater. Maybe it was just that, in comparison to how happy
I had been with Noah, it might as well have been the abyss.

These sensations didn’t register to me. I hadn’t
longed for a serious companion in years. I loved my job, and I loved the
freedom I had to keep things on my terms. None of them ever wandered into my
thoughts when they weren’t around, unless it was because I was horny and needed
the material. But the second I left Noah’s house that night and climbed into my
chilly rental car, he haunted my mind. He still hadn’t left it.

Scared to admit what might be happening to me, a dark
voice in my mind was saying a prayerful chant that Noah wouldn’t show up
tonight, so I didn’t have to face how completely unguarded I felt around him.
And so I didn’t have to feel the pain when he finally left again. And so I
didn’t have to face the other fears – the ones that constantly reminded me
about what he was going to do, and how he was going to feel, when he eventually
learned the truth about me. Ignoring those feelings were hardest of all, but
professionally, the most important ones to keep at bay. I had a job to do, and
that’s why I was here in the first place. The feelings I was developing for
Noah had to be kept separate from that, didn’t they?

“Another round!” I said as Kevin passed by. I downed
the rest of the beer in front of me before Kevin could put the fresh one down.
He just laughed as he refreshed my round.

The Graveyard Club was jumping tonight, already more packed
than I’d seen it so far. A touring metalcore band was headlining the show
tonight, and their bigger fan draw meant the show was still going to get
crazier before the night ended. Kevin had two extra bartenders helping him out,
and so far, there hadn’t been a hitch with the service.

Noah came in behind a group of five or six young guys
showing up for the concert, sinking into the crowd and maneuvering his way
around, edging against the wall. Already I could see the sad darkness on the
rim of his eyes that betrayed his heavy thoughts. He met my gaze across the
room and gave me a soft smile, pushing his way through the crowd until he stood
next to my stool.

Noah bent down and pressed his forehead against mine.
He kissed me softly. “Hi, sugar.”

“Hey,” I said. The nickname made me smile every time.
“I was wondering when you’d show up. How did the meeting go?”

Noah closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his
nose.

“That bad, huh?” I said, running a thumb over his
cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Noah blinked a few times, thinking. “Maybe later. I’m
too fucking pissed to talk about it right now. Are you staying long?”

“I’ve got all night,” I said. “I’m all yours.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said. “I want to
check out a couple of these sets. I’m going to go grab a bottle from Kevin and
make sure he doesn’t need any help. I’ll be back.”

“Okay. I’ll go get us some space in the crowd,” I
said.

Noah kissed me, biting my lip with gentle force. “I’m
glad you’re here.” I got off the stool and he gave my ass a playful smack
before he turned and headed for the back room.

I found a spot near the back wall with a decent view
of the stage, well out of the range of the mosh pit. The dudes hanging out
tonight were pretty huge, some of them Noah’s size, and I didn’t have any
interest in throwing around with them. There was a constant flow of people into
and out of the crowd as the band’s set continued; people hitting the
facilities, getting beer, or going outside to smoke, the movement never ended.
I tried my best to ignore it and enjoy the show when a tall body came to a stop
next to me.

At first I didn’t think anything other than the
general awareness of someone in my personal bubble, but that was just a
consequence of being at a packed underground show, so I quickly brushed it off
my mind. But then this creeping sensation moved along my skin and I turned to
look.

The dude was tall, thin, and dark-haired. Judging by
his eyes, he had been drinking for many hours before he even got to the show,
but there was nothing fun about the drunkenness on his face. He leered down at
me with something in his glassy eyes that looked almost like hatred.

Immediately I gave him a sour look. “The fuck is your
problem?” I yelled at him over the music as I took a step to the side to add
some distance between us.

“You got my fucking dick hard,” he slurred at me,
stepping closer.

Oh, fuck. My heart started racing and I stumbled two
steps back until I hit the wall hard. Before I could reach out and grab the
hoodie of a dude standing in front of me, the drunk guy stumbled forward and
pinned me against the wall with his body, leaching his fetid breath into my
face.

“Get the fuck off me!” I screamed, but my voice was
just one of many screams in the hardcore din, and in the dark corners of the
club it was near impossible for anyone to tell that what was happening wasn’t
right.

The drunk guy ground his body against mine. I made a
desperate bend for the pocket knife I kept strapped inside my combat boots, but
he countered faster than I expected and yanked me by my hair to keep me
upright. His other hand ripped its way up my shirt and over my breast as he
lowered his mouth over mine and forced his tongue past my lips. My body froze
at the shock and speed of it.

Feeling bile rise in my throat, I did the only thing I
could and bit down on his tongue. He yanked his head away and howled, but the
grip he had on my breast and hair only tightened. When his nails dug into my
sensitive skin, I screamed in pain.

In the dark strobing lights, suddenly the drunk was
falling backwards with wide, surprised eyes. He released his death grip on my
body and his hands flew out to the sides, trying desperately to find some
balance, and failing. He hit the floor on his tailbone hard and instantly
writhed like a worm on a sidewalk after a rainstorm.

Noah stood over him, his shoulders squared, his eyes
blazing with hate and anger. Like a herd of sheep, the crowd instantly parted
from the scene of the fight, as entranced by the display of power as I was.
Noah circled the fallen man before he grabbed him by the shirt collar and
pulled him up until he was hanging like a rag doll, his tip-toes just barely
scraping the floor.

Noah didn’t even scream at him. He let him hang there
for a few horrible seconds, terrified, staring into the face of pure hatred. Then
he threw him hard into the bar, where his face connected with counter edge and
let out a sickening thud. The drunk collapsed to the floor in an agonizing
heap.

I was still pressed against the wall, too shocked to
move. Kevin came around from behind the bar, carrying a beat-up baseball bat
and looking ready to fight. When he saw Noah standing over the man, he dropped
the bat and helped Noah pick him up. A few other men stepped up to give a hand
and together they dragged the motherfucker out of the club.

The band kept playing, and most of the show-goers
didn’t even notice.

Noah came back inside and immediately made his way
over to me at the wall. A few people had already gathered gently around me,
asking if I was okay. He patted each of them on the shoulder as he pushed by
them to get to me. As soon as he was close enough, he gripped my head between
his hands and forced me to look him in the eyes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I hadn’t even had time to consider the question. In a
split second I went from feeling that disgusting man’s hands all over me to
watching him get beat up by Noah Hardy. It was all too much, too fast.

Noah seemed to sense that. He rubbed his thumbs over my
cheeks, his expression crumpled and worried, before kissing the top of my head
and leading me away from the wall with an arm around my shoulder.

We ended up in the back room of the bar where Kevin
kept the kegs and did all his washing for the place. The room was a bit
quieter, muffling the sounds from the stage. Kevin brought us all shots and
joined us in a quick drink before he rushed back out to deal with his full
house of customers.

The whiskey helped. I felt my muscles loosening under
the warmth. Slowly, my mind started to reconnect with the rest of my body.

Noah only stood in front of me, holding my hand,
rubbing it gently in his. He waited. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head immediately. “No, no.” He had grabbed
my breast pretty hard, but already the pain was fading. “It just happened so
fast, it scared the shit out of me.”

“I can’t fucking believe that just happened in my
club,” said Noah with an angry shake of his head. “If that asshole dares show
his face around here again, he won’t live to regret it.”

My mind was racing with confusion. Noah really was
violent, he had just proven that beyond a doubt—as if his record didn’t already
prove it. And yet as angry as he was, and as badly as he hurt that dude, he
still didn’t kill him. He still showed restraint, and in a moment when probably
everyone else in this club would have understood if he hadn’t.

Noah was violently loyal. He’d give up everything to
protect his roots; and he’d kill to protect his friends. Or his girl.

Is that what I was?

He seemed to suddenly be aware of the weight of his
words, given the situation. Noah’s face flushed, and the hand stroking my hair
slowed. His eyes darted around. “I mean… fuck, I… I really should not have said
that.”

I grasped the hand on the side of my face and brought
it to my mouth for a gentle kiss. “No. Don’t apologize. I’m lucky you were here
to protect me.”

Something like hope flashed across Noah’s face. He
mimicked my affection and brought my hand to his lips, pursing them there
against my skin with his eyes closed.

“We can get out of here,” he said. “I understand if
you don’t want to stay in here after that.”

I stroked his beard and smiled. “You’re sweet to
worry. But I’m okay, really.”

“What if I said I wanted to get out of here?”

I shrugged. “I’d say sure. Metalcore never really was
my jam.”

“There’s just too many people here tonight,” said
Noah. “There’s too much in my head tonight. I want to go somewhere peaceful
with you.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said.

“Good,” said Noah, taking my hand. “Come with me.”

~ TWELVE ~

Noah

After
what happened in the club, all I could think about was getting Laurel somewhere
safe. Even though she’d been to shows a million times and had no doubt dealt
with way worse jerkoffs than the dude who groped her tonight, it felt like I
had personally failed her. All this rumbled around my head silently as I
wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to my side on the dark,
winding drive.

Not too many miles from my house, in the more isolated
parts of Thornwood, a small river tributary ran through the dark woods. The
flat, soft beaches created by the slow-moving parts of the river were popular
places for peace and quiet, and one in particular had always calmed me down. A
makeshift parking lot of gravel carved on the side of the unkempt highway road
was the only indicator that anything was worth stopping for. Tonight, we were
the only ones here. I pulled my truck to a stop in the dark.

“Is this the part when they find my body wrapped in
plastic on the beach, and you start having crazy dreams about red curtains and
giants?” said Laurel as she looked around through the windows.

“Why don’t you sound sadder about that possibility?” I
laughed.

“Hey, I like a good mystery as much as the next girl.”

I kissed the top of her head. “I come here sometimes
when things get too loud. I’ve got some dry firewood in the tool box in the
back. What do you say we have a little bonfire?”

“That sounds lovely!” said Laurel with a smile. “Isn’t
it funny when you live your life around heavy music, but still need so much
quiet sometimes? People always gave me shit for that.”

With a smirk, I nodded. “They’re not living their
fullest lives without both.”

Laurel smiled up at me like we had a secret together.
She leaned up my body and kissed me sweetly, still with the same sexual hunger
she always seemed to possess, but with an added tenderness. Was that there
before? Or was I just now noticing it myself? The thoughts melted away when I
wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close, into the kiss.

Before she could get me so hard I couldn’t say no, I
pulled away from the kiss and got out of the truck, helping her out behind me.
The firewood was wrapped in plastic and wedged in the toolbox; by the time I
got it out and turned around, Laurel was already shivering in the unexpectedly
cool night air. She had dressed for a night indoors at the Graveyard Club, and
I hadn’t thought to have her grab a jacket before we left her car at the lot.

“Oh, fuck, sugar,” I said, dropping the wood on the
ground. Keys fumbling, I pulled the truck door open and dug around until I felt
the fabric of the spare sweatshirt I always kept in the cab. After giving it a
firm shake and a smell, it seemed clean and dry. I turned it over to the front
and realized it was my old Rising End sweatshirt.

“Here,” I said, helping it over her head. “This is a
warm coincidence.”

Laurel giggled a little as I invariably made the
getting on of the sweatshirt more complicated than it needed to be. Her eyes
were shining with laughter when she finally popped her head out of the neck
hole, hair alight and floating in a million different directions.

“You’re the scariest thing in these woods right now,”
I said, smoothing her hair down with my hands.

She batted them away and made a grumpy noise. “Doesn’t
speak very highly of your woods, then, does it?”

“Is that a hidden insult about my dick?”

She came toward me with a wicked grin and ran a finger
up and down my chest. “Now, what could there possibly be to insult about
that
?”

“Nothing, I just like to hear it from someone else
every now and then,” I laughed.

Laurel rolled her eyes and gave me a soft punch in the
stomach. She turned and followed the clear-cut path through the greenery that
led down a slight hill toward the riverbed. I grabbed the firewood and followed
her down after making sure the truck was locked tight.

This beach was my favorite because of one specific
feature: the driftwood. Lots of it inevitably got picked up by local artists or
asshole tourists, but the piece that somehow wound up in this tiny little gully
was enormous, easily thirty feet long, rolled by the sand and sea into a soft,
rounded ghost of its former self. The trunk sat parallel with the river, its
most gnarled end planted in a curve in the river like ancient roots. The
opposite end, however, was firmly on dry land, and was just as comfortable a
bench as any I’d ever found. Laurel was drawn to it without direction. She sat
in the twilight, huddled in my sweatshirt, watching me set up a little pit for
the fire. It only took me ten minutes to get her roaring, and the warmth
scattered the gully with dancing light.

With my back to the driftwood, I sank down into the
sand, and beckoned Laurel to me. She sat down between my legs and leaned on my
back as my arms wrapped around her, swallowing her completely. She wasn’t
shivering anymore, not with the fire to her front and me at her back.

We didn’t talk for a while, and that was fine. I could
feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, and the beat of her heart
against me. My cheek resting on the top of her head, I smiled when I realized
her wearing my shirt was mingling our scents together in my senses.

“This is perfect,” she said after a while in a dreamy
voice. “Feels like I never get moments like this anymore.”

I kissed her hair. “Why not?”

She was quiet, and then she shook her head a little.
“I’m not… I’m not the best at moments like this. It’s hard for me to be close
to people. I’m much better at work… at my job.” She sighed. “But even the good
days at work don’t feel like this.”

“You don’t have to sacrifice this for your ambition,
you know,” I said to her. “There are men out there who would be glad as hell to
have a woman who gives a shit about something. There’s almost nothing sexier
than watching a professional work.”

Laurel let out a bitter scoff and turned her eyes
down, away from the fire, and suddenly I worried I had struck a nerve.

“What is it?” I asked, leaning my head next to hers.

There was something I wanted her to say. But I didn’t
know if she felt it.

“I just…” She stopped when her voice cracked, and I
realized how close she was to tears. The smile on her half-turned face was
pressed, forced. “I’ve been hearing that for a long time now, and it still
hasn’t been true. I’m starting to think everyone just doesn’t know what else to
tell me.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, and in turn, I
wrapped my arms tighter around her. Lips against her hair, I said, “I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to upset you. And I don’t know about everyone else… but I really
mean it.”

“Really mean what?”

“What I said. Watching someone who is good at what
they do is the hottest thing. I’d consider myself a lucky man if the woman I
ended up with was so talented.”

Laurel inhaled sharply under my touch, and something
about it made my heart stop. But the moment fell silent between us, filled by
the sounds of the crackling fire and softly flowing river.

I didn’t understand what I was feeling for Laurel.
When I wasn’t thinking about this disaster with the band, or how badly I wanted
to beat Duke to a pulp, I was thinking about her. When she was next to me, I
felt like I could handle whatever the world threw at me. And being apart from
her was starting to feel a lot like being apart from something vital to my
life.

In that moment by the beach, I wanted to spill
everything to her. I wanted to hand her my darkest secrets and see if she could
hold them, see if she would still want to kiss me when it was all said and
done. I craved to know if what was building in my heart had any bearing on the
real world, or on her. I wanted to cut open a vein and bleed everything out.

Just like with the festival, even though I knew I did
the right thing back in the Graveyard Club by stopping that guy from assaulting
her, guilt still raged through my mind. Guilt that Laurel had seen me, up close
and personal, at my most violent. Duke’s bitter accusations rang in my ears,
and I realized I actually was scared that Laurel saw me as an animal. I didn’t
want her to think that of me. The thought was unbearable.

“I want to tell you something,” I said. “And I know we
haven’t talked about this yet… and you’ve been… you’ve been really amazing to
just spend time with me and get my mind off what’s happening without bothering
me to bring it up.”

Laurel said nothing, waiting for me to continue. Her
body shifted under me, though, scooting closer, grasping the cloth of my jeans.

“I’m not allowed to say much to anybody, but not
talking about it is fucking killing me. The festival… the festival was an
accident,” I said. “Not just an accident, but…a complicated one.”

“What do you mean?” said Laurel. She turned in my lap
to look at me, sliding in the sand until her gaze met mine, and I could tell by
the worry in her eyes that I looked sadder than I realized.

“Look, I told my band, I told the cops, and now I’m
telling you, even if you don’t believe me like the rest…” Anxiety spread
through my veins.

“Believe what, Noah?” Laurel rubbed her hands up and
down my chest, and then grasped my hands with hers. “What happened?”

I took a deep breath. Pulse rushing in my ears, I
spilled out the words before I could lose my cool. “The man who fell… who I
killed that day… he had a knife when he climbed up on-stage. I saw it. I saw it
with my own eyes. He had a knife, and he was going for Quinn. That’s why I
shoved him offstage.”

Laurel’s eyes widened, but she didn’t lean away. She
gripped my hands tighter.

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said. “I just didn’t
want him to hurt Quinn. We’d been attacked before, remember, and people die
from asshole fans all the time… I saw it about to unfold and I just… acted.”

“Like you did earlier in the club,” she said in a soft
voice.

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. Laurel, I don’t want you to
think I’m a fucking monster. I don’t want you to believe all the shit the press
says about me. It’s not the truth. I may be a fighter, but I don’t fight over
nothing.”

“Noah, I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said,
putting her hand on my cheek. “You’ve proven to me that you aren’t. And I
believe you about this.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” she said. “I believe you about the festival.
There’s been something off about this whole thing for me for a while. Hearing
this from you… it just confirms it.”

Relief crashed into me like a wave. I took Laurel into
my arms and hugged her tight, feeling her warmth against me. “You have no idea
how good it feels to hear you say that.”

“Are you telling me no one believes your story?” Laurel
said, pulling away to look at me. “Noah, seriously? I figured you hadn’t said
anything to the press for other reasons. I didn’t think it was because… because
they didn’t believe you.”

My expression fell. Sadness rose in my mind, and I
couldn’t find the words to say to her, lie or otherwise.

“Noah…” Laurel trailed off, distress in her voice.
“That’s what’s happening with the band? They don’t believe you were protecting
Quinn, and now they’re all jumping ship to save themselves?”

Hearing it said so starkly made the reality of my cold
situation all the more hurtful. My eyes closed and I dropped my forehead onto Laurel’s
with a sigh. Laurel nuzzled against me with concern, her hand on the back of my
head.

When she spoke again, her voice was quivering. “You
don’t deserve this to happen to you, Noah. You’re the last person in the world
who deserves this.”

Laurel held me on the beach while the fire popped next
to us. Emotions raced, bittersweet, through my mind. Having Laurel believe me,
however, and the relief that knowledge held, was stronger than all of the
others in that moment.

She nuzzled against me in the warm light of the fire
and we didn’t talk for a while. The moon was much farther overhead by the time
it got too chilly to enjoy the scenery, and Laurel waited, shivering in place,
while I put out the fire and followed her back up the hill to the truck. She
held my hand the whole way.

Something overcame me when we got to the truck. Maybe
it was the way she looked in the moonlight, or the fact that she had only
crawled in closer when I offered to show her my scars. Before I opened the door
to the truck, I wrapped my hands around her face and kissed her fiercely,
pressing her body up against the driver door. Laurel moaned into my mouth and
traced her hands up my body, under my jacket and shirt, until they hit the
heated skin of my back. Only a few seconds of this passionate mess and my dick
was steel, aching for her.

Lips still devouring her kisses, I bent and lifted Laurel
up, arms under her ass. She only made the tiniest noise against my mouth as she
drew tight around me. I fumbled open the truck door and tossed her inside, and
then crawled in and shut the door behind me.