Get Bent (20 page)

“Dax left with Hayden, right after their set.”

I shrug.

“So?”

“So,” he says, sounding annoyed. “You didn't let me finish. They left, but they didn't go back to the bus. They went out front. I followed them during the set change.” I don't like where this is going, Turner looks guilty as fuck. Why, I don't know. Maybe because he suggested we bring Dax in on this? I don't blame him for it. I said it was alright. Besides, we needed someone from Amatory Riot to check shit out for us. I'm starting to wonder if we should've picked Blair. “I didn't have time to chase them down, but I waited until they were almost at the end of the lot, near the street. It might not mean anything, but it could mean fucking everything. Thought you should know.” Turner gets a weird look on his face, two parts irritated, one part hopeful. He probably wants Dax to be a bad guy, so he's out of the picture for good.

I turn away and breathe in deep.

I want to end this shit, find out whose hands are in the cookie jar, but I don't want to lose all my friends and band members doing it.

“Thanks, Turner,” I say instead. Since there's no way to know where they went, we'll just have to wait this one out, maybe send Ronnie over to Terre Haute's bus to see if they're back. Until then, I'm not making any assumptions. “This shit just gets weirder and weirder,” I mumble under my breath, moving out the door and across the rain soaked pavement. Turner keeps pace with me and doesn't let me get even a foot ahead of him. Inch for inch, we walk as equals.

Dax and Hayden don't show up until right before we're about to leave, so we don't learn a damn thing. We don't bother to call him. It's hard enough to get privacy on our bus, let alone one with twice as many fucking people.

“Must be fucking hell in the bathrooms over there,” I tell Naomi who's sitting half-naked in one of my shirts. Ronnie rolls a joint at the table between us. I don't know why he gets to sit closer to her than I do, but that's how she wants it. I have a bad feeling I'm not getting lucky tonight.

“I don't want to make small talk,” she tells me, mulling over the information again. I want to kick her ass for getting into that car with Katie, but I settled for yelling. Didn't exactly go over well. Naomi is not the type of chick that likes to be bossed around. Good thing, though. I've been with some of those. The sex isn't nearly as much fun. She looks up from painting her nails and smiles meanly. “With you. I want to hear about Ronnie.” Naomi turns to my friend and continues coating her nails with black polish. It'll actually help her blend in better here, and believe it or not, actually makes her more androgynous. Half the fucking guys in the tour have black nails. Kinda comes with the territory.

Ronnie smiles and pinches his joint between two fingers, leaning back into the cushions and scratching at the snake tattoos on his neck with his other hand.

“I'll tell you all about Ronnie,” I say, giving him a look that says
get the fuck out, so I can have some alone time with this girl.
He sees it, registers it, and ignores it. He's not interested in her, thankfully, or I'd have to kick his ass, but I think he does like her. So he's going to play cock blocker and stick around. Fine. I sigh and watch his joint with hungry eyes. I can smell it. Naomi can, too, but neither of us accepts it when he offers. “He's a hopeless romantic turned whore. He loves to drop acid and he has like sixty kids. We've been friends for over a decade and he still doesn't remember my middle name.”

“First of all,” Ronnie says, taking a hit and holding the smoke in his chest as he continues. “I have four kids.” He blows the smoke out with a sigh. “From four different mothers. I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a hopeful cynic, and I'm pretty sure your middle name is a state. Arkansas? Nebraska?”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, it's a curse word. My bad.” Ronnie throws the joint at me, and it hits me in the chest. “It's Dakota, you fuckin' asshole.” Naomi laughs and smiles. But not at me. At Ronnie. Guess she's still pissed about my freak-out. I mean, come on though, anybody could've been in that car. Or waiting outside those gates. Or shit, for all we know, Katie is almost completely and utterly responsible for all this shit. Naomi said at least one guy was involved, but he could be working for Katie. What do we really know about this chick?

“Tell me about your kids,” Naomi says, watching as I toss the joint in the ashtray and pretend I'm not trying to breathe in as much secondhand smoke as humanly possible. Ronnie rubs his chest and shakes his head, dark hair falling into his face as he stares at the tabletop. That melancholy is back again, flitting briefly behind his eyes. I don't know where it's been going lately, but I hope it stays gone. This whole murder mystery thing is working for him, giving him a purpose. That, and I think he's sort of living vicariously through me, falling in love all over again. I hope this cures him, or at least helps. Marta's death will have saved Ronnie's life in that case. “Convince me why I should or shouldn't have any.”

Ronnie looks guilty as fuck and plants his elbows on the table, reaching tentative fingers for the abandoned joint.

“I couldn't say either way really,” he tells Naomi honestly. She doesn't blink, just sits there and stares at him while her nails dry. I wonder if she's thinking of our almost-kid, imagining what he or she would've been like. I know that I fucking am. And as soon as I have a kid, I know I'll be a better father than Ronnie. I sit and listen anyway, wishing it was just me and Naomi and a can of fucking whip cream in this room. I could show her some fun stuff. “I've only met three of the four. The youngest was just born a few months back. The mother doesn't want anything to do with me, so what am I gonna do? Take it to court? I don't stand a fucking chance.” Ronnie looks down at the tabletop and starts to fade away into that ghostly otherworld where he's spent the majority of his adult life. “I'm not saying I don't want to know them. I just … haven't found anything in myself worth knowing. I don't want to saddle them with this shit.” Ronnie looks up sharply and slices me with his gaze. I know some deep shit is coming. When he looks like that, it always cuts hard and fast. I get ready to bleed. “What I do know, but that nobody tells you, is that I wish I'd had my kids with a woman I loved. I mean, I imagine that it would make a world of difference. I'm no good to them as I am. I should be a rock, but I'm just a stone, sinking faster than I can blink.” Ronnie takes a hit and drums his knuckles on the table. “I wish I'd treasured Asuka more when she was alive, and I wish I'd died right along with her.” Naomi gives me a look that I return. She doesn't know all the lurid details of Ronnie's past, but she will. I'm going to tell her everything I know about everything. No secrets. No fucking secrets. “But since that's not an option, all I can do is wander and hope I find somebody half as good. I want to fall in love again. There, I said it.” Ronnie takes a deep breath and stands up, giving me a look that plainly says
move.
I glare back at him, but he's not in a place to be messed with. I could punch his skinny ass out if I wanted, but it's not worth screwing with him when he's this fragile. I swallow my pride and get out of his way, so he can make a quick exit. “I know you didn't ask for it, but I said it.” He moves to the door and pauses with his fingers outstretched and reaching. I imagine that's a position he's metaphorically been in for a long time and hasn't even known it.

“The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem,” I say, scooting back into the seat and watching his shoulders shake with the revelation. Might not mean much to anybody else, but this has been a long time coming. I swallow my arrogance and my cocky bullshit and my need to show off for Naomi, attract her like a posturing animal in the throes of heat. “Hey,” I say and he throws me a glance over his shoulder. “I'm proud of you, man.”

Ronnie smiles, grins, flashes us some of his silver fillings and winks mischievously.

“Thanks,” he says. “I owe you both one, even if you don't know it. Whatever shit you two have got going on, it's toxic and it's contagious. Keep spreading the disease.”

“And you'd know all about that,” I laugh as he opens the door a crack and slips out, making sure I lock it behind him, pressing my back to the flimsy, folding wood. Naomi is staring at me with a frown. The room heats up a degree or two.
We're alone.

“And what is it?” she asks, poking one of her nails with a cautious finger. Satisfied that it's dry, she grabs for a pillow and wraps her legs around it, resting her chin on the top. If I thought she was hot onstage, it's nothing like this vulnerable softness I see in her now.
So fucking cute, Knox. I could eat you with a friggin' spoon.
“This thing that we have.”

I stare at her. Answer's easy for me, maybe not so easy for her.

“Love.”

Plain, simple, easy.

I cross my arms over my chest and stare her down. She doesn't respond.

“You said you loved me before, why can't we start over again? Everybody deserves a second chance?” More silence. I look at her face, her arched brows, her porcelain skin, the way she runs her tongue over her lower lip when she's thinking. I try to think up something intelligent to say, something meaningful, something that'll light up her eyes and bring her running onto my arms. Instead, I break down and hit old habits hard. I say, “You want to pick up where we left off this morning?” She just keeps staring at me. The silence is getting eerie. I shift forward and plant my hands on the tabletop. “I could show you exactly what you're missing out on, maybe change your mind about things?”

“Do you think, maybe, that Katie is telling the truth? That all she did was send the videos?” I roll my eyes and stand up straight. I know if I reached out and touched Naomi right now, that we'd both explode into a million pieces. My cock is responding to the pull, rising to the challenge so to speak. I can't even look at the woman without getting a rager and coming inside my damn pants. This love shit is tough.

“Can we put that on pause for a second and figure out this other thing?” Naomi's pale lashes flutter slightly, like trees in a breeze or some shit. Sorry, I'm not very poetic.

“What's there to figure out, Turner? Relationships are not puzzles. They are not mystery whodunnits. There is no right answer, no clues to string together. Either we'll fall in love or we won't. That's it.”

“I'm already in love. You mean, if you'll admit to yourself that you're still in love with me.” She gives me a mean look, orange eyes flashing so bright they could blind.

“I fucking hate you,” she says, and I know that's true. Honesty drips from every syllable.

“Yeah, but love-hate is the best kind. It's passionate and it defies logic and it just fucks with your mind on a daily basis. So, that's what I am for you. A mind fuck. And baby,” I whisper, leaning down, brushing our lips when I speak. Flames roar higher than Hades. “I'm gonna make you come all over.”

Naomi laughs, but she doesn't kiss me back. Somehow, someway, she resists the pull between us and scoots back. I want to freakin' choke her. Anybody else, anybody, man or woman giving me a look like that and I'd knock their fucking teeth in. I want respect and Naomi does
not
respect me. Not even a little. Not yet. I imagine that if I'd saved her, if I'd ridden to the rescue that it might've changed things. But I didn't. I tried and failed. Time to find a new tactic.

I take a step back.

“I've got to find Eric,” Naomi says, grabbing a smoke from the carton on the table and lighting up. She doesn't look at me again.

“I'm going to go jack off,” I tell her, gesturing at the bathroom door. “Any chance you'd care to join me?”

“Knock yourself out, cowboy,” she says, cig dangling from her lips as she opens the notebook I got out for her earlier. I have no fucking clue what she wants it for, but there it is.

“Fine.”

I spin away and squeeze myself in the closet sized bathroom. What Naomi doesn't know is that as I'm closing the door behind me, I see her slide her hand under the waistband of her borrowed underwear. Oh yeah. This shit is going to get good.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.