Hard Rock Roots Box Set (25 page)

As soon as Naomi walks offstage, I go after her.

“Don't touch me,” she whispers, voice low and gravelly. She's growling at me for fuck's sake, and it's
hot.
All eyes are on us as we move towards the back door like a storm cloud, bouncing energy off of one another's skin. I'm so hypersensitive right now that I'm having a really, really hard time forming logical thoughts in my brain. I can see every bead of sweat on her skin, her dilated pupils, her taut nipples. “Stay away from me.” Naomi pauses with her fingers on the handle of the door, and it's almost like I can hear the entire room taking a breath, holding it, waiting to see what's going to happen between us. “I don't love you.”

“You will.” Maybe that's the wrong thing to say, but it comes out of my mouth anyway. I'm not used to not getting my way. I might be overcompensating for my shitty childhood, but that's just the way it is. I want, no I
need
, Naomi to respect me. Somehow, her opinion is the only one that's important right now. But of course she doesn't love me, not yet. “You hate me. I get it. I can wait.”

“Goddamn it, Turner!” she shouts, punching the door so hard that her knuckles come back bloody. She turns on me and her eyes are wild, not just wet but soaked, drenched. They don't even look brown now, just orange, bright as the fucking sun. “You're right. I do.” She points at me with one of her silver painted fingernails. “You're a cocky, arrogant, self-serving, smug, selfish piece of shit. You don't love me. You just think you do. You're interested in me because you can't have me.” She throws her arm out to indicate the rest of the room. “You could have almost any girl here or out there or anywhere, anyone that's single and available and a lot that aren't. You like me because I'm a challenge, but as soon as the challenge is over and you've won, you'll get bored and you'll wander.” Naomi sucks in a massive breath and steps close to me, brushing the toes of my shoes with hers. “To love something or someone, you have to be willing to give up everything else you care about to make things right for them, even if the decision is hard or it sucks or it makes you so miserable you want to tear your teeth out of your fucking skull.” She looks me straight in the eye and holds me there with that piercing gaze. “You're not there yet, Turner. You're just not, and that's pretty obvious, even to me, and I'm no fucking expert.” Naomi touches her fingers to the bleeding heart tattoo on her chest. “Life is real, and it's ugly, and it hurts. I've only ever loved three things in my life, and none of them worked out for me.”

I stand there in silence and listen to her speech with my cock throbbing and my heart pounding. Sweat is pouring down my face and into my eyes, and my breath is coming fast and shallow, making my vision spotty and blurry. I'm jealous, I admit. Stupid as it fucking sounds, even after her impressive but admittedly hurtful speech, I can only think about one thing.

“What are they?” She stares at me like I'm the craziest person she's ever laid eyes on. Her laugh, when it does come, is harsh and painful.

“God, you're a fucking idiot.” Naomi holds up three fingers. I can't help but notice that they're shaking, too. “You.” She drops one finger against her palm, and I take a step forward, letting flashes of memory flicker over the top of my vision. I can remember her telling me that before, but I didn't get it. I've had lots of girls tell me that in bed. It's just something people say. Honestly, I think she's the only one that ever meant it. “Your baby.” Naomi drops her second finger, leaving only her middle up, so she can flip me the bird. “But I could not, in good conscious, force her to suffer alongside the rest of us.” She pauses and takes a deep breath. “And myself. I lost that love a long, long time ago, and I'm only now just starting to get that back. I won't let you take it from me.” She pauses and lets her hand fall to her side, shifting her eyes away from mine. She doesn't stop shaking.

“I wouldn't dare,” I tell her, trying to get her to look at me, but she won't. She flat out refuses to give me the satisfaction. “And I could probably teach you a thing or two about it. If anyone's an expert in loving themselves, it's me.” It's a joke … sort of. But Naomi doesn't laugh. Instead, the words hang in the air like they've been drawn there, etched into the white smoke that drifts lazily around the room. Part of me is aware that I've got to get onstage soon. The rest of me doesn't care. I stand very, very still, and I wait. After what seems like forever, Naomi drops her hand and licks her lips.

“If you're waiting for a declaration of love from me, it isn't coming.” She looks at me and then glances over her shoulder at the bits of broken guitar that were salvaged off the stage and placed inside of a plastic bag. Her manager's holding them now, and she doesn't look all that happy about it. I try to stick to my honesty policy. I figure I sound like a dick anyway, so I may as well just go for it. If you've got nothing to hide, it's a hell of a lot harder for other people to hurt you.

“Nah, baby, right now, I just kind of want to fuck.” If I don't touch her before I go onstage, I'm going to be worse than animalistic. It'll get real ugly, real fast. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, right? Fucking toxic. Still, I think she's wrong about me. I know love because I know the absence of it, you know what I mean? Like, I know black because I've seen white, something like that. But just telling that to Naomi isn't going to do me shit. I'm going to have to prove it a thousand times over. There's a lot of baggage that has to be dealt with first.

She looks at me with an expressionless mask plastered over her face, then back at her band, then at the door. After a moment, she reaches down and touches her fingertips to the handle. I can tell she wants me just as badly as I want her. When we're onstage together, we just connect. We're like
this.

“I don't think that's such a good idea right now,” she whispers, and I hear this whoosh of air, like everybody that's been watching us can finally breathe again. The silence breaks, and the roar of the crowd comes echoing violently out at me.
Duet. Duet. Duet.
They want Naomi back. Can't say I blame 'em.

“Encore?” I ask her, but my heart is sinking fast, drowning in blood. I feel like I'm sweating excitement out through my pores. I feel like something is happening, but instead of an explosion, it's a whisper. It happens so quietly and discreetly that I hardly notice it. I'm not used to subtlety anymore. I've been living with everything happening in a big way for so long that I miss it. That's my fucking problem. Since there's nothing crashing down around me, I don't notice that anything's wrong.

I should have never let her walk out that door.

“Turner,” she says as pulls the handle down and steps forward. “Fuck off.”

As soon as she leaves, I have a mild freak out and punch the wall so hard that my entire arm goes numb for a moment. If I didn't have a fucking show to do, I'd chase after her. I think she knows that. By the time I get out there, it's going to be too late. The night's fucking ruined.
But there's always tomorrow, right?
Unfortunately, that's not always true, but I guess I don't realize that yet.

When the crowd starts to chant my name, I snarl deep in my throat and storm that stage, ready to fucking destroy them. They're going to get their money's worth tonight, that's for fucking sure. I lost the battle with Naomi, but I'm going to win the war. Eventually.

After all, Turner Campbell always gets what he wants.

By the time we're finished with our set, I'm ready to go on a rampage, storming off into the night with a cigarette between my lips and Milo shouting at my back. He's saying something a record exec and a deal, and I just don't fucking care right now. If he wants me, he'll wait. I'm not begging anything from anyone anymore. I figure, if they really want to sign us, they'll stick around. At the moment, I'm nursing the world's worst hard-on, rubbed raw against my jeans and aching like a fucking bitch. I just want to go back to the bus, snort a few lines and take a fucking shower. I don't even want to touch myself.

All I can think about is Naomi, like an all consuming fire, she's taken hold of me and turned everything else to ash. Jesus Christ. I run trembling fingers through my hair. If I'm this bad now, what happens next week? Or next month? Am I going to get progressively worse? I don't know shit about how this works, and there's nobody that I'm willing to ask about it. Anyway, the only person I can even think of who's been in love is Ronnie, and he's the last one I'd ever talk to. Whenever Asuka's name comes up in conversation, he just loses it.

So I pace outside for awhile, just to burn some energy, when I notice this girl staring at me from the edge of the fence. It's kind of obvious that she's just jumped it, making me pretty damn sure that when I actually find my fucking bodyguard, that I'm going to fire him.

She's looking at me with big, blue eyes, haunted eyes, eyes that tell a story I don't want to hear. Her blonde hair is buzzed short, military style, so close to her skull that she almost looks bald at first. She's got on a white dress that's stained with dirt and in her hands is a purse, clutched so tight it looks like her fingers are going to snap off. Something about her catches my attention and not in a good way. When this girl walks, angels cry. That's how sad she is. Something bad happened to her, and it's written all over her face. As she starts to walk towards me, I change my mind. Not something. A whole lot of fucking somethings. Jesus, Mary, and fuck.

“Am I too late?” she asks me, biting her lip and glancing around surreptitiously, like she expects something horrible to crawl out of the darkness at the edge of the lot and consume her, flesh, blood, and bones. “Is she still here?”

I take my cigarette out of my mouth and toss it to the ground at my feet.

“She?” I ask as the girl moves tentatively towards me. She's kind of freaking me out, to be honest. I glance over my shoulder and see Treyjan storming across the lot. He wants to rip me a new one for what happened backstage, but fuck him. This is nobody's business but mine anyway. If I want to fall in love, that's my problem, not his. I really don't want to deal with his shit tonight, but at least if this girl turns out to be a crazed fan, I'll have someone at my back. Can't ask for anyone better in a fight.

“Naomi,” she whispers, and then it just clicks. The foster sister. Fuck. I take a step backward, but the girl is already shaking her head. “I don't know what he told you, but whatever it is, it's a lie.” She pauses and bites at her lip, like a rat trying to chew its way through the bars of a cage. It's disturbing as shit. “This is big, much bigger than I first thought.” She stares at me, and I find myself unable to look away. I let my hands roam down to my pockets for another cigarette. “Much bigger than you and me.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I ask her as she continues forward, brow scrunching up so tight that her forehead looks like it has ripples.

“Where's Naomi?” The girl pauses and squeezes her eyes shut tight. “Please tell me she's still here, that I'm not too late. Please. Please. Please.”

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” I ask, contemplating what the fuck it is that I should do. Do I call the cops? Do I get Naomi? Is it safe to show this chick where she is? “Naomi's back at her bus, I guess.”

“When's the last you saw her?” the girl asks, leaning forward and staring unblinking up at me. I think that's about the moment when I first hear the sirens. Both the girl and I turn to look. “Oh no,” she whispers, and then she starts running. Not away like I think at first, but towards the sounds, towards the red and blue lights that are swinging in off the highway.

The cigarette falls from my fingers. My heart stops beating. I don't know when it hits me, but when it does, I start running, too.

“Fuck.”

Naomi.

That's where the sirens are headed. And it's not just police. Just police I can handle. But there's an ambulance. No, no, no …
two
ambulances. I run faster and manage to outpace the blonde girl who's running with tears streaming down her face. It's only then that I realize she's barefoot.

I hit the stairs to the bus first, before the girl, before the cops and the EMS workers.

Dax is already there, and he tries to stop me, holds out his arm and catches me before I slip in it.

Bile rises in my throat and my head begins to spin.

The entire room is coated in blood. It's everywhere: floors, walls, even the ceiling. It's splattered everywhere, just everywhere, all over fucking everything. My eyes are wide now, and my heart is beating so loud I can hear it in my skull.

“Don't look, just don't look at it,” Dax is shouting, tears streaming down his face. The world goes silent. There are two bodies on the floor, two female bodies, naked, bloody, beaten, blonde. Either of them could be Naomi. Neither of them could. A line of a song slides through my skull.

To find you, only to lose you, even the devil couldn't think up a hell worse than that. I abused you, when I should've held you, and only the truth will set us free.

I turn to my right and vomit, all over the back of the captain's chair. The barefoot girl climbs the steps behind me and stands with her hand on the railing and her chin lifted in the air.