Vindication: A Motorcycle Club Romance (33 page)

~
FOURTEEN ~

Noah

I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee when my phone
started buzzing across the counter. Gavin was on the other end.

“I’m picking you up. Be ready in ten
minutes,” he said.

Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I replied,
“What the fuck’s going on?”

“We have a meeting with your band
downtown. It’s urgent.”

Panic gripped my chest. The coffee
cup in my hand slopped mess over the counter as I set it down. “What happened,
Gavin?”

“Get dressed. I’m almost there.” He
hung up before I could say another word.

Cursing, I rushed to my bedroom and
threw on the first clothes I could find that didn’t smell when I held them to
my nose. The day outside was remotely sunny, so I forewent the jacket and
instead tried to save what was left of my coffee, dumping it in a portable cup.
Outside, a smooth engine rumbled, and two honks sounded in quick succession.

The record label paid for big shots
like Gavin to be driven around the city. He was sitting in the back left corner
of the town car, engrossed in a phone conversation, as I ducked inside and sat
down. Hidden behind the dividing glass, the driver said nothing as he began
reversing out of my driveway.

I sipped my coffee and waited for
Gavin to finish his call. He was mostly listening, anyway. After a few moments
he mumbled quietly into the phone and hung it up, turning to me.

“How are you feeling today?” he said.
His face looked flat and gray, like a statue. Or like he’d been up all night
sick to his stomach.

“C’mon, man, save that shit for
Quinn,” I said. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized the coffee
cup in my hand was shaking. “What the hell is going on?”

The way Gavin couldn’t look at me
straight, it only made me more nervous. He put his fingertips to his lips as he
spoke, as if he could somehow filter the awfulness of his words that way. “I
wanted to tell you in private first. The rest of the boys are meeting us
downtown. Well, minus Duke and Jeff.”

“Wanted to tell me
what
first?” I pressed. My heart began to pound in my ears.

“Have you smoked today yet? Do you
want a joint?”

“Gavin, what the fuck is happening?”
I couldn’t stop the sound of shaking anger in my voice.

Finally he relented with a sigh, and
began to loosen the tie around his neck. “Noah, I don’t know how to say this. I
got the call from my friend down in the DA’s office, and the word is they’re
going to put out the warrant for your arrest this week. Maybe even as early as
today. They want you to face trail for manslaughter.”

Everything seemed to freeze like a
scratched record, even the sound of the tires on the wet road. I stared at the
tattooed hands wrapped around my coffee cup and found myself wondering whose
hands they were, and how did I get here? This couldn’t be my life. I had fallen
asleep and dreamed of being a rock star, and now this was the crashing end, and
I was about to wake up in bed, sixteen and skinny again.

But the moment didn’t end. It just
stretched on and on, until Gavin finally spoke.

“I’m so sorry, Noah. I tried everything
I could to get them to see reason. I pushed on every contact and called in
every favor I had in that county…” He trailed off and pinched the bridge of his
nose. “The public outcry is just so ravenous that the DA can’t ignore it and
look credible anymore. This is political, pure and simple.”

Everything in my brain and heart went
numb. Kevin’s words tumbled out of my mouth. “They like the wolves until they
prod one into biting.”

“What’s that?”

I shook my head. “Did you offer a
joint because you have one?”

Immediately Gavin was patting his
suit pockets until he came out with a shiny, silver cigarette case. He popped
it open to reveal a string of pretty, professionally-rolled joints. I fumbled
one out and cracked the window before lighting it up.

“I’ll figure out a way around this,
Noah, I promise you. I’m not going to let you spend a day in prison.”

The air from the window was cold and
wet on my face, the earth still soaked from showers during the night. Gavin’s
high-grade pot definitely helped. I felt the anxiety in my body melting into
itself and disappearing. I felt myself letting go of control, and anger. For
the time being, it was the only positive sensation I had to hold on to.

We didn’t speak another word to each
other for the rest of the drive into Seattle. I wasn’t even sure how long the
drive was; part of it felt endless. Hands in my pockets, I followed Gavin
through the pristine skyscraper lobby and could hear the whispers and feel the
stares, but I couldn’t get up the energy to care. I let them hit me and kept my
eyes on the back of Gavin’s suit as we entered the elevator and rode up to the
offices of the label.

We walked into the conference room to
find Ash lounging, bored, in one of the chairs. Quinn stood against the wall
opposite him. They weren’t talking. I caught Quinn’s eyes when we entered the
room, and I saw his face fall when he looked at mine, like he could read
everything that had happened in the car. He looked sick.

Gavin stood near Quinn and leaned on
the table. I kept walking past him, heading for the windows. I didn’t say a
word to either of them.

“Guys, we’ve got some bad news. The
DA is proceeding with charges against Noah. He’ll probably have to turn himself
in by the end of the week.” Gavin wasted no time.

After that, I blanked the whole thing
out and let my stoned mind get caught up on watching the speedy, mutating
clouds forming over the mountains and the bay. I could only hear Quinn’s
raging, tearful voice, but not the words he was saying—nor Ash’s bitter,
shorter ones. It wasn’t long until I didn’t hear Ash’s voice in the room at
all.

Quinn came up behind me, his
reflection in the glass hazy. I turned to face him. His face was red, eyes
already full of tears. He looked angry, like he wanted to fight me. It actually
made my shoulders tense up.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like
this,” he said in a shaky voice. “We can’t just let this happen to you, Noah.”

The sight of my best friend crumbling
under this pressure started to break the haze of numbness around my head. Pain
began pulsing in my chest. I felt my lip quivering when I responded. “There’s
nothing else we can do, man.”

“We have to—” Quinn couldn’t
continue. He cried freely, clenched fist pressed against his lips, until I took
a couple steps toward him with an open arm. He threw his arms around me
tightly. My neck and shoulder grew damp with his tears.

“This isn’t over,” said Gavin. As sad
as his voice was, it still had a fire to it.

I didn’t argue with him. I would
never tell either of them, but for that moment in the conference room, the
feeling of giving up filled me with a sense of sweet relief. Prison would be
horrifying, but what else was new? My life had always had horror in it. This
rock star thing—this was a lucky prize I was never supposed to have gotten in
the first place, let alone keep.

People had been trying to beat me
down into the dirt since I was a kid. Put me in my place. Make sure I didn’t
get any big ideas about who I was. And every single day I had fought them. Some
days harder than others, sure; and there was no perfect record to speak of. But
I fought. I always promised myself I would fight.

Right then, though, I didn’t want to
fight anymore. I was tired, and this fight was so big. And what was I fighting
for now, anyway? A band that didn’t want me. A career that wouldn’t exist once
the dust settled. And an empty bed, an empty home. Whatever Laurel might have
felt for me, I wasn’t so sure it was going to survive me being a felonious
ex-rock star. And why should it? She deserved much better.

I had nothing. I had no one. And now,
I was probably headed to prison.

As glad I was it had happened, I
suddenly wished Laurel had never met me.

~
FIFTEEN ~

Laurel

Once I got my travel plans cleared through the
magazine, nothing was left except to see Noah and tell him I would be gone a
few days. It was a conversation I was not looking forward to; I couldn’t shake
the dread that clung to me with every step as I got up, showered, and prepared
for the day.

My flight to LA left first thing in the
morning, so I told Noah we should have a nice dinner and go see what was
jumping at the Graveyard Club if he felt up to it. He didn’t text me back right
away, but when he did, it was with a promise he’d take care of dinner. All I
needed to do was show up.

Ringing the doorbell at his house, I
could already smell the spices inside. Noah opened the door to me, but he was
the reverse image of the man I expected to see. Something dark and pale had
overcome the skin of his face, and his eyes had that glassy look of insomnia I
recognized all too well. But he was smiling, happy to see me, and bent to pick
me up in a tender bear hug. He sighed against my body like he hadn’t held it in
a while.

“This was a good idea,” he said.
“Thank you.”

I tightened my grip around his neck
and planted kisses on his beard and cheek. “I hate to give away my secret, but
most people actually eat meals, like, a few times a day… I can’t take credit.”

Noah pinched and squeezed me in the
spots he now knew were ticklish as hell, and I kicked, squealing, trying to get
out of his strong grasp. But there was no chance for that unless he wanted to
let me go. He tortured me a few seconds and dragged me inside the house,
closing the door behind us.

“Smells like curry,” I said as I took
off my jacket.

“It’s from the Indian place around
the corner,” said Noah with a nod of his head. “I… don’t really cook much, as
you can imagine.”

“Good thing you’re rich enough to get
someone to cook for you,” I said. “And not a prisoner of Ramen Island like the
rest of us.”

Noah’s eyes shifted from side to
side. “Right, sure. On a totally unrelated note, do not look in the cabinets
above the stove, okay?”

I burst out laughing at the look on
his face, half-embarrassed, like he was fifteen and I’d just found his porn
stash. On my tiptoes I leaned up and kissed him and asked him for a piggy back
ride to dinner. He laughed at me a few seconds but then shrugged and flipped me
over his shoulders for the short walk to the kitchen, claiming every grasp of
my inner thighs was ‘for balance’. The small dining room table he had near the
sliding back door was filled with different containers of Indian food, two
plate settings, and open beers. A bunch of mismatched candles flickered
throughout the room, on the counter and table and windowsills.

“This is beautiful,” I said.

“You sound surprised,” he said,
nuzzling into my neck. His beard tickled my skin, but his lips quickly undid
it.

“A little, I guess. This is… no one
does things like this for me,” I said.

“Well, now someone does,” said Noah,
brushing the hair out of the side of my face. He kissed the side of my cheek
and held out my chair for me as I smiled up at him.

It wasn’t expected, but it certainly
wasn’t unwelcome, to discover that sitting at a table having dinner with Noah
was every bit as delightful as anything else we did together. For half a
minute, I actually felt
normal
. When was the last time I actually sat
down and had dinner—with anyone, even a co-worker? Half the meals I ate were on
the go, and the other half were quick fixes scrounged up at two AM to keep me
through another night of edits.

But sitting across from Noah,
enjoying my food, sharing laughter with him, it was recharging my soul in ways
I hadn’t realized I was lacking. There was never a dull moment between us, or
hardly even a lull in the conversation. We both had enough experience in the
industry that we could talk to one another with lingo and insider knowledge
that often kept me, at least, alienated from a lot of people.

Lots of people saw the music industry
as a thing you dream about when you’re a young idiot, a place for children to
get filthy rich acting out their stupid fantasies. And sure, lots of the stars
in every genre were kids who had no idea what was going to happen to them when
their popularity faded. But behind the scenes, it wasn’t kids—it was people
like me and Noah, who did start out chasing fantasies, and ended up sewing
ourselves into the foundation of what we loved. It was difficult to explain
that kind of thing to someone who had spent their time following the
school-college-marriage-kids life plan handed out to us when we were young.

I didn’t have to explain anything to
Noah. He just understood.

We were on our fourth beer each, and
Noah on his third serving of Indian, when things got a little quiet. It wasn’t
uncomfortable; quite the contrary. It was more comfortable than I’d felt in
years. I felt home.

Lost in my own feelings, though, I
hadn’t noticed Noah’s mood shift. When his voice finally came from across the
table, it was with a heaviness he clearly couldn’t hide anymore. “Laurel, look,
I’ve got to tell you something.”

I’d had my feet propped up on one of
the empty dining chairs. Shifting to face him, I put my beer down. “Of course.
What’s up?”

He stared at his plate, like he
didn’t have the strength to lift it and look at me. I could see him lick his
lips. “I had a meeting with Gavin today, and… he told me…” Noah bit his lip and
forced himself to continue. I could feel my heart beating faster with every second.
“He told me the DA is going ahead with charges against me for Sun Fest. I
might… I might be in jail by the end of this week.”

My heart dropped. Even though the
news wasn’t totally unexpected, it dropped like a dead weight into the water of
my mind.

“Fuck, Noah… Oh my God.”

Noah looked up at me finally and his
eyes were angry, but also filled with pain and sadness. “I’m sorry, Laurel. I
should never have…” He took a deep breath. “I should never have brought you
into all of this.”

“No,” I said, jumping up from my
chair to kneel down in front of him. “You didn’t. None of this is your fault.”
The guilt in my heart started bubbling, molten. I had to comfort him somehow.
“I knew who you were when I saw you in the club that day, and I still wanted to
meet you. You didn’t bring me into anything, I’m a grown woman. I brought
myself.”

He stared at me, thinking, and
blinked hard a few times. His throat shifted as he swallowed hard. “Laurel, I…
I really care about you. I know that sounds stupid coming from me, and I don’t
understand it fully myself, but it’s the fucking truth. I care about you and I
feel like a complete piece of shit getting hauled off to jail just when I’ve
found you…”

My heart froze in my chest, hearing
Noah’s words. Tears welled up in my eyes in an instant, my mouth open in shock.
“Noah, I care about you too. I care a lot. I figured it was just me, being a
stupid… girl… falling for a rock star…”

“Is that how you think of me? A rock
star?” It was a painful question.

“No,” I said. “But I thought that was
how you saw yourself. I didn’t imagine you for a minute actually… actually
connecting with me.”

Noah leaned forward with his hand in
my hair. “But it’s not just me, right? You feel it too?”

I grasped his hand in mine. “Of
course I feel it. But I don’t understand it.”

“Well, at least we both suck at
this,” said Noah with a self-effacing laugh.

“We can suck at it together,” I said
with a teary smile.

Noah returned it as he leaned down
and kissed me. It was tender, sweet, and slow. I could feel my tears pressing
up against his skin.

After the kiss, guilt overcame me and
I shook my head as I stared at the floor. He’d been so honest with me, how
could I continue to hold back the truth of myself? “I have to say something
unpleasant too, Noah.”

And when I looked up at him in that
moment, there was no question whether I had the courage to tell him who I was.
I didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Instead, I started with the smallest
disappointment. After all, I had no idea what I was going to find in LA. There
was no reason to destroy this until I had to. “I have to fly out of town for a
couple of days for work. I leave tomorrow morning.”

Noah’s face dropped and my heart
cracked in my chest. I squeezed his hands tighter. “Oh, sure, that’s okay
sugar. As long as you’re not just saying that because of… because of what I
just said…”

“Fuck no,” I said, leaning down to
kiss him. “No, no, no. The trip was already planned before I got here. What you
said tonight was… perfect.”

Noah smiled at me, but it was sad.

“I’m really fucking sorry… the timing
of this is just awful.” I rubbed the side of his face. “I want to stay here
with you during this. But this trip is… it’s crazy important. I wouldn’t be
going if it wasn’t. It’s only for two days, tops.”

Noah stared at me, thinking silently.
He ran a thumb over my face and lips and brought me in for a sweet kiss. “As
long as you fuck me one more time before you go.”

I flushed and smiled against his
lips. “I didn’t realize that was even up for debate.”

Noah’s next kiss was instantly
ravenous, pulling me up onto his lap in the chair. Already I could feel his
cock beneath me, half-hard and getting more swollen by the second. We kissed
each other with an intensity, almost a fear, a fear that the world was going to
be totally different when we stopped. So we just didn’t stop.

Grinding me on his lap, Noah reached
underneath and pulled my shirt over my head, tossing it somewhere into the dark
kitchen. He had no trouble unclasping my bra. Likewise, I scrambled to get his
shirt off his gorgeous body, and moaned into his mouth when I finally felt the
bare skin of his chest against mine. Noah ran his hands up and down my bare
back, sliding them into my jeans to squeeze my ass and rub me against his dick.

Without taking his mouth off me, he
gripped my ass and stood up. Reflexively, I wrapped myself around him and let
him carry us both to the clean-smelling black and white tile of the kitchen
floor. Noah worked between our bodies to unfasten first his jeans, and then
mine, wiggling them down my body and kicking them into a heap at our feet. His
fingers massaged my clit as he kissed me and I writhed underneath him. He
pushed two of them inside me and found my wetness was already waiting for him.
After a few teasing, deep pumps, he withdrew them and positioned the head of
his hard cock at my entrance.

There was no condom this time, and he
hesitated for just a moment as if to give me time to object. But I wanted it
this way, too. I wanted to feel him, skin on skin. And almost as important, I
trusted him, and wanted him to know that.

When he finally pushed his length
inside me, I nearly came right there, arching my back and crying out his name
against his mouth. He bit my lip as he buried his cock in my pussy and held it
there, bottoming out, as he kissed me passionately. Keeping his body and mouth
on mine, Noah slowly began to pump his hips just enough to withdraw his huge
cock a few inches before sliding smoothly back inside to fill me completely. I
hitched my legs around his hips and felt him bump my spot with every single
stroke of his cock inside me, and it was almost more pleasure than I could
take.

There was desperation in the way we
clung to each other, in the way we refused to let our bodies get more than a
few millimeters apart at any given time. Even though the pleasure building in
my body needed a release, I also never wanted Noah to stop. I wanted to lie
here beneath him, making love, forever.

I could see his face clenching and
knew he was getting close. Noah’s kisses got hungrier, his thrusts shorter and
harder. His hands held me tight against his sweating body.