Real Ugly (9 page)

“Wow. You don't even remember that girl, do you?” she asks, sounding disgusted. I look her up and down, take in her white wife beater, her black jeans and the high heels she's got on. Fuck me. If I don't scratch this itch soon, I'm gonna have the bluest balls in the fucking country.

“That roadie chick? Yeah, I remember her. I'm not always shit faced, you know? I do have moments of clarity.” I flick myself in the head and run my tongue over my lips, letting her take in the stud and pretend she isn't interested. From what I gathered onstage last night, she wants me just as hard as I want her. She just doesn't know it yet. See, that's the fucking problem with keeping secrets. Once you've got a few, you get so addicted that you even start keeping them from yourself. Poor Knox. Good thing she's got me to liberate her. “Somebody walked in on us. Despite what you might've heard, I don't really like to have an audience.”

Naomi's harsh laugh echoes through the darkness as she swipes off her shades and starts walking backward without even looking for traffic. It's a ballsy move, stupid, too. Fuck, I really do like this girl.

“You stupid, motherfucking, piece of shit asshole,” she says as she sticks the sunglasses in her pocket and turns away from me, blonde hair whipping around in the hot, dry air. I take a deep breath and watch after her, feeling that anger boiling inside of me again. Something about her just pisses me off at the same time it gets me off. Jesus Christ.

“What?” I ask, throwing my hands up in the air. Naomi Knox is strange as fuck. I thought I was an expert on women, but this one is out of my range of knowledge. “What the fuck is it now?”

“That person that walked in on you,” she begins, stopping on the sidewalk and turning back to face me with a crooked smile, one that's sinfully wicked. “That was me, and I wasn't impressed.”

Aw, fuck me.

I start to move across the road after her and nearly get killed by a fucking semi carrying logs. Dirt and grit sting my eyes and push me back to the sidewalk as my heart frantically tries to explode from my chest. When I finally recover, Naomi's gone.

I'll admit, seeing Turner almost get turned into hamburger meat really fucked with me. There was this second there where I really thought he was going to die, and I was mad at myself for not telling him. Yeah, the emotion was premature and stupid as shit, but now I know that at some point, I have to hunt the devil down and tell him what he put me through. I've been dragging this shit around for far too long, and it's getting old. If I'm ever going to escape really and truly, I've got to dig up my dirt and bury him in it, too.

I buy my cigs from the gas station and take them back to the bus where I search out Wren and score some coke off of him. It's not normally my drug of choice, but he's got plenty to go around and I need something to keep me up. Sleeping equals dreaming and right now, I've got nightmares in spades. Besides, a cocaine high sounds real good right now. I can tweak all over my guitar, blow some minds with my music. I play really good when I'm high.

I lay out white lines on the table in the front and snort them in quick succession. Wren watches me from the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks pretty hot tonight, dressed in a black tank and a pair of tight as fuck jeans. He doesn't have any shoes on either, which is a kind of a thing for me. Only problem is I hate him. Too bad because I'm horny as hell right now. I try not to admit to myself that it's all because of Turner.

“You want to talk about something?” he asks me, but I sure as shit don't. Not yet. I want to get high first. I lean back and rest my head on the seat behind me, waiting for the drugs to take over and give me courage, euphoria, confidence. It'll do all that, you know? Yeah, it could kill me, and yes, it's stupid as hell, but I do it anyway. I'm not right in the head, never have been. That's a problem of mine, one that I intend to work on at some point. I wonder briefly if I'd had real parents, if things would've been different. If, instead of being shuffled from home to home, I could've lived in one place, how I might've turned out.

I open my eyes and sit up, brushing the thoughts away like cobwebs. Introspection never helps; it only gets me more tangled up in my shit.

“Want to make out?” I ask Wren, studying his strong face, his stubbly jaw and then watching as he pulls his lip down with his middle finger and flashes me the tattoo there.
Fuck Yeah,
it reads. I scoot over and wait for him to join me, putting a hand on his chest before we start anything. “I don't want to screw though,” I tell him seriously. “Got it?” Wren just shrugs and wraps his arms around me, pressing his mouth to mine. I tangle my tongue with his and try not to imagine what Turner Campbell is doing right now, if he's dipping his dick into hot, wet heat and thinking of me.

Naomi, seriously? Why are you even going there?

I scoot onto Wren's lap and press the hard bulge in his pants against my crotch.

It's fun for awhile, until Hayden comes back, panting hard, face as white as a sheet. Wren and I both turn to glare at her.

“Naomi,” she pants, cheeks as pink as the top she's got on. It's got friggin' Rainbow Dash on the front. Like, who the fuck over the age of ten wears a
My Little Pony
on their clothing?

“What?” I snarl at her as I shove Wren back and stand up. Whatever it was that I was looking for in him, I'm not finding. I wonder if I should just fuck him, but I don't know if that'll help. If I'm honest with myself, I'm still carrying a big ass torch for Turner Campbell, one that I thought had gone out long ago. Guess it just got relit.

Apparently, Hayden doesn't like my tone and proceeds to rip into me.

“Hey, you stupid bitch, either come with me or not. If you don't, maybe I'll forget our little agreement and call the cops in Tulsa with an anonymous tip. Think the guy you stabbed last month will testify to your penchant for violence?”

I grab my jacket off the hook near the door and tear out of the bus on Hayden's heels, wishing I could just reach out and strangle her with her hair. She leads me around to the other side of the bus and down to the trailer that we tow behind it with our equipment inside.

I light a cigarette as we go, one that quickly gets forgotten when I see what Hayden wants to show me. The lit cherry tumbles through the dry darkness and hits the dirt at my feet.

On the side of the trailer, there's a message written in blood. Like a scene in a bad horror film, the headless body of a dead bird lies on the ground beside the wheel.

“Oh shit.”

Thank God we don't have a show tonight.

After what I saw, my hands are shaking so bad, I can hardly bring the cup of water to my lips for a drink. Or maybe that's from the coke I snorted. Not sure which.

“Are you sure you don't want to call the cops?” Dax asks, hovering above me and Hayden like an overprotective brother. He likes to think he's one of the responsible ones in the group. Not true. The only truly responsible one of all of us is America.

“No, it's fine,” she snaps at him as she paces back and forth, hands tucked into the pockets of her navy suit coat, bits of stray hair poking out of her slicked back bun. She looks frazzled which is pretty impressive. It's the first time I've ever seen her like that. “Spencer's probably already washed it off anyway.” America pauses and looks down at Hayden and me.

The bloody words flip through my head on a continuous loop.

Hayden knows Naomi's truth. Keep your fucking mouths shut.

“You have no clue who might've done this?” she asks in a very severe tone, one that brings tears to Hayden's blue eyes.
God, I can't stand that bitch. At least she isn't blaming me for this shit.
“Like, is there someone you might've told
something
to?” she asks, stressing the word for Hayden's benefit. Unfortunately, since Dax is standing there, she can't be anymore obvious, but I wish she could be. There's at least a fifty/fifty chance that Hayden isn't going to understand what America's trying to get at.

“Not a fucking soul,” I say, and Hayden just shakes her head. Neither of us believes her, I don't think, but there isn't anything we can do about it, so I just walk away and try not to dwell on the idea that somebody just decapitated a bird (or judging from the amount of blood, probably three or four) and used its life force to write a threatening message. At least now I know I have a stalker of some sort.

Awesome.

I leave the bus, even as America shouts at me to get my ass back there and get ready to take care of something I should've taken care of a long time ago. The adrenaline from the message and the coke are melding together to make for one pretty amazing trip. I feel like a Titan as I storm through the camp and pause outside of Indecency's bus.

The bodyguard just stares at me like I'm an idiot.

“I'm here to see Turner Campbell,” I tell him, which he's probably heard a thousand times before. The man, who's as big as an ox and twice as wide, folds his arms across his chest and sighs.

“He isn't here,” he tells me and then shakes his head, continuing on before I get the chance to start an argument. I'm kinda glad because my fights never end well. Last month, I stabbed a rabid fan in the stomach with a fucking hunting knife. Thankfully, the charges were dropped, but I have to be more careful than that. Another incident could bring everything crashing down around my fucking head, and if I go to prison, I'm hanging myself with my sheets. I won't survive in there. “But he did tell me to expect you, so if you'd like to go up and wait, that'll be fine with me. I just have to pat you down for weapons first.”

I stare at the man like he's fucking insane.

Expecting me?

Turner was
expecting
me?

That son of a bitch.

My blood goes hot and my heart cold.

“Thanks.” I force the word out through tight lips and spin away on my heel, moving across the dirt in the direction of the gas station when a voice calls out behind me.

“Naomi?”

I turn around and find a blonde in dark washed jeans and a red T-shirt. I don't know his name, but I know he plays bass in Turner's band. He's standing on the bottom step of the bus and holding the screen open with one hand. In the other, he has a book. I trust him right away.

I take a step forward.

“Yeah?”

The man smiles.

“Hey, I know you don't know me, but my name is Joshua Drake. I was wondering if I could talk to you for just a sec? It's about Turner.”

A smile stretches hard across my lips, and I head for the door of the bus with a very specific purpose in mind – pissing off Turner Campbell.

I fuck around the city for awhile, hitting up a few bars and stumbling half-drunk back to the parking lot where the buses are parked for the night. I find a lot of girls that night, but I turn them all down. Cannot stop thinking about Naomi Knox.

That was her?
I wonder for the hundredth time. I'm still having a hard time believing she was the one that walked in on me fucking that roadie. Was that when we first met? Is that why she hates me? Nah. Well, maybe a little. But that isn't it. There's something else, something more.