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The candy red Manson MB-2 with an ebony finger board and the controller screen built right into the slick as hell body that shimmers in the stage lights.
The piece I bought right before the Road Trip tour because I wanted it and because my last one was so broken in that the neck actually started splinting and leaving little painful reminders in my already calloused thumb.
Rex pulls at my arm to get a look at the screen I tilt in his direction because at this point, Ian’s right. It’s only a matter of time before the internet calls me out on it.
Where am I?
On stage, fucking someone.
With her pale legs on either side of my hips, her boots at my elbows and my guitar hanging loose against my ass, there’s no mistaking what’s going down in the wide shoot of the Setlist’s main stage, including my back that lights up the tablet and makes its way across the internet.
I’m just lucky her face and naked as fuck state is hidden behind me.
“I wanna know where it came from, Ian,” I snarl and dump the tablet in Rex’s grip when he stares at it too long, as if confirming it is who he thinks it is.
“I have a fucking guess,” Rex mutters and presses the button that blanks out the screen before handing the device back over to As Above’s head of security.
“Yeah,” Leo drags out from behind us, his humorless chuckle filling the cabin, and has me spinning on my heel with a tic to my jaw and a clench to my fists. “Or we could have just … oh, I don’t know. Maybe kept it in our fuckingpants?“ Leo’s voice echoes off the walls and settles in the center of my chest like a kick straight to my ribs.
And that just won’t do for me.
Stepping up to one of the men I’ve considered a brother for the better part of a decade, I wrap up the collar of his fancy shirt in my fist and yank his ass up close and personal to the sneer on my face.
“Or maybe you could have done your job.” With a growl, I shove Leo aside and throw a look over my shoulder as I move. “I’ll take that hand now.”
I don’t wait for a reply because I’m already out the door, helmet in hand, my thudding footsteps echoed behind me.
The kick of my bike’s engine roaring to life feeds the adrenaline already coursing through my veins and has me twisting my neck to relieve some of the pressure before slapping my helmet on and peeling out of the service entrance and onto the main road with one of As Above’s security blacked out SUV’s in my rear-view.
Cutting through the crowded street, I bank a left off of the main road where all the festival goers jam up the traffic and hit the calmer surface streets to open the bike the fuck up.
The engine roars to life when I engage the throttle, the SUV making the same turn just a few seconds behind me and the driver gunning it to catch up.
Inhaling deep, the earthy scent of Cedar fills my lungs and pulls a deep growling yell from the recesses of my chest.
He was right there. So close to Cedar, possibly seeing her body again.
All because I couldn’t keep my hands off of her.
And I had no fucking idea.
Bile races up fast and burns the back of my throat when the rage rips apart my nervous system and the only thing I see is pulsing red waves filtering out the pavement in front of me.
I pull onto the street leading into the dump of a trailer park I tracked Jeremy down to only hours ago, the SUV on my tail. I pass the rusted bucket of a car, the cracked and barred windows, the shambles of houses left behind to rot or become the next meth lab.
My jaw tics as I ride past the overturned flowerpots, the piles of trash and broken bicycles left abandoned on the destroyed driveways.
This is the life she almost lived.
I feel the ache of Cedar’s disappointment down to my very soul. The lasting pain Jeremy caused her that just echoes now in her strikingly blue as fuck eyes.
I’m gonna do so much better by her.
I can still imagine those eyes now—watering, puffy, and so full of pain—when I pull my bike right up to the last trailer in the deep recesses of the park and dump it.
My feet thunder up the decaying steps to the broken storm door. The glass shards from the busted door have been left scattered across the wooden porch and crunch beneath the sole of my boot with each calculated step. Lifting my knee, I raise my foot and slam it right below the doorknob.
The panel springs free from the jamb, smashing into whatever’s behind it and hangs loose on its hinges.
