Real Ugly (27 page)

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.

“I knew it,” she whispers. “He got here first.”

And then there are men in uniform, dragging me and Dax and the girl back, pulling us out of the blood, away from the scent of copper and pain. My first instinct is to fight, and I end up elbowing a cop in the face. They cuff me and throw me in the back of a squad car, but I still have a first row seat to what's going on in front of me.

One body goes on a stretcher, the other in a body bag. I don't know which is which, and it's killing me.

This can't be happening. It just can't. I can't discover Naomi only to lose her. How fucked up is that? And she can't be dead, not yet, not with that pain she's carrying around. She deserves someone to show her a good time first, show her that life isn't all bad. Maybe I'm not the one, but maybe I am. How the fuck are either of us supposed to know, to be happy? If she is gone, I get the feeling that I am really and truly screwed. And I also know that I don't care because without her on this earth, nothing else will matter. Not even me.

Blue and red lights flash as the ambulances speed away. Well, one speeds, one goes slow. That's the one that scares the shit out of me. I drop my head to the back of the seat, and I scream. It echoes out the open window and ricochets around the lot.

In the midst of the gathering crowd around me, somebody smiles.

To be continued...

Dear Reader,

I want to apologize for the cliff-hanger. It's super screwed up, and I'm sorry. Unfortunately, not everything gets to be tied up in a pretty bow, especially not a story as fucked up as this. What I can promise you is that you'll get an ending … eventually. Check for the second book in the series, coming soon. It's a real doozy, but I promise you answers.

Peace and love.

C.M.

P.S. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story, and I look forward to sharing the rest of this journey with you. Readers imbue words with magic, and I can't thank you enough for that. <3

If you enjoyed this, you might like the
Never say Never
Trilogy
.

Excerpt Included!

1

Rick is a perfectly nice guy.

But not for me.

Rick is the kind of guy you can take home to your family, show off, and know that at the end of the day, he'll be there for you. I'm not into guys like Rick. I should be, but I'm not. I think there's something wrong with me. I need a guy like Rick to put me on the straight and narrow, to help me stop doing the things I shouldn't be doing and start doing the things I should.

Right now, my back is to a wall and I'm kissing the neck of a guy I don't know. My therapist says it's because I have 'daddy' issues. Like that's supposed to mean something to me. How can I have daddy issues when I barely knew the prick? He didn't walk out on me and mom like my therapist thinks. She thinks that because I've never told her the truth. My dad died right in front of my eyes, called out my name seconds before the light went out of his face and left him cold. That's all I remember about him. Other than that, my mind is a blank, a series of shadowy pictures without words. They don't make any fucking sense.

The guy I'm kissing unbuttons his pants. I think about telling him to use a condom, but I just don't feel like it. I'm on the pill anyway. He thrusts into me while I'm watching Rick through a crack in the door. He's drinking punch, not alcohol, and smiling with big, wide teeth in a face that's handsome, but not too handsome. Rick's the kind of guy that your friends compliment you on, tell you he's gorgeous, but they never try to sleep with him. The ones they really want, the dangerous ones, the ones with pasts that burn like fire and melt everything around them … Those are the guys that I always seem to fall for. The one I'm having sex with right now is one of those. I don't even know his name.

“I love you,” the guy says over and over, and I roll my eyes. I've heard it before, a hundred times, and I just don't want to hear it anymore. I pretend to have an orgasm, moaning and groaning and scratching his back, and all the while, I'm watching Rick. We have a date tomorrow night that I think I'm going to cancel. I thought maybe I'd take Rick out, see how chivalrous he really was, but tonight, he's wearing khaki pants and a red sweater. I don't date guys like Rick.

The guy I'm fucking finishes and tells me how great I am. Then he disappears and I don't see him again, not that night or any other. I light a cigarette and leave the room before any of the drunken idiots at the party stumble in and find me there with my panties around my ankles. I step out of them and stuff them in my pocket, aware that my skirt is too short and that my ass is hanging out. I just can't seem to find it in myself to care.

“Hey,” Rick says, intercepting me before I can reach the front door. “We still on for tomorrow night?” He looks me up and down, and I can see that he's curious about my disheveled appearance, my mussy hair and my swollen lips, but he doesn't ask about it. I don't think he even gives it a second thought. Rick doesn't know that girls like me exist. He's heard about them on TV, maybe even masturbates to them, but he doesn't really believe that they exist in this world or any other. I really should keep my date with Rick, go out with him, and grow up.

“I can't,” I say, biting my lip seductively and touching his cashmere sweater with a shaking hand. I don't know why it's shaking, but I don't like it, so I pull it back and let it fall to my side. I blow cigarette smoke in Rick's face which is rude, but that I do anyway. There's a monster inside of me, eating little bits of me everyday, and I can't seem to stop it. It makes me do things I don't want to do, say things I don't want to say. It makes me tell Rick that I've got to study for a test that he really believes I have.

I kiss him on the lips and leave an orange-red stain before I walk out the door and down the front steps. People wave at me as I go by and say they'll see me around, but I don't really know who any of them are, so I avoid their stares and their friendly smiles. It's all fake, just a big load of shit that I can't buy into or I'll die. If I ever believe in something again, and it turns out to be false, then not only will my body crumble beneath me, but so will my soul. I'll disintegrate, disappear into the wind and blow away. I'll be nothing. I'll blank out and the energy of who I was will just go away, melt into the ground and come back as something unimportant, like a dandelion or a caterpillar. I can't find it in my heart to care.