35. Riot
Riot
Itear out the leaf of paper from my book, scrunch it up and toss it at the trash. It misses and ends up with the others scattered around the base of the can.
A giggle erupts behind the pulled curtain on Golden’s bunk.
Kelsey’s still not talking to me. It’s been days and she hasn’t said one fucking word to me since our heated exchange about the money she stole and why that means I need to not only pretend I can stomach being anywhere near Sonatina Savant, but that I have affection for her.
But she’s been as friendly as ever with Golden, Bronx, and Kodiak.
While she and I skirt around each other in bunk alley, she spent the late hours after the Tacoma concert watching infomercials with Kodiak in his bunk.
Yesterday she spent cuddled on the bench seat with Bronx playing video games, and then slept in his bed.
And this afternoon... I managed to catch a glimpse of her and Golden in matching goopy face masks as they emerged from the bathroom prior to holing up in his bunk.
The only place she should be is next to me. I have half a mind to drag her out of his bunk and keep her captive on my lap while I work.
“Another song?” Bronx puts down the game controller and stretches his arms above his head
“More like a whiny, pining ode to cherries.” I get up and collect the scraps of paper and dispose of them properly.
“Oowee, Chula Chula?” Bronx smirks.
Kodiak scratches at his messy hair as he looks up from his bass. He’s been focused on fiddling with the strings and practicing a new riff to perfection. His brow pulls together. “What?”
“Crazy night.” Bronx gets a faraway look on his face. “Will go down as one of the best nights ever.”
Kodiak shakes his head. “Are you all not talking English?”
“No, not strictly,” Bronx says.
“What happened on this best night ever?” He taps a beat on the side of his bass.
Bronx and I share a glance.
“Some nights can’t be explained.” I sit back down.
Kodiak looks to Bronx for clarification.
Bronx shrugs. “Sorry, bro. You had to be there.”
Kodiak shakes his head. He goes back to playing the riff. “Whatever.”
Bronx abandons his game to sit opposite me. “You want to talk about it?”
“Oowee, Chula Chula?” I raise a brow, pretending I don’t understand the deeper meaning behind why he used that reference.
He rolls his eyes. “What did we miss between you and our girl? One minute we were group bonding in the best possible way, the next you two haven’t talked to each other in days. What happened? You were a jackass, weren’t you?”
“No.” Maybe. I could probably have handled things better.
If she’d give me anything to work with. I haven’t found the key to understanding her journal, even though I went back and started rereading it from the start.
It’s like she knew I would get my hands on it and read the damn thing eventually. “Everything is fine.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “We’re on a bus. It’s not like we can miss the way you two are around each other.”
My phone vibrates loudly on the table. I glance at the screen. Sonatina has been messaging me excessively since that video went viral. She wants something. Whatever it is I don’t want to give it to her.
The hell she’s setting foot on this bus. Or anywhere near Kelsey.
“As much as I love having time to myself with her, I’ve got to agree with Bronx,” Kodiak says. “Something happened. What did you do?”
“I told her why we’re stuck with Sonatina.
” I close my lyric book. Maybe her time as my muse has run its course.
It’s all getting too complicated. Especially now that my stalker is back in action.
Sonatina is threatening to join us on tour at some point.
And Marco is still a consideration no matter how far away he might be.
We could part in Vancouver. I’ll make sure she has enough money to get herself set up since I’ll be breaking the agreement Bronx told me he made with her, and then we’ll go our separate ways. “I told her Sonatina’s our manager thanks to her thieving from us.”
“What did she say?” Bronx leans forward, his elbows on the table.
“That she didn’t do it.” Standing, I shove my notebook in my back pocket and grab a bottle of Jack to keep me company while I read.
Bronx doesn’t say anything. He presses his palms into the table and stretches back until his shoulders pop. “Well...”
“She’s lying obviously,” I say the words he doesn’t want to say before I stalk into bunk alley.
Except she’s adamant. Her story hasn’t changed. What if she’s not lying?
There’s proof. I’ve seen it. Carmine showed me the discrepancies in the accounts. So why is it that two and two doesn’t seem to equal four like it should?
I tug the curtain back on Golden’s bunk.
The two of them are cozily sitting side by side, his covers over their laps while they craft in their matching face masks. She has her diamond painting and he’s crocheting a small, happy octopus to add to his collection of crocheted creatures displayed on a shelf.
I missed this. The family we were when she was with us. The everyday moments that kept us grounded.
Her.
I can’t let her go. I can’t go back to being without her. Even if the only form we can be together in is as two people who hate and hurt each other.
“What do you need, brother?” Golden pauses mid-loop.
“My damn muse in my bed where she belongs,” I say darkly, knowing that she’s not going to do it. That if I want her there, I’m going to have to force her and that’s not something I’ll do. Not unless she asks me very fucking nicely in advance. Pretty please with a cherry on top.
“Can you tell him that I would rather eat dynamite?” she smiles sweetly at him before she focuses on adding a tiny resin bead to a spot on the canvas.
Golden shrugs apologetically. “She’d rather eat—”
“I heard her,” I snarl at him and yank the curtain back across.
Loosening the cap from the bottle of Jack, I hold the bottle by the neck and spin the base until the contents start to whirl. A third of the bottle has disappeared between my lips by the time I send my bedroom door crashing against the frame.
Picking up her journal from the nightstand, I pick up reading where I left off while I pace and drink. Unable to relax. Unable to ignore the giggles when she and Golden get up to clean off their face masks.
We went to see Paramore tonight. They’re my favorite band. Or they used to be. But L.A. Riot is going to be bigger. I can feel it deep down in the spot where I know things before I know them. Anyway, Riot and I danced and sung our lungs out. By the time we left I had no voice left.
Then my freaking shoe broke and he carried me on his back for blocks while we talked about L.A. Riot’s future. He smelled like weed, leather and that sexy cologne he wears.
I remember that. We’d stopped and gotten tacos.
She’d straddled and sat on my lap because there weren’t enough empty chairs at the place we’d stopped.
Our conversation had been intense so it made sense to be face-to-face.
But I’d had to fight the urge to kiss her and start something I was still telling myself we couldn’t have.
Until she'd dropped half the contents of her taco between us.
Perhaps if I’d stopped my attraction to her there, we would still be friends. We could be those people we were.
I flip and scan the following pages.
We went down to the motocross course this morning. The way he rides a motorcycle... it’s just about the hottest thing I have ever seen. But I gave him a run for his money. Maybe. Either that or he let me win.
Then he pretended to stalk me with that damn helmet on, the visor down. There is something about a man in a helmet that screams danger and the wildest ride of your life if you know what I mean.
Well, that’s interesting. I file that scrap of information away for later.
I keep reading, through the start of our relationship. That’s where the story thins. She mustn’t have taken her journal with her to Heart Ranch where the wedding took place. Otherwise, it would be full of hate and anger at this point.
It’s also the point where she starts questioning whether she should confess. But then gives absolutely zero clues to what she’s hiding.
“What were you keeping from me?” I keep flipping through the pages, reading backward and forward each time she felt regret for not coming to me.
I wonder if Doc will let it slip. If he does, is Riot going to come after me?
Doc knows about this. I must have missed it in my first read. Gotten distracted.
Why would Doc be aware? What information would he have that I didn’t?
And why was he concerned about her when she walked him out the other night?
Unless they were hiding something from me.
Unless he didn’t tell her there was nothing wrong when I had him check her out before we left for the wedding.
She’d puked over nothing.
Unless she’d actually puked over something I couldn’t see. Something small, but life changing.
I toss the journal aside and retrieve her memento box.
My heart is pounding in my ears. Nausea is eating away at my insides like acid. I can’t breathe. She would have told me if she were pregnant. She wouldn’t have hidden it from me. We told each other everything.
Except, she was testy as hell about me smoking weed around her on that trip.
She wasn’t drinking. And she was over the top insecure for a woman who has more fight in her than anyone else.
I thought admitting our feelings and making it official would make our relationship stronger.
Instead, it had flipped some switch inside her.
What if the reason behind all her weird behavior was because she’d found out she was pregnant?
The contents of the box scatter across my covers. I pick up the pregnancy test in its plastic bag. It looks like the ones Doc uses, but it could easily be bought anywhere. It’s not evidence of anything other than Kelsey was pregnant at some point.
I rifle through all the bits and pieces and find nothing, but there are cards in their original envelopes. I open and empty each one. The pile on the bed doubles.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am clutching at straws.
I asked her about the baby when I found the test and she hadn’t answered. But she’d shut down hard. Was that because it’s mine? Why didn’t she fucking tell me?
I’d let it go because I assumed I couldn’t be the father. But now...
I could wake Doc. Fire him if he doesn’t tell me the damn truth. Because someone has to, and it clearly isn’t going to be Kelsey.
A thin piece of shiny paper falls out of the envelope I am holding upside down. It falls onto the pile, blank side up. I pick it up, my knees giving way as I do.
I sit heavily on the edge of the mattress.
I don’t have to look at the image for my breath to stall.
Between my brothers, I have six nieces and nephews so far.
And Rogue and Ivy have another one on the way.
The only time I’ve seen this paper outside of a hospital is when it has been a picture of one of the babies.
I turn that piece of paper over like it’s fragile. The picture is in grainy black and white. It would be hard to make out if I hadn’t seen a heap of them in the last couple years. The dates on it are clear. This image was taken fifteen weeks after she left me. The baby is dated at nineteen weeks.
She was pregnant at the wedding.
Across the bottom of the paper in her careful print is our baby’s name. Harlowe Maddox.
She was pregnant with my baby.