3. Chirp
CHIRP
Herb threw his hands up in the air, his beer sloshing over the edge of his paper cup, a few droplets spraying over both me and Amber.
She scowled at him and wiped the sticky spray off her bare arm. “Herb! That’s the third time you’ve done that!”
He cried and tried to help her clean up. “Sorry! I just really like this song!”
He moved his hips in a little shimmy that was probably supposed to be in time with the beat but was definitely not.
He had a bit of pudge around his belly, probably thanks to the munchies the man seemed to have a permanent case of, courtesy of his pot smoking habit.
A beard hid a double chin, but did nothing to disguise the warm, friendly smile he always had at the ready. “Come on, Amber! Dance with me.”
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “That’s not dancing. That’s… I don’t know what that is, actually.”
I didn’t either. Herb’s dance moves looked like a cross between an oversized worm having a fit and the water sprinklers that jerked around the lawns of the fancy houses in Providence.
The two of them had bickered from the time we’d left the Slayers’ compound, all through the first three bands of the night, and with Kyle and Kiki staking out spots at the front of the crowd and not here to be a buffer between them, I was all that was left.
I was ready for a break from it. The wind was picking up again, blowing dust in my eyes, and there was a hell of a lot of people at this thing.
My brain rattled from the constant noise of the last few hours.
“I’m going to take a break. I’ll catch up with you guys later.
” I pointed back toward the campsite we’d left behind.
Herb and Amber were too busy with their bickering to even notice.
Coming along on this trip had probably been a mistake. There was nowhere to go for any downtime. Nowhere quiet where an introvert could recharge, except my truck, and it had been too hot to sit in there, at least until the sun had gone down.
It was fine. It was only a few days, and I’d go back to the club afterward and lock myself in my room until I could people again.
But here, while I couldn’t physically be alone, my fingers itched to pick up a guitar. Because that was the only other way I found some peace. I only ever played in my bedroom, and normally only when the other guys were all out so no one would hear. But nobody knew me here.
The campsites weren’t as quiet as I might have hoped, even though I was back well before the performances were scheduled to finish.
People still milled about, some clearly getting ready to go down to the stages late, but others set in for the night, camp chairs set in circles, drinks flowing and the smell of barbecue in the air.
Faint strains of music from the stage reached back here, but it wasn’t loud.
I passed groups playing their own music from little portable, battery-operated speakers, one site’s music crashing into the next.
By the time I got back to our things, I was more overstimulated than ever and beelined for the beat-up old guitar in the back of my truck.
I dropped the tailgate, and pushed myself up on it, settling my lower back against the metal and propping up one jean-covered leg so I had somewhere to rest my instrument.
The strings were familiar beneath my fingers, the pick an extension I’d been holding ever since my early teens. I strummed a few times, twisted a few knobs until it all sounded right, and then closed my eyes.
Covers fell from my fingers first, one song running into the next while I craved that musical zone where everything else drifted away.
At some point, the notes I played changed to an original.
It had always been one of my favorites and as the wind swirled around me, I moved through more of the stuff I’d created.
“Mess Me Up”
“Teeth Marks”
“Love Me Like You Hate Me”
They were old songs, ones I knew by heart, ones that required no conscious thought. Ones I could lose myself to and just fall into the notes and rhythm.
The rest of the world faded away when I played.
At some point of barely conscious thought, I opened my mouth and sang the lyrics so deeply imprinted in my brain there was no chance I could forget them.
I didn’t know how long I sat there playing. Only that when I opened my eyes, someone else’s collided.
I’d drawn a crowd. A small group of people who had stopped to listen to me sing and play, and I hadn’t even had the remotest idea of anyone there. Hot embarrassment flushed my cheeks, and I ducked my head, feeling stupid.
“Don’t stop,” someone called out. “You’re really good.”
I shook my head, ready to brush off their compliments, but then my gaze locked again with that set of blue eyes I’d first noticed when I’d come out of the zone.
She didn’t say anything, just gave me the tiniest smile and went to walk away.
And I suddenly found myself playing again because I didn’t want her to leave.
Something settled inside me when she stopped to listen again, and this time when I played, I did it with my eyes open so I could keep watching her.
She’d curled her blond hair into loose waves that fell beneath a wide brimmed cowboy hat. Her outfit was something between what Kiki and Amber had been wearing, cowboy boots and a mini skirt, paired with a bikini top her tits practically spilled out of.
She rubbed at her arms as the wind rattled between campsites, and I found myself wanting to know why she was standing there watching me when she was obviously cold. She should have gone back to her site and grabbed a sweater.
I jerked my head toward my club jacket, folded and hanging over the side of my truck bed, inviting her to take it.
She scrunched her face up adorably, like she wasn’t sure if she should or not.
I just kept playing, my eyes shaded by the brim of my baseball cap and the lack of light around me. But I saw her, in every sparkling drop of moonlight that kissed her skin.
Fuck, she was beautiful.
The crowd grew around me, more and more people stopping to listen, and maybe if I hadn’t been so engrossed in the woman, I would have noticed their whispered comments earlier.
“Wait, I swear I know this guy.”
“Why is his voice so familiar?”
“Oh my God, it’s that guy from YouTube, isn’t it? Noise by Nobody? The guy who wears a mask when he sings?”
Fear jolted through me, and I hit a wrong note, my voice cracking painfully. The guitar let out a twang I hadn’t intended for it to make.
The man who had been so sure he knew who I was, shook his head. “Nah, it’s not him. He’s just doing his covers.”
His friends agreed with him as I shoved my guitar in its case as fast as I could. They walked away and relief crashed over me.
My heart raced, and I tried to breathe through the threatening panic attack. I didn’t play in front of people. Never had, never would. And yet I had tonight, because I’d been so distracted by a set of blue eyes that the rest of the world had seemed to disappear.
“You’re really good.”
I jerked and spun around.
Her.
She hadn’t left with all the others. She stood there at the end of my truck, watching me carefully.
Hot embarrassment chased its way up my neck, and I was glad it was too dark for her to see it.
“Uh, thanks. I’m just messing around.” I swallowed thickly, dying on the inside that this woman had heard the songs I’d written late at night in my bedroom.
Those words came from a place I didn’t know or recognize.
From somewhere so deep inside me I was barely conscious of it.
But every word felt like it had been pulled straight from my soul, and realizing a whole bunch of people, her included, had a front row seat that stared right inside my body had my skin crawling.
This was why I recorded myself wearing a mask.
I couldn’t write songs like that and then play them for the whole world to hear.
And yet I had tonight.
I’d been drinking. Shared a joint with Herb. That was the only logical explanation I had.
She cocked her head to one side. “So you aren’t the guy from YouTube all those people seemed to think you are?”
I forced a laugh and then lied through my fucking teeth. “Pretty sure that guy would be on a stage somewhere, not singing covers in the back of his truck.”
She nodded like that made sense.
Because it did.
Noise by Nobody had over a million followers across various social media apps. He stared at the camera in all his videos, baseball cap low, mouth and nose covered by a bandana. All he showed was his eyes, and he stared at the camera like he wanted to fuck every woman watching from the other side.
Noise By Nobody had women sliding into his DMs, offering everything from management to blow jobs. And he cooly ignored them all.
He wasn’t the man standing here now feeling so fucking tongue-tied because a beautiful woman had stopped to talk to him.
The wind blew a gust of dust and cold air at us, and the woman shivered once more, rubbing her arms. “It’s crazy how hot it is during the day, and how cold it gets at night. I did not dress appropriately.”
Her nipples strained at the thin cups of her bikini top, just another sign of how cold she was. For a second, all I could think about was putting my mouth over them and licking and sucking her until the warmth of my tongue relaxed them.
I realized I was just standing then like a creep, staring at her tits while she shivered.
I grabbed my jacket from the back of my truck and opened it up for her. “Here. Take this. I’m Chirp, by the way.”
She reached for it, and cocked her head to one side, amusement written all over her pretty features. “Chirp? That a nickname or do your parents really hate you?”
It hadn’t even occurred to me to tell her my legal name. No one had used it in so long, I’d just gotten used to not hearing it. I couldn’t help but grin at her. “They do hate me, but not that much. It’s a nickname. A road name, really. I’m in a biker club and that’s just what everyone calls me.”
She froze. Her fingers crumpled in my jacket. “Which club?” She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and then forced them open, staring down at the reaper holding a scythe on the back of my jacket.
“Saint View Slayers.”
She thrust the jacket back at me so fast it was like it had burned her.
I blinked at the violent motion, not quick enough to grab the jacket before she let it go. It fell to the dirt at my feet.
She walked backward like she’d seen a ghost, shaking her head. “I have to go.”
Panic reared up inside me. There were thousands of people at this festival. If she walked away now, there was a very good chance I would never see her again.
Something inside me screamed at that thought.
I grabbed her hand. “Wait. Don’t go.”
She pulled her fingers from my grasp, shaking her head hard. “I have to. You can’t—”
“Siren?”
The woman spun around, staring at Kiki and Kyle.
Kiki’s eyes went huge.
And then filled with tears.
Siren trembled, and I was sure this time it wasn’t just from the cold.
Her and Kiki stared at each other like they were seeing ghosts.
“Keeks,” Siren managed to choke out.
A tear dripped down Kiki’s cheek, and she suddenly rushed in, pulling the other woman into the tightest, fiercest hug I’d ever seen.
One that ended so abruptly it felt as cold as the winds.
When Kiki stepped back her eyes were cold.
Siren’s lips pressed together and nodded once. “I’ll go.”
She looked over at me for a second, something wistful in her eyes, and then she walked away.
“Wait!” I called.
But Siren kept walking and when I went to chase after her, Kiki grabbed my arm. “Let her go. You can’t talk to her.”
I frowned. “What? Why not?” I strained to see her through the darkness and the other people milling around. I could still catch up to her if Kiki would just let me go.
But Kiki dug her nails into my arm. “You can’t, Chirp. Not as long as you’re a Slayer.”
I didn’t understand how one thing had anything to do with the other. “What has that got to do with anything?”
She stared after Siren with sad eyes. “She’s War’s ex.”
She may as well have slapped me in the face with a dead fish. I started at her. “You’re joking. She’s the prez’s woman?”
Kiki shook her head. “Was the prez’s woman. He excommunicated her after he found out she murdered his father.”
Kyle’s mouth dropped open.
So did mine. “What the fuck?”
Kiki grabbed my hand, pressing her fingers to it.
“As long as you’re a member of this club, you cannot speak to her, Chirp.
If War found out… He showed her compassion by letting her go, not reporting her, and not ending her life himself.
But no one in the club can talk to her.” She looked off into the space where Siren had disappeared before she looked back at me with fierce eyes. “She’s as good as dead to all of us.”