Heart Broke (Hard Rock Roots Book 8)

by C. M. Stunich

  I help Ronnie prop Cohen Rose's body into a more lively position and take a step back to look at him. He looks pretty fucking ratchet, but hey, so does my brother right now. I think he'll pass.

  “This is bullshit,” Trey growls from his spot on Ronnie's bed. We just tossed his crippled ass onto the blankets and hauled Cohen up into the chair. I mean, to get out of here in plain sight, broad daylight, do you have a better idea? Anyway, now we can use the wheelchair lift on the back of the rented van to haul Cohen inside. And if a random fangirl happens to snap a shot of the scene? Everyone will just assume we're taking Trey out on the town, grabbin' him a hooker or some shit.

  What happens after that is not my fucking problem … but I kind of feel like it should be.

  “You sure you want to take care of … the actual disposal by yourself?” I ask, smoking a cigarette and sliding a pair of shades onto Cohen's stiff, cold face. “I mean, if this all goes south, I'm kind of the person with the least to lose.” I shrug my shoulders and step back, keeping my attention focused on the black sweatshirt and the white Indecency logo instead of on Ronnie's face. I'm not trying to be whiny or morbid here, just speakin' the truth. Ronnie has kids and the sweetest little second chance romance you ever did see. Me … I'm just a stripper with a crush.

  “You always said I was the smartest of the bunch, right?” he asks, moving around the wheelchair and pulling me into a brotherly bear hug that warms my heart and makes me smile. Sometimes I want to scream when I look at this group of idiots that Trey dumped on my doorstep. Other times, it's kind of nice to have a bunch of dopey ass little brothers. “Let me take care of this, okay?”

  “Stop fucking hugging on each other and tell me what the hell is going on!” Trey tosses a water bottle at us and ends up hitting Ronnie right in the back. We both ignore him as we pull apart and take deep breaths.

  “Never disposed of a body before,” I mumble, sliding some lip gloss from my pocket and prettying up my mouth. Never hurts to have a beautiful mouth. Seriously. I switch back to my cigarette. “Don't forget to take back the sweater and the gloves and all that. Trey'll have a fit if you leave 'em in whatever dumpster you drop Cohen in.”

  “I want a goddamn explanation. I'm tired of you people sneaking around and whispering and shit. I want to know what's going on. Why is there a dead guy in my fucking wheelchair?”

  Ronnie and I continue to ignore Trey as we smoke our cigarettes and give the body another once-over. As stupid as this all seems, you gotta admit, my idea is pretty goddamn brilliant. If Cohen slumps or looks a little off, we can just pretend that Trey's having a bad day or something. It's perfect. Foolproof. Genius.

  “This is fucking stupid,” I murmur. “We are so screwed. Come on, Ronnie, spill. What're you gonna do with the body?” I spin to face Ronnie, blonde hair fluttering around me, silver cigarette smoke trailing from my pretty mouth.

  Ronnie reaches up and scratches at the back of his head, ruffling his dark hair and biting at his lower lip.

  “You know, I haven't really gotten that far yet.” There's a pause and then his face brightens up and he snaps his fingers. “I've got it.” I raise my eyebrows.

  “Okay?”

  “Can you call Dax for me?” I feel my lips twitch while Trey continues to bitch in the background, his screams fading to muffled curses. Thank god. Not sure how much more of this I can take.

  “Why do you need me to call Dax?” I ask, trying not to grit my teeth. Ronnie notices anyway and smiles wryly. “Because, you know, getting someone else involved in this shit doesn't sound like a very good idea.”

  “I'm not saying you have to call him up and tell him there's a corpse in our van. Just … get him to meet us in the lobby or something, okay?”

  “Us? It's an us now?” Ronnie shrugs his shoulders. Of course it is. I should've known better. I roll my eyes and stomp my feet out. Yeah, it's that sensation thing again. Just thinking about Dax gets icy chills running down my spine and tickling goose bumps up on my arms. “This sounds like a really stupid idea,” I tell Ronnie, straightening out my hot pink tank top and pointing a finger at him. “Really bad idea. Ridiculous.” Ronnie crosses his arms over his chest and blows smoke over Cohen's corpse-y little head.

  “Just do it.”

  “Fuck. Fine.”

  I slide out my cell phone and dial up Dax McCann.

  Back at the hotel with nobody and nothing, I decide that getting smashed is my best possible option, especially considering I can order room service and get exactly what I need. A god-awful number of pints in, I'm trashed on some overpriced lager that smells like the mothballs my grandma keeps in her closets, and I'm dialing up my dad.

  “Not really my fucking dad,” I mumble as the phone rings and my conscious mind rails at me to hang the fuck up. With everything that's going on around me, why would I want to open up this can of worms, too? I mean, obviously this whole bullshit thing with America and Travis and whatever didn't start twenty-three odd years ago. This particular bit of shit, this is all mine.

  “What the hell do you want?” Arnold McCann asks when he finally picks up the call. “Didn't I tell you I want nothing to do with you anymore, boy? Are you deaf or just dumb?”

  “I want to know who my fucking father is,” I snap at him, rubbing my thumb between my brows and leaning over, my head swirling with booze and bullshit. “I want to know why I got stuck with some hateful asshole that turned my life into a living hell, and I want to know why the fuck you put so much malice and rage into an infant. An infant. I might wear black and play drums and tattoo ghosts on my arm, but you're the frigging monster.”

  “You drunk, son?”

  “I'm not your goddamn son. You were pretty fucking clear about that.”

  There's a snort from Arnold's end of the line, and I can just imagine him shaking his head at me, disappointed as usual. Not that I give a fuck. Because I don't. I seriously fucking don't.

  “Your father,” Arnold snaps, and I cringe. Fifteen hundred miles away from the man and I'm still terrified of him. “Was some drunken asshole your mother met at a bar. There for a night, gone in the morning, and all he left to remember him by was your ass. A constant reminder of your mother's unfaithfulness, a constant reminder that a lousy tumble in a bathroom got her killed. Is that what you wanted to hear? You like knowing that you were unwanted by everyone? Your mother wept the entire nine months she was pregnant with you. If she didn't think God was looking down on her, judging her for her sins, she'd have aborted you and walked away a better woman.”

  Without thinking about what I'm doing, I stand up and chuck my phone at the wall. The screen cracks and it falls to the floor while I scream. Just fucking scream and then fall to my knees on the hotel carpet.

  No manager. No music. No mother.

  No friends. No family. No lover.

  No nothing.

  “Fuuuuuck.” I drag my hands down my face and breathe out nice and slow, my head swimming like the Northern Pacific. Fuck. Fuck. Jesus fuck.

  As I'm sitting there shaking and sweating and letting my dad's words screw with my head like I always do, my cell rings. It's some eighties song that Sydney programmed into my contacts.

  She's calling me.

  I crawl over to my cracked phone and pick it up. Sydney doesn't want me. Nobody does. But I answer anyway.

  “Hello?” I try my best to sound normal, but I'm pretty sure I'm slurring my words.

  “Hey, babe,” Sydney says, acting all nonchalant and whatever. This morning, the way she looked at me, I was sure she didn't want anything to do with me. Not that I blame her. Fuck. I don't want anything to do with me either. “You busy right now?”

  “I'm sitting drunk on the floor of my hotel room, and I'm pretty damn sure I'm about to vomit.”

  “Perfect. We'll be right there. Let the hotel know we're on our way.”

  Sydney's wearing lime green headphones around her neck and chewing her gum with a crack-snap-pop. I think I can hear White Wedding by Billy
Idol playing on her iPod.

  My cock turns to stone in an instant, drawing Sydney's eyes straight down to the bulge in my jeans. I lean against the doorjamb unapologetically. The fuck do I care anymore? Let her look. I'm done saying sorry for this shit. Why not play a Turner Campbell and unzip the damn things? Flash my dick for the entire hallway?

  Only I don't, you know, because I'm not Turner Campbell. I'm fucking Dax. Just … Dax.

  “Hey,” Sydney says, sliding under my arm and into the room with a sweet smoky scent trailing behind her. She smells like incense, like an underground magic shop that sells tea and herbs and shit. I close my eyes and breathe her in, prepared to slam the door closed behind her when I spot Ronnie pushing a wheelchair in my direction. Huh. Must be Trey, I guess?

  I try not to feel disappointed. Didn't I just declare that I don't give a crap about Sydney Charell? It wasn't like she was there for you when you needed her most or anything, right Dax? Be a dick and kick her out why don't you.

  I step aside, hating that my room is a frigging disaster. It smells like sweat and desperation and beer in here. Jesus Christ. I kick the door closed and take a deep breath, trying not to wrinkle my nose at the overpowering reek of body spray that follows the wheelchair. Treyjan and Turner and all those other assholes like them, they might be douche bags but I've never been poisoned by the rancid stench of Axe before. Goddamn it. Thought that crap was reserved for jocks and fanboys.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I drawl, slumping against the wall and putting a cigarette between my lips. I try to look at Ronnie but as usual, I can't keep my eyes off of Sydney. Good god. Even with a heavy blanket of melancholia dampening my spirit, I can't not look at her. Or keep my dick from getting painfully hard. Down boy. I suck in a deep breath and wrinkle my nose.

  Sydney steeples her hands in front of her face, her multicolored fingernails flashing bright against her pink mouth as she looks at me with those liquid candy eyes of hers and grimaces sheepishly.

  “You okay, Dax?” she asks me, giving me a once-over that doesn't really end like I'd want it to. I want to see her eyes light up like that first time she saw me, swarmed with lust, wrapped in desire. Instead she just looks … sad. Because I am sad. Just sad. Sad, sad, sad.

  “I'm alright,” I say which is complete bullshit, and Sydney knows it. We've been spending too much time together for her to miss my tumble down fuck-up hill. All I had was the music and my friends, and now … now I'm not even sure I have either of those anymore. “What's up?”

  Ronnie and Sydney exchange a long, lingering look, one that tells me there's something going on here that I'm not going to like.

  “I'm about as low as I can go, guys. Hit me with it. You can't take much from nothing.”

  “Dax,” Sydney begins, but Ronnie's already a step ahead of her, flipping back Trey's hood with a flick of his fingers and sliding off his shades.

  Only it's not Treyjan Charell.

  There's a motherfucking corpse in my hotel room.

  “Oh fuck.” I slap a hand to my face and take a nice long hot drag on my smoke. “Is that Cohen Rose?”

  “Might be,” Ronnie quips with a loose shrug of his shoulders. This guy, he's a god of the kit. As far as drumming goes, it doesn't get any better than Ronnie McGuire. This man's a living legend and he's not quite thirty years old. But apparently he's also a murderer. Great. Just great. Wonderful role model.

  “You killed him?” I ask, not like I'm surprised. Turner's a fucking asshole, but Cohen Rose, man … he's a wannabe asshole. Nothing worse than that. Not cool but desperate. Not confident but insecure. A total nightmare. I think I spoke to the guy a total of three times on the tour. Once, to buy blow off him. The second and third times I think he was calling me an emo faggot or some other unoriginal piece of dribble. I could've beaten the bitch up with my eyes closed. Why does everyone act like I'm a skinny goth boy with greasy hair and a satanic altar in my basement? I work out three times a week. Don't see Turner Campbell lifting weights with me.

  “Not me,” Ronnie says with another shrug. “Although I was strongly considering it. No, we found him dead in our bathtub this morning. I think Brayden Ryker left him there.”

  “Why would …” I start, but then pause, taking another deep breath that smells like sweat and body spray. “Later. You can tell me later. What I really want to know right now is why the fuck you brought a dead man into my hotel room?”

  “He was staying here, wasn't he? Cohen Rose?” Sydney asks, pulling my attention back to her. That's not a difficult task, really. She's so fucking beautiful. I check her out from head to toe, tracing her curvy figure, my eyes trailing over her acid wash skinny jeans, her purple heels, and then going back to her beautiful blonde hair and big pink earrings. Tattoos tease me from fingertip to shoulder, brightly colored sea creatures swimming over her skin and across her chest. She's like some eighties pop star or something, all neon colors and angles and pretty perfection.

  “To be honest, I have no fucking clue. Maybe. I guess?” I run my hand through my hair, glad that at least I had the chance to shower this morning. “Brayden Ryker booked us in here through next week. After that … I don't know what happens after that.” My forehead wrinkles up as I try to recall the night of our last concert. It's such a blur, dude. I remember guns and a kid and blood and … fuck. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “We need somewhere to dump the body,” Sydney says, all matter-of-fact and shit. I raise my eyebrows at her, my body tingling as I stand up straight and move around the table, dragging out a chair and flipping it around to sit in it. If either Ronnie or Sydney notices my cock straining against my pants, they're polite enough to pretend otherwise.

  “Um,” I start, my head spinning and twisting, my dad's words echoing in the back of my brain like they always do, a demon I can never shed. Is that what you wanted to hear? You like knowing that you were unwanted by everyone? Your mother wept the entire nine months she was pregnant with you. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “We were going to toss him in a dumpster or something, but the crowd is … well, it's frigging enormous.” Sydney moves over to my trash can and spits out her gum, switching it out for a cigarette. At least she has the decency to crack the window. I haven't bothered to do that once and I've been chain-smoking since we checked in. “So we need another plan, and we needed a plausible excuse for coming over here.”

  “And another accomplice for the felony charge of abuse of a corpse?” I ask. I'm being an asshole. I know I am. But come on? I hardly know these people, right? We're all trapped in the same spider's web. That's it. No connection at all.

  “I know what you're feeling right now,” Ronnie says, his voice surprisingly soft. I flick my eyes up at him and raise my brows. He comes over to sit next to me, pulling out the other chair and staring at me like he thinks I need some mentoring or something. “I lost my soul mate and then, three years later, I lost my brother. I get what you're going through, and I'm not saying you can't grieve, but don't dig another hole, Dax.”

  “What—”

  Ronnie reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. It's weird, this dude covered in snake and rose tattoos, looking at me like he gives a rat's ass about how I feel. I stare back at him, trapped in brown eyes that hold way too much wisdom for a guy in his late twenties. I know all about Ronnie, about his lost lover, his drug habits, his horde of kids. But something's changed in him recently. I mean, I can see he's not nearly as skinny as he was, not all drugged up and dragging, but holy shit.

  Part of me wants to slap his hand off and part of me wants to … listen.

  But then I remember he just wheeled a corpse into my hotel room and shrug him off.

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask instead, looking up at Sydney. At the very least, I owe her this. If she hadn't been there those first few days after the incident with Hayden and Tara, I'm not sure if I'd even be sitting here right now. “I might have a cemetery tattooed on my arm, but I'm n
ot exactly an expert on death. In fact, the more I see of it, the more I hate it.”

  “Do you have any idea what room Cohen might've been staying in? Or what floor? I mean, Brayden's guys are every-fucking-where, but they don't seem to have any interest in bothering my poor, crippled brother.” Sydney grins and pokes at Cohen's shoulder with her fingernail. “We figure if we can at least get him somewhere close by, then it doesn't matter if they find the body. I have a feeling that Brayden Ryker won't be making any calls to the police either. He seems to exist outside the system.”

  Sydney taps a finger against her lips and my body goes bat shit crazy. I can just imagine those lips enveloping my cock, her bubblegum pink tongue wrapping my dick.

  I groan and ash my cigarette into the tray behind me, leaning over and pressing my head into my forearm. Sex is like, literally the last thing I should be thinking about right now. So why when I see this girl does it become the first thing on my mind?

  “I think he was on this floor to be honest with you,” I say, raising my head and looking between the two of them with tired, sticky eyes. “But I've been so out of it lately that maybe I imagined him? Who knows?”

  “Well, that's a start,” Sydney says, putting her cig back in her mouth and flipping up Cohen's hood. I can't look at the man, at his corpse white skin or the weird half-smile on his face. God. There's a fucking dead body sitting not three feet away from me and here I am, smoking a cigarette and sporting a woody. Fan-fucking-tastic. “But if Brayden was in your room last night, Ronnie, he knows Cohen's dead, whether he put him in the tub or not. That means he's just waiting for us to do something about it. The man's not a complete idiot.”

  “He did it,” Ronnie says, still staring at me like some sort of fucking sage or something. What does he think? That he can save me or something? Screw him. I watch as he stands up and straightens his black Indecency tee. “Nobody else could've gotten into the house with our security detail. There's no fucking way.”