Noah stood over him, his shoulders squared, his eyes blazing with hate and anger. Like a herd of sheep, the crowd instantly parted from the scene of the fight, as entranced by the display of power as I was. Noah circled the fallen man before he grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him up until he was hanging like a rag doll, his tip-toes just barely sc.r.a.ping the floor.

Noah didn't even scream at him. He let him hang there for a few horrible seconds, terrified, staring into the face of pure hatred. Then he threw him hard into the bar, where his face connected with counter edge and let out a sickening thud. The drunk collapsed to the floor in an agonizing heap.

I was still pressed against the wall, too shocked to move. Kevin came around from behind the bar, carrying a beat-up baseball bat and looking ready to fight. When he saw Noah standing over the man, he dropped the bat and helped Noah pick him up. A few other men stepped up to give a hand and together they dragged the motherf.u.c.ker out of the club.

The band kept playing, and most of the show-goers didn't even notice.

Noah came back inside and immediately made his way over to me at the wall. A few people had already gathered gently around me, asking if I was okay. He patted each of them on the shoulder as he pushed by them to get to me. As soon as he was close enough, he gripped my head between his hands and forced me to look him in the eyes.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

I hadn't even had time to consider the question. In a split second I went from feeling that disgusting man's hands all over me to watching him get beat up by Noah Hardy. It was all too much, too fast.

Noah seemed to sense that. He rubbed his thumbs over my cheeks, his expression crumpled and worried, before kissing the top of my head and leading me away from the wall with an arm around my shoulder.

We ended up in the back room of the bar where Kevin kept the kegs and did all his washing for the place. The room was a bit quieter, m.u.f.fling the sounds from the stage. Kevin brought us all shots and joined us in a quick drink before he rushed back out to deal with his full house of customers.

The whiskey helped. I felt my muscles loosening under the warmth. Slowly, my mind started to reconnect with the rest of my body.

Noah only stood in front of me, holding my hand, rubbing it gently in his. He waited. "Did he hurt you?"

I shook my head immediately. "No, no." He had grabbed my breast pretty hard, but already the pain was fading. "It just happened so fast, it scared the s.h.i.t out of me."

"I can't f.u.c.king believe that just happened in my club," said Noah with an angry shake of his head. "If that a.s.shole dares show his face around here again, he won't live to regret it."

My mind was racing with confusion. Noah really was violent, he had just proven that beyond a doubt-as if his record didn't already prove it. And yet as angry as he was, and as badly as he hurt that dude, he still didn't kill him. He still showed restraint, and in a moment when probably everyone else in this club would have understood if he hadn't.

Noah was violently loyal. He'd give up everything to protect his roots; and he'd kill to protect his friends. Or his girl.

Is that what I was?

He seemed to suddenly be aware of the weight of his words, given the situation. Noah's face flushed, and the hand stroking my hair slowed. His eyes darted around. "I mean... f.u.c.k, I... I really should not have said that."

I grasped the hand on the side of my face and brought it to my mouth for a gentle kiss. "No. Don't apologize. I'm lucky you were here to protect me."

Something like hope flashed across Noah's face. He mimicked my affection and brought my hand to his lips, pursing them there against my skin with his eyes closed.

"We can get out of here," he said. "I understand if you don't want to stay in here after that."

I stroked his beard and smiled. "You're sweet to worry. But I'm okay, really."

"What if I said I wanted to get out of here?"

I shrugged. "I'd say sure. Metalcore never really was my jam."

"There's just too many people here tonight," said Noah. "There's too much in my head tonight. I want to go somewhere peaceful with you."

"Sounds wonderful," I said.

"Good," said Noah, taking my hand. "Come with me."

~ Twelve ~

Noah

After what happened in the club, all I could think about was getting Laurel somewhere safe. Even though she'd been to shows a million times and had no doubt dealt with way worse jerkoffs than the dude who groped her tonight, it felt like I had personally failed her. All this rumbled around my head silently as I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to my side on the dark, winding drive.

Not too many miles from my house, in the more isolated parts of Thornwood, a small river tributary ran through the dark woods. The flat, soft beaches created by the slow-moving parts of the river were popular places for peace and quiet, and one in particular had always calmed me down. A makeshift parking lot of gravel carved on the side of the unkempt highway road was the only indicator that anything was worth stopping for. Tonight, we were the only ones here. I pulled my truck to a stop in the dark.

"Is this the part when they find my body wrapped in plastic on the beach, and you start having crazy dreams about red curtains and giants?" said Laurel as she looked around through the windows.

"Why don't you sound sadder about that possibility?" I laughed.

"Hey, I like a good mystery as much as the next girl."

I kissed the top of her head. "I come here sometimes when things get too loud. I've got some dry firewood in the tool box in the back. What do you say we have a little bonfire?"

"That sounds lovely!" said Laurel with a smile. "Isn't it funny when you live your life around heavy music, but still need so much quiet sometimes? People always gave me s.h.i.t for that."

With a smirk, I nodded. "They're not living their fullest lives without both."

Laurel smiled up at me like we had a secret together. She leaned up my body and kissed me sweetly, still with the same s.e.xual hunger she always seemed to possess, but with an added tenderness. Was that there before? Or was I just now noticing it myself? The thoughts melted away when I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her close, into the kiss.

Before she could get me so hard I couldn't say no, I pulled away from the kiss and got out of the truck, helping her out behind me. The firewood was wrapped in plastic and wedged in the toolbox; by the time I got it out and turned around, Laurel was already shivering in the unexpectedly cool night air. She had dressed for a night indoors at the Graveyard Club, and I hadn't thought to have her grab a jacket before we left her car at the lot.

"Oh, f.u.c.k, sugar," I said, dropping the wood on the ground. Keys fumbling, I pulled the truck door open and dug around until I felt the fabric of the spare sweatshirt I always kept in the cab. After giving it a firm shake and a smell, it seemed clean and dry. I turned it over to the front and realized it was my old Rising End sweatshirt.

"Here," I said, helping it over her head. "This is a warm coincidence."

Laurel giggled a little as I invariably made the getting on of the sweatshirt more complicated than it needed to be. Her eyes were shining with laughter when she finally popped her head out of the neck hole, hair alight and floating in a million different directions.

"You're the scariest thing in these woods right now," I said, smoothing her hair down with my hands.

She batted them away and made a grumpy noise. "Doesn't speak very highly of your woods, then, does it?"

"Is that a hidden insult about my d.i.c.k?"

She came toward me with a wicked grin and ran a finger up and down my chest. "Now, what could there possibly be to insult about that?"

"Nothing, I just like to hear it from someone else every now and then," I laughed.

Laurel rolled her eyes and gave me a soft punch in the stomach. She turned and followed the clear-cut path through the greenery that led down a slight hill toward the riverbed. I grabbed the firewood and followed her down after making sure the truck was locked tight.

This beach was my favorite because of one specific feature: the driftwood. Lots of it inevitably got picked up by local artists or a.s.shole tourists, but the piece that somehow wound up in this tiny little gully was enormous, easily thirty feet long, rolled by the sand and sea into a soft, rounded ghost of its former self. The trunk sat parallel with the river, its most gnarled end planted in a curve in the river like ancient roots. The opposite end, however, was firmly on dry land, and was just as comfortable a bench as any I'd ever found. Laurel was drawn to it without direction. She sat in the twilight, huddled in my sweatshirt, watching me set up a little pit for the fire. It only took me ten minutes to get her roaring, and the warmth scattered the gully with dancing light.

With my back to the driftwood, I sank down into the sand, and beckoned Laurel to me. She sat down between my legs and leaned on my back as my arms wrapped around her, swallowing her completely. She wasn't shivering anymore, not with the fire to her front and me at her back.

We didn't talk for a while, and that was fine. I could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, and the beat of her heart against me. My cheek resting on the top of her head, I smiled when I realized her wearing my shirt was mingling our scents together in my senses.

"This is perfect," she said after a while in a dreamy voice. "Feels like I never get moments like this anymore."

I kissed her hair. "Why not?"

She was quiet, and then she shook her head a little. "I'm not... I'm not the best at moments like this. It's hard for me to be close to people. I'm much better at work... at my job." She sighed. "But even the good days at work don't feel like this."

"You don't have to sacrifice this for your ambition, you know," I said to her. "There are men out there who would be glad as h.e.l.l to have a woman who gives a s.h.i.t about something. There's almost nothing s.e.xier than watching a professional work."

Laurel let out a bitter scoff and turned her eyes down, away from the fire, and suddenly I worried I had struck a nerve.

"What is it?" I asked, leaning my head next to hers.

There was something I wanted her to say. But I didn't know if she felt it.

"I just..." She stopped when her voice cracked, and I realized how close she was to tears. The smile on her half-turned face was pressed, forced. "I've been hearing that for a long time now, and it still hasn't been true. I'm starting to think everyone just doesn't know what else to tell me."

She wrapped her arms around herself, and in turn, I wrapped my arms tighter around her. Lips against her hair, I said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. And I don't know about everyone else... but I really mean it."

"Really mean what?"

"What I said. Watching someone who is good at what they do is the hottest thing. I'd consider myself a lucky man if the woman I ended up with was so talented."

Laurel inhaled sharply under my touch, and something about it made my heart stop. But the moment fell silent between us, filled by the sounds of the crackling fire and softly flowing river.

I didn't understand what I was feeling for Laurel. When I wasn't thinking about this disaster with the band, or how badly I wanted to beat Duke to a pulp, I was thinking about her. When she was next to me, I felt like I could handle whatever the world threw at me. And being apart from her was starting to feel a lot like being apart from something vital to my life.

In that moment by the beach, I wanted to spill everything to her. I wanted to hand her my darkest secrets and see if she could hold them, see if she would still want to kiss me when it was all said and done. I craved to know if what was building in my heart had any bearing on the real world, or on her. I wanted to cut open a vein and bleed everything out.

Just like with the festival, even though I knew I did the right thing back in the Graveyard Club by stopping that guy from a.s.saulting her, guilt still raged through my mind. Guilt that Laurel had seen me, up close and personal, at my most violent. Duke's bitter accusations rang in my ears, and I realized I actually was scared that Laurel saw me as an animal. I didn't want her to think that of me. The thought was unbearable.

"I want to tell you something," I said. "And I know we haven't talked about this yet... and you've been... you've been really amazing to just spend time with me and get my mind off what's happening without bothering me to bring it up."

Laurel said nothing, waiting for me to continue. Her body shifted under me, though, scooting closer, grasping the cloth of my jeans.

"I'm not allowed to say much to anybody, but not talking about it is f.u.c.king killing me. The festival... the festival was an accident," I said. "Not just an accident, but...a complicated one."

"What do you mean?" said Laurel. She turned in my lap to look at me, sliding in the sand until her gaze met mine, and I could tell by the worry in her eyes that I looked sadder than I realized.

"Look, I told my band, I told the cops, and now I'm telling you, even if you don't believe me like the rest..." Anxiety spread through my veins.

"Believe what, Noah?" Laurel rubbed her hands up and down my chest, and then grasped my hands with hers. "What happened?"

I took a deep breath. Pulse rushing in my ears, I spilled out the words before I could lose my cool. "The man who fell... who I killed that day... he had a knife when he climbed up on-stage. I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes. He had a knife, and he was going for Quinn. That's why I shoved him offstage."

Laurel's eyes widened, but she didn't lean away. She gripped my hands tighter.

"I didn't mean to kill him," I said. "I just didn't want him to hurt Quinn. We'd been attacked before, remember, and people die from a.s.shole fans all the time... I saw it about to unfold and I just... acted."

"Like you did earlier in the club," she said in a soft voice.

"Yes," I said. "Exactly. Laurel, I don't want you to think I'm a f.u.c.king monster. I don't want you to believe all the s.h.i.t the press says about me. It's not the truth. I may be a fighter, but I don't fight over nothing."

"Noah, I don't think you're a monster," she said, putting her hand on my cheek. "You've proven to me that you aren't. And I believe you about this."

"You do?"

"Yes," she said. "I believe you about the festival. There's been something off about this whole thing for me for a while. Hearing this from you... it just confirms it."

Relief crashed into me like a wave. I took Laurel into my arms and hugged her tight, feeling her warmth against me. "You have no idea how good it feels to hear you say that."

"Are you telling me no one believes your story?" Laurel said, pulling away to look at me. "Noah, seriously? I figured you hadn't said anything to the press for other reasons. I didn't think it was because... because they didn't believe you."

My expression fell. Sadness rose in my mind, and I couldn't find the words to say to her, lie or otherwise.

"Noah..." Laurel trailed off, distress in her voice. "That's what's happening with the band? They don't believe you were protecting Quinn, and now they're all jumping ship to save themselves?"

Hearing it said so starkly made the reality of my cold situation all the more hurtful. My eyes closed and I dropped my forehead onto Laurel's with a sigh. Laurel nuzzled against me with concern, her hand on the back of my head.

When she spoke again, her voice was quivering. "You don't deserve this to happen to you, Noah. You're the last person in the world who deserves this."

Laurel held me on the beach while the fire popped next to us. Emotions raced, bittersweet, through my mind. Having Laurel believe me, however, and the relief that knowledge held, was stronger than all of the others in that moment.

She nuzzled against me in the warm light of the fire and we didn't talk for a while. The moon was much farther overhead by the time it got too chilly to enjoy the scenery, and Laurel waited, shivering in place, while I put out the fire and followed her back up the hill to the truck. She held my hand the whole way.

Something overcame me when we got to the truck. Maybe it was the way she looked in the moonlight, or the fact that she had only crawled in closer when I offered to show her my scars. Before I opened the door to the truck, I wrapped my hands around her face and kissed her fiercely, pressing her body up against the driver door. Laurel moaned into my mouth and traced her hands up my body, under my jacket and shirt, until they hit the heated skin of my back. Only a few seconds of this pa.s.sionate mess and my d.i.c.k was steel, aching for her.

Lips still devouring her kisses, I bent and lifted Laurel up, arms under her a.s.s. She only made the tiniest noise against my mouth as she drew tight around me. I fumbled open the truck door and tossed her inside, and then crawled in and shut the door behind me.

Laying on top of her, we made out and pulled desperately at each other's bodies with our hands, as if we had never touched one another before and would never again. A few minutes of that and my d.i.c.k was practically begging to be inside of her-and that was to say nothing of my enflamed heart.

After some careful maneuvering, my jeans and boxers were slid down my legs, and I sat waiting on the bench seat of my truck like some h.o.r.n.y teenager while Laurel wiggled her own pants off, stealing kisses the whole time. I had just rolled on an old condom from the glove box when she finally straddled my hips, and I could feel her wet heat dangerously close to my d.i.c.k, even through the thin latex.

Grasping my shoulders for leverage and balance, she maneuvered herself over my c.o.c.k and looked straight into my eyes as she impaled her p.u.s.s.y on my d.i.c.k. It was so f.u.c.king hot I had to roll my head back and growl. My hands gripped her a.s.s cheeks tight as she lowered herself, inch by inch, onto my stiffness until it filled her completely. Her muscles clenched around me with sweet pressure as she let out a long, soft sound of contentment. She paused for just a moment, as if simply enjoying the feel of having me inside her, and then she began bucking her hips and riding me hard.

We couldn't keep our mouths off each other in this cramped s.p.a.ce-not that we would have wanted to. I couldn't get enough of Laurel's taste, the heat of her skin, the feel of her soft womanhood around me- h.e.l.l, even the sharp but sweet pain of her nails, digging into my neck. I kept one hand clenched on her a.s.s, helping her rhythm, and tangled the other in the back of her hair. I pushed her gasping mouth down to mine and she kissed me ravenously.

"f.u.c.k, Noah, you feel so good," she cried, her forehead pressed against mine as she rode me.