Real Ugly (Hard Rock Roots #1)

Chapter One: Naomi Knox

There's a metamorphosis happening right before my eyes. I'm watching a devil shed its skin, shrink its horns and grow wings. The dark haze in the air is lifting, banished by the bright lights of the stage. Even metaphorically, a trick like that is hard to pull off. I'm impressed. Or I would be if I didn't hate the asshole so much.

"He looks like a fucking angel," I whisper as I sip my beer.

"What?" Blair shouts, cupping her hand around my ear. I swipe some hair away from my face and lean over, so that she can hear me above the booming of the bass. It pounds down through the wood of the stage, into the concrete, and across the floor where it catches on the rubber soles of my boots and ricochets up through my bones. If I close my eyes, I can see it tainting my blood, forcing my heart to pump faster and faster, until I feel dizzy from the beautiful poison in the air. The phrase slaying the crowd wasn't made up off the top of someone's head; if the fucks on stage do it right, it really does feel like the music is killing you softly.

"Turner Campbell," I yell back at her, my lips brushing against the small, black plugs in her earlobes. "He looks like a fucking angel up there." Blair leans back and raises one pierced brow at me. Her blue eyes say that I'm full of shit. I take another sip of cool, cool amber and watch as she turns her heart shaped face to the stage. Her gaze rakes Turner from head to toe and then slides across the heaving, thumping crowd, landing right back on me.

"A fallen angel," she shouts. Pauses. "Maybe."

I shrug and ignore her pointed stare, watching Turner as he moves across the stage, lights glistening off the blue-black highlights in his hair and making him look like he has a damn halo on his head. His brown eyes scan the crowd, catching on faces and holding them as he purrs into the microphone and caresses it like he fucking owns it. I bet every bitch in here can practically feel his hands on her body, taste his tongue in her mouth. What am I shitting myself for? They've probably all had a nice, big slice of the real thing anyway. Let's just say that Turner's reputation proceeds him.

Devil.

I have to remember that he's not just a devil, but The Devil.

I take another sip of beer and try to focus on something else – the crowd of people clusterfucking at the bar, the mosh pit up front, Blair's white feather eyelashes. Nothing works. My gaze finds Turner Campbell again and stays there, focusing primarily on his lips and the words that tumble out of them.

"What the hell did you do to leave me broken, barren, and bleeding? What gave you the fucking right?" Turner sucks in a massive lungful of air, blowing his hot breath across the microphone and breaking my heart with a single gasp. I'm not alone. The crowd starts to hum, men and women alike pulsing with the heat and the energy of the song. Goddamn, that's good, I think as I allow myself to sink against the cool concrete of the back wall. Doubt those lyrics are his though. Fucking hypocrite. Just yesterday I walked in on Turner fucking a roadie over a PA speaker. When he saw me, he just pulled out and left the girl there with her panties around her ankles. She cried for a half a fucking hour. Devil. I want to hate him, but it's really hard from down here. I like it better when I'm backstage, when I can look at him hitting on groupies and roadies, watch him running his fingers across the lips of a dozen girls in a dozen cities. It's a lot easier to hate him that way. How am I going to make it through six months of this?

I finish my beer and push away from the wall, dropping the empty bottle on the edge of the bar before sneaking out a side door. My hands slide across a collage of torn stickers and scribbled Sharpie as I heave the heavy metal out of my way, snatching one last glance before I go at the lead singer of Indecency. Sweat slides down the tattoos on his neck and soaks into the fabric of his black T-shirt. Ironically, it's one of ours. Amatory Riot. I doubt he even really knows who we are. I bet one his roadie bitches dressed him this morning.