Page 48 of Hope & Harmony

“Right.” Jesse rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Didn’t think of that.”

“Then we’ll find another way,” Brody said firmly.

“I’m gonna talk to Talia again,” Maggie said with determination. She promised me, “We’ll fix this.” Then she got on her phone and Brody opened the door for her, patting my shoulder as I followed her into the bowels of the arena.

Talia was the assistant manager of the Players. She was also Roni’s best friend.

I trusted her and Maggie to do what they could.

But in all my envisioning of how this night would go down, I didn’t envision any backup plan. Really didn’t think I needed one, what with Maggie and Talia here to help me pull this off.

Major fucking mistake.

But maybe the whole idea was stupid anyway. Too old school.

I should’ve come up with something more high-tech yet simple. Something that didn’t rely on so many damn moving parts and so many people, many of them strangers.

“We’ll figure something out, man.” Jesse squeezed my shoulder. “Do you want to just come onstage with me? Or I could sing her something?”

“I don’t know. Let me think on it. Maybe this was a stupid idea, anyway.”

“Brother. Don’t give up. Brody and Maggie will come up with something.”

Yeah. They usually did.

I glanced back, but Brody and Maggie had both disappeared. I could hear the Players onstage, muffled, shoutingthank you’s to the roaring crowd as they ended their set.

I slapped Jesse on the back. “Let me go find Roni.”

“Sure, brother. I’m here when you need me.”

I left him and headed deeper into the arena, checking in with Ronan, the Players’ head of security. And greeting some of the guys on my crew, a mix of the clean-cut professionals we’d pulled from Ronan’s VIP security company and some patched brothers from my motorcycle club, the West Coast Kings MC.

I’d always been careful to make sure that the two sides of my life, the MC and the music industry, didn’t interfere with each other. They overlapped only in this way: when I hired guys from the club to work security for the bands.

Unfortunately, both sides of my life had interfered with my relationship with Roni, even when I didn’t mean for them to.

Maybe because, once upon a time, I’d chosen both of them over her, when I shouldn’t have.

I’d been so fucking stupid when we were young. Practically drove her into Zane’s arms that one time they hooked up so many years ago. Into the arms of other men, too. I’d left her to go on tour when I didn’t yet realize she was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

In truth, from the moment she crossed my path in our teens, like a black-haired Lolita sucking on her lollipop, to the first time I kissed her goodbye to leave on Dirty’s first tour…to the moment I finally swore to her, years later, “you and me, darlin’, we’re goin’ down the longest road there is,” Veronica Webber had owned my heart.

There were many heartbreaks in between.

Many times I lost her.

Many times I fucked it all up.

Maybe that first time she came to kiss me goodbye before I left on tour, I should’ve just saidCome with me, V.

How awesome would that have been?

Somehow, these days, it was hard to remember ever being here, backstage, without her.

When I finally found her backstage, just standing in one of the endless concrete corridors in the bowels of the arena, talking to her mom and one of Brody’s managerial underlings, the sight of her sucked the breath out of me like it so often did. I’d know that sexy silhouette anywhere, the thick black hair in loose waves around her face and shoulders, the confident tilt of her chin.

As a bodyguard and a biker, I’d survived more than my fair share of dangerous situations with dangerous people. But I’d never known anyone as dangerous as Veronica Webber.

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