CHAPTER 3
GRIFF
I’m rooted to the spot. But all around me, bikers scramble out of their chairs and rush toward her. Crash, Rowdy, Hyena, and the entire table of Bandits belly up to the bar and tip back their heads while waving their twenties in the air.
The girl with red wings just laughs like this is a typical day in her life. Then she squats down—butt out and knees spread like a music video vixen—and starts pouring measured shots of alcohol into each of their waiting mouths.
I can’t hear anything over the AC/DC song. But she leans down to murmur something into the ear of each guy after she “feeds” them and tips the bottle back up. Then she smiles and plucks the twenty-dollar bill out of his hand before moving on to the next dude.
As she moves down the line of open-mouthed bikers, they look exactly like the image she painted when she called them to the bar: leather-clad baby birds, eager and waiting to be fed by their mama.
For some reason I can’t figure out, an ugly jealousy boils in the pit of my stomach. I’m tempted to go over there and start slamming heads into the bar. Just because she’s touching them, and not me.
But the thing is, I’ve actually dated video vixens. Dated them and passed them on to members of my entourage when I was done. I don’t get jealous. Especially of some chick I just laid eyes on a few seconds ago.
Still, when I try to look away, my eyes stay glued right where they are—on her as she makes her way down the length of the bar. Once, then back again for a second line of guys, then back again when a third line replaces those guys. And yet again, when a few of the guys from the first couple of lines come back for second shots. By the time she picks up the mic again, her waistband is stuffed with twenties.
“Thank you!” she calls out. “Mama Red Bird's all out of shots. But I’ll be on the stage in a little bit for tonight’s Deep Cut.”
The bikers she baby-bird-fed shots hoot and holler as she descends from the bar and disappears from my sight, which abruptly releases me from the trance I fell into while watching her.
“Who is she?” I demand as soon as Crash, Rowdy, and Hyena return to the table. “You know what, actually, her name doesn’t matter.”
I grab Rowdy by the shoulder and turn him back toward the bar. “Tell her to come over here. I want an upstairs meeting.”
“Upstairs meeting” is always code for “s*x” when it comes to roadhouse girls. But for once, Rowdy doesn’t immediately jump to do my fetching.
“Aw, Rockstar, don’t even bother, man,” he advises, even though he’s usually my biggest cheerleader.
“She's a d**k tease,” Crash adds with another apologetic look. “You cain’t get close to her unless you’re waving a twenty.”
Even Waylon decides to weigh in. “She’s been here since Thanksgiving, and just about every biker in here’s tried with her. But she’s turned all of them down.”
“Even Hades,” Hyena adds as he plops back into his seat and takes a swig of beer.
Gotta admit, the Hades thing surprises me.
The girls that work behind the bar at the nameless roadhouse are strictly off-limits. Everybody knows that. But sometimes, they can be coaxed upstairs. For the right price or for the right guy. And Hades, with his smooth New Orleans accent and next-level flirting game, are what most girls working at the roadhouse would consider the right guy.
I've seen him drop a few honeyed words into the ear of a waitress he likes and her set a whole tray of drinks down to follow him upstairs to one of the f*****g rooms.
But the girl with the wings turned him down.
The crowd erupts into cheers before I can finish processing all this new information. And the chick who called herself Mama Red Bird appears above us again, this time on the roadhouse’s stage where I’ve been known to perform Garth Brook’s “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” when I’ve had a few too many.
The girl’s wings have disappeared, but that doesn’t make her any less mesmerizing, especially now that she’s carrying a guitar under those fantastic t**s.
“Hey, everybody, I’m Red! Y’all ready for tonight's Deep Cut?” Her slow drawl lets me know she’s a local Tennessee girl, not a Nashville transplant like me, or from one of the twangier lower southern states like Hyena.
“What’s a Deep Cut?” I ask Crash and Rowdy.
“It’s this game she plays,” Crash answers.
And Rowdy adds, “She sings a song, and if you can guess it—”
“Ssshhh!” Waylon hisses, cutting him off. “I wanna hear. I almost won last night.”
When Waylon gives an order, none of the Reapers dare to disobey it. Crash and Rowdy immediately clamp their mouths.
But up on stage, the girl with long cherry-red hair explains everything, as if she heard my question.
“I play a song, and if you know the name of it, shout it out. Whoever guesses first gets a free beer on me. But fair warning, this is Waylon’s favorite game, and boy, does he hate when folks cheat. He will pull a g*n if he catches you Shazaming or looking up the lyrics any other way. So keep your phones in your pockets and just remember rule number four.”
She points to the sign hanging above Nestor’s door, and just about everybody in the bar shouts back, “Don’t piss off Waylon!”
She laughs, like Waylon’s well-earned reputation for sudden violence is a funny story.
But then she starts strumming her guitar with a meditative look on her face, and the whole bar quiets to play her game.
I recognize the song immediately, even before she starts singing about a lamp that won’t light in her poetry room. But I don’t call it out. No, I don’t say a goddamn thing.
Her singing isn’t professional. Hell, she wouldn’t even be able to get through the door at Big Hill, my family’s record company. But her voice has something a lot of better singers can’t replicate. Personality, mood.
The song she’s chosen is melancholy and bittersweet. And that’s exactly how I feel as I listen to her sing—like the stone wall I’ve constructed around my heart is cracking in a few places with old memories from before I joined the Reapers.
No, I don’t call out the song’s title. I don’t disturb her mini-concert, even for a moment.
I’ve performed on stage with R&B legends. But for the few minutes of her amateur rendition of this particular song, all I want to do is listen.
There's a moment of rapt silence when she finishes. Then every biker in the bar burst into applause, including me.
“Thank you!” she calls out with a laugh. “Oh, my goodness, thank you so much! But did any of you know it?”
Nobody but me answers.
“Boat on the Sea,” I call out.
She smiles down from the stage, and an engine revs in my chest when she looks straight at me with those big brown eyes and says, “Yes, sir. You got it exactly right. Good job!”
“Hey, no fair!” The Bandits prez, who was so eager to get my autograph earlier, calls out. “'Boat on the sea' was the main hook on the chorus. Anybody could have guessed that!”
I keep my gaze locked on her, but I let that Bandit and everyone else know, “It’s the song that ends that movie, Grace of My Heart.”
“Right again, sir,” she says with an impressed nod. “What’s your name?”
All the Reapers look at her, then at me. Probably because they’re way more used to waitresses coming up to me and squealing, “Oh, my God, you’re G-Latham!”
I’m startled by her question myself.
But the PR bros at Stone River did warn me just a few days ago at our branding meeting that my fan numbers are glaringly white and majority male.
So, a lot of people love my particular brand of outlaw country trap, but they’re usually not women of color.
I reset my ego and answer, “Name’s Griff.”
Then I give her a slow up-and-down look and ask, “What’s yours?”
The question’s meant to throw her off the same way she did me when she pretty much announced to the whole bar that she has no idea who I am.
But she just grins and answers, “Come on, Griff, you know who I am. I came out in a pair of bird wings earlier? Remember that? And now I’m playing guitar half-n***d on stage.”
She shakes her head at me like an exasperated teacher. “But if you really can’t remember it. Boys, let’s remind him.”
She cups one hand around her mouth and calls out, “What’s my name?”
“Red!” the whole bar shouts back.
Like she’s the music star, not me.
“What’s my name?” she shouts again.
“Red!” they cry even louder.
A wicked grin spreads across her lush mouth. And this time, she gives me the up-and-down look as she calls out, “One mo’ gain—just in case Griff has as hard a time hearing important details as he does remembering them.”
Even Waylon and the rest of the Reapers join in to yell back, “Red!”
Red laughs big and loud, filling the gritty roadhouse with the sound of her delight. “Okay, Griff, meet me at the bar to get your free beer on Red.”
She walks off the stage to cheers and laughter—mostly at my expense. But I’m not too bothered.
“I don’t care what any of you say,” I declare as soon as she disappears from my sight again. “I’m f*****g her.”
Waylon snorts. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Crash and Rowdy, my two biggest fanboys, refuse to meet my eyes.
And Hyena repeats, “Even Hades,” like maybe I didn’t hear him the first time.
“Hades ain’t me,” I remind him—remind all of them.
I could lie and say I'm not cocky. But why bother? I know what I look like. Even hotter than Hades, with more money and fame on top. I've never been turned down, especially here in the roadhouse where I'm big s**t. And I’m sure that record won't be broken tonight.
Plus, I want this girl. Bad. Them telling me I can't have her only makes me want her more—at least until I nut between her legs and then instantly lose interest.
“I’m going to have her,” I tell my fellow Reapers. “Watch me go over there and close this deal.”
I’m met with a whole bunch of skeptical looks, but Rowdy rises to the occasion.
“Yeah, Rockstar’ll be balls deep in no time,” he tells the rest of the Reapers, finally falling back into hype-man mode. “All he has to do is let her know who he is. When she finds out he’s G-Latham and his family owns a record label, them legs will fall right on open for Rockstar. You’ll see!”
I squint at Rowdy. “You don't think I can get this girl without her knowing who I am?”
“Uh . . .” Suddenly Rowdy’s real interested in what’s happening on the roadhouse’s concrete floor.
But Hyena isn’t afraid to make his feelings on the subject known.
“Yeah, playing the fame card is probably the only thing that will get you in that particular girl’s pants.”
That ugly, weird vibe that’s been plaguing me since my birthday boils and bubbles at his words.
I’m back in the gym at the boarding school my dad tried to ship me off to after my mom went home. And the rich boys with famous last names are calling me “Surfer Dude” because I’m from California and wondering out loud during a lacrosse game if I even would have gotten into the place if my last name weren’t Latham.
Back then, I proved that I wasn’t one to cross with my fists. Breaking all those teeth was worth getting expelled from my first of many schools before I dropped out and joined the Reapers.
But this time, I decide to prove myself a different way.
When they tell me the girl I want is untouchable—that there’s no way I can have her without using my fame or name to get it in—I ask them, “Wanna bet?”