I’d been wondering that alot.
Over the next few weeks, I’d be prepping my security crew and working with Maggie to get all the details set for the tour. There was a lot of paperwork for my guys and bullshit that Maggie helped me take care of, and I liked to map out a whole plan of who was doing what and where and when, even if it sometimes fell to shit once we got on theroad.
I liked to be prepared, as much as possible; when it came to security for the band, I didn’t likesurprises.
Which meant I also needed to prepare a whole alternate plan—one that laid out what was gonna happen if I wasn’t on the tour. Minor problem with that was I still wasn’t sure who I’d have lead my crew in myplace.
And if I did go on the tour… I didn’t even want to think about who was gonna take my place here—withRoni.
Being her fuck buddy and the one guy she’d let near her when she was feeling “emotional”? Those were roles I wasn’t thrilled about handing off to anyoneelse.
* * *
Late that night,once the video shoot had wrapped, instead of heading over to Roni’s place for sex, I picked her up where she was—at a bar with some friends—and I took her to myplace.
It was the first time I’d ever brought her to my place, and as we walked into the house, I saw it more or less through hereyes.
The general lack of furniture. The giant TV and leather couch that pretty much dominated the living room. The dining room that had no table. The huge black-and-white photo on canvas of me and my brother as kids, with our dad and one of his motorcycles—the only decoration on anywall.
The house was old, plain, in decent repair, but it really wasn’t all that much to lookat.
Roni still looked, carefully, as I gave her the incredibly brieftour.
As she looked around, maybe it should’ve made me uneasy. Her condo by the water in Olympic Village was much newer, and like her, it was beautiful, stylish andinviting.
But it didn’t make meuncomfortable.
I knew why I never brought women here. Because this was my private space. My sanctuary. My one escape from both the MC and theband.
I had a lot of love for a lot of people, but at the end of the day my introverted ass needed to shut it all down and turn off that fucking ticking clock or I’d goinsane.
There were pretty much four things I needed in life, in order to maintain mysanity.
Myroutines.
Myworkouts.
Keeping my diet as clean as I could, even on theroad.
And myspace.
The best places to get the space I needed were on my bike, and in my home—a place that was mine alone, where I checked all the drama at thedoor.
I’d only had this place since coming home from the last Dirty tour. Pretty much every tour, I gave up whatever rental I’d been living in, and when the tour ended I just found another one. If I didn’t count the six-week tour for Jesse’s solo album last year, I hadn’t been on tour for almost two years; it was the longest gap we’d ever had between Dirtytours.
And in these last two years, being more or less home from the road, it wasn’t like there’d been any woman in my life who I’d wanted to bring into mysanctuary.
JustRoni.
I wasn’t even sure why it suddenly felt so important to me to bring her here, except that I felt the need to do it. So here wewere.
“Your dad,” she said, as she gazed up at the photo on the wall of the empty dining room. “He died, a few years back.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “I heard about it. Still run into people from the club, from time totime.”
“Yeah. I was away on tour when it happened. Dirty’s second world tour. We were in Australia. Almost didn’t make it back for the funeral in time. Jesse flew back with me, had to miss a couple ofshows.”
“I know,” she said. “I was there.” She looked up at the photo again. “I came to the burial. But there were a lot ofpeople.”
She wasthere?
