Tiller Read online

  Table of Contents

  Tiller

  Copyrights

  Quote

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Chapter 1 – Crazy Fuck

  Chapter 2 – Hatred in my veins

  Chapter 3 – I’m paranoid

  Chapter 4 – What now?

  Chapter 5 – Don’t bother me

  Chapter 6 – What was she thinking?

  Chapter 7 – On Her Own

  Chapter 8 – Her truth

  Chapter 9 – The man who sold his soul

  Chapter 10 – Weapon Words and soulless

  Chapter 11 – The night we met

  Chapter 12 – Unbelievable

  Chapter 13 – Words don’t define

  Chapter 14 – Don’t Bail

  Chapter 15 – Outlawed

  Part 2

  Chapter 16 – Popcorn, motherfucker

  Chapter 17 – A night out

  Chapter 18 – Haze

  Chapter 19 – He’s lost his mind

  Chapter 20 – Why does there have to be a title?

  Chapter 21 – Defiant fuck

  Chapter 22 – I knew better

  Chapter 23 – On the road

  Chapter 24 – Power trip

  Chapter 25 – Young and dumb

  Chapter 26 – The details are fuzzy

  Chapter 27 – The wedding from hell

  Chapter 28 – Broken

  Chapter 29 – I’m only human

  Chapter 30 – I was me

  Chapter 31 – Follow the rules

  Chapter 32 – What were you thinking?

  Chapter 33 – Bath time

  Chapter 34 – Seat Grab

  Chapter 35 – Fake it

  Chapter 36 – Exhausted

  Chapter 37 – By the way...

  Chapter 38 – Fuckin’ rich people

  Chapter 39 – Untangle my mind

  Chapter 40 – Morning after

  Chapter 41 – New “messy” beginnings

  Chapter 42 – I’m never not thinking of you

  Chapter 43 – I’m an idiot

  Chapter 44 – Betray and Degrade

  Chapter 45 – Kill the beast

  Part 3

  Chapter 46 – What were you thinking?

  Chapter 47 – Welcome to hell

  Chapter 48 – Fuck you, beast

  Chapter 49 – Show her how to live

  Chapter 50 – Now what?

  Chapter 51 – Will he show?

  Chapter 52 – Sorry means something

  Chapter 53 – Give me one date

  Chapter 54 – Wild Love

  Chapter 55 – I thought I understood it

  Chapter 56 – Launch Zone

  Chapter 57 – Kiss of Death

  Chapter 58 – An unconventional family

  Acknowledgements

  Meet the Author

  Thank you for purchasing Tiller. To be notified of new releases join my mailing list on my website at: www.sheystahl.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Shey Stahl

  Tiller

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of Shey Stahl.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, motocross/Nuclear Cowboyz races/events, the situations the racers encounter, locales, or persons, dead or living, is coincidental. Certain phrases, quotes, and/or lines from the author’s previous works may appear in this book and are copyrighted by Shey Stahl.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, sponsors, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Plagiarism checks carried out by Hot Tree Editing using Grammarly, Plagiarisma and by Shey Stahl using PlagScan.

  Copy Editing: Becky Johnson, Hot Tree Editing

  Cover Image: Furious Fotog

  Cover Model: Joey Berry

  Cover Designer: Tracy Steeg

  Formatting and Graphics by A Designs

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  Do you see that guy sitting on the couch with his head in his hands? Not the hungover one. C’mon, I’m better looking than that dude. That’s Ledger. He’s had a rough night, but I’ll get to that a little later.

  I’m the one with the dark brown Mohawk covered in ink with a beer in hand. That’s me. The crazy looking motherfucker drinking before noon. Sadly, the drinking isn’t even surprising.

  I bet I can surprise you. Listen to this. I once read the entire dictionary all in one sitting. Took me forty-seven hours and I read it out loud which made me sound something similar to Eminem’s raps. Although I did learn some cool words like Barmecide, which means illusionary or imaginary and therefore disappointing. And meacock. A cowardly or effeminate man. Both of which I can relate to.

  “Hey, dumbass.” Scarlet slaps the back of my head. “Some chick has been calling the house asking for you all morning. The next time the phone rings, answer it and tell her to cut the shit.”

  Scarlet’s always riding my case, and after the night I had, I hate the sound of Scarlet’s voice. Not her in particular, I actually tolerate Scarlet. Probably like her better if she’d let me fuck her, but the chipper sound of her telling me what to do is like fingernails on a chalkboard. It makes me want to punch her.

  Not that last night was any different than any other night, unless you count being Tased. Then I guess you could say last night turned into something I’d rather forget. You don’t need to know the details, but it involved a nun and a Taser and a party to celebrate me not dying. I like to celebrate.

  I stare up at her, trying to focus on her face, but I can’t see it. Without my contacts in, she’s just another blurry figure. “Who the hell are you talkin’ about?”

  Sighing—like she can’t be bothered with my miniscule questions—she shrugs, tossing the house phone in my lap. “Fuck if I know. Wouldn’t leave her name. C’mon, get dressed. I’m hungry and we’re meeting Rod for lunch”—she waves her finger in my face accusingly—“to talk about what the hell we’re gonna do now that you’ve decided to ditch the tour.”

  Fuck that shit. Explaining myself is the last thing I want to do today. “I’m not going.”

  “Yes, you are!”

  I wave her off. “Leave me alone.”

  “I would, but it’s my job to bother you. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just leave.”

  My dismissal means nothing to her. “Get dressed.”

  Tossing the house phone on the table, I reach for my cell underneath a bag of weed. Squinting at the screen, a familiar number appears. It says I have twenty missed calls. And while we’re at it, that’s actually a low number. I once had seventy-eight missed calls before I checked my messages. I’m not a talker, I barely even text, but for some reason, people don’t get it and keep calling me expecting I’ll answer. I’ve gone weeks without checking my phone.

  All twenty calls are from the same person. I only have to look at the number to know who it is. Why is that? Well, that’s fucking predictable.

  Pre
dictable because everyone has addictions. You’ll soon find I have several, but one in particular owns me in more ways than one. Funny, I used to give my younger brother, Shade, shit about his strung-out calls from Rhya, when I’m no different when it comes to Amberly.

  The only difference between Rhya and Amberly? It’s usually me who needs her. Amberly doesn’t get high and call me to talk her off the ledge or bail her out of jail. That’s what I do to her. She calls to check on me, make sure I’m not using again. I’ll straight up tell you to your fucking face—drugs or drinking—it’s something I chose. I can’t call something I chose addiction, can I? It’s a choice I’m making knowing damn well what it’ll do to me. Addiction to anything, drugs, alcohol, adrenaline. . . it begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to has power over you, because you allow it.

  I did coke for the first time when I was nineteen. I kept doing it, and as with anything, it formed something I couldn’t, didn’t want to let go of. I’m not saying I’m one of those pale, jittery fuckers with holes in their arms who can’t function without a line or shooting up. That was Rhya, not me. I’m more of the good-time user. If it’s at a party and available, I’ll do it. And that leads me to the girl who keeps calling.

  Amberly Sky Johnson. . . just thinking her name sends a rush through my blood even the purest of coke can’t give me. I’m talking about the legit pure shit too. Not the “Trust me, man. This shit bangs.” She’s like the premium grade you find inside a Peruvian jungle lab.

  This girl, fuck, she’s wild, unattainable and nothing someone like me deserves. She’s loyal to my demons and I crave her madness because I can’t stand to be inside my own head. Her and I, we don’t see what it does to us, but underneath, there’s beauty I can’t explain. She’s not just a girl I can’t have. Don’t see it like that. She’s a feeling. Angst. A desire for more. She’s too much, not enough, and in my head. I hate her but love her for the same reasons is the only honest answer I can give you.

  If you ever saw the tiny purple-haired girl, you would never think she was capable of doing anything illegal aside from destroying my heart. Although, there was that one time where she was protesting animal rights and was escorted to jail. When she’s not calling to check on me, she calls because. . . well, I never really know. It’s crazy shit like, I need you to go to a party with me. . . or can you pretend to be my boyfriend, fiancé, whatever. I once pretended I was a pimp so she could get money out of her friend’s ex-boyfriend, who owed her rent money. How did I pass for a pimp and get the money? That’s a story for another day. Just know I can be very convincing when I want to be, and you don’t ever want on my bad side.

  So you see, there are more differences between Amberly and Rhya—my brother’s cocaine-addicted suicidal friend who eventually killed herself. Amberly does all that shit for other people. She’s like the Mother Teresa of bullshit.

  Throwing my phone back onto the table, I lean back against the couch and stare at the ceiling. I don’t have it in me to call her back.

  Beside me on the couch, Ledger sighs, lifting his head, bloodshot eyes focused on nothing in particular.

  Oh look, he’s still here. I forgot the bastard was there contemplating his royally screwed life. I’ve known Ledger for about ten years. He suffered a broken back a couple years ago when he took a fall in Las Vegas. The accident left him with partial paralysis and ended his riding career. Just not his sex life. Apparently. Now he builds tracks and ramps for motocross tracks. And fucks strippers.

  “I can’t believe this. I’m totally fucked.”

  “Nah.” Turning my head so I can look him in the face, I smile. “Not unless you tell her.”

  He gives me that look. The one he always gives me that screams, you’re an idiot. I know this look. I get it often and from almost everyone I know. “How am I not going to tell her, Tiller? She’s my wife and I fucked another chick.”

  If you ask me—and no one usually does—it’s his stupid his fault for getting married in the first place. How the hell did he expect to remain faithful when she’s off working all the time and he’s here, with an endless supply of pussy on hand?

  I’m not bragging. It’s a known fact—spend enough time around this house and you’re bound to get laid at some point.

  Hell, I’m pretty sure the neighbor’s kid, Camden, has been offered up a chance and he’s eleven.

  “Shouldn’t have gotten married.” I notice my cigarettes on the table in front of me. Pulling out one, I smile at him and reach for my lighter next to it. “Then you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “I love her.”

  “Bullshit. What’s love, anyway? You’re a fuckin’ idiot, man.” Lighting the cigarette, I take a drag and blow the smoke out with a laugh. “And your dick doesn’t love her enough.”

  I know what you’re thinking. Jesus, dude, you’re an asshole. Tell me something I don’t know.

  Would you believe me if I told you I was shy?

  Didn’t think so. Despite what you think you know, or what you might have read about me, I am in fact shy.

  I’m shy out of fear. But let me be very clear here. It’s not because I’m embarrassed or fearful of your opinion of me. Far from it. I don’t give a goddamn what you or anyone else thinks of me. I’m fearful of conversations that lead to the demons hidden inside me. You don’t want to know the bizarre shit going on in my head. In actuality, I’m crazy. No bullshit. Certifiable even. Hell, it’s the reason I connected with fucked-up Rhya far more than I ever have with my brothers. I was the last person she spoke to on the phone that last night. Shade doesn’t know this, but he’s also never asked me about it. If he had, I’d tell him. Straight up. No fucking around.

  Most people are a little bit crazy, but me? Twenty-three and out of my goddamn mind. When I was eighteen, I locked myself in a basement for a week. For 168 hours, I pretended I couldn’t get out. Do you want to know the bizarre part? I had the key in my hand the entire time. Hell, I had my phone, and my brothers were upstairs. I don’t know why I did it, maybe to protect me from myself. If that makes sense. Maybe it doesn’t, and at this moment in my life, I can’t explain it. That week, I did nothing but watch YouTube videos and eat saltine crackers, and I gotta say, I didn’t mind being alone.

  Plagued with a gamut of gnawing unease that never leaves, I have something deep inside of me. A knotted soul. A frightening window to a world I don’t understand. Or is it me being paranoid? Or is it just anxiety? I’m not sure there’s a difference. Is there?

  I’ve had what most would call anxiety for as long as I can remember. Twice it’s tipped over into severe depression. The kind that imprisoned me for weeks at a time where I locked myself in a basement or read the dictionary because reading words was better than being inside my own mind. When it happens, the anxiety, the crazy, my thoughts are all over the place. They teeter and control my mind, and I think to myself, will this time make me psychotic? Am I bipolar like my mother? How many of those sleeping pills can I take to sleep for the next three days and not die?

  I ask myself these questions all the time when I’m stuck in a tornado of negative thoughts.

  For the most part, I never know when it’s going to start, how long it’s going to last or what provokes it. It seems to come out of nowhere.

  Actually, I can peg one of the reasons, which is part of why I skipped out on the first round of After Dark in Houston, Texas. The bullshit industry of freestyle motocross. If you’ve never heard of things like Nitro Circus, Red Bull X-Fighters or the Nuclear Cowboyz, it’s the world of professional freestyle motocross. Essentially a sport that began as “free riding” is now commercialized bullshit where you’re scored on your techniques and for things like crowd participation. Whatever the fuck that is. Last time I checked, it was my ass sailing through the air seventy-five feet above the ground while holding up a 250-pound bike. I don’t see that dude in seat 34-A doing shit but drowning his face with beer and screaming “Booo!” when I flip his frat-boy ass off.
r />   I travel all over the world, competing for a living. And while it certainly pays well, the only thing I enjoy about the sport is pissing off the officials, and sometimes other riders just for the sheer fun of it. On more than one occasion I’ve provoked another competitor with a wild, and yet completely ridiculous, confrontation between our respective pit crews. I live for that shit. I’m not happy unless I’m thriving on anger and chaos.

  For that reason, the stiff-collared motherfuckers of mainstream motocross (in particular Rod Milan, as the After Dark promotor), hates my guts. Of course, I can’t say I blame them. I’m disrespecting their sport.

  I also don’t give a fuck.

  I’m not my younger brother/model/freestyle gold medalist golden boy Shade. And I’m certainly not my older Erzberg Rodeo champion brother, Roan, who will do anything to prove he’s the world champion of enduro’s, even if it means handing out rim jobs to the stiff collars.

  I haven’t always been this jaded. Before I could walk, there are pictures of me floating around, naked, on my dad’s dirt bike. There I was, straddling a Kawasaki KX500, my bare ass in the wind with the biggest smile on my face I haven’t seen since then. Once I discovered the thrill of the adrenaline when you turned it on, I was hooked. I started out riding motocross with my brothers. I rode every day, without fail, trained mostly by my supercross world champion uncle and his elite group of friends. Over the course of my childhood career, and going pro at eleven years old, I became wildly unpredictable as a rider. I never rode in a manner that reflected my ability. I can’t tell you what was going on inside my head back then, or even now, but the tremendous pressure building every time I got on a bike had something to do with it. I didn’t want to disappoint Ricky; he gave up everything for us, but then again, I didn’t like where my career was heading and, easily distracted, I was bored with the structure of motocross.

  Eventually a pattern of self-sabotage emerged and I chose not to do well at certain events. I’d let things like poor track conditions set me off. I didn’t love motocross, so I reached for anything that gave me an excuse to lose, which, this would prove to be a reoccurring problem in my life.