Jet: A Marked Men Novel (23 page)

She cleared her throat and pushed up off the couch, crossing her arms over breasts that I would dream about until I died.

“You deserve to be happy, Jet. You deserve to take care of yourself for once.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I would much rather have her take care of me, much rather take care of her, but since that wasn’t an option anymore, I guess taking care of myself was the only choice left.

I was going to head to my room, so I started unbuttoning my shirt. Those eyes of hers were sharp and followed my every move. Her phone rang from the kitchen table and I moved to toss it to her. Everything inside me went cold and still when I saw the name on the caller ID. Sweater Vest. Goddamn Sweater Vest was calling her and I was going to incinerate the whole planet with a single thought. Without a word I handed the device to her and went to storm past her. I stopped when her hand fell on my shoulder. Those gilded eyes glowed at me with an emotion I couldn’t identify, but I was so tired of this girl twisting me up and letting me go. I couldn’t just spin out of control anymore. Being dizzy was only fun for a second.

“It isn’t what you think, Jet. None of this is what you think it is.”

Her voice quivered a little and I wanted to care, wanted to kiss her and take her to bed. I wanted to sing to her, wanted to beg her to come on tour with me, wanted to put a ring on her finger and ask her to be mine forever. Unfortunately, all I could do was shrug her off and narrow my eyes at her.

“I try not to think about it at all, Ayd.”

I heard her gasp but I just kept moving to my room. I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say to the idiot in argyle, so I slammed the bedroom door and pulled the clothes that were suffocating me off, all the while wishing I could pull the emotion she had me tangled in off as easily.

I turned on Venom as loud as it would go, to dissuade her if she tried to follow me and talk. The music was so loud it made even my head hurt, but it distracted me long enough that I got a few last-minute things done for the tour, and set in place a few details I had hanging with the recording for Black Market Alphas.

Really, helping start-up bands, getting new bands out into the world for other people to hear, made me happier than anything else at the moment. There was just so much good music out there that no one ever got a chance to hear, because they never made it big, never made it to the radio or on one of the big tours. It was a shame, and any part that I could play in changing that gave me more pride than anything that I produced for myself did.

When I left to head to the tattoo shop, there was no sign of Ayden and I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse. I chose not to think about it too hard and headed downtown. I hated to leave the car parked on Colfax, so I went farther down where Nash and Rule lived in a converted Victorian and parked there. It took me a few minutes to walk back up to the shop, and even though I was a few minutes late, Rowdy was still working on a girl who barely looked sixteen.

Cora rolled her eyes and told me that the girl had been late and she was proving to have a low pain tolerance, so that my boy was struggling with it. I told her I would wait, but Rule came walking out of the back frowning at his phone as asked me if I had a minute. I wasn’t really in the mood to have him bust my balls, but the shop wasn’t that big, so I didn’t really have a choice. I nodded a greeting at Nash, who watched us walk out the front door with a frown. He was working on something intricate on a guy’s calf, though, so he didn’t say anything or make any move other than the frown.

Rule muttered something at the screen of the phone and tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Rome is headed home for good in a few months.”

I wasn’t expecting that, so I wasn’t sure what to say. Rule’s older brother was cool, and a total badass, take-no-shit kind of guy, and I liked him a lot. I knew there was some tension there with the family, and the fact that Rule’s twin brother—who was no longer living—had managed to take a pretty big secret to the grave with him.

“That’s cool.”

“It would be, if he would stop being an asshole. I want him to take over the lease on the Victorian when he gets back, so he doesn’t have to worry about trying to figure out where he’s going. I know he won’t go home right now. He’s still not talking to the folks.”

I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck and wondered why he wanted to talk about this away from everyone else.

“If he moves into the Victorian, where are you and Shaw going to go?”

“I’m going to buy her a house.”

I balked a little because I had known Rule for a long time, and while the idea of him settling down with one girl had been a shock, the idea of him making a permanent home with one was downright unthinkable.

“Wow, dude, that’s a huge step.”

He shrugged a shoulder and leaned back against the glass window that was the front of the shop.

“It doesn’t feel like one. She’s it for me.”

I lifted an eyebrow and copied his pose against the chilly glass.

“You thinking marriage and babies there, Archer?” It baffled me. He was the original lone wolf, and his track record with women was legendary and almost scary in its length. But once he had decided that he was going to commit to Shaw, he had done it with the same intensity that he applied to everything else in his life.

“Honestly, man, it’s whatever she wants. She wants a ring, I’ll by her one the size of her head. She wants a kid, I’ll take her to bed every night until she has one, and I won’t complain about it at all. If she wants to keep things the way they are now, until the end of time, then I’m cool with that, too. All that matters is that it’s her and me at the end of the day. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

His eyes were serious and pinned me to the glass. It was hard to look away from that winter storm when he turned its full force on you.

“When the right one comes along, Jet, you figure it out. You move mountains, you change your life and you do whatever it takes to keep them with you. I would be half the man I am without Shaw. She makes me better, she makes me happy, and I can see that Ayden does that for you, too.”

I was going to interrupt, going to tell him that I wasn’t the one who had walked away, that I had dealt with her secrets and her evasion, and still fallen in love with her anyway, but he held up a hand and stopped me.

“I know things with her are convoluted. I know she isn’t making it easy to love her, but that’s when it’s most important that you do it anyway. Trust me, I’ve been in her shoes. Shaw explained a little of what Ayd’s dealing with, and it isn’t pretty, and it sure as shit isn’t easy, but I know you could handle it if you just pushed through.”

I frowned and tried not to let his words rattle around in my head. I appreciated where he was coming from, appreciated that he really did think that love was something that could just prevail. It was beautiful coming from a guy like him, but he wasn’t the one trying to battle the walls Ayden had up, and he wasn’t the one there when that damn phone rang this afternoon. I sighed and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t going to lie about how I felt about her, but I also wasn’t going to pretend like I had hope for things working out beyond the way they had.

“Thanks, Rule. Seriously, I understand where you’re coming from and I wish, I truly wish I could have with Ayden the same kind of thing you have going on with Shaw. It just isn’t like that. I know what happens when you try to force something on someone, just look at my folks.”

We stared at each other for a long minute, his pale blue eyes glittering like chips of diamonds as he turned my words over in his head. Finally, he sighed and pushed off the glass.

“I just know that if you think the person is worth it, that the end game is worth it, then you shouldn’t give up.”

I followed his lead and pushed myself off the window. A group of girls walked by and checked us out, but neither one of us returned the attention or the flirty smiles sent our way. I wanted to kick something.

“I guess happiness is all relative now.”

We went back inside the shop and Rowdy was walking the girl he had been working on to the desk. Cora was giving her the stink eye and being particularly snarky as she cashed her out. Rowdy and I exchanged a fist bump, and he jerked his head toward the back room where they all had drawing stations and a little break room.

“Come back and check out what I threw together. If you don’t like it, I have enough time to change it up.”

Rule clapped me on the shoulder.

“He’s been working on it all day. It’s fucking amazing.”

I lifted an eyebrow and followed Rowdy to the rear of the shop.

“Thanks for pulling it together so quick.”

“It isn’t often I have a client who gives me free rein to just do what I want, so I had a good time with it.”

The stencil was massive. It would cover one entire side of my back, from the top of my ass to the base of my shoulder blade. The fire was the main focus, with twisting, twining flames that licked over an old-fashioned microphone that was split open in the center and looked similar to a screaming mouth with more swirls of flame spitting out of it. It was nasty, it was mean, it was bright, and it was full of life. It looked exactly like what I felt when I was onstage, and the colors he envisioned, the flow he found for it, was more like a watercolor painting than the typical hard lines of a tattoo. I stared at it in awe for a long minute, until Rowdy cleared his throat, and I noticed that he looked a little nervous.

“Is it kind of what you were after?”

I laughed, really laughed. Laughed so hard I felt water build in my eyes.

“Dude, if I didn’t think you would punch me in the face, I would kiss you. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

“It’s big. All we’re going to be able to get done tonight is the outline, and you’re looking at a solid four to five hours for that alone. You need to decide what side you want it on.”

“The side opposite the angel of death.” I figured that would look more balanced than having them on the same side, even though the death angel took up most of my chest.

“Cool, give me a few to set up and get the transfer ready. Nash said when he was done with the guy he’s working on, he’ll run out and grab pizza. Rule said he was gonna get a case of beer and come back. You have to wait until you’re done getting inked to drink though, otherwise you’ll push the ink out. We’re all just gonna hang out here.”

I readily agreed and kicked back while he went to take care of business. My family was as settled as it was ever going to be, my music was in the prime of its success, and I had the coolest group of friends ever. It was a shame that none of that seemed to do any good at filling the place in me that was still gaping wide open because of a whiskey-eyed brunette. Nothing made the fact that she was still talking to Sweater Vest easier to swallow, and none of it made the fact that we just couldn’t figure out how to be together suck any less.

Letting Rowdy hammer on me for a few hours with a bunch of needles seemed like a good way to get the endorphins and adrenaline flowing, and a good way to let some of that scorching, blistering emotion Ayden stirred up bleed out.

Chapter 15

Ayden

S
acrificing so the person you loved would be better off should have made me feel altruistic and at peace. Unfortunately, in my case it was making me miserable and uncomfortable. Walking away from Jet before Asa could get his grubby paws into him, or before all the nasty things I thought I had a handle on could come between us was so much harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know what was worse, the awkward encounters I had with Jet when I ran into him in the house, or the nights he didn’t come home at all.

My head would spin around like a crazy person, trying not to wonder who he was with or what he was doing. I had always wanted him on a purely chemical and sexual level, but now that I knew him, now that I understood all the things going on behind those dark eyes of his, I wanted him for everything else as well. It broke my heart into a million pieces every time he looked at me like I was a pane of glass, and that he had not interest whatsoever seeing what was on the other side. It killed me when he just gazed right through me. The reality was, if he looked close enough, he would see all those shattered pieces of my heart in places they didn’t belong. They were in my throat, in my hands, and lost somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

He was leaving today. When I left for my run earlier, he had been getting his stuff together by the front door and talking on the phone to whoever was coming to pick him up. Part of me was glad that the tension that rolled between us would ease now that he was going to be thousands of miles away, but a bigger part of me, a louder part of me, was screaming that once he was out of the door with that guitar, it was over for good between us. I knew he deserved to know the real reasons why, but I just couldn’t seem to find the right words to tell him.

I hadn’t heard from Asa or Silas in more than a week. I hoped my brother had taken my advice and found a deserted island to hole up on, but knowing him, I had my doubts. I wasn’t stupid enough to meet Silas alone, so I had given that little book that had turned my life so upside down to Lou, and had Silas come to the Goal Line to get it. Lou was cool about it and didn’t ask a million questions. Plus, he had the benefit of looking like he could pull Silas’s arms off and beat him with them with very little effort, so I felt safer having him take care of the hand-off.

I tried to call my mom and explain the whole situation to her, but she was as disinterested as always, and wanted to talk instead about some guy she met at a bar. Apparently, he wanted her to go on the road with him in his big rig and she was all excited about it. As usual, I tried to be the voice of reason, telling her she didn’t know the guy, and that if they got into a fight or she decided she didn’t like him, that he could end up leaving her stranded wherever he liked. She didn’t want to hear any of it. She didn’t even say thank you or seem at all grateful that I had come up with a way to keep Asa breathing, at least for now. All of it reminded me why I had been so desperate to get out of Woodward in the first place, and why I wanted my life to look so different now.

Adam had taken to calling once or twice a day, now that he knew Jet and I were no longer involved in whatever it was we had been trying to do. I could tell he was honestly concerned about how I was doing, but I had had to tell him more than once that I just wasn’t interested in dating or starting anything with someone else. The fact of the matter was that no one was ever going to be safe in a relationship with me, secure financial future and corporate career or not. The things in my past, the people in my life, were always going to be a threat and there was just no way that I ever wanted to risk subjecting someone I cared about to that. It wasn’t fair.

When I got back to the house, I stopped to catch my breath and I stumbled a little, because Jet was coming out the front door and headed down the steps. He stopped short when he saw me and looked down at the toes of his combat boots. The look in his eyes broke my heart, and all I wanted to do was wrap him in a hug and tell him everything would be okay. I knew that wasn’t really true, so I just propped a hip on the wrought-iron railing and looked up at him.

“Are you okay?”

He didn’t even look up at me, but I saw his shoulders tense and his nails dig into his palms. I didn’t know if I was in love with this man, but I thought I was, and I knew for absolute certain that all I wanted for him was that he never feel the way he was obviously feeling right now again. If I had to stand between Jet and whatever was making him sizzle and pop with anger the way he was at the moment, I would do it, even if that meant I kept myself away from him as well. He deserved some measure of peace, some respite from the demons that constantly hounded him, and even if it meant not being part of his life, I was determined to see that he got it.

“I’m fine.”

He lifted his head to look at me and those eyes were so dark and so angry that I felt them singe across my skin. I understood better than he could ever imagine about being hurt by someone who you loved, and I wanted to tell him, wanted to explain the entire ugly mess to him. But then he would just want to fix it and there was no fixing Asa, and no going back in time and fixing the girl I used to be. There was just moving forward and getting the things we had worked for, and building a better life from here on out, and hopefully being better people along the way.

“Well, have fun on tour. I’m sure you’re going to be amazing.”

It was stilted and awkward, as all conversation between us was anymore. We used to be able to talk to each other, just look at each other and know what the other was thinking. Now we were just two people hurting for different reasons, trying to pretend like it didn’t rip us apart to breathe the same air.

I wasn’t expecting him to move but suddenly he was in my face with a rattle of the chains that hung from his wallet to his belt, and a clinking of the rings on his fingers. He grabbed the metal rail on either side of me. Those blazing eyes were millimeters from my own, and I could see the way his anger pulled down the corners of a mouth that had loved me in so many different ways. I knew Jet had a lot of rage inside him, knew that he struggled to keep a lid on the volcano of emotion that roiled inside him, but I never expected to see it unleashed on me. It burned and popped across all my exposed skin and all I could do was stand there and take it, while he glared at me and growled,

“Does it even matter?”

I wasn’t scared of him, wasn’t scared of that anger. What terrified me was being another person who had ultimately let him down, who had picked someone awful and abusive over him. That wasn’t my intention, but it was what I had done nonetheless.

“Of course it matters. What was between us always mattered; you matter. We both knew going in that it was never supposed to be long-term, just a good time remember? We aren’t good for each other, Jet.”

The words tasted like dirt on my tongue. I wanted him forever, wanted him to sing me to sleep every night, wanted to watch him onstage and know he was coming home with me. I wanted all of it, and none of it was the future I had ever planned for myself, but more than that, I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to have something that no one could tarnish or soil; not his dad, not his mom, not me, and sure as hell not my jackass of a brother. He was great and more talented than one person should ever be, and I knew he deserved greatness. I refused to stand in the way of that.

He bent down, leaning in even closer, so that our noses were practically touching. I was shivering from head to toe, because it had been far too long since I had pressed up against the long, hard lines of that lean body. I was always going to want him, always going to be tempted by him, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to grab him and slam my mouth over his, not to beg him to come back to me, not to demand that he keep it in his pants while he was on the road. But I didn’t have the right to do any of those things, so I just watched him carefully and tried not to quiver.

“Why can’t you just say I’m not good for you, that I’m not what you want? It doesn’t have anything to do with me or what I think or want, Ayd. I could see forever with you, and could promise you every day that it’ll just be me and you.”

That made my heart seize. I wanted to grab his face, wanted to kiss that mouth that looked like it tasted sour and bad. I just wanted to make it better, but there was no way I could. I sighed and shook my head a little bit.

“I want what’s best for both of us. I know you don’t understand that, and I can see that you don’t really believe it, either, but it’s true. I know I’m not what’s best for you, Jet. I have things going on and so do you, really. I don’t think the universe or that girl from my past was ever going to give us a fair shot.”

I wasn’t ever going to be what was best for anyone, but that was neither here nor there.

He was looking at me like I was killing him slowly, over and over again. He pushed off the railing in a violent move that made me flinch a little. He scowled at me and shoved his hands through his messy hair. He took a few steps down the stairs, so that I was standing above him. When he looked up at me, the pain in his eyes tore away whatever was left that I was hiding behind. None of it mattered anymore and the truth was just too strong to ignore.

I loved him, loved him like I had never loved anyone or anything ever, and I realized that was why I could let him go. I could see how much it hurt him, imagined that I looked just as bad, but knowing I was doing it for the right reasons, because I did love him, made me believe we would both be okay in the end. Letting him go for his own good, to protect him from all the things that he could suffer from if he loved me back, was worth it.

“That’s funny, Ayden, because when I’m with you, I feel better. I behave better, I sound better, and some of the nasty shit that eats me up inside doesn’t seem so bad. No one has ever done that for me before, so if you aren’t what’s best for me, I can’t imagine what you think would be.”

I bit my lip and caved. I hopped down to the next step and grabbed his frowning face in both hands. His rough cheeks abraded my palms and he was warm, as if all that stuff he was feeling on the inside was trying to find its way out through his skin.

“You don’t need anyone to make you better, Jet. You’re already the best.”

I meant to just brush my mouth across his, to just touch lips to lips, to try to soothe some of those broken edges we seemed to keep stabbing each other with. As usual, when it was me and him, it went from sedate and light to a full-blown inferno in half a second. My hands wrapped in his hair, his hands locked on my waist, and it went from a good-bye peck to the kind of kiss people share when they know there is a very good chance they will never see each other again.

His lips were hard and his tongue was insistent against my own, and there was a level of desperation in both of us that made the kiss twist into something more dangerous than I could handle now that I realized how deeply I cared for him. Everything about Jet was passionate—his mouth, his hands, and the way he held me like I was going to escape and run away at any minute. He kissed me like he loved me and it broke me even further. I had no doubt had we been inside, and not standing in front of the house when the van with the rest of the guys in the band pulled up, that they would have interrupted something a lot more intimate than us kissing.

Someone honked the horn and Jet pulled away. He left a little bite to remember him by and now, instead of being angry, those oh-so-pretty eyes with that gold halo just looked sad.

“Bye, Ayd.”

I had to hold back tears. I put his shaking fingers to my mouth, like maybe I could hold him there, keep him with me forever, and whispered back, “Bye, Jet.”

He hauled all his equipment to the van and I stood frozen to the spot. Right before he closed the door, he looked at me and forced a lopsided grin. I lost it. Before the van was gone from the front of the house, I bolted to my room and threw myself across the bed. I cried because I couldn’t help but feel like he was telling me good-bye forever, and I cried because there was no way I could have him. I cried because my mom was never going to grow up, and I was never going to get my childhood back. I cried because, as awful and manipulative as Asa was, I still loved the rat bastard. But mostly, I cried for me. I had spent so much time trying to deny who I was, and working toward a future that was secure, that I wasted Lord only knew how long avoiding and denying the one person who wanted to actually promise me a forever. It was a mess.

I didn’t hear Cora come in, but I felt my bed sink down when she sat on the edge of it. Her fingers were cool when she pushed my hair off my face.

“That was brutal.”

I sniffed and tried to wipe the moisture away with the pillow case, but my eyes kept on leaking.

“How much of it did you see?”

“Enough to watch two of my best friends’ hearts break. Come on, Ayd. Why are you doing this? Clearly you guys belong together.”

The tears came harder and harder and my heart squeezed so hard I thought I was going to stop breathing for a minute.

“It’s for the best.” I wasn’t sure how many times I had to say it before I actually started to believe it myself.

She didn’t say anything else, which for Cora was like an act of God himself, but she did stay and continue to stroke my head until I was all cried out.

T
he first week he was gone was the worst. I threw myself into school and picked up every extra shift I could at the bar, and not only because I had to pay Shaw back an exorbitant amount of money. I had to stay busy or I felt like I would crack into pieces.

My friends asked how I was doing every day, and every day I lied and said I was fine. I even gritted my teeth and listened to Cora when she gave me updates on how the tour was going. Apparently, Enmity was even more popular than the band that was headlining, which wasn’t surprising at all. Jet was a rock god and now all of Europe knew it, too. I wondered if, when he got back, he was finally going to sign with a big label and shoot to real stardom. He deserved to be recognized for how wonderful he was.