Jet: A Marked Men Novel (15 page)

“What’s been going on with you?”

She rolled her eyes and tucked her long hair behind her ears. “Still arguing with Rule about the house. I told him that I would love to move into one with him, if he let me put down half of the down payment. He lost his mind.”

I followed her up the stairs and let her talk while I nodded and listened sympathetically. We stopped outside the classroom for my next class and I tugged on the end of her braid to get her to take a breath.

“Shaw, think about this from his perspective for just a second. This is a guy who has a hard time making bonds with anyone, has a hard time committing to anything, and he wants to buy you a home. You offering to pay for half of it makes logical sense to me and you, because you have more money than God, but to him it’s taking something he’s trying to do for you, for the two of you together, and making it less important. Besides, it’s money that comes from your folks, who
hate
him, and he wouldn’t want to accept a freaking penny from those people after the way they’ve treated you. He wants to do this
for
you, Shaw. Why shouldn’t he take care of you? You loved him unconditionally for years and years. Can’t this be your reward for that?”

She blinked at me with big eyes and then groaned. “Well, crap. Why didn’t I see that?”

I laughed. “Because you’re trying to prevent yourself from being hurt. That boy would rather chew off his own arm than hurt you again. Just chill out and enjoy loving each other.”

She raised a pale brow at me and pushed open the door to the classroom. She already had her phone out and was texting Rule. I really wanted what was best for them. They had had a hard road and deserved a break.

“Where did all this romantic insight suddenly come from? Did Jet get under your skin or what?”

Jet was under more than just my skin. He was doing things to me that were downright scary, and with Asa looming in the background, I needed to get it all together or risk it exploding in painful bits and pieces around me. I needed the control, the firm hand on my life I had maintained since landing in Denver years ago. I needed to remember that I was the one in charge of my fate, not Asa and not Jet.

“Jet is a lot different from what I really thought he was. There’s a whole lot there I never really anticipated or fully appreciated.” I wasn’t just referring to what was in his pants, either.

Shaw was smiling at whatever had come back at her on her phone, but she answered me anyway.

“It’s really easy to think that these guys are just one way because of how they look and how they talk, but once they let you in it’s an entirely different ball game.”

I sighed and dug a pencil out of my bag. “I really like him, Shaw. I mean
like
him. He sings to me at night and it makes my heart hurt. The way he looks at me, I feel like he’s trying to pull me apart and put me back together in an even better way.”

Her mouth fell open a little. “Wow.”

“I know. I’m not ready for any of that with him.”

“Why not? If he makes you feel that way, why wouldn’t you just jump in with both feet?”

“Because then I wouldn’t be in control of what’s happening between us anymore.”

She was going to say something back, but had to stop because the teacher started class and we had to pay attention. My life felt like it was suddenly spinning out of control. All I wanted was to build myself a rock-solid road to the future, a way to never end up back where I was. Now not only was my past staring at me like a loaded gun, but my future was tied up with a guy who didn’t care about security and stability, but made me feel like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. It was confusing and stressful, and the more time I spent worrying about it, the heavier that brick of cement in my gut got. Jet was a great guy, but the problem was, I wasn’t exactly a great girl, and I just didn’t know if I was ready for him to know that. I knew for sure I wasn’t ready to turn the reins of whatever our relationship was or wasn’t over to him.

After class was over, I knew Shaw wanted to rehash what we had been talking about, but I needed to go there like I needed a hole in the head, so I bolted when she was distracted by a classmate asking her about an assignment. I had bigger problems to tackle, like where in the hell I could come up with money for Asa. Realistically, I knew I could ask Shaw for help. She might not have that kind of money just lying around, but she was the only person that I knew who could more than likely come close to getting her hands on it. I had about five grand in savings, but it went quickly between school and rent, and there was no way that would be enough to keep Asa breathing, if he was in as deep as I thought or it was as bad as he was hinting at.

I had two more classes and was scheduled to work a closing shift, but I needed to get ahold of my mom to make sure she was okay. I called her twice but it went to voice mail, and I tried not to panic. It made my skin crawl that Asa could be so reckless and so thoughtless as to how his actions affected everyone around him. I had hoped and prayed that when I left Woodward, I was leaving behind all the awful things my brother dragged around with him.

Shaw sent me a text that let me know, in no uncertain terms, that we were not finished talking, and I started to dread having to work my shift with her. I wasn’t sure what to do about Jet, and trying to explain things to her wasn’t helping me figure it out. I was running across the parking lot because I was late again and needed to get downtown, when my phone rang. Since my mom was finally calling me back, I ground to a stop and answered her with a breathless, “Hey, Mama.”

“Why have you been calling me all day, Ayden? I’m busy.”

That was my mother—perpetually stuck at sixteen years old and knocked up. I don’t think she had ever emotionally matured beyond that.

“Did you know Asa was coming to Denver?”

“Of course I did. He misses you and wanted to see you.”

I had to bite my lip to try not to swear at her. “No, Mama, he owes some people back home a lot of money. He’s here so I can help him, as usual.”

“Asa is a good boy, Ayd. It’s good to help your brother.”

It was always the same thing. Every time he went to jail, every time he had thugs pounding on the door, every time he used me or used her, he was always just a good boy in her eyes and that would never change.

“All right, Mama. Just be careful, okay.”

“You worry too much, girl. Being at that fancy school hasn’t done nothing but made you like all those folks from here you used to turn your nose up at and run circles around.”

I sighed and closed my eyes and tightened my fingers around the phone. “Things change.”

She snorted. “No, baby girl, people change. Things just stay the same.”

That was the attitude that was going to keep her in a trailer in Woodward the rest of her life. I hung up the phone and was getting ready to climb in the Jeep and head to work when I heard my name. Shaw was running across the parking lot and talking rapidly into her phone. I tossed my stuff in the passenger seat and rounded the hood so I could meet her halfway. We worked the same shift so I assumed that she was having car problems or that something had come up with Rule and she was going to call out. What I wasn’t prepared for was for her to grab my arm and gasp, “Jet’s in jail!”

At first I thought she was joking. After all, I had left him snuggled up and satisfied this morning on my way to class. I couldn’t figure how he had found himself in enough trouble to get arrested between then and now. I laughed a little.

“You have to be kidding.”

She shook her head, blond hair flying in all directions. “No. Cora just called me. All three of the guys just left the shop. I guess he called Rowdy to bail him out but they all went. She said she had to threaten Nash with bodily harm to get him to tell her what was going on. She tried to call you, but it went to voice mail.”

I looked at the screen of my phone and did indeed have two missed calls from Cora while I had been talking to my mom. I just blinked at it stupidly, while trying to piece together what was happening to my once orderly life.

“Why is he in jail?”

“She couldn’t say. The guys all left in the middle of appointments and she was scrambling to reschedule and hold down the fort. Do you want me to take you to the police station? You look a little pale.”

I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wanted to run away to a place where Asa was back in Kentucky, to a place where I lusted after Jet in silence and pretended that I could make a relationship with Adam work out. I shook my head and turned back to the Jeep.

“If he wanted me there, he would have called me and not Rowdy. I need to get to work.”

“Ayden?” I could hear the question in her tone, but I just held up a hand. I needed some sense of normalcy, some kind of pattern that I was accustomed to, back for just a second.

“Not now, Shaw. I’ll talk to him when I get home. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but if it was bad enough to get him arrested, chances are the boys are a better fit for him right now than I am.”

She frowned at me, and for the first time since we had met when we were freshmen, I could actually see her judging me and finding me lacking. “I don’t know that I agree with that, Ayd.”

I just shook my head at her. “Well, it isn’t up to you. I’ll see you at work.”

I saw her knit her brow in confusion as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the bar. My mind was spinning in a million different directions and I was having a really difficult time putting all my thoughts in their assigned boxes. I was worried about Asa, worried about Jet, and maybe, more important than either of those things, I was worried about myself.

I could feel the control slipping away, feel the walls I had erected to prevent these very things from happening start to crumble, and I was holding it all together by only the skin of my teeth. Who I was and who I wanted to be were being torn into separate parts, and the me that was left was vulnerable and raw. I had no idea how to stitch it all back together again, or even if I wanted to.

Chapter 10

Jet

I
should have known when my mom called me hysterical and crying that it wasn’t going to lead to anything good. Normally, she was too beaten down, too cowed to do anything other than be dejected and disheartened. Not today. Today she was sobbing and rambling on and on about how Dad was going to kill her, and while I would have much rather been basking in the afterglow of some very fine morning sex time, I was instead frantically pulling on pants and rushing across town to see what the hell was going on over there.

I brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the house and ran up the stairs like the house was on fire. I didn’t bother knocking, just shoved the front door open, and before I could stop to get my thoughts in order or do a thorough survey of what exactly it was that I was dealing with, my dad came barreling out of the kitchen and knocked me back out the door. I landed with a dull thud on the cracked concrete of the sidewalk and saw stars for a second as my head banged hard on the ground. Before I could get my wits about me, or even get my hands under myself to get up, my dad launched himself at me, and his fist connected with the side of my face. I felt the skin on my cheek split wide open and jerked just in time to avoid the blow that would have surely broken my nose. I grabbed at his flailing fists and felt my stomach turn over when I smelled the stale booze and pungent fury coming out of his every pore.

We were about the same size, only I was sober and had been in enough fights in my time to know how to get the upper hand. I shoved him off me and scrambled to my feet, so that I was looking down at him. I poked at my bloody face and glared down at him.

“What the fuck, old man?”

He started to yell something at me, but my mom chose that moment to come running down the stairs. She was a mess. Her shirt was torn and her hair was everywhere, but what made me see red, what made the fire I tried so hard to contain burst forth in an eruption of flame and rage, was the fact that not only did she have a black eye, but also a split lip and tear tracks running down her too-pale face. It was clear that, whatever had set my dad off on his drunken rampage, I wasn’t his first victim of the day. She was wailing that we had to stop, that we needed to go inside before the neighbors called the police, but I didn’t care.

I spit out some of the blood that had trickled from my cheek to the corner of my mouth, and told my dad, in all seriousness, “I’m going to kill you.”

He staggered to his feet and glared at me like I was the one at fault.

“Kind of like you killed my dreams? If it wasn’t for you and that stupid bitch, I coulda kept on doing what I wanted. Touring the world, seeing great bands. You ruined everything, you selfish little prick. I asked for one thing. Look what you made me do!”

His words made no sense and they didn’t matter anyway. All I could see was my mom crying and hear her asking him to stop. There was no stopping it anymore. The flames were raging and I didn’t care if they burned him to a charred remnant of himself.

He was still pretty loaded, so when I hit him he went down easily. I heard my mom scream my name from somewhere really far away and felt immense satisfaction that he wasn’t nearly as quick as I was. My blow to his nose landed with a gratifying crunch. I don’t know how many times I hit him. I don’t know who called the cops, or if my mom was crying over me or over him. It wasn’t until the handcuffs clicked into place, and the cop who looked like he was the same age as me was shoving me into the backseat of his cruiser, that I realized what I had done.

My dad was lying still as stone on the walkway. His face was covered in blood and a paramedic was strapping an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. My mom, my poor mom, in all her black-and-blue, tearstained glory, was holding on to his limp hand and telling him everything would be all right. I think something inside of me officially died when she climbed into the back of the ambulance with him to go to the hospital. The young cop gave me a steady look, like he had seen this a hundred times already today and asked, “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

I sighed and let my head fall against the back of the seat. It wasn’t the first time I had been in the back of a cop car, but I had a sinking feeling it was going to be the most serious reason I’d ever had had for being there.

“He hit her. Normally, he just treats her like shit, and makes her feel bad and worthless, but this time he put his hands on her. I just lost it.”

The cop watched me closely. “He do that to your face?” I had forgotten about my cheek and prodded at the inside with my tongue. It still stung but it wasn’t dripping blood anymore, so I didn’t think it was going to need stitches or anything.

“Yeah. Sucker punched me when I first walked in the door.”

My hands were starting to throb, with my knuckles undeniably split open and torn. The reality of what I had done was starting to settle heavily on my shoulders.

The cop nodded and tapped the roof of the car. “They’re both saying you started it. The old man wants to press assault charges.”

I groaned. I bet he would be willing to drop them the second I agreed to hook him up with Artifice and send him on tour.

“We have to take you down to the station and book you. You have anyone you can call to get you bailed out?”

I nodded and had him call Rowdy. I gave him the CliffsNotes version of events and had no doubt he would bring the cavalry with him, but I had been in enough situations with the law during my misspent youth to know that no matter how quickly he moved, I was still looking at a solid day spent in lockup.

I appreciated that the cop didn’t grill me or try to give me a bunch of unwanted advice on the trip to the station. I also appreciated that he didn’t ask me over and over if I wanted to know how my dad was doing. I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want to know what my mom had to say about it. This was the last straw. I was going to go on the European tour. I was going to look at signing with a label, if that’s what the guys wanted. I was going to do it all, everything I held back on because of her. What I wasn’t going to do was try to stand sentinel between my mom and that bastard anymore.

They booked me, ran my prints, took my rings and my belt, my wallet and my phone, and put me in a cell with a dude who was clearly in for some kind of drug thing. He was twitchy and kept asking me if I had a smoke, even though there was obviously no smoking when you were locked up. I sat on the hard bench and stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. As the time passed, more people were ushered in and out of the cell, and I just kept still. I was just trying to blend into the brick walls and make this day go away.

I didn’t even want to know how I was supposed to explain any of this to Ayden. We weren’t exactly at the “bail your boyfriend out of jail” stage of our relationship. Hell, I didn’t even know if we were at the relationship part of the relationship. Something told me this little road bump was going to go over like heavy metal at a funeral. She already couldn’t see anything beyond a good time in bed with me, and the last thing I needed to do was prove her right.

It was well after dark when they were finally able to post my bail. I had to show up in court the following week for sentencing, and the same cop who had arrested me walked me to where Rowdy was waiting with a handful of paperwork. He had a serious look on his face and I could tell he wasn’t happy. The cop handed me a bag that had all my crap in it and shook my hand.

“For what it’s worth, I would have much rather put the cuffs on the old guy. I see it every day. I understand you were just trying to do right by your mom. Too many kids find themselves in that situation, a lot of them are much younger than you.”

I just sighed and thanked him for his time.

Rowdy clapped me on the back of the neck and practically dragged me out of the station. I was surprised to see that he was alone, but as we walked to his black SUV he told me, “The cop mentioned you left the Challenger in the Heights with the keys still in it. Nash convinced Rule to go with him to pick it up and drop it off at the house. Didn’t know what the old bastard might do to it.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me, so I muttered a thank-you and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Thanks for coming to get me, dude.”

He brushed it off. “Whatever.”

“Seriously. I’ll pay you back.”

“Okay, I’m about to punch you on the other side of your face. Knock it off and just tell me what happened.”

I jammed my fists into my eye sockets and tried to block it out but all I could see was my mom crying and her black eye. It made me want to beat on the old man all over again.

“It was a total shit show that involved my dad throwing me on the ground, my mom with a black eye, and some pretty serious assault charges leveled at me.” I flexed my hands and winced as the scrapes across my raw knuckles pulled and tugged. “I would have killed him. Seriously, Rowdy. I was so goddamn close.”

He was quiet for a long minute and I thought maybe I had crossed a line in our friendship, but when he spoke, his voice was steady and there was no censure in it.

“He would have deserved it. No man should ever hit a woman.”

I groaned and wanted to pull my hair out. “Now all I can think about is how long it was going on and why she never said anything. She got into the fucking ambulance with him and went to the hospital. She was bleeding and had a black eye and she went with that bastard to the hospital where she works. She didn’t say a word when they put cuffs on me and shoved me in the back of the cruiser, not even ‘thank you.’ I’m over it, dude. Just over it.”

“You need to get a lawyer.”

“Yeah, I guess I probably should.”

“Talk to your mom. Get her to tell them that he hit her first.”

I shook my head. “That won’t happen. I mean, I guess I should have seen this coming. It’s been getting worse and worse. I refused to set him up with Dario and the boys in Artifice. He wanted to go on tour with them as a roadie. Can you believe that shit? I told him no and he beat the crap out of her and then tried to whip my ass. He’s insane.”

“What are you going to do?”

That was the question. What
was
I going to do? Since I didn’t have an answer, I just kept my mouth shut. I was glad to see the Challenger parked in the driveway. I was also glad to see that Cora’s Mini was gone and so was Ayden’s Jeep. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to either of them, and now that I had the time to wash the stench of jail off and try to put my head back on right, I was gladly going to use it. I turned to Rowdy and gave him a lopsided grin that had no humor in it.

“Let the guys know I’m cool. Especially Nash. This isn’t the first rodeo with my old man. I doubt it’ll be the last.”

“We got your back, Jet. Don’t sweat it.”

I nodded my thanks and jumped out of the SUV. It was closing in on midnight and I felt wrung out and dirty. All I wanted to do was strip down both physically and mentally. I felt like I should have seen this coming from a mile away, and it bothered me that I was still disappointed that it was happening to me. Before I could change my mind, before I could let guilt and anything else get in the way, I sent Dario a text to tell him that the boys and I were in for the tour. I would deal with what that meant for where I stood with Ayden later. Right now, I needed something tangible to focus on and put my energy into, and getting together an amazing set to take overseas was just the ticket. I turned the phone off before I could see what he sent me back, and wandered into the bathroom.

I dropped everything in a messy, bloodstained pile on the floor and turned the water on as hot as it would go. When the steam filled the room, I climbed in and let the scalding burn slide over my head and down over my shoulders. I wanted to wash the entire day away, but that was far-fetched because I still had a dad in the hospital and a looming court date, and no matter how hot the water was, neither of those things was simply going to wash away. I flexed my hands under the water and watched dispassionately as the dried blood swirled with the water down the drain. The slice on my face started to sting and I was going to scrub it, when the glass door to the shower opened and I felt soft hands slide around my waist and rest on my stomach. A feather-light kiss landed on the back of my neck and I felt her lay her cheek on the center of my spine.

She was all soft hands, soft skin, soft breasts, and the sweetest-sounding voice I had ever heard. All the razor-sharp edges and stabbing pain of the day bled away, piece by piece, and started to swirl down the drain with everything else. Some of the awful tension that was coiled inside me started to unwind and I put one of my battered hands over the top of her much smaller ones.

“Bad day?”

Her twang was a little more pronounced than it typically was and I wanted to believe it was because she was worried about me, and that she really did care about me in the same way I was rapidly starting to care for her. I felt her move closer to me, so that her entire front was pressed along my back. I could feel other parts of my body start to tense now, but in an entirely better way. All it took was a touch from this girl and nothing else seemed to matter.

“It wasn’t one of the better ones, for sure.”

She moved one of her hands up so that it was resting on my heart, which I was pretty sure she could feel pounding at her touch. The other she moved lower and it was almost enough to make me forget about what a crap day it really had been. I wanted to turn around, wanted to put my arms around her, but letting her hold on to me, letting her put me back together was what I needed right now. So I just kept my eyes closed and stretched my hands out to brace myself against the wall. I couldn’t see my mom’s battered face anymore or feel my dad’s face break under my hands. All that mattered was Ayden, and that she could make it right, make me right.

Her fingers trailed a tingling pattern along my cock. I felt each brush, each twist of her hand on my chest. My heart pounded a rhythm that I was sure she could feel, and each time she squeezed me or slicked her hand over the ring through the tip, it thundered and I could feel her smile against the back of my neck. She moved her hand that was on my chest, so that she could run her fingers around the hoop through my nipple, and for a second I thought my knees were going to give out. She normally didn’t pay any attention to the hardware I had in places she only got to see when we got naked together. The fact that she was paying extra attention to it right now, that she was just taking care of me so well, I think it was what pushed me over the edge.