Jet (Marked Men, #2)(35)

Rowdy whistled and Rule growled like a wild animal. “Did you call the cops?”

I sat back and laced my fingers behind my head. “Cora wouldn’t let me. You know her, she thinks this is the Wild West still and things like that just don’t happen here like they do in Brooklyn. She seems to think it’s a onetime event and that the guy was just a meth head or something looking for money. That bike was cherry and there was no way he just picked out our house at random. We’re way too far away from downtown for a junkie just looking to score some cash.”

“This isn’t cool.” Rule sounded a little unhinged and I couldn’t blame him. He had gone a little off the rails when Shaw had been attacked and we were all now just starting to settle down from it all.

“I know, but I don’t want to get all worked up over something if it turns out to be nothing. I’ll tell Ayden to keep an eye out and remind Cora that things here can be just as bad as the East Coast, but I’m hoping this was an isolated incident.”

Rule shoved hard hands through his spiky hair and squinted eyes that were glittering like ice on a frozen lake. “It better be because I’m not going to make it through something like what happened to Shaw again.”

I lifted a dark eyebrow. “I’ll keep an eye on them. I do live there, you know, and I’m trying to figure shit out with Ayden.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. You have no idea what it’s like to have someone you care about, someone you love, facing a danger like that. It changes you, it turns you into a different person. I barely made it when Shaw got hurt. If someone hurts Ayden or Cora, there is no telling what’s going to happen.”

Rowdy reached out and gave him a shove with one of his hands. Rule glowered at him but there was just something about Rowdy that made you want to listen to what he had to say.

“We all care about those girls, Archer. Nobody wants to see anything happen to either one of them. Let Jet handle the home front. You tell Shaw to keep her eyes open and remind Ayden to be careful and on the lookout. We’re a goddamn team and no one better forget it.”

It took a minute before Rule relented, but when he did his shoulders relaxed and his tattooed hands unclenched. I nodded in agreement, but the conversation was cut short because Cora flopped herself on the couch between me and Rowdy and pouted about Nash forcing her into regulation bowling shoes.

The topic was essentially dropped, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said, that when you cared about someone so deeply it changed you, made you into a different person. In his case, deciding that he could love Shaw, and more important, that she could love him, had turned him into a totally different guy. He was still a pain in the ass, but now he was a pain in the ass that could see beyond himself, and he was a shining example of love changing someone for the better.

I didn’t know how going from friends to something more was going to play out for me and Ayden, or that I necessarily needed to be better or worse. All I knew for sure was that she was inside me like cold drops of water next to all the burning things that had lived there for years. I was in no hurry to get her out, because something about her was cool and soothing to all the parts of me that had been on fire for far too long.





Chapter 7

Ayden

I was tired when I got home. Work had been busy, which was nice because I was tired of dodging Shaw’s questions and speculative looks about my relationship, or nonrelationship, with Jet. I wasn’t ready to get into it with her—hell I wasn’t even ready to get into it with him. When Rule had shown up to get her, he had almost strong-armed me into letting him take me home. When he got distracted by Lou, I had literally ducked out the back door to take my own car home. Something weird was going on, because while Rule was normally bossy and overbearing, he usually toned it down with me because I didn’t acquiesce to him in the least.

When I was pulling out of the parking lot, I got a text from Cora telling me that I needed to park in the driveway and that they had left all the lights on for me. It was all clandestine and overly cautious, and was making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

The house was quiet when I got in the front door. Cora’s light was off. I still wasn’t sure about this new territory I was treading on with Jet, so even though his light was on under his door, I decided I needed a shower and a minute to collect my thoughts before trying to talk to him. I collected a pair of yoga pants and a stretchy tank before padding to the bathroom on silent feet.

I shared the second bathroom with Jet, and before I had started sticking my tongue down his throat I never really thought about how intimate that was. For instance, all the junk he used in his hair was scattered all over the counter, right next to all the stuff I used to smell good and look pretty. He had a collection of thick silver rings on one side of the sink and a bunch of random guitar picks in the soap dish, next to the fancy bottles of perfume I left out because I was too lazy to put them away. One of his belts with the metal studs was curled up on the back of the toilet and the skirt of my cheerleader uniform was in a discarded pile on the floor. Somehow, without even noticing it, my life had intersected his so thoroughly that it was just seamless and so easy. I liked having all my stuff mixed up with all his. It made for a more interesting mess, kind of like us.

When I was walking back to my room, I had to stop outside the door because there was music drifting from across the hall. It wasn’t the screaming, ear-bleeding, headache-inducing noise that he usually had blaring, but soft guitar and the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. I couldn’t make out the song because it didn’t sound familiar, but it was alluring enough that I threw everything on my bed and went back across the hall without any hesitation. I knocked and the guitar stopped long enough for him to tell me to come in. When I did, my breath stopped somewhere in the middle of my chest, and my heart did a slow slide all the way down to the bottom of my feet and back up to my throat.