Jet (Marked Men, #2)(58)

“You’re lucky she didn’t shoot you. She’s from Brooklyn, and she doesn’t mess around.”

“Stop avoiding the question. I know he’s here. I followed you around for days waiting for him to ask you to make it all better. Just like he always did.”

I tried not to convulse in disgust when his eyes raked over me from head to toe.

“I don’t do that for him anymore, any of it. This is his mess to clean up.” I made sure my point was clear. “I don’t know where he is and I don’t know anything about a book.”

Silas swore and I jumped when his meaty fist smashed into the dingy mirror over the sink, shattering it into a shower of glass bits.

“This isn’t a game, Ayd. This is a bunch of pissed-off bikers who run drugs and guns, and they have no problem putting your entire family in the ground in the backwoods if it suits them. Asa screwed the pooch and I’m just trying to minimize the damage.”

“By following me? By scaring the crap out of my roommate and trying to break into my house? This isn’t Woodward. None of that is going to fly here.”

I pulled the door open and glared at him over my shoulder. “I’ll talk to Asa. If I can get him to hand that book over, you better make sure nothing happens to my mama. But chances are he already did something stupid with it and he lied about needing the twenty grand so he could disappear. This is Asa, you know what he’s capable of.”

Silas’s gummy eyes skirted over me from the top of my head to the worn toes of my boots. “So do you, Ayd, and if you think for one hot second that piece of shit would be above selling your fine ass to an MC, if it meant keeping his own skin safe, than you’re dead wrong and that fancy college didn’t teach you shit.”

I walked out the door shaking from the inside out. I had tried so hard to keep the past from interfering with my new life, tried so hard to forget about the things I’d done and the way I had lived, but it seemed like fate was bound and determined to keep right on cramming it down my throat. At that moment, I could say in all honesty that I hated my brother, hated everything he represented, and yet I was still going to have to try to figure out a way to keep him breathing. It grated that I couldn’t just let him hang from the noose of his own stupidity and greed.

When I got back to the table, I wasn’t at all surprised to see that we had visitors. Shaw was sitting on Rule’s lap while he finished her beer, and Jet had taken up post in the seat I had recently vacated. They were all laughing at something Cora was saying, and I felt my heart sink. This was the family I had always wanted. These were the people who I could count on, who would love me through the good and the bad and not ask a thing of me in return, and all I had done was fool them into thinking I was worth more than I actually ever was.

Jet’s dark gaze found mine and I tried to force a smile. There were so many questions shining out of those dark depths. I wished so badly that I could just answer a single one of them. I stopped at his side and smiled for real when his hand curled around my hip.

“What’s going on?”

“We were hanging out at Rule’s when Shaw called in an SOS. I figured since I was close by I could just scoop you two knuckleheads up and take you home, so you didn’t have to wait for a cab.”

It was sweet; he was sweet, and so ridiculously hot. Man, oh man, was he hot. His black hair was standing all over the place like it tended to do and he had on a tight, black long-sleeved T-shirt with a pentagram and cow skull on it. I’m sure it was some band logo that I had never heard of, but it looked good on him, almost as good as those painted-on black jeans he liked to wear, which were tucked into the top of his unlaced combat boots. I liked everything about him, from the silver rings on every finger to the devil spikes at the top of each ear. He looked like a rock star and I knew firsthand that those skills extended way beyond the stage. I licked my lips and felt his fingers press even harder into the soft skin on my hip.

“Well, that was awfully nice of you.”

I didn’t want to think about Asa, or Silas, or my mom. All I wanted to do was get somewhere alone with him and let him make me forget everything. I could fall asleep with him singing in my ear, and pretend that everything would be all right.

Rule laughed and lifted one of his dark eyebrows. The barbells made him looked wicked and sinister, and I had no trouble seeing why Shaw had been his for the taking for so long.

“You don’t have to thank us. It’s totally to our benefit that you’re all liquored up and ready to get down to business. I told Jet on the way over, girls’ night out is one of my favorite nights of the week. Shaw always comes back ready to play.”

She gasped in outrage and smacked him on the forearm. The guys shared a laugh and I couldn’t help but grin when she turned hot pink under the scrutiny. Playing with Jet, drunk or sober, sounded like a whole lot more fun than hanging out in the bar, so I tried to catch his eye and indicate anytime he was ready, so was I. Cora ordered one more round of shots and by the time we finished them it was way past time to go. She was draped over Jet and me, and he had to fold her small frame into the back of the Challenger. He gave us both a level look and warned that if we puked in his baby, we were cleaning it up, wasted or not. Cora found that hilarious and laughed and laughed, until I heard her gasping for air.

Jet let out a low whistle, and honked the horn when we drove past Rule’s massive truck. I saw Rule flip him the bird, but it in no way deterred him from whatever he was doing to Shaw. He had her pressed up against the driver’s door with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.