Jet (Marked Men, #2)(76)

“It would be, if he would stop being an *. 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 f*cking 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.