Jet (Marked Men, #2)(83)

Chapter 16

Jet

There was a naked blonde in the bed, across from where I was sitting at the little dinette in the hotel room. It was a sad testament to the state of affairs that I was far more interested in the bottle of whiskey in front of me, than I was in her. She hardly spoke any English and had come along with one of the guys in Artifice after the set, but for whatever reason she had been all over me all night, even though I wasn’t remotely interested. Maybe it was the language barrier. I didn’t understand German, and all she seemed to understand was that the more booze I tossed back, the more appealing she became, so there had been an endless supply since coming back to my room.

She was good-looking, tall with a great rack, and had miles of blond hair and pretty, big blue peepers. The problem was, she had all of those things and was in my bed where there should have been an amber-eyed brunette. Part of me was dying to climb in beside her and let the whiskey and a soft girl eliminate the ghost of Ayden for just a minute. Unfortunately, a bigger part of me knew that was only a temporary fix, a fix that would make me feel like shit in the morning, and make the guys in the band worry about me more than they already were.

Being on this tour was wearing on me and I don’t think I was hiding it well. The girls, the parties, the booze and the drugs—it was all a lot to process while I was trying to deal with a broken heart, and no matter what my own guys threw at me or what Dario and his boys tried to tempt me with, it held no appeal. I missed Colorado. I missed the boys at the shop, I missed Cora, and despite everything, I was worried about my mom. There was no hiding the hole in the center of my very being where Ayden should be and it went without saying I missed her most of all.

However, the real reason, the real issue that was keeping me from climbing all over the naked blonde and letting her teach me the German word for Jet, was Ayden. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and couldn’t stop seeing all the things I was feeling reflected back at me in her honey-tinted eyes. I felt so alone without her, and I didn’t for a second think she was going to be waiting around for me when I got back, not even after that kiss good-bye.

So far, the best thing about Europe was the opportunity to see a bunch of really great bands. In every country we stopped in, in every bar we pulled up to, there were underground bands playing. Amazing groups made up of kids often years younger than me, and it made me happy every time we got to hear them play. It reminded me just how much I loved listening to other bands play, loved discovering new talent and getting them exposure, far more than I liked being the one adored and fawned over while onstage. Sure I loved to play, loved to write songs and perform, but I absolutely didn’t want to do this for a living.

Being on tour, no matter where in the world it was, got to be a drag after a while. I wanted my own bed, preferably with a pretty Southern girl already in it, and I wanted a night not spent in a bar, fending off groupies and metal heads. I wasn’t cut out to be a rock star, but I was a perfect fit to make others into one. When I got home, I was going to rebuild the studio and look into starting up my own record label. The idea had me excited in a way the naked blonde could only dream of doing. Luckily for me, the rest of the guys in the band seemed as burned-out as I was.

Von missed his girlfriend and his kid, and spent more time on Skype than he did in the bar. Catcher spent most of his time with the guys in Artifice, but really was just happy to be along for the ride, and Boone we all watched every day, to see if he was struggling at all with his long stretch of sobriety. Being on the road was hard, and for this long and this far from home, we all worried he might slip. I don’t think anyone was thinking about signing with the label and I was glad. The band was solid and I would have hated for us to break up because we wanted different things. That thought just hit a little too close to home right now for me.

Dario insisted we were the better band, that we could go places and do things Artifice had only come close to, and while I took it as a compliment, they were things I just didn’t want. The only thing I wanted, the only thing that mattered, didn’t think we were right for each other and that’s where I seemed to be stuck.

I lumbered to my feet, drunk but not drunk enough, and eyeballed the girl. I needed to get her under me or out the door, and my tired brain wasn’t sure which option it was going to go with, when my phone trilled the very screamy Jucifer from my back pocket. The time changes across the ocean still weirded me out and the fact that Shaw was the one calling me made my blood go cold. It didn’t even register to me that the girl in the bed was swearing at me in a foreign language, or that she hurled the remote at my head as I went into the bathroom to take the call. She was going to be a pain to get rid of, but I didn’t deserve anything less for some seriously piss-poor judgment.

“Hey, Shaw is everything all right? Is Rule okay?”

Worst-case scenarios were running through my head at a rapid pace and I couldn’t slow them down. Angry German was rumbling though the closed door along with hammering fists. If I had been just a shade more intoxicated, this entire situation would have been so ridiculously hilarious there was a chance I would have killed myself laughing over it.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt you, but I needed to call you even though Rule threatened to hide my phone if I did.”

“What’s up?” She sounded nervous, which made me nervous and mad that Colorado was an entire ocean away. Something really heavy hit the door, and I absently wondered if the girl had bothered to put on clothes before throwing her tantrum. It struck me as funny that no matter where I was in the world, a pissed-off groupie was still just a pissed-off groupie.