Jet (Marked Men, #2)(86)

“It’ll work out the way it’s supposed to. I have faith in you guys.”

I grunted and hung up the phone. I flipped it around in my fingers for a few minutes, and stared at the blank screen until I finally gave in and typed a message to Ayden. We hadn’t spoken since that kiss in the yard before I left, and I could still feel every part of her inside me.

I’ve been thinking about you. I miss you.

There was no response back for a solid half hour, but she was in a different time zone and I didn’t know if she was staying at the hospital or not, so I tried really hard not to think about it too much. Instead, I scrounged up a pen and a piece of paper and worked out the chorus of a new song that had been tugging at me since we left. I was so lost in thought that when my phone dinged with a message, I almost ignored it until I remembered that I had sent a text to her.

I miss you, too.

Simple and to the point. It was all I really needed to hear.





Chapter 17

Ayden

I was so exhausted I could barely see straight. I had spent the last three nights sleeping in the most uncomfortable chair in the world in Asa’s room and I was sick to death of arguing with my mom on the phone.

Asa had a seizure my first night back in Kentucky and had been rushed in for major surgery. The doctors had to drill a hole in his head in order to reduce the swelling and give the pooling blood a place to escape. Asa’s heart had stopped beating twice, and they told me lucky didn’t even come close to covering it with how close my brother had come to dying. He still wasn’t awake, and it was really touch-and-go, but I had to take a shower and if my mom called to tell me she just simply couldn’t make it home one more time, I was going to murder everyone. I couldn’t believe she was acting like this was just another scrape that Asa had gotten himself into. Not when I told her that the hospital staff had declared him dead, not just once but twice, while he was on the operating table. If he died and she made me bury my brother alone, it was the last time she was ever going to hear from me.

The hotel wasn’t exactly five-star accommodations, but it was within walking distance of the hospital and they had plenty of open rooms, so it would do until I knew one way or the other what I was dealing with. I sent a quick message to the girls to let them know what had happened and then spent ten minutes assuring both of them I was fine, and that neither one of them needed to get on a plane. They were the best, but I needed to handle what was to come on my own. I promised to call if I needed them and then stared at the message Jet had sent the day before.

I had been sitting in the waiting room during Asa’s surgery when it came through, and it had taken me a half hour to stop silently crying long enough to write him back. Just knowing I was on his mind had been enough to get me through the endless hours of waiting, and when they had come out and told me about Asa’s heart stopping, it was the simple I miss you that had enabled me to keep it together.

I toyed with the idea of sending him a quick little message to let him know I was thinking about him as well, but I was too tired to think straight and no words seemed right to convey everything I wanted to say to him. I wanted to tell him that I needed him, that this was the scariest thing I had ever had to do on my own, that I was done pushing him away for his own good, that if he could love all the parts of me, they were his for the taking. I just didn’t want to shovel all that at him while he was concentrating on the tour. He had obligations to things bigger than me, and I could be patient. I would talk to him when he got back and hope that somewhere along the way he hadn’t found a replacement for me

I rubbed my gritty eyes and trudged up the concrete steps that led to the floor my room was supposed to be on. I had only been in the room for five minutes to drop off my bag and brush my teeth. There were families on either side of me who had been cheery in passing, but now I hoped they were out for the day, so that it was quiet and I could just crash for an hour or so until I had to head back to the hospital. I blinked a couple of times when I got to the landing because it looked like a long, lean figure was sitting against the closed door. I shook my head for a second to make sure my sleepy brain wasn’t playing tricks on me, because there was only one person on the planet I could think of who would be wearing skintight purple jeans in the middle of redneck country, and he was supposed to be a million miles away being a rock star.

“Jet?”

The word whispered out as more a breath than an actual sound, but he must have heard me, because his head turned and he finally saw me. He pressed back against the closed door he was propped up against and levered up to his feet. He had on dark sunglasses and a tight black T-shirt that had some kind of flaming skull and pentagram, band logo on it. His dark hair looked like he had slept on it for days, but his mouth kicked up in a half grin and suddenly he was all I could see. There was no rundown hotel, there were no kids screaming in the pool down below, there was no brother barely hanging on to life—there was just Jet, and he was all I wanted in the world. I wasn’t aware of the fact that I was moving toward him, that I was running. I wasn’t aware that I was crying, yet again, and wasn’t aware that he caught me when I slammed into him hard enough to drive him back a step or two. All I could feel was his arms wrap around me and his lips touching the top of my head, while I collapsed against him. I tried to climb him like a jungle gym, so that I could get my legs around him as well.

“What are you doing here?” I wasn’t sure the words made any sense through the hysteria I was dripping all over him.