Jet (Marked Men #2)(77)

“Is it kind of what you were after?”

I laughed, really laughed. Laughed so hard I felt water build in my eyes.

“Dude, if I didn’t think you would punch me in the face, I would kiss you. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

“It’s big. All we’re going to be able to get done tonight is the outline, and you’re looking at a solid four to five hours for that alone. You need to decide what side you want it on.”

“The side opposite the angel of death.” I figured that would look more balanced than having them on the same side, even though the death angel took up most of my chest.

“Cool, give me a few to set up and get the transfer ready. Nash said when he was done with the guy he’s working on, he’ll run out and grab pizza. Rule said he was gonna get a case of beer and come back. You have to wait until you’re done getting inked to drink though, otherwise you’ll push the ink out. We’re all just gonna hang out here.”

I readily agreed and kicked back while he went to take care of business. My family was as settled as it was ever going to be, my music was in the prime of its success, and I had the coolest group of friends ever. It was a shame that none of that seemed to do any good at filling the place in me that was still gaping wide open because of a whiskey-eyed brunette. Nothing made the fact that she was still talking to Sweater Vest easier to swallow, and none of it made the fact that we just couldn’t figure out how to be together suck any less.

Letting Rowdy hammer on me for a few hours with a bunch of needles seemed like a good way to get the endorphins and adrenaline flowing, and a good way to let some of that scorching, blistering emotion Ayden stirred up bleed out.

Chapter 15

Sacrificing so the person you loved would be better off should have made me feel altruistic and at peace. Unfortunately, in my case it was making me miserable and uncomfortable. Walking away from Jet before Asa could get his grubby paws into him, or before all the nasty things I thought I had a handle on could come between us was so much harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know what was worse, the awkward encounters I had with Jet when I ran into him in the house, or the nights he didn’t come home at all.

My head would spin around like a crazy person, trying not to wonder who he was with or what he was doing. I had always wanted him on a purely chemical and sexual level, but now that I knew him, now that I understood all the things going on behind those dark eyes of his, I wanted him for everything else as well. It broke my heart into a million pieces every time he looked at me like I was a pane of glass, and that he had not interest whatsoever seeing what was on the other side. It killed me when he just gazed right through me. The reality was, if he looked close enough, he would see all those shattered pieces of my heart in places they didn’t belong. They were in my throat, in my hands, and lost somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

He was leaving today. When I left for my run earlier, he had been getting his stuff together by the front door and talking on the phone to whoever was coming to pick him up. Part of me was glad that the tension that rolled between us would ease now that he was going to be thousands of miles away, but a bigger part of me, a louder part of me, was screaming that once he was out of the door with that guitar, it was over for good between us. I knew he deserved to know the real reasons why, but I just couldn’t seem to find the right words to tell him.

I hadn’t heard from Asa or Silas in more than a week. I hoped my brother had taken my advice and found a deserted island to hole up on, but knowing him, I had my doubts. I wasn’t stupid enough to meet Silas alone, so I had given that little book that had turned my life so upside down to Lou, and had Silas come to the Goal Line to get it. Lou was cool about it and didn’t ask a million questions. Plus, he had the benefit of looking like he could pull Silas’s arms off and beat him with them with very little effort, so I felt safer having him take care of the hand-off.

I tried to call my mom and explain the whole situation to her, but she was as disinterested as always, and wanted to talk instead about some guy she met at a bar. Apparently, he wanted her to go on the road with him in his big rig and she was all excited about it. As usual, I tried to be the voice of reason, telling her she didn’t know the guy, and that if they got into a fight or she decided she didn’t like him, that he could end up leaving her stranded wherever he liked. She didn’t want to hear any of it. She didn’t even say thank you or seem at all grateful that I had come up with a way to keep Asa breathing, at least for now. All of it reminded me why I had been so desperate to get out of Woodward in the first place, and why I wanted my life to look so different now.

Adam had taken to calling once or twice a day, now that he knew Jet and I were no longer involved in whatever it was we had been trying to do. I could tell he was honestly concerned about how I was doing, but I had had to tell him more than once that I just wasn’t interested in dating or starting anything with someone else. The fact of the matter was that no one was ever going to be safe in a relationship with me, secure financial future and corporate career or not. The things in my past, the people in my life, were always going to be a threat and there was just no way that I ever wanted to risk subjecting someone I cared about to that. It wasn’t fair.

When I got back to the house, I stopped to catch my breath and I stumbled a little, because Jet was coming out the front door and headed down the steps. He stopped short when he saw me and looked down at the toes of his combat boots. The look in his eyes broke my heart, and all I wanted to do was wrap him in a hug and tell him everything would be okay. I knew that wasn’t really true, so I just propped a hip on the wrought-iron railing and looked up at him.