Jet: A Marked Men Novel (26 page)

“I need to know where in Louisville Ayden is.”

“What?” The sleepiness was gone out of her voice now.

“Shaw called me and told me about Ayden’s brother. I’m going to her.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Come on, Cora, help me out here.”

“I talked to her yesterday. They had to rush him in for some kind of emergency surgery. She sounds terrified and so sad. Shaw and I were about to draw straws to see who was going to ignore her and fly to Kentucky anyway. Her brother is at Baptist Hospital East or something like that. It’s right downtown. She needs someone, Jet. Don’t screw this up.”

I thought it was ironic, considering Ayden was the one who had left me hanging, that everyone was suddenly so concerned that I was going to mess everything with her up.

“I’m trying to fix it, which is pretty weird considering I don’t think I’m really the one that broke it.”

She snorted at me and I popped my knuckles and twirled the ring around my thumb absently.

“I have to play the show in Berlin tonight and I’ll work on getting to the States tomorrow, but it’s still going to be a while before I can get to Kentucky. You guys probably need to keep an eye on her until I can get to her if it’s as bad as Shaw said.”

“We have been. We love her, too, you know?”

I snorted. “I do know.”

“Are you going to tell her you’re coming?”

I was debating that myself. I wanted to shoot her a message, something to let her know she was on my mind, that she wasn’t alone no matter what happened. I knew if she ignored it, or told me not to bother her right now, there was a good chance I would scrap the entire idea and just keep on going forward with the band and the tour.

“No. I think it’ll be better just to show up. That way, if she doesn’t want me there she can just tell me, and it doesn’t have to be some long, drawn-out thing.”

“Jet, even if she tells you she doesn’t want you there, she’s lying. It’s your job to know that and stay anyway.”

Women were entirely too complicated.

“Thanks, Cora. I’ll shoot you a message later to let you know how everything works out.”

“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.

He put a hand under my ass to hoist me up higher and ran his other hand over my seriously unbrushed hair.

“It’s where I’m supposed to be. Good thing the teenager in the room next to yours took a fancy to those long-ass legs, or I would still be wandering around the parking lot. I was going to come to the hospital if you didn’t show up in another hour, but I figured here was a better bet, just in case things with your brother were really bad and you didn’t want me there.”

I buried my nose in the crook of his neck and just breathed him in and out. He felt so solid and real. I swore to myself I was never going to let him go again. He tasted salty from the Kentucky humidity and from my tears running down the side of his neck and into the collar of his shirt.

“I want you here.”

“Want to give me the key to your room so we can stop giving the nice family from Michigan a show?”

“It’s in my back pocket.”

I felt him digging around in the pocket of my cut-off jean shorts and his chest move up and down as he chuckled a little against me.

“I gotta tell ya, Ayd. I’m a fan of the South if this is what you’re gonna be wearing while you’re here.”

I had on cut-off jean shorts and my cowboy boots with a tank top, which was pretty much the uniform while I was home, and not really appropriate for Colorado, since the weather there never wanted to make up its mind. I felt him get the door open and move us inside. He kept his hold on me and sat down on the edge of the bed. I wanted to tell him it was probably gross and he should pull the comforter off, but more than that I just wanted him to keep holding on to me and make everything feel better.

“I’m so happy to see you.”

He rubbed the back of my neck and I closed my eyes and just let him soothe me.

“You could have called me at any time, Ayd. I would have been on the first plane out.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Jet. I don’t even know how I got this far alone.” I exhaled against his neck and felt him shiver. “I need to tell you some stuff and I need you to promise me that it’s not going to make you go anywhere when I’m done.”

I felt him tense a little under me but his hands stayed steady and his voice was calm when he replied, “I’m not going anywhere, Ayd. I just flew all the way across the fucking globe to be here. You don’t scare me, this doesn’t scare me.”

“That makes one of us.”

I pulled back so that we were looking at each other and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. He reached up and tucked some loose strands of my hair behind my ears and the gesture was so sweet, so caring it almost made me start bawling all over again. I took a deep breath and let it all unravel.

I told him about my mom. I told him about the trailer. I told him about the boys. I told him about the drugs. I told him about the sex. I told him about Mr. Kelly and school, and finally I told him about Asa. I laid it all out as bare and naked as I could. I pulled back the curtain to show him all the secrets that were hiding there. He never blinked, just kept watching me, kept those dark eyes on mine the entire time, and those halos around the outsides got several degrees brighter and sharper the more I talked.

I told him about being entranced by him the first time I saw him onstage. I told him about how bad I wanted him that first night he turned me down for being too good of a girl, and how that played with my head for months after, because I was no one’s idea of good. I told him all I wanted was to protect him, and that the idea of Asa being behind the studio robbery had sent me running into a blind panic, and that was why I had to make him go. I was trying to get it all out, explain all the decisions, either right or wrong, that had led me here. I was going to tell him that I missed him so bad, that I loved him, and that I never wanted him to go, but I didn’t get that far, because he just stopped me by putting his mouth over mine.

It was an effective way to stem the flow of words, and it also had the added bonus of making me lose my train of thought and settle more fully into his lap. He ran his hands up the outside of my bare arms and his rings trailed little paths of cool metal all along the skin.

“Ayden,” his tone was serious and his dark eyes were intent. “You never had to do any of this alone. I would have been there for you,”

I let my forehead fall forward to rest against his. This man, who was all metal and tattoos that bled out anger and frustration, really had the softest and kindest heart I had ever encountered in my life. Now that I knew how easy it was to snap in half, I told myself it was going to be my job to take care of it from here on out.

“I know you would have, but you’re here now when I need you the most, and that’s all that really matters to me. If you still want my forever, it’s yours, Jet. No one else has ever come close and you’re the only one I have ever wanted to offer it to.”

He lifted a dark eyebrow and grinned at me.

“You in love with me, Ayd?”

I closed my eyes and kissed him like he had just kissed me. We just made so much sense together even if we made no sense at all.

“I’m in love with us, Jet.”

That made him laugh out loud and wrap me in an even tighter hug.

“That’s even better. For what it’s worth, I shouldn’t have let hurt feelings and my own fears stand in the way of us being together. I knew you were a runner from the get-go, and I shouldn’t have been such a jackass and given up the chase so easily. Now that I know what you were trying to sort through all on your own, it makes me feel like even more of a pansy. Just a fair warning, if your bro pulls out of this mess, there is a good chance I might put him right back in that hospital bed.”

I sighed against his mouth and moved to climb off him. It did my heart happy when his hand clenched just a little to hold me close, before he finally let me go.

“You might have to get in line for that. Asa is Asa. He’s always going to be the way he is, but he’s also always going to be my big brother and he did the right thing by me when he ultimately had to. Come on, you know it’s nearly impossible to turn your back on family.”

He leaned back on his elbows on the bed and watched me with hooded eyes as I moved around the room.

“I finally let my mom go.”

I looked at him over my shoulder and sucked in a breath. If I wasn’t exhausted beyond measure, if my mind wasn’t still on Asa and his precarious condition, I would have jumped on him and not let him up for hours. I wondered if it was always going to be like that between us, or if the allure of all that tattooed skin and those dark eyes and devil spikes in his ears was going to wear thin.

“You didn’t let her go, you just finally gave her some room to find her own way. There is only so much you can do there.”

“I’m not letting you go, Ayden, and I’m not going to give you any kind of room, so you better be prepared to deal with all of that for a long time. You promised forever and I plan on holding you to it.”

The hesitancy in his voice tore at my heart. I hated that I had put it there, hated that I had added to his insecurity. I knew all about wanting a steady and secure foundation for the future. I just never knew it was going to come in the form of a good-looking boy in too-tight pants holding a guitar and singing to me in a beautiful voice.

“Old me, new me and everything that’s in between or yet to come, all of it is yours, Jet.”

He pushed off the bed and stalked toward me, until we were toe-to-toe and I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye.

“We can wait until your brother is all better to talk about this stuff. I have a couple days before I have to head back, and you look dead on your feet. I’m here to take care of you, not the other way around.”

I grabbed one of his hands that was hanging loosely at his side. It took a little bit of work to pry the fat silver ring off his finger, but when I had it free, I held it up between the two of us and looked him dead in the eye. He was watching me cautiously but didn’t ask me what I was doing.

“Do you love me, Jet? Despite it all, do you love me?”

“Ayden, I’m here. Of course I love you. I loved you before, I love you after, and I’ll love you for everything in-between.”

Had we not been in a grungy hotel room in Kentucky, there was a good chance that I would have gotten down on one knee to make the moment more dramatic, to prove to him just how serious I was about not running away anymore. But a girl had to have standards. I grabbed his left hand and put a kiss in the center of his palm.

“Jet Keller, I love you, and there is no future for me without you in it. I’m never going to bed with a man who isn’t you again. I don’t care if you’re a rock star or a car salesman, I just want there to be a ‘you and me’ forever. Will you marry me?”

I held his ring out in front of him and waited for him to answer me. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, and his eyes looked like they were going to bug out of his head. The entire thing would have been comical, if I hadn’t felt like I was going to swallow my tongue or pass out at any second.

“Are you serious right now?” I was surprised that his voice cracked a little. I had seen Jet in a lot of ways, but speechless and choked up wasn’t one of them.

“It doesn’t have to be today. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. Hell, it doesn’t have to be this year or five years from now. I want you to understand I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m never going to pick anyone over you, Jet, never again not even myself. This is it. You are it.”