Jet: A Marked Men Novel

by Jay Crownover

  “What the hell?”

  She was shaking a little and I took the Taser out of her hand just in case she accidentally stunned me.

  “I don’t know. Someone knocked on the door and I just thought it was a neighbor or a solicitor. I mean, come on, this is Denver, not Brooklyn; that crap isn’t supposed to happen here. As soon as the door was open, he shoved me back and started coming into the house. I ran to the kitchen, because I still have all the stuff I bought for protection when Shaw lived here and was worried about her ex. He came after me and kept asking where it was.”

  I shook my head in confusion because she was talking a mile a minute. “Where what was?”

  “I don’t know. Just it. He freaked when he saw the Taser and I think he heard your car pull up. He took off.”

  “We should call the cops.” I patted her back because I could feel her quivering. Cora was a tough chick, and not very much rattled her, but having a stranger force his way into her home had to have been terrifying. She puffed out a little breath against my chest where she was tucked and she thunked a fist on my ribs.

  “No.”

  “What? Why the hell not?”

  “Because they can’t do anything. He didn’t take anything and never got a chance to put his hands on me. They’ll come poke around and tell us tough shit. I’m an idiot for opening the door anyway. I know better than that.”

  I set her away from me with a sharp frown. “You could have been seriously hurt.”

  She waved a hand in front of me. “No, I couldn’t have been. He was after something, not after me. It just spooked me, is all. What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you went to play nice with Ayd.”

  I didn’t like it one bit. Everything inside me said call the police, that one girl I cared about had already been put through the ringer by a loose cannon. I wasn’t about to let it happen again. I picked her up in a full body hug that had her squealing and laughing at the same time. “You need to be careful, Cora. We wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

  She scoffed. “You really think I’m about to let you guys roam around this city unsupervised? The female population of Denver would never survive it. We have to be sure to tell Ayd to be careful. I don’t know what would have happened if she had been home and not me.”

  I liked that thought even less. I don’t know how all the fury and fire that I barely kept banked would stay contained if something happened to Ayden. If I let it go, not only would I go up in flames but there was a chance I would end up burning anyone close to me to dust as well.

  “I don’t like this, Cora. I want both of you to be safe.” She hooked her arm through mine.

  “It’ll be fine, Jet. Seriously, he probably just had the wrong house, or was looking for money for drugs or something. No place is perfect and we can take care of ourselves. You never answered me”—her crazy eyes narrowed at me—“did you fix things with Ayden?”

  I sighed and let her drag me into the house. “Sort of. I apologized for being an asshat last night and told her I couldn’t fight this thing between us anymore. I don’t know what that looks like to her but I can take it day by day for now.”

  “She was okay with that?”

  “I guess, Honestly, I think that’s the only way she’s okay with it. She’s a hard chick to pin down.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Jet. You have a lot to offer anyone. The cool thing is Ayden isn’t the type to take it all. She can provide for herself, and be happy just taking what she wants from you. It’s up to you to make her see just how much you’re willing to give and how much better she is off with the entire package. Make her want to be pinned down and not just in the sexy, fun way.”

  I just looked at her in silence. This little pixie ran us all ragged and at times I think she had our lives figured out far better than we did.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She tapped me on the chin with her finger.

  “Good.”

  “The guys all went bowling. Do you want to go? Nash was worried you weren’t answering your phone, so I decided to come and check on you.”

  She scrunched up her nose and ran a hand over her spiky blond hair. “No. I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day. Plus, I had a pretty good sulk going before the breaking-and-entering portion of the day. I think I’d like to finish it.”

  I felt my eyebrows dip sharply down. Cora wasn’t a sulky person. She was cheerful and honest to a fault. “Why are you sulking around? That isn’t like you.”

  She sighed and flopped down heavily on the couch. “Watching Rule take such good care of Shaw is kind of hard for me. I never thought he was going to fall in love, never thought anyone would be able to get him to see past himself, but she did, and they are just so perfect together. I thought guys like him—guys like you—were hopeless. Now I’m wondering if I’m the one who is hopeless. I mean, you’re amazing, Ayden is amazing. So, whatever you guys work up is bound to be amazing and I just feel like I’m missing something.”

  We were friends and I cared a lot about her. There were plenty of mirrors in the house, so I knew that she knew she was hot enough to make men stupid. I didn’t really understand it, but all I could figure out was that she was alone because she wanted to be alone.

  “Cora, come on now. You can find a guy in, like, a second flat. Half the guys in the band have you on their laminated list.”

  She rolled her expressive eyes at me. “I want something real, Jet. Something that is life changing and dramatic, something that makes me forget anyone else ever existed. I just can’t see that happening and it makes me sad.”

  “I think you’re maybe reaching for something that doesn’t exist.”

  “You see Rule and Shaw. It exists.”

  I couldn’t really argue that point with her, but I didn’t know what else to say. I believed in love. I just didn’t trust it and what the end result could be if two people weren’t ultimately right for each other. Every great song was sung from a place of love. I knew love was strong enough to change people. My mom held on to her love for my dad, like it was a raft in the center of the ocean of horror that was her life. It was just my experience that love never changed anyone for the better, with Rule being the exception to the norm. He always did his own thing anyway, so it wasn’t like he was going to even love someone within the conventions of how it normally worked.

  “Well, if some guy does come along, that’s an awful lot of pressure to be putting on him.”

  “I know, so I’m destined to be alone and grumpy for the rest of my life. Not to mention sexually frustrated.”

  “Stop being ridiculous and shake this crap off. Go put on some shoes and come bowling with us. It’ll be fun.”

  She grumbled until I eventually got tired of it, and just picked her up and hauled her to her room. She argued the entire way, but after I pointed out that I was wearing pants that were bound to make it impossible to throw a heavy ball down the lane without ripping in half, she begrudgingly put on some Chucks and followed me out the door. I refused to ride in her little circus car, so we hopped in the Challenger and roared down to the sprawling blocks of the Sixteenth Street mall where every tourist and degenerate in town hung out. I normally avoided this part of the city. It brought back too many memories of skipping school and sneaking booze from Phil with Rule and Nash. However, after a spectacularly nasty day, I didn’t mind the noise and hustle as much.

  The bowling alley was lit in blue and had velour couches scattered all over the place. Personally, I thought it looked more like a strip club than a bowling alley. The guys had beer and it looked like they were having a great time giving each other shit as they rotated turns. The pink bowling ball looked like a tiny toy in Rowdy’s beefy hands, and when he tossed it down the alley it bounced hard enough that it went right into the gutter. Cora laughed and gave him a high five, while Rule and Nash offered up a round of ridiculous-looking golf claps.

  There was a group of teenage girls a few lanes down openly gawking, and I thought they were
going to need the paramedics called when Nash winked at them when he got up to take his turn. I sat next to Cora on one of the benches and ducked just in time to avoid getting knocked upside the head by the flat of Rule’s palm. I scowled at him, but his glacial gaze made it clear he wasn’t playing around.

  “You ever pull a stunt like you did last night again and I will use your intestines to string your Les Paul.”

  I swallowed, because from most people that was an idle threat, but not coming from him. I nodded.

  “I know, dude, I know. I tried to make it right. We’re good, she doesn’t hate me.”

  Those cold eyes regarded me seriously and he must have decided whatever he saw was sincere, because some of the tension left his body.

  “Good, because if she hates you, then Shaw has to hate you, and by default that means I have to kick your ass all over town and I would hate to have to do that.”

  I snorted and took a pint of beer that Rowdy handed me. “You wouldn’t hate that at all.”

  He shrugged and nodded at Cora who was having some kind of argument with Nash over exchanging her Chucks for bowling shoes.

  “What’s up with her?”

  I felt my mouth pull down at the corners and my eyes sharpen just a fraction. Rowdy sat down on the low lounge table and all three of us bent our heads together so that they could hear me when I lowered my voice.

  “Bad stuff going down at the homestead, guys. When I got there, she was chasing some guy out the door. She said he shoved his way in and was demanding to know where ‘it’ was. She has no clue what he was looking for, but she was pretty shaken up. He took off on some souped-up bike way too fast for me to do anything about it. After everything that went down with Shaw, I don’t like it one bit.”

  Rowdy whistled and Rule growled like a wild animal. “Did you call the cops?”

  I sat back and laced my fingers behind my head. “Cora wouldn’t let me. You know her, she thinks this is the Wild West still and things like that just don’t happen here like they do in Brooklyn. She seems to think it’s a onetime event and that the guy was just a meth head or something looking for money. That bike was cherry and there was no way he just picked out our house at random. We’re way too far away from downtown for a junkie just looking to score some cash.”

  “This isn’t cool.” Rule sounded a little unhinged and I couldn’t blame him. He had gone a little off the rails when Shaw had been attacked and we were all now just starting to settle down from it all.

  “I know, but I don’t want to get all worked up over something if it turns out to be nothing. I’ll tell Ayden to keep an eye out and remind Cora that things here can be just as bad as the East Coast, but I’m hoping this was an isolated incident.”

  Rule shoved hard hands through his spiky hair and squinted eyes that were glittering like ice on a frozen lake. “It better be because I’m not going to make it through something like what happened to Shaw again.”

  I lifted a dark eyebrow. “I’ll keep an eye on them. I do live there, you know, and I’m trying to figure shit out with Ayden.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. You have no idea what it’s like to have someone you care about, someone you love, facing a danger like that. It changes you, it turns you into a different person. I barely made it when Shaw got hurt. If someone hurts Ayden or Cora, there is no telling what’s going to happen.”

  Rowdy reached out and gave him a shove with one of his hands. Rule glowered at him but there was just something about Rowdy that made you want to listen to what he had to say.

  “We all care about those girls, Archer. Nobody wants to see anything happen to either one of them. Let Jet handle the home front. You tell Shaw to keep her eyes open and remind Ayden to be careful and on the lookout. We’re a goddamn team and no one better forget it.”

  It took a minute before Rule relented, but when he did his shoulders relaxed and his tattooed hands unclenched. I nodded in agreement, but the conversation was cut short because Cora flopped herself on the couch between me and Rowdy and pouted about Nash forcing her into regulation bowling shoes.

  The topic was essentially dropped, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said, that when you cared about someone so deeply it changed you, made you into a different person. In his case, deciding that he could love Shaw, and more important, that she could love him, had turned him into a totally different guy. He was still a pain in the ass, but now he was a pain in the ass that could see beyond himself, and he was a shining example of love changing someone for the better.

  I didn’t know how going from friends to something more was going to play out for me and Ayden, or that I necessarily needed to be better or worse. All I knew for sure was that she was inside me like cold drops of water next to all the burning things that had lived there for years. I was in no hurry to get her out, because something about her was cool and soothing to all the parts of me that had been on fire for far too long.

  Chapter 7

  Ayden

  I was tired when I got home. Work had been busy, which was nice because I was tired of dodging Shaw’s questions and speculative looks about my relationship, or nonrelationship, with Jet. I wasn’t ready to get into it with her—hell I wasn’t even ready to get into it with him. When Rule had shown up to get her, he had almost strong-armed me into letting him take me home. When he got distracted by Lou, I had literally ducked out the back door to take my own car home. Something weird was going on, because while Rule was normally bossy and overbearing, he usually toned it down with me because I didn’t acquiesce to him in the least.

  When I was pulling out of the parking lot, I got a text from Cora telling me that I needed to park in the driveway and that they had left all the lights on for me. It was all clandestine and overly cautious, and was making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  The house was quiet when I got in the front door. Cora’s light was off. I still wasn’t sure about this new territory I was treading on with Jet, so even though his light was on under his door, I decided I needed a shower and a minute to collect my thoughts before trying to talk to him. I collected a pair of yoga pants and a stretchy tank before padding to the bathroom on silent feet.

  I shared the second bathroom with Jet, and before I had started sticking my tongue down his throat I never really thought about how intimate that was. For instance, all the junk he used in his hair was scattered all over the counter, right next to all the stuff I used to smell good and look pretty. He had a collection of thick silver rings on one side of the sink and a bunch of random guitar picks in the soap dish, next to the fancy bottles of perfume I left out because I was too lazy to put them away. One of his belts with the metal studs was curled up on the back of the toilet and the skirt of my cheerleader uniform was in a discarded pile on the floor. Somehow, without even noticing it, my life had intersected his so thoroughly that it was just seamless and so easy. I liked having all my stuff mixed up with all his. It made for a more interesting mess, kind of like us.

  When I was walking back to my room, I had to stop outside the door because there was music drifting from across the hall. It wasn’t the screaming, ear-bleeding, headache-inducing noise that he usually had blaring, but soft guitar and the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. I couldn’t make out the song because it didn’t sound familiar, but it was alluring enough that I threw everything on my bed and went back across the hall without any hesitation. I knocked and the guitar stopped long enough for him to tell me to come in. When I did, my breath stopped somewhere in the middle of my chest, and my heart did a slow slide all the way down to the bottom of my feet and back up to my throat.

  Jet was sitting in the center of his bed, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He didn’t have a shirt on, which was already hot and distracting, and the huge black and gray tattoo that covered his entire torso looked menacing behind the acoustic guitar he was holding. It was a sight that made my breath catch and made me remember why he put every good intention I had to the
test. His dark head was bent down and he was scribbling something on a notebook he had open next to him. He looked rumpled and sexy, the rock star at rest, but the things he was doing with that guitar and the way he sounded when he sang the next verse made my knees go weak. I walked across the room in a daze, unaware that he was pulling me in with his voice alone. I sank to the edge of the bed and watched him with wide eyes.

  He didn’t acknowledge me until he was done, and by that time I had a film of tears in my eyes and felt that something in my soul had been touched by what this boy could do. He leaned across me and put the guitar down on the floor and shoved the notebook into a drawer of his nightstand. His dark eyes regarded me quietly and I couldn’t help but reach out and touch him. I grabbed his thigh and leaned over so that we were eye to eye.

  “If you can sing like that why in the world do you get onstage and scream and yell so that no one can understand you? You’re amazing. That was so beautiful, it made my heart hurt.”

  He cleared his throat and his shoulders moved up and then down. There was a lot of tattooed skin on display and even though I was used to seeing it onstage or in passing in the hall, it was pretty impressive and very distracting up close and personal, and I wanted to touch all of it. I wasn’t sure where to let my gaze land, so I decided that his midnight gaze with the gold halo was my best bet.

  “It’s just music, Ayd. It all speaks to something inside us.”