Текст книги "Jet"

Автор книги: Jay Crownover

Соавторы: Jay Crownover
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter 10

Jet

I should have known when my mom called me hysterical and crying that it wasn’t going to lead to anything good. Normally, she was too beaten down, too cowed to do anything other than be dejected and disheartened. Not today. Today she was sobbing and rambling on and on about how Dad was going to kill her, and while I would have much rather been basking in the afterglow of some very fine morning sex time, I was instead frantically pulling on pants and rushing across town to see what the hell was going on over there.

I brought the car to a screeching halt in front of the house and ran up the stairs like the house was on fire. I didn’t bother knocking, just shoved the front door open, and before I could stop to get my thoughts in order or do a thorough survey of what exactly it was that I was dealing with, my dad came barreling out of the kitchen and knocked me back out the door. I landed with a dull thud on the cracked concrete of the sidewalk and saw stars for a second as my head banged hard on the ground. Before I could get my wits about me, or even get my hands under myself to get up, my dad launched himself at me, and his fist connected with the side of my face. I felt the skin on my cheek split wide open and jerked just in time to avoid the blow that would have surely broken my nose. I grabbed at his flailing fists and felt my stomach turn over when I smelled the stale booze and pungent fury coming out of his every pore.

We were about the same size, only I was sober and had been in enough fights in my time to know how to get the upper hand. I shoved him off me and scrambled to my feet, so that I was looking down at him. I poked at my bloody face and glared down at him.

“What the fuck, old man?”

He started to yell something at me, but my mom chose that moment to come running down the stairs. She was a mess. Her shirt was torn and her hair was everywhere, but what made me see red, what made the fire I tried so hard to contain burst forth in an eruption of flame and rage, was the fact that not only did she have a black eye, but also a split lip and tear tracks running down her too-pale face. It was clear that, whatever had set my dad off on his drunken rampage, I wasn’t his first victim of the day. She was wailing that we had to stop, that we needed to go inside before the neighbors called the police, but I didn’t care.

I spit out some of the blood that had trickled from my cheek to the corner of my mouth, and told my dad, in all seriousness, “I’m going to kill you.”

He staggered to his feet and glared at me like I was the one at fault.

“Kind of like you killed my dreams? If it wasn’t for you and that stupid bitch, I coulda kept on doing what I wanted. Touring the world, seeing great bands. You ruined everything, you selfish little prick. I asked for one thing. Look what you made me do!”

His words made no sense and they didn’t matter anyway. All I could see was my mom crying and hear her asking him to stop. There was no stopping it anymore. The flames were raging and I didn’t care if they burned him to a charred remnant of himself.

He was still pretty loaded, so when I hit him he went down easily. I heard my mom scream my name from somewhere really far away and felt immense satisfaction that he wasn’t nearly as quick as I was. My blow to his nose landed with a gratifying crunch. I don’t know how many times I hit him. I don’t know who called the cops, or if my mom was crying over me or over him. It wasn’t until the handcuffs clicked into place, and the cop who looked like he was the same age as me was shoving me into the backseat of his cruiser, that I realized what I had done.

My dad was lying still as stone on the walkway. His face was covered in blood and a paramedic was strapping an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. My mom, my poor mom, in all her black-and-blue, tearstained glory, was holding on to his limp hand and telling him everything would be all right. I think something inside of me officially died when she climbed into the back of the ambulance with him to go to the hospital. The young cop gave me a steady look, like he had seen this a hundred times already today and asked, “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

I sighed and let my head fall against the back of the seat. It wasn’t the first time I had been in the back of a cop car, but I had a sinking feeling it was going to be the most serious reason I’d ever had had for being there.

“He hit her. Normally, he just treats her like shit, and makes her feel bad and worthless, but this time he put his hands on her. I just lost it.”

The cop watched me closely. “He do that to your face?” I had forgotten about my cheek and prodded at the inside with my tongue. It still stung but it wasn’t dripping blood anymore, so I didn’t think it was going to need stitches or anything.

“Yeah. Sucker punched me when I first walked in the door.”

My hands were starting to throb, with my knuckles undeniably split open and torn. The reality of what I had done was starting to settle heavily on my shoulders.

The cop nodded and tapped the roof of the car. “They’re both saying you started it. The old man wants to press assault charges.”

I groaned. I bet he would be willing to drop them the second I agreed to hook him up with Artifice and send him on tour.

“We have to take you down to the station and book you. You have anyone you can call to get you bailed out?”

I nodded and had him call Rowdy. I gave him the CliffsNotes version of events and had no doubt he would bring the cavalry with him, but I had been in enough situations with the law during my misspent youth to know that no matter how quickly he moved, I was still looking at a solid day spent in lockup.

I appreciated that the cop didn’t grill me or try to give me a bunch of unwanted advice on the trip to the station. I also appreciated that he didn’t ask me over and over if I wanted to know how my dad was doing. I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t want to know what my mom had to say about it. This was the last straw. I was going to go on the European tour. I was going to look at signing with a label, if that’s what the guys wanted. I was going to do it all, everything I held back on because of her. What I wasn’t going to do was try to stand sentinel between my mom and that bastard anymore.

They booked me, ran my prints, took my rings and my belt, my wallet and my phone, and put me in a cell with a dude who was clearly in for some kind of drug thing. He was twitchy and kept asking me if I had a smoke, even though there was obviously no smoking when you were locked up. I sat on the hard bench and stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. As the time passed, more people were ushered in and out of the cell, and I just kept still. I was just trying to blend into the brick walls and make this day go away.

I didn’t even want to know how I was supposed to explain any of this to Ayden. We weren’t exactly at the “bail your boyfriend out of jail” stage of our relationship. Hell, I didn’t even know if we were at the relationship part of the relationship. Something told me this little road bump was going to go over like heavy metal at a funeral. She already couldn’t see anything beyond a good time in bed with me, and the last thing I needed to do was prove her right.

It was well after dark when they were finally able to post my bail. I had to show up in court the following week for sentencing, and the same cop who had arrested me walked me to where Rowdy was waiting with a handful of paperwork. He had a serious look on his face and I could tell he wasn’t happy. The cop handed me a bag that had all my crap in it and shook my hand.

“For what it’s worth, I would have much rather put the cuffs on the old guy. I see it every day. I understand you were just trying to do right by your mom. Too many kids find themselves in that situation, a lot of them are much younger than you.”

I just sighed and thanked him for his time.

Rowdy clapped me on the back of the neck and practically dragged me out of the station. I was surprised to see that he was alone, but as we walked to his black SUV he told me, “The cop mentioned you left the Challenger in the Heights with the keys still in it. Nash convinced Rule to go with him to pick it up and drop it off at the house. Didn’t know what the old bastard might do to it.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me, so I muttered a thank-you and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Thanks for coming to get me, dude.”

He brushed it off. “Whatever.”

“Seriously. I’ll pay you back.”

“Okay, I’m about to punch you on the other side of your face. Knock it off and just tell me what happened.”

I jammed my fists into my eye sockets and tried to block it out but all I could see was my mom crying and her black eye. It made me want to beat on the old man all over again.

“It was a total shit show that involved my dad throwing me on the ground, my mom with a black eye, and some pretty serious assault charges leveled at me.” I flexed my hands and winced as the scrapes across my raw knuckles pulled and tugged. “I would have killed him. Seriously, Rowdy. I was so goddamn close.”

He was quiet for a long minute and I thought maybe I had crossed a line in our friendship, but when he spoke, his voice was steady and there was no censure in it.

“He would have deserved it. No man should ever hit a woman.”

I groaned and wanted to pull my hair out. “Now all I can think about is how long it was going on and why she never said anything. She got into the fucking ambulance with him and went to the hospital. She was bleeding and had a black eye and she went with that bastard to the hospital where she works. She didn’t say a word when they put cuffs on me and shoved me in the back of the cruiser, not even ‘thank you.’ I’m over it, dude. Just over it.”

“You need to get a lawyer.”

“Yeah, I guess I probably should.”

“Talk to your mom. Get her to tell them that he hit her first.”

I shook my head. “That won’t happen. I mean, I guess I should have seen this coming. It’s been getting worse and worse. I refused to set him up with Dario and the boys in Artifice. He wanted to go on tour with them as a roadie. Can you believe that shit? I told him no and he beat the crap out of her and then tried to whip my ass. He’s insane.”

“What are you going to do?”

That was the question. What was I going to do? Since I didn’t have an answer, I just kept my mouth shut. I was glad to see the Challenger parked in the driveway. I was also glad to see that Cora’s Mini was gone and so was Ayden’s Jeep. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to either of them, and now that I had the time to wash the stench of jail off and try to put my head back on right, I was gladly going to use it. I turned to Rowdy and gave him a lopsided grin that had no humor in it.

“Let the guys know I’m cool. Especially Nash. This isn’t the first rodeo with my old man. I doubt it’ll be the last.”

“We got your back, Jet. Don’t sweat it.”

I nodded my thanks and jumped out of the SUV. It was closing in on midnight and I felt wrung out and dirty. All I wanted to do was strip down both physically and mentally. I felt like I should have seen this coming from a mile away, and it bothered me that I was still disappointed that it was happening to me. Before I could change my mind, before I could let guilt and anything else get in the way, I sent Dario a text to tell him that the boys and I were in for the tour. I would deal with what that meant for where I stood with Ayden later. Right now, I needed something tangible to focus on and put my energy into, and getting together an amazing set to take overseas was just the ticket. I turned the phone off before I could see what he sent me back, and wandered into the bathroom.

I dropped everything in a messy, bloodstained pile on the floor and turned the water on as hot as it would go. When the steam filled the room, I climbed in and let the scalding burn slide over my head and down over my shoulders. I wanted to wash the entire day away, but that was far-fetched because I still had a dad in the hospital and a looming court date, and no matter how hot the water was, neither of those things was simply going to wash away. I flexed my hands under the water and watched dispassionately as the dried blood swirled with the water down the drain. The slice on my face started to sting and I was going to scrub it, when the glass door to the shower opened and I felt soft hands slide around my waist and rest on my stomach. A feather-light kiss landed on the back of my neck and I felt her lay her cheek on the center of my spine.

She was all soft hands, soft skin, soft breasts, and the sweetest-sounding voice I had ever heard. All the razor-sharp edges and stabbing pain of the day bled away, piece by piece, and started to swirl down the drain with everything else. Some of the awful tension that was coiled inside me started to unwind and I put one of my battered hands over the top of her much smaller ones.

“Bad day?”

Her twang was a little more pronounced than it typically was and I wanted to believe it was because she was worried about me, and that she really did care about me in the same way I was rapidly starting to care for her. I felt her move closer to me, so that her entire front was pressed along my back. I could feel other parts of my body start to tense now, but in an entirely better way. All it took was a touch from this girl and nothing else seemed to matter.

“It wasn’t one of the better ones, for sure.”

She moved one of her hands up so that it was resting on my heart, which I was pretty sure she could feel pounding at her touch. The other she moved lower and it was almost enough to make me forget about what a crap day it really had been. I wanted to turn around, wanted to put my arms around her, but letting her hold on to me, letting her put me back together was what I needed right now. So I just kept my eyes closed and stretched my hands out to brace myself against the wall. I couldn’t see my mom’s battered face anymore or feel my dad’s face break under my hands. All that mattered was Ayden, and that she could make it right, make me right.

Her fingers trailed a tingling pattern along my cock. I felt each brush, each twist of her hand on my chest. My heart pounded a rhythm that I was sure she could feel, and each time she squeezed me or slicked her hand over the ring through the tip, it thundered and I could feel her smile against the back of my neck. She moved her hand that was on my chest, so that she could run her fingers around the hoop through my nipple, and for a second I thought my knees were going to give out. She normally didn’t pay any attention to the hardware I had in places she only got to see when we got naked together. The fact that she was paying extra attention to it right now, that she was just taking care of me so well, I think it was what pushed me over the edge.

She kissed me behind my ear and ran her tongue over the spike that decorated the top. Her clever hands did something with the ring at the tip of my dick that made me breathe out her name, and I knew there was no way I was going to hold out for much longer. I bit my bottom lip and thrust a rhythm into her slick hand. Her palm was soft and pliable, like she knew just what I needed in order to get all the poison out. When she clamped her strong teeth onto the cord of my neck that was straining in effort to prolong the pleasure and to wring out every single second of mindless oblivion she offered, I was done for. She laughed in a soft caress against my shoulder and I felt her rest her cheek on my damp skin. She wrung me out dry, while I panted and she patted the flexed muscles on my flat stomach.

“All better?”

I shook the water out of my face and reached out to turn off the tap. I turned around to look at her. I saw her pretty eyes get big when they landed on the gash in my cheek and I held up my hands backward so she could see the damage to them as well.

“Not even close.”

She reached out to touch my face, but I jerked away before she could make contact. I didn’t want her to have anything to do with all that ugliness, even if it was just a gesture of comfort and care. I pulled her to my chest so we were pressed together, all wet skin and slick bodies, and wished I could have this moment last forever. She put her arms around me and I almost choked on a sigh of relief. There was a part of me that didn’t know where this girl’s head was and I really thought seeing the wrecked shape I was in might be enough to make her say, “It was fun, Jet, but I don’t have time for this.” Instead, she put her hands on my ass and rubbed her soft cheek against the one of mine that was still intact.

“I was supposed to close, but I was worried about you so I harassed Shaw into staying for me. Everyone was freaking out.”

I sighed into her hair and pushed open the shower door. I wrapped a towel around her first, which was a shame because there were very few things in life I liked more than a naked Ayden, then hooked one around my own waist. I wasn’t sure if she wanted to go to my room or hers, so I followed her out of the bathroom, which had the added bonus of me getting to watch those long, bare legs the entire way. She picked my room, which wasn’t a surprise. She liked when I played the guitar and worked on songs, and I think she knew that after the way today had gone, I was no doubt going to need to get something out and on paper before the night was over. I don’t know how she got it the way she did, but regardless of where we went with our relationship—or nonrelationship—Ayden Cross was the one person who simply understood me. That alone was enough to make me care for her like I had never cared for anyone else. It would be so easy to fall in love with her, secrets and all.

She let the towel drop and crawled up on the dark red comforter. Those legs, that dark cap of hair and those eyes that just burned with furtive stories and every kind of enticement held me entranced, and all I wanted to do was stare at her. She watched me steadily for a long minute. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I looked at my torn-up hands again and frowned as I flexed them open and closed.

“You didn’t have to leave work early. I would have made it until you got home.”

One of her sable-colored brows went up and the side of her mouth kicked up in a sexy grin. She leaned back on her elbows, which made her breasts do things that any red-blooded male on the planet would give his left nut to see.

“Stop it, Jet. I was worried about you. I debated all afternoon about coming down to the station, but figured if you wanted me there you would have called me. I knew the boys would take care of you in their own way, but I needed to get to you in order to take care of you in mine. I’m going to ask you what happened and we’re going to talk about it for real, because I see your hands, Jet I’ve had them all over me and I know that whatever got you to this point is bad. I don’t see any reason for us to have that conversation before we work out some of that nasty stuff floating around in those eyes, though, so get that fine ass in gear and get over here.”

She tapped the bed next to her and it was enough to startle a laugh out of me. I dropped the towel and let her molten gaze travel over me. There was appreciation there and something deeper that hit me hard when I grabbed her ankle and pulled those long legs apart. She hissed out a breath and it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. She was pretty and polished all over. Everywhere I touched, she was smooth and silky, and I knew she tasted like cinnamon and sugar. She looked so right in my bed, I had a hard time remembering what it was like before she became a regular fixture there.

I ran my hands up one of her smooth legs and tickled her knee. She narrowed her eyes at me and I grinned down at her.

“What?”

“Stop playing with me.”

She had a flat tummy that curved delicately in between her hip bones. I bent down and kissed her right below her belly button, and then I trailed a wet path to right above her slick folds and stopped and heard her swear at me. She threaded her fingers through my still-wet hair and bent her legs up to my ribs.

“I want to take care of you the way you took care of me.” I kissed her again, this time lower, and I heard her gasp and swear at the same time. Her thighs tensed next to my head, and I ran the top of the barbell that was in the center of my tongue over her clit and felt her entire body spasm under the delicate contact. It made me chuckle, which had her pulling at my hair.

“My God, Jet, you’re going to destroy my idea of what sex should be like.” Good. She didn’t need to know what sex was like with anyone but me from now on, and I wanted it to be better with me than it had ever been with anyone before.

I used my tongue on her again, this time deeper and harder and curled it around her, and sucked on her until she bowed underneath me and her skin quivered everywhere we touched. Her nails dug into my scalp and I brushed my bruised and torn knuckles across the velvet peak of her breast until she whispered my name again and started to come apart under my hands and in my mouth. Ayden came like she did everything else, sweet and smooth. I could eat her up all day long for the rest of my life, but she was impatient. Clearly, the taking care of each other portion of the night was over, because she wiggled out from under me and I let her shove me over so that I was on my back. I stacked my hands behind my head and watched with heavy eyes as she leaned over me to fish a condom out of the bedside table.

She was always extra careful when she worked the latex over me. I think the metal down there still kind of intimidated her. I knew she enjoyed it, loved the way it made her feel, but she was always extra gentle when she touched it, like she still wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. There were no words for how badly I wanted her to put her hot little tongue around it, to taste it, feel the metal in her mouth. Not that I could complain; she wasn’t shy and I loved what she did to the rest of me. I liked it when she lost control and dug her nails into my back, when she forgot to keep a lid on all that passion and hunger that boiled and frothed between us and used her teeth just a little too hard or pulled my hair a little more roughly than I think she meant to.

She swung a long leg over my waist and rose above me. All I could see was amber glowing down at me. She dug her teeth into her bottom lip when I grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard around the tip of my dick. Both her eyebrows shot up and I saw concern flash across her flushed face. The ring throbbed in the best way possible and I smirked up at her.

“Giddy up, cowgirl.”

She flushed a light shade of pink and sank down on me, which made both of us groan. We fit. That was all there was to it, we just fit. She leaned down to kiss me, and the contact of her pointed nipples on my own made both of us hiss out in pleasure. She pressed her forehead against mine and found a rhythm that had me digging my fingers into her hips and swearing under my breath. Every time she lifted up, her swollen flesh pulled and tugged against mine in a way that made me want to explode. We were both pretty sated from all our earlier fooling around, so this slow build up, this tenuous climb toward orgasm had us watching each other intently.

It was far more intimate, far more personal than any sex act I had ever been part of before. I could see it filling her, could feel her inner muscles flutter and drag against me, but it was her eyes—those eyes I wanted to drink in over and over again—that pushed me over the edge. For once I could see her, see that there was something there for me, and I pulled her over into a climax that had both of us sweating and scrambling for air and boundaries as soon as it was over.

She collapsed on top of me, crossed her hands over my heart and propped her chin on them. I moved one hand to her hair and threaded the dark strands between my fingers.

“I beat the shit out of my old man today.”

I saw her eyes go to the cut on my face and linger.

“Why?”

I couldn’t meet her gaze, so I looked up at the ceiling and let the events of a lifetime drift through the pleasant aftermath she had woven around me.

“He sucks. He sucks as a parent, he sucks as a husband, he sucks as a man, and he sucks as a human being in general. He has it in his mind that knocking my mom up somehow derailed the awesome party his life was before we came along, and has spent years and years blaming both her and me for it. He wants to drink and party and act like he’s eighteen, all while making her feel worthless and awful. I left home to get away from it and I’ve always tried to keep him in some kind of check, but today he was drunk and he hit her. I lost my goddamn mind when I saw it. He hit me first, but then I saw her with a black eye, and all I could think about was killing him. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose and he had to get hauled off to the hospital, for a second I thought I might have killed him, but the cops told me I wasn’t that lucky. But, the worst thing . . .”

She didn’t say anything, just watched me talk and listened to my heart beating under her hands.

“The worst thing is that she got in the ambulance and went to the hospital with him, while I got carted off to jail. She took his side and told the cop I started it, she blamed me. I just can’t do it anymore and that makes me feel like shit.”

She lifted one of her hands and used the edge of her nail to trace a line around my mouth, which had turned down in a hard frown.

“The extent to which we can sacrifice our own lives for our families has to have some kind of end point, Jet. You can’t be angry and hurt forever because she won’t let you help her. At some point, you need to recognize that she made her choice, and it clearly isn’t you.”

Ultimately, that was what hurt the most.

“I have a court date in a couple of days. He pressed assault charges.”

“He hit you first. Claim self-defense.”

I would, but the fact of the matter was, had the police not shown up when they did, there was a good chance I would be facing a homicide charge instead. I sighed when she pulled my fingers out of her hair and placed a delicate kiss on each of the raw knuckles. I didn’t know what it felt like to heal, but I knew enough to know that was what she was trying to do for me. It tempered some of that angry blaze that always hovered so close to the surface in me.

“We can’t pick our families or where we come from, Jet. All we can choose is who we want to become in spite of them, and because of them.”

I curled my palm around her cheek and ran a thumb over the pronounced bone. To me, she always looked elegant and refined, like she was something expensive to be savored and enjoyed as a reward for really good behavior. I never understood when she hinted that it might all just be a carefully crafted front.

“Why don’t you ever talk about where you’re from or your family? I don’t mean just to me. Cora says you hardly ever say anything about what your life was like before college. Was it that bad?”

I saw the walls go up and the gates close, even though we were still naked and intimately connected. Her mouth got tight and all the warm fuzzies I had put in her eyes dwindled. I thought she was going to try to pull away from me, so I locked my hand around her neck, under her hair and held her in place. She scowled at me but didn’t try to leave. She dropped both her hands and let her head fall, so that her cheek was pressed against the snarling face of the death angel on my chest. She put her hands on my rib cage and answered the wall instead of me.

“It wasn’t that bad, but I was.”

“What does that even mean, Ayd?” I soothed my hand up and down the curve of her spine. No matter where I touched this girl, there was no place I felt it more than in my dick.

She huffed out a breath that made my skin pebble.

“It means I wasn’t a very good person not too long ago. There were too many boys for too many bad reasons. There were drugs and a general disregard for the law and the only use I had for anyone was what they could do for me. I used whatever—and I do mean whatever—it took to get what I wanted, and I didn’t care who it hurt or how it made me look to anyone. I was a mess, and the only real reason I had for being that way was because that’s what folks there expected. No one thought I was smart. No one thought I was going to ever get it together enough to leave, and if one teacher hadn’t taken an interest in me and forced me to get my act together before it was too late, chances are they would probably have been right.”

She was describing a stranger. That person sounded so far removed from this dynamic girl draped all over me that I couldn’t even picture them in the same room, let alone the same body.

“I don’t even know what to say to that. I don’t know that girl.”

Her thumb was skating along my ribs and rubbing at the skin stretched in between each one. It was soothing; she was soothing, and all I wanted was for her to be the balm that put out the fire in me once and for all. I could tell by her tone, tell by how she still couldn’t look at me, that forever and me didn’t go hand in hand in her mind, no matter how hot we were in bed, or how deeply we affected each other out of it.

“No, but she knows you. She knows you make me feel wild and out of control and that I don’t ever want it to stop. She knows that because of you I feel like I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have you, and damn the consequences and whatever gets in my way. Because you get to me like no one ever has and you’re more addicting than anything illegal I ever messed with in the past. Mostly, she knows that when I’m with you, all I think about is you and me, and how quickly we can find someplace to get naked, or how long it will be until I can curl up in your arms and let you sing to me. I don’t think of the future, or school, or all the other important things I need to work on to have a life for myself. You could own me, Jet, and I don’t want that to ever happen.”