Jet

She rolled her eyes and flopped back on the couch, as if she hadn’t just demolished this poor girl’s romantic hopes and dreams.

The girl looked at me and then back to Cora. I saw her mouth tighten before she uttered “bitch” and stomped out our front door. I upped her points even more when I saw she had her panties from the night before sticking out of her back pocket.

Without looking up, Cora held her hands up over her head and extended seven fingers in the air. “She didn’t even have any fight in her. I would’ve given her at least an eight if she had told me to fuck off or get bent. Anything.”

I shook my head. “You were kind of a bitch.”

She snickered. “Gotta find my fun somewhere. What do you give her?”

I was about to answer when another figure came out of the room. You’d think that after three months of running into him coming in and out of the bathroom we shared, or catching him running around without a shirt on while he was getting ready to go out, or even watching him dance around half naked onstage I would have built up an immunity to seeing Jet Keller’s bare chest.

But as he made his way down the hall, pulling on a plain black T-shirt, I forgot every single thought as my mind blanked, just like it always did.

After the disastrous incident outside my apartment last winter, we had developed an odd sort of friendship. I knew what boundaries I had to keep Jet within, and he treated me like I was some kind of virginal goddess he wasn’t allowed to mess up. That was working for us, sort of.

When Shaw had ultimately decided to go live with Rule and Nash, Cora and I had worried about who was going to take up her share of the rent. Luckily, the girl Jet had been living with went bat-shit crazy, and dumped all of his stuff on the lawn while he was on his last tour, not mention she found someone else to take his place when she got lonely. He ended up homeless and in need of a place to crash, so here he was. I saw him every day and spent plenty of time just hanging out with him.

But still, the sight of those abs, the ink that covered them and the twin hoops through his nipples turned all my good intentions and strictly marshaled thoughts to all things sexy and naughty, where they clearly didn’t need to be. When I looked at him I had a hard time remembering the rejection and what I should be doing and instead let his wicked grin ruin all my self-control.

I averted my gaze and ordered myself not to inhale when he leaned over me to snag the other half of my untouched bagel. I wasn’t allowed to go around sniffing him, even if he smelled like temptation and rock and roll.

He lifted a dark eyebrow in my direction and motioned toward Cora with the bagel.

“What kind of havoc are you two wreaking in here? I heard the front door slam all the way from the back of the house.” He stretched his long legs, clad in supertight black jeans, out in front of me and I wondered again how he got into them. I had never seen a guy wear such tight pants, but they worked for him. I spent an obscene amount of time wondering how to get them off of him.

“Cora was just wishing your latest conquest a safe trip home.”

He paused before biting into the bagel and focused his eyes at the back of Cora’s head. “What did you really say to her?”

We could see Cora’s shoulders shaking with silent laughter, but she didn’t turn her head around. “Nothing. Well, nothing that wasn’t true.”

He took a big bite out of the breakfast treat and narrowed his eyes. They were so dark it was hard to tell where the iris and the pupil met.

“I think you’re just pissed Miley Cyrus copied your haircut and you’re taking it out on innocent girls across the land.”

Surprised laughter shot out of me as Cora jumped to her feet and hurled the nail polish bottle she had been using at Jet’s head. Luckily, he had good reflexes and caught it in the air before it smacked him in the face or broke all over the wood floors.

“I’ve had this hair forever! It’s not my fault she decided to be rock and roll all of a sudden.” She huffed out of the room and I shared a grin with Jet.

“She’s sensitive about that. Be nice.”

“It’s not nice that you two have a sliding scale for every girl I bring home, either, but you don’t hear me complaining, do you?”

I didn’t have an answer for that so I turned back to my computer screen.

“One of these days there’s going to be a ten and you’re not going to know what to do with yourselves.”

I was surprised he was aware of what we were doing. That didn’t speak too highly of his respect for the girls he brought home with him on a regular basis.

I tucked the ends of my hair, which was now styled in a short, sleek bob, behind one ear and looked at him over the top of my glasses. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it now that I knew he was in on the game.

“Why didn’t you say something, if you knew what we were doing? ”

He lifted a shoulder in a shrug and I watched as his mouth turned down in a frown on one side. Jet had an expressive face. I think it came from trying to project his every feeling, his every passion, to a crowd of people while he was onstage. I knew the half frown well—it meant he was thinking about something he didn’t particularly want to talk about. I always wondered what put it there.

“They get what they come for and then they go home satisfied. If they have to tangle with you two knuckleheads on the way out, I just figure that is part of the price of admission.” He cut his look back up to me and frowned for real. “Where were you last night? Everyone came to Cerberus and hung out for a few hours. Shaw said you were supposed to meet us there, but you never showed.”

I cleared my throat and fiddled with the handle on my coffee mug. “I was on a date with Adam. He didn’t want to go, so I just had him drop me off here and I did some homework I’ve been putting off.”

I saw his eyes widen and the gold rings flashed bright and clear. Jet wasn’t a fan of Adam, and Adam hated that I lived with Jet with every fiber of his being. I tried to keep the two of them apart, a task that was getting harder and harder now that Adam was pushing for us to be more than casual dating partners. We had been seeing each other for about four months, and logically I knew it was time to move one way or the other, but something always stopped me.

“Of course Adam didn’t want to go. When does that dude ever do anything you want to do? Geez, Ayd, how many freaking operas, ballets, and boring-ass art exhibits are you going to let that moron drag you to? Why can’t he just come and meet your friends and chill at the bar for a minute?”

We’d had this conversation more than once, so I just sighed.

“My friends intimidate him. Rule and Nash don’t exactly scream ‘welcoming committee’ and you and Rowdy take way too much pleasure in making fun of anyone and everyone that you don’t like. It would be awkward for all of us, so I would rather avoid it altogether. Adam is a nice guy.”

I told myself that at least ten times a day. Adam was a nice guy and he was far more suited to a secure future than a guy who planned to play heavy metal for a living. Not to mention Adam didn’t make we want to lose control and throw caution to the wind at every turn, not the way Jet did.

“We’re your friends, Ayden, and Shaw is your girl. If this guy plans on sticking around, don’t you think he needs to suck it up and get used to all of us? Or are you planning on just ditching us for the upper crust as soon as you can?”

There was something in his tone that spoke to a deeper conversation than the one we were currently having. But as usual, before I could probe further, he decided to change the subject to something he obviously deemed safer.

“Besides, if he didn’t want Rowdy and me to clown on him, he wouldn’t wear a damn sweater vest everywhere he goes. Who even owns a sweater vest anymore?”

I kicked him lightly under the table. “Be nice. Sweater vests aren’t that bad.”

He made a face and climbed to his feet. I tried not to drool when he stretched his arms above his messy hair and the hem of his T-shirt rode up over the edge of his pants. It would take torture to get me to admit it, but my main goal in life was to see how far down that damn angel tattoo went, and to trace the entire thing with my tongue.

I cleared my throat to try to get my head out of the gutter, and noticed he was watching me closely.

“That’s the whole point; you don’t see anything wrong with dating a dude who thinks a sweater vest is badass, and I don’t see anything wrong with picking up a chick who gets ranked by my shithead roommates the morning after. Two different worlds, Ayd, two totally different worlds.”

He ruffled my hair, getting several of the longer strands stuck in his rings as he walked away. I watched him solemnly until he disappeared in his room, before releasing the breath I had been holding. It took a minute for me to unclench my fingers from the coffee mug.

Jet had no idea what I was really like under all the polish and primer I had slapped on before moving to Colorado with nothing but the clothes on my back. No one really did. I had talked to Shaw about it briefly and vaguely, but even my bestie had no clue about the kind of life I had lived before starting college three years ago.

I was only twenty-two, but felt like I had lived a hundred lifetimes in this short amount of time. The good girl, the girl who Jet saw as so untouchable and so different from him, was all an illusion I fought on a daily basis to maintain. Having him so close and so present put my desire to leave the old Ayden buried in the rolling hills of Kentucky to the test, every minute of every day.

“Hey!” I sputtered indignantly as a dish towel suddenly slapped across my face. Cora plopped down in the chair Jet had just vacated and gave me a knowing look.

“I thought you might want that for the slobber on your chin.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Knock it off.”

“Whatever. Every time, Ayd—it’s like you’re in heat or something. I don’t know how you guys ignore all the snap, crackle, and pop that happens whenever you get within breathing distance of each other, but I’m telling you it’s exhausting to watch.”

I opened my mouth to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that we were not attracted to each other, but she held up a hand and lasered a pointed glare at me before I got one word out.

“And don’t give me that bull about just being friends. I have guy friends. In fact, I have more guy friends than I do girlfriends and I do not look at a single one of them like I want to have hair-pulling, bite mark–leaving, bed-breaking sex with them. When you look at him when he’s not paying attention, Ayd”—she made a big production of fanning herself down with the towel she reclaimed—“I feel like I need a cold shower.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so, I stuck with what I knew.

“We’re friends. We aren’t each other’s type and I told you what happened the one single time I let alcohol try to convince me otherwise.”

She leaned back in the chair and regarded me with her crazy eyes. The dark brown one was all censure and knowing regard, and the turquoise one was all good-humored mirth and friendly compassion. It was hard to pull anything over on Cora, but that didn’t mean I ever stopped trying. In order to build the life I wanted, the life I so desperately craved, I had to convince everyone that it was what I had deserved all along. Who I was before wasn’t allowed to be a factor in who I was now, and no matter how hot Jet was or how much he made me want to wander off the path of good intentions, I just couldn’t allow it.

“Besides, we fundamentally want different things out of life. Once I graduate I’m going right into a master’s program. Jet has been playing at being a rock star since he was a teenager. I can’t understand not having the ambition to want something more than that, to want a secure future. We want different things all the way around.” Not to mention the way he made me want to forget everything I already knew about the dangers of the wild side totally freaked me out.

She shook her head looking like a judgmental version of Tinker Bell. It was hard to fathom so much attitude packed in such a little frame.

“I’m going to be honest with you, babe. From the outside looking in, you and that boy want exactly the same things, only you’re both too scared of something to admit it. And FYI, nobody, and I mean nobody, looks good in a sweater vest, so you should just stop trying to sell that poor Adam guy as boyfriend material.” She climbed to her feet and gripped the back of the chair, and in typical Cora fashion switched gears while I was trying to process the last bit of insight she had dropped on me. “So you never gave me your ranking for the groupie of the day, what do you think?”

It bugged me every time a girl came stumbling out of that room, but I refused to acknowledge it, so I held up nine fingers and played along just like I was supposed to.

“She had a seven thanks to the missing bra and inside-out shirt, but after calling you a bitch and stuffing her underwear in her back pocket, she moved up.”

Cora burst into boisterous laughter and grabbed her sides. She was cackling so loud I was worried all the noise was going to bring Jet back out of his room.

“Crap, I totally missed the panties. You know he’s right; one day he’s going to have a ten, a girl so thoroughly worked over that it won’t even be fun anymore, because we’re going to know she got the best stuff.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from scowling at her. “I can’t wait.”

I didn’t fool Cora for a minute. “Sure you can’t.”

Frustrated with the conversation and the morning in general, I shut the laptop down and got to my feet.

“I’m gonna go run before I have to leave for class.” I announced this to no one in particular, because Cora was messing around on her phone and Jet had not reappeared. I changed into clothes that were warm enough for a February in Denver and put on my well-worn running shoes.

I loved to run. It helped me clear my head, and since I lived in one of the most health-conscious states in the union, I was always just one of a hundred other people out for a little exercise when I took to the pavement. I put in earbuds and listened to what Jet called “that god-awful pop-country,” as loud as it would go. I liked music that I didn’t have to think about, and most country songs spelled it right out for the listener. The girl was mad because the guy cheated, the guy was mad his pickup got trashed, everyone was sad the dog died, and Taylor Swift had about as much luck with men as I did.

I knew Jet preferred stuff that was loud and heavy, but in reality the guy was a music snob, and after knowing him for more than a year, fighting about what was good and what wasn’t ceased to faze me.

The cold air burned against my face as I found a steady rhythm and headed toward Washington Park on my usual route. When I ran I liked to block everything out, to shut the constant buzz of all the things hounding me, and just feel the ground under my feet and the brisk air on my face. But it wasn’t working so great for me today.

I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was pretty much living a lie. There was Ayden Cross, nobody, from Woodward, Kentucky, and Ayden Cross, chemistry major, from Denver, Colorado. They were two parts of the whole and at times I thought one was going to smother the other and there would be nothing left but ash and bad memories.

Woodward wasn’t a bad town, but it was small, really small, and everyone knew everyone. When your family was the family in town that everyone the same age as you gossiped about, that everyone older than you talked about, that everyone coming and going told stories about, life wasn’t exactly easy.

My mom wasn’t a bad lady, just nowhere near equipped to handle being a mother at sixteen, and way less ready to be a mom to a hard-to-handle daughter and to a son who was born looking for trouble. My older brother, Asa, had never met a crime he didn’t want to commit or a law he didn’t want to break. Since neither one of our dads had stuck around, Mom was left alone with us running wild and trying to keep the damage down to a minimum. I learned the hard way that if you heard you were one thing enough times, eventually you had no option but to start believing it.

Even though I knew better, I fell in with the kind of crowd that could destroy a perfectly good future, led there by the hand of a big brother looking out for only himself and his current scam. We were trash; we were never going to amount to anything, and with all the trouble and drama Asa created, it was a wonder any of us was still breathing.

If it hadn’t been for a well-meaning and overly perceptive science teacher in my high school, I would have more than likely ended up just like Mom, knocked up and forever living under the judgmental eye of everyone else in Woodward.

But I applied myself at school, got scholarships, and worked my ass off day in and day out to make sure I never ended up back there. I was never going to give anyone a reason to think I was easy, stupid, and worth nothing ever again. I was going to take care of myself, build a future that was rock solid, and, Lord willing, pull my mother out of that tiny town. I was going to show her there was more to life than a case of Miller High Life, a pack of smokes, and whatever truck driver she had hooked up with for the month. As far as I was concerned, Asa was a lost cause, and the last I had heard was doing time—but I was the first to admit that I drifted in and out of the Woodward gossip mill, so I didn’t really know for sure, and I was way past the point of always wanting to save my brother from himself.

I had made plenty of mistakes and done plenty of things wrong, but I was on the right track now. I figured my reward for living my life the right way, finally, was getting good grades in school, keeping friendships with good people who loved me no matter what, and, never having to worry about waking up with nothing, ever again.

If that meant I had to bury the attraction and choking lust I felt for Jet, then that was just the way it was going to have to be. If he wanted to treat me like a Catholic schoolgirl who was never allowed past the gates, then all the better for making me act properly. There was no reason for me to let him know that not only was he misguided, but that I could probably give any of those girls he brought home for one night a decent run for their money when it came to being the type of girl that knew all about the price of admission.

I rounded the corner of the park, and started to slow down as I got into a heavier flow of people out walking their dogs and playing with their kids.

When Cora had initially asked about letting Jet rent out Shaw’s old room, I had wanted to say no. After the incident in the car last winter, I’d had a really hard time being around him at all without reliving every mortifying detail in slow motion. I thanked God every day I hadn’t actually made a move. I doubted there was any way I would ever be able to face myself after that, but when I considered the horrific experience Shaw had gone through with her ex, the idea of letting a stranger stay with us was too scary, so I reluctantly relented.

I thought brutal, in-my-face exposure might do something to kill the persistent crush I had on him. After all, he was sarcastic and pushy at times. Only the opposite had happened: I liked him. I mean, I still wanted to do really naughty things to him on a regular basis, but I liked him as a person now, too.

He was surprisingly funny and smarter than a guy with that many tattoos and such horrible taste in music should be. He took all of Cora’s attitude with a grain of salt, and never bothered me when I retreated into myself. We usually had breakfast with each other, and at least once a week all of us got together and had a drink at some bar or another. Even though I hated—and I mean hated—the music he played, I went to hear his band at least twice a month.

He was by far my favorite drinking partner. He didn’t have all the raw edges that Rule had, he wasn’t prone to broody moodiness like Nash, and he wasn’t into making a scene like Rowdy. He was just laid-back and liked to have a good time. It wasn’t until someone started to talk to him about his band or tried to treat him like he was a big deal that he got closed off and distant. For a guy who was born to be a rock star, he sure had a lot of issues being semi-famous and admired. It was odd, but it was also endearing and just another reason I enjoyed being around him.

I stumbled a little as a German shepherd pulled free of his owner’s grip and dashed past me. I took a minute to catch my breath and bent over to put my hands on my knees. Now that I wasn’t moving, the air wicked across my sweat-soaked skin, making me shiver. I should have put on a hat and maybe some gloves, but it was too late now, and I had to get back if I didn’t want to be late for class.

I was plowing through my undergrad classes with my sights set firmly on a master’s program, all before I was twenty-five. I had always been good with numbers, and science came naturally to me, so when I had applied to schools I made sure to look for ones that were as far from Woodward as I could get, but also had top departments in my field. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I graduated, but I knew I wanted no less than a six-figure income, continuous growth potential, and a generous retirement plan. I knew those were lofty goals for someone my age, and from someone with my lackluster background, but I didn’t set low standards anymore.

I fell into a light jog and pulled my earbuds out as I got closer to the house. I pulled up short when I rounded the corner, because I could have sworn I recognized the guy walking on the other side of the street from somewhere.

Granted, I was still jumpy after Shaw’s attack and looked at most strangers like they were a danger, but there was something about the way this guy carried himself that had me stuck to the sidewalk, trying to figure it out. He walked right past me on the other side of the road without once glancing my way, so I shook off the heebie-jeebies and dashed up the stairs to the front door. I was about to pull it open when Jet came out the other side, causing me to almost topple over backward on the front steps. I let out a squeal and tried to grab the railing, but it was no use. I had too much momentum and went flying back toward the concrete.

Jet grabbed for me, but I was moving too fast. When he caught my hand, all that did was drag him forward, so that we were both suspended in air for a split second. Our eyes locked before we went tumbling to the ground, hard.

He landed half-on, half-off me. I swore softly as my head made contact with the solid slab of sidewalk hard enough to make me see stars. His chest pressed into mine, and between my thin running pants and his painted-on jeans, there wasn’t an inch of us not pressed intimately together. I forgot to breathe, forgot I was injured, and mostly forgot why I knew that he was such a bad idea.

I wanted to rub up against him. I wanted to put my hands in his messy hair. I wanted to kiss and lick the spot on his neck where his pulse was hammering hard and fast, but none of that was going to happen. He levered himself up in a stiff push-up and looked down at me with wide eyes. The gold had swirled in from the outer circle, making him look like some kind of wild animal as he gripped my head in his hand and whispered, “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”

His rings were freezing cold on the side of my face and the sidewalk at my back was making me go numb.

“I’m fine. I was distracted. It wasn’t your fault.” My accent was a little stronger when I was upset and I could see that Jet had noticed.

“Are you sure? I can take you to get checked out. We can’t risk having that giant brain of yours rattling around.”

I wanted to be having any other conversation than this one while he was practically lying on top of me. I wrapped my hands around his wrists and tugged at him to get him to let me go. “Seriously, I’m fine. Wanna let me up?”