Jet

Something moved across those dark eyes that I hadn’t seen before. It was like he was considering the question and answering “no,” but it passed, and he shoved to his feet, pulling me up with him. He didn’t let me go and where he still held on to my hands, I burned. I needed to get away from him, fast. I had to bite back a groan as he turned me around and started to brush off the back of me with the palm of his hand.

“Are you sure you’re all right? I’m not exactly a lightweight.”

He wasn’t. He was tall and solid, but not muscle-bound or ridiculously pumped up. He was in good shape from running around the stage and from hauling equipment back and forth, but I knew he didn’t have a steady gym ritual he followed—not that it mattered. I shook him off because I had to, in order to catch my breath, and shoved my hair away from my face.

“Yep. Nothing’s broken and we both know I have a pretty hard head. I was lost in thought. I just need to pay closer attention when I run or I’m going to end up falling on my face again.”

He gave me a funny look and shoved his hands in the front pockets of his leather jacket. I always wondered how he could wear it when it was wintertime. I figured the zippers and studs had to be icy cold, but it was such a part of his look that he just wouldn’t be Jet without it.

“Okay, if you’re sure you’re fine. I gotta get going. I have a session with a band from New Mexico this afternoon, and then practice later. One of the bands we played with at Metalfest last year is going on tour this summer, and they need some new stuff.”

I shivered because I was getting cold and because I hated the idea of him going on tour again. It actually made me sick to my stomach. I had heard the stories, listened to the tales the guys told about what happened when a guy in a popular band went on tour, and it wasn’t pretty. I forced a smile and took a couple steps back toward the stairs. “Well, that sounds like a busy day. I have class, and then I close tonight, so I won’t be home until really late.”

He was watching me and I was watching him, and I realized that Cora was right. I was a genius when it came to chemistry, and what was going on between us was bound to explode eventually. I had been keeping it under pressure and on a slow and steady boil and nothing reactive could handle that kind of heat for long.

He scratched his chin with a finger and lifted an eyebrow at me. “Maybe if the guys and I get done early we can swing by for a beer.”

I gulped down a surge of panic and forced a smile that I’m sure he didn’t buy for one second.

“Sounds great.”

I didn’t wait to see what his response was as I darted for the door. This time I made it into the house without incident, but I was running late, so I had to scramble into the shower, throw on some jeans and a long-sleeved top before getting into my Jeep and racing toward the campus.

The University of Denver wasn’t too far from home, but parking tended to be a pain in the neck and I was already stressed out, so when my phone rang I didn’t bother to dig it out of my bag. I was the last person into the classroom and had to suffer through questioning looks and irritated glowers as I interrupted the professor while I made my way to my seat. I tried to pay attention, but my mind was a million miles away, and after sleepwalking through my lab and my second class, I realized I had better get my head out of the clouds or work tonight was going to be a nightmare.

I worked at a popular sports bar in LoDo, or lower downtown Denver, where we had to wear ridiculous outfits that showed more skin than they covered. We were right down by Coors Field, so even with football season over, we were still packed with hockey and basketball fans. I made enough money to easily make rent and whatever my scholarships didn’t cover for school. I didn’t mind shaking my ass a little, as long as it got the bills paid.

I had to be on alert, though, because there was no shortage of drunken, grabby hands and overly affectionate regulars who wanted to touch things that were not allowed. I also had to keep my head in the game when it came to dealing with my catty coworkers. Those girls lived for gossip and any kind of dirt they could find. Shaw and I had a long-standing feud with Loren Decker, the reigning queen bee, and if I showed up for my shift like I was now, she would find an opening and make the night hell for me.

It wasn’t until I was in the changing room at the back of the bar, getting into my silly cheerleader outfit, that I remembered my phone ringing earlier, and I blinked in surprise when I saw I now had five missed calls from a 502 area code. I didn’t know why anyone in Kentucky would be trying to get ahold of me, let alone how they had gotten my number. There were no voice mails or text messages, so I just tucked the phone into my bra, where it lived for my shift, and made a note to try to call the number tomorrow.

I was slicking my black hair down and shoving a sparkly bobby pin in the front, when Loren’s sickly sweet voice came from somewhere over my shoulder. I so wasn’t in a mood to deal with her, so I just gritted my teeth and turned to look at her.

She was the perfect fit for a bar like the Goal Line. She was every guy’s cheerleader fantasy all grown up, complete with fake double Ds. She had about as much sense as a bobblehead doll, and I couldn’t figure out why she tried to go toe-to-toe with me, because she never won. Besides, she was, like, three inches shorter than me, even more than that when I wore the spiked heels I used to up my tips, and I always ended up looking down on her. Both figuratively and literally.

“How’s it going, Ayden?”

“I’m having a crap day, Loren, what do you want?”

She played with the ends of her hair in a way that made me want to strip them out of her head, one perfect blond strand at a time.

“I was wondering if you could do me a teeny-tiny favor?”

I rolled my eyes and slammed the locker shut behind me. “I already work all weekend, so I can’t cover you.”

She blinked her big cornflower blue eyes at me, and I swear in that second it solidified my hatred of her until the end of time. I had to take a deep breath, because I knew I was being irrational and irritable for no reason.

“No, I was wondering if you could talk to Jet and see if he could get me and a couple of my girls in to see Bryan Walker at the Ogden. He has a bunch of connections, doesn’t he?”

Bryan Walker was a pop singer, along the lines of Justin Bieber, but way less famous. There was no way on this green earth I was ever going to ask Jet if he could get this nimrod into that show. I moved past her with a frown.

“Why don’t you ask him? He said he was probably going to come in tonight for a beer.”

She looked at me like I had just landed from another planet. “I can’t talk to him.”

That brought me up short and I turned to look at her in confusion.

“Why the hell not? He’s in here all the time. I know you’ve waited on him before.”

She shook her head like I was an idiot and shared a smile with one of her girlfriends. “Oh, Ayden, you are just so sweet. I just think it’s so cute how you hang out with all those superhot, superyummy boys and yet you don’t know the first thing about wrapping one around your finger. If I ask Jet for a favor it means he knows that I know who he is and what a big deal he is in this town. If I want him to notice me, I have to ignore him and treat him like he’s no one special. Otherwise I’ll be like you, forever stuck in the friend zone, and dating a guy who has a sweater vest in every color of the rainbow.”

I was so stunned, I just stared at her. I was pretty sure all the blood went from my head straight to my face because, for one, I couldn’t believe she was interested in Jet after her interest in Rule had been shut down so mercilessly by Shaw. I also couldn’t believe she was criticizing Adam or my taste in men.

Loren was custom-made to be a trophy wife who would be cheated on after she lost her shine. She had no idea what a real future looked like or what a steady guy like Adam had to offer.

I was about to unleash a torrent of shit at her. I was ready to pull her apart verbally, and maybe even physically, with the mood I was in. But the urge passed when Lou, the bar’s door guy, stuck his head in and told us to haul ass. He said that a busload of after-work guys had just piled in, and paying my bills was way more important than putting Loren in her place. The straighter path didn’t have stops for taking down bimbos on it, either.

I gave her a tight-lipped smile and tossed over my shoulder, “And I just think it’s so cute how you drool all over those superhot, superyummy boys I hang out with, like you have a chance in hell of ever even getting into the friend zone. Those guys can spot a fake a mile away, Loren, and that’s why, even with all your attributes”—I sent a scornful gaze over her very fake boobs—“they don’t give you the time of day.”

I flounced to my section, hoping all the talk of asking Jet for favors was put to bed. The guys could spot a fake; in fact, I had seen them do it on more than one occasion. As far as I was concerned, it was a miracle they all still thought I was such a good girl, still worthy of their friendship and protection, and if it took learning to love sweater vests to keep the act up, then by God, I would do it, and I would do it with a smile.

Chapter 2

Jet

This stupid dance I was doing around Ayden was getting old and tired pretty damn fast. When I first moved into their place, I thought having Cora and her big mouth there would make it easier. When that didn’t happen, I thought having a revolving door in my bedroom might do the trick, but nothing seemed to be working.

She was on my mind all the time—in my head when I was trying to work, under my skin when I was with another girl—and I swear that soft, Southern drawl was designed to turn me inside-out every time she spoke to me. I hated that I didn’t know what to do with it. Girls always came easy to me, but that girl was anything but.

A year ago, I had a shot to do everything to her I dreamed about at night. In fact, I think I had fallen a little bit in love with her the first time I saw her at the Goal Line in her sexy uniform, wearing heels up to the sky. She had a “take no shit” attitude wrapped up in superlong legs and whiskey-colored eyes that did way more than Jameson when it came to going to my head fast and hard. I wanted her, wanted her like an addict wanted a fix, but she was so far out of my league, and played on such a different field than me, it was a wonder we even managed to maintain a loose form of friendship.

Rule had warned me in no uncertain terms that if I upset Ayden, and if that, in turn, upset Shaw, there would a reckoning like Denver hadn’t seen in years.

I could hold my own in most cases and spent a fair amount of time trying not to get my ass kicked in mosh pits across the country, but Rule was someone I knew firsthand not to mess with. He was even scarier now that he was all caveman-protective over Shaw.

So I had done the right thing, the decent thing, and told her no when all I wanted to do was tell her yes. Now I was stuck in this awful place where we were friends, but not, and where I had endless dreams about that voice and those legs while she slept soundly across the hall. It sucked to epic proportions, and I didn’t know what to do about it besides either moving out or quit talking to her altogether—options which were neither practical nor enjoyable. I liked living with the girls. Cora was a riot and Ayden was hardly there as it was, but when we all got together it was fun and easy. I didn’t have to worry about all my shit ending up on the curb with the garbage because I pissed one of them off while I was on tour.

My studio was in an old warehouse off California downtown. The acoustics were great and after the band’s last tour, I had enough money to really trick it out.

I knew everyone, and I mean everyone, in this town who had anything to do with music. Granted, Denver isn’t L.A. or New York, but it is right in the center of the country. It has such a huge and diverse population that it really is a destination for bands, some more famous than others, to come and record.

My band was really popular locally, and after going on tour with Artifice for Metalfest last year, we were getting better known nationally. What paid the bills was the studio and putting together tracks for other people. I didn’t care—as long as I got to make music and got to write songs, I was a happy guy. Music was what made me get up in the morning and what followed me to bed at night. Sure, I sang in a heavy-metal band, but when I was younger it had been all about punk rock and the indie scene. The reality was I just liked good music. I didn’t care what color or creed it came in, even if I gave Ayden endless shit about her addiction to Top 40 Country. The truth was, I liked to get her riled up just to see those amber eyes of hers shoot sparks.

Today I was planning on losing myself in work. The band that was booked was good and we had already put together a solid track layout for their new album. What I hadn’t planned on was pulling into my spot by the door to find my old man waiting for me. I couldn’t help the frown that automatically pulled across my face, and it took a conscious effort to uncurl each and every finger from around the steering wheel in order to get out of the car to confront him.

He had on aviator shades and jeans that were too baggy for a guy his age, but that was my pops, refusing to let go of his youth and all the good times, no matter who it hurt along the way.

I sighed and pushed open the door, watching him warily as he came around the hood of the car. “What are you doing here, Pops? I have work to do. I can’t stand around and shoot the shit.”

Sometimes it was better to just cut him off before he got started, but today apparently that wasn’t going to work.

“You got back from tour three months ago and didn’t think to give your old man a call? I’ve been dying to hear about Metalfest. Did you boys get signed by a big label yet?”

It would have seemed like a typical question for a parent to ask his child, if it was any other parent than mine. Dave Keller had lived his life as a professional roadie and had gone on tour with everyone from Metallica to Neurosis and whatever band he could find in between. And now, all he wanted was for his one-and-only son to hit it big. Not so I could take care of him or buy him a mansion in the Malibu hills, but so he could go back on tour and live the wild days of illicit sex and drugs, as if he were still in his twenties. It drove him crazy that I was happy staying local, that I made plenty of money recording and doing an occasional tour, and that the idea of fame and worldwide recognition scared the living piss out of me.

Not to mention he had bailed on me and Mom over and over again and was less than an ideal candidate for husband or father of the year. I never understood why my mom, my sweet, loving, kindhearted, generous mom, stayed married to such a scumbag. But no matter how hard I pushed or how much I pleaded with her, she refused to leave him, which, in turn, made it really hard for me not to hate his lazy, cheating, lying ass.

“I don’t talk to major labels, Pop. I’ve told you that a million times.”

He scoffed. “Do those other guys in the band know that you’re holding their future hostage? What do they have to say about you making decisions like that?”

This wasn’t a conversation I cared to have with him. I didn’t really care to have any kind of conversation with him, but he wasn’t going to go away unless I made him. The band I was recording was going to be here any minute, and the last thing I wanted was for him to act like a middle-aged groupie.

“The guys know where I stand and they know where the door is if they don’t like it. I’ve played with Boone and Von since we were fourteen years old, so I doubt much I do surprises them. Catcher came from a band that already hit the mainstream and hated it, so the last thing he wants is to be in another one that’s blowing up. Stay out of my business, Pop. It doesn’t concern you, unless you’re asking to borrow money—in which case, have Mom call me. I’ll transfer it to her, not to you.”

He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head so that I could no longer just watch myself glower in the reflection. I got my dark eyes and my dark hair from him, but that was where the resemblance stopped. He was lived-in. A life of too many drugs and too many hard nights had taken its toll, and all I could think about when I looked at him was to wonder how someone so awful was able to convince someone as wonderful as my mom to marry his sorry ass. He made me furious in a way I couldn’t express with normal words. The only way I ever got it all out was to purge it on stage, in bleeding vocals and ear-shattering melodies.

“You better watch what you’re saying to me, son. I’m still your father and I go home to her, unlike you.”

There were a million things that I wanted to say to that, but I didn’t; I never did. As much as I loved my mom, there was no way I could stay in that house and watch him tear her down time and time again. It upset her so much when the old man and I got into it over his blatant disregard of her and her feelings that I had moved out when I was barely fifteen. It was either that or put my dad in the ground. Luckily, Nash’s uncle Phil was practically running a halfway house for unhappy teenage boys and hadn’t had any issue adding me to the fold.

I knew it bothered her that I didn’t come home often, considering they lived just a few miles down the road. But I couldn’t abide him stepping out on her and constantly hurting her. I knew he did a number on her emotional state, and I wouldn’t put it past him to have taken it further, to take it to a level none of us would be able to ignore anymore, but I was at a loss as to what to do about any of it. My mom was a great lady and she deserved someone who treated her like she was a queen, not a consolation prize.

“What do you want?” My patience was running thin.

We stared at each other in silence for a long minute before he pulled his shades back down and crooked the corners of his mouth up in a grin that made me want to punch him in the face.

“That band you helped get signed—Artifice—they’re pretty huge right now. You wrote most of their album, didn’t you?”

“So?”

“So I’m thinking they owe you pretty big, and it wouldn’t kill you to put in a call to them to see if they want any help on the European leg of their tour that’s coming up.”

I was two seconds away from grabbing him by the collar of his stupid bowling shirt and shoving him against the side of the building, when he held up a hand and smirked at me.

“I know you love your momma, son. What about her? You really want to leave me to my own devices for an unknown amount of time where she’s concerned? Who knows what that will look like this time? Neither one of us is getting any younger.”

The challenge in his voice was clear—as was the threat to my mom. I glared at him and consciously talked myself out of ripping his head off his neck and kicking it across the parking lot like a soccer ball.

“You’re out of your damn mind, old man. I already hate your guts. You really want to go this route with me?”

“She ain’t ever going to leave me, son, and you know it. There ain’t a damn thing you can do to me while you’re worried about her at home with me, and we both know it. Set up something with Artifice. I’m not asking to be their tour manager, or even the sound tech, but I want in on the show. I need a little adventure and a whole lot of good times.”

I was going to skin him alive and then use his bloody carcass as a stage prop. I pushed past him with a growl.

“I’ll see what I can do, but if she calls me and it so much as sounds like you upset her or were even thinking of upsetting her, I swear I will run you over in the street like the dog that you are. If you think blackmail is the way this relationship is going to play out, you don’t know me at all.”

“You’re damn straight I don’t know you. No son of mine should be wasting his God-given talent in this town, when he could be all over the map making millions and dropping panties in every city.”

I looked at him over my shoulder as I unlocked the door. “It is my undying wish that I was no son of yours, but neither of us is that lucky. Go away, Pop, before you make me do something that one of us will be sure to regret.”

I went into the darkened space, turning on lights as I went. It took a real honest effort to lock back down all the aggravation and resentment that always boiled to the surface when I had to deal with the old man.

It bothered me on an inexplicable level that he insisted we were so similar. I had been born with the talent he so desperately wanted. I had the life he longed to live practically banging down my door, and it infuriated him that all I wanted was for my poor mother to recognize that she deserved better and get away from him. I would never claim that I was an angel when I went on tour, and I would never deny that being in a band was a surefire way to get laid by the ready and willing. But I never left someone behind with a promise that I would behave, and I never had anyone in particular waiting for me to come home. I didn’t make promises I couldn’t keep. I learned that firsthand from him.

I set up the recording area and leafed through the list of songs the guys in Black Market Alphas dropped off. It was a stupid ass name, but the kids were talented and had a lot of potential to make it big. They were more poppy than I liked, falling more along the lines of Avenged Sevenfold. They were hard enough that teenage boys would dig them, but with enough harmony and melody that teenage girls would rock out to them as well. Plus they were young—the lead singer was only like eighteen or nineteen, so they had a lifetime to get better or flame out and die, which was probably more likely. I agreed to work with them because the drummer who wrote all the songs had a ton of talent and reminded me a lot of myself when I was younger.

Being in a band was hard work and being in a good band was often more work than the reward was worth. I was lucky that the guys I played with understood that I was happy being a big fish in a small pond here, rather than a speck in the ocean that ate new bands alive elsewhere.

I might be conceited in other ways, but I knew that wasn’t the case when it came to my ability to play good music. I knew I could sing and I could rock any guitar you put in my hands. I had enough fury at my old man and anger and angst built up over a lifetime to fuel me to write songs that were both powerful and relevant.

I also knew that I had enough swagger and attitude to own any stage I walked on, and that if I wanted my audience to feel what I was feeling, I could pull them in and refuse to let them go until I was ready. I was a good front man. What I didn’t have was the patience to play the game, or the desire to let others think that they had a right to what I had created. I didn’t have the necessary tolerance for bullshit and ass kissing that it took to be a major player in the industry.

I was also terrified by the idea of what would happen to my mom if my dad ever found out I signed with a major label. That would just spin the old guy right off his axis, and he would take her right along with him. She just deserved better than that. He would up and leave her in the blink of an eye. He would hitch himself to my coattails, the all the pomp and circumstance that went along with being a big name band on a big name label, and I always wondered if she would ever be able to forgive me if I was the cause of the old man ultimately walking away for what he deemed his just rewards.

I looked up when the outside door opened and the group started filtering in with their instruments. The lead singer was a kid named Ryan, who was a decent kid but full enough of himself that he could easily rub you the wrong way. He had a lot of attitude and the requisite presence to lead a band, but he was immature and way more interested in the money and the girls than in putting out a quality product. I noticed he had his upper arm wrapped in cellophane and medical tape when he reached across the mixing board to pound fists in greeting. I nodded at the obviously new ink and asked, “You go to one of my boys?” When we had been on tour, all the guys in BMA had been enamored of the artwork the Enmity band members sported courtesy of the Marked, the tattoo shop where all my boys worked.