“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?”
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.
