Jet: A Marked Men Novel

by Jay Crownover

  I got up and held the money out to him.

  “It means take the money or I’m calling Silas on my way out the door. Like I said, he’s been following me all around town, and he might even be out in the parking lot now. If you don’t work with me, Asa, I honestly don’t care what happens to you from this point on. I don’t have it in me to save you, to do anything and everything for you the way I once did.”

  He must have seen the seriousness in my face, and the fact that I had nothing left to lose, because he snatched the envelope from me and peeked inside. I saw his eyes get big at the sight of all that green, but he made no move to get me the book.

  I crossed my arms and tapped the toe of my cowboy boot on the floor. I think he was waiting to see what I was going to do, so I just stared him down until he swore. He took his sweet time going to his suitcase and digging out the little leather-bound book that was about the size of my palm. Why criminals didn’t just digitize all their illegal doings and password protect that shit was beyond me. I caught it in one hand when he threw it at me, and tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans. It felt like it weighed as much as my heavy heart at the moment.

  I put my bag over my shoulder and made my way to the door.

  “I’m serious, Asa. This is the last time I’m doing anything for you or because of you. I like my life here, I like the person I am here, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep it. Even if you are blood and family.”

  He crossed his arms over his bare chest and his radiant eyes glinted at me.

  “You’ve changed, lil sister. You’re a lot tougher than you used to be.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. “Damn straight, and you would be smart not to forget it.”

  “I know you won’t believe me, Ayd, but the things I did, the things I never told you not to do, even though it was obvious it was killing you inside, I was just trying to get us by. I always loved you more than anything. You’ve always been the only one who ever had my back.”

  I turned to look at him and had to fight back tears. “When did you ever have my back?”

  He looked confused for a second, but Asa was good and could look anyway he wanted to. It sucked that I couldn’t trust whatever was shining out of those eyes that were so like my own.

  “What are you talking about, Ayd?” For a split second it looked like he was going to move toward me, to try to hug me or comfort me, but it was way too little and far too late for any of that to exist between us now.

  Maybe he really didn’t know, maybe he didn’t want to know, either way it was too late and all those things and him were in the past. It wasn’t a conversation I felt like I wanted or needed to have with him. When I closed the door on him without answering, I was closing the door on more than just my brother. I was closing the door on a past that had held me hostage for too long. I wasn’t sure Asa even knew what love looked like, but I knew that now I did. I had been living a life that was driven by things that seemed like a good idea but had proven to be superficial and were really just armor to insulate myself. Moving forward, it was going to be all about the balance between what I wanted and what I needed. It sucked that Jet Keller was the only thing that fit both those criteria, when I was pretty sure he was never going to want to have anything to do with me again.

  Chapter 14

  Jet

  The last week had been torturous. I was emotionally exhausted and running on fumes and a flurry of avoidance. Between scurrying all over hell and back to replace the stuff we would need for the tour at the end of next week, and trying desperately to avoid any kind of run-in with Ayden, I was scattered all over the place and barely holding it together.

  So far I had managed to spend most of my time with the band, practicing and working our asses off, to the point that I was just crashing overnight at the studio on a blow-up mattress, or dragging myself home long after Ayden returned from her shift at the bar. I was writing songs that made my head hurt and my heart ache, and I think the guys in the band were sick of ballads about broken hearts.

  I didn’t know what to say to her, and didn’t know how to look at her without having it rip me into shreds and burn me up more than I thought was possible. I didn’t want to be constantly mad at her or let her know that the chasm she’d rebuilt between us was killing me, so I thought that distance was my best bet for holding on to my sanity. On occasion, our paths would cross in the morning on the way to the bathroom, or at the kitchen table for breakfast, and I had to admit she looked about as broken as I felt. None of that made me feel any better, and the fact that Cora wouldn’t leave it alone just made it easier to avoid the house as much as I could.

  At the moment, I was sitting in court, and even though I had been waiting for this moment, I felt like an igniter on a stick of dynamite. My lawyer kept telling me to stop twitching and fidgeting, but I was anxious, because my dad was sitting on the opposite side of the room, with his bruises healing and looking madder than a sack of wet cats. My mom was sitting behind him, her gaze nervously moving back and forth between the two of us. Her black eye was artfully covered with makeup and I could tell she was trying really hard not to cry. I was also uncomfortable as all get-out, in a pair of pinstriped pants and a white, button-down oxford cloth shirt that made me feel like a big, fat phony. Court clothes sucked, but I could tell by the way the judge was eyeballing my hair and the spikes in my ears that dressing up had been to my benefit.

  My dad’s lawyer, opened up by going on and on about how assault was a serious charge, and how I had put my dad in the hospital. He said I had brought trauma and damage to the family. He brought up the fact that I had been in trouble before, and generally tried to make me out to be some kind of wild hooligan who was out of control.

  My lawyer countered that my dad had instigated the fight, and that I had only been acting to protect my mom. It went back and forth like that for a while, with my dad huffing and puffing the entire time. I tried to sit still, tried not to glare daggers across the courtroom. The judge interjected that he had seen cases like this far too often in his court, and even though my old man wanted me in jail, I got just what I had predicted—a million hours of community service, probation for a year and fines out the ass. They also made me responsible for my dad’s medical bills and ordered an immediate protection order that said I couldn’t go within a hundred yards of him or the house for ninety days.

  I readily agreed to all of it and had the added benefit of watching my dad go purple when I asked about postponing the community service and making sure the terms of my probation didn’t prohibit me from leaving the country for the tour. I heard my mom gasp when the case was ruled closed, but the same cop who had put me in the back of his car came around the table and slapped a heavy folder down in front of my dad. I wanted to get up and do a victory jig. It had taken every favor my lawyer had hanging in the legal world in order for it to go down like this for me and I was beyond stoked that the same cop was the one who had the honor of arresting the old bastard.

  “Do you know what these pictures show, Mr. Keller?”

  My dad’s lawyer was freaking out, calling out all kinds of crap that no one was paying attention to, and my mom was holding her hands up to her mouth when the clear, bright images, of my dad trashing and emptying out the studio, spilled onto the table in an array of visible guilt.

  My dad went from purple to some other color I had never seen before, and stood up in his chair so violently that it fell backward, making the officers of the court tense.

  “That’s not me!” He pointed a finger at me. “You little shit! You set me up!”

  I leaned back in my chair and tried hard not to smile.

  “I had security to prevent something like this from happening. It’s not my fault you got caught, and you bet your ass I’m pressing every goddamn charge he can think of.”

  I tilted my head at the cop who was putting my dad in the cuffs.

  “You’ve messed with me for the last time, old man. This is it, and I hope yo
u rot.”

  “I’m your father, Jet!”

  I just shook my head and got to my feet.

  “No, you’ve never been that.”

  I couldn’t look at my mom or at the judge, who was watching the entire debacle with sad, knowing eyes. I didn’t even want to think about all the families in worse shape than ours who had come before his bench. I shook my lawyer’s hand, and agreed to sign all the stuff he needed to get together for my community service and legal fees. I asked him to check with the cop about getting the stuff my dad had stolen back, but he didn’t sound hopeful that that was an option.

  I was walking out of the courthouse and pulling my leather jacket on over my stupid button-down shirt, when I heard my name called. I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to talk to her, considering I was still bleeding from her picking that asshole over me the last time. There was something encoded on my DNA that made me turn around and wait for her to catch up to me, though. Out here in the bright light of day, I could see every line, every mark on her face that indicated a life lived in misery and suffering. She looked so awful and so far away. There wasn’t even a shadow of the woman that I wanted to call “Mom” in there anymore.

  “Jet, wait just a minute, please.”

  I swore under my breath and wished that I smoked so I had something to do with my hands. I shoved them into the pockets of my jacket and tried to keep my expression blank.

  “I don’t think we have anything left to say, Ma.”

  She fidgeted with the strap on her purse and refused to meet my gaze head-on.

  “He’s your father, Jet. You can’t send him to jail.”

  I sighed. I knew it was coming, but it still felt like a blow.

  “Yes, I can. He stole from me, and he dismantled my livelihood because I wouldn’t cave in to his demands. Not only can I send him, but it’s where he belongs. I’m going to Europe for three months, Mom. I’m not going to be just a phone call away the next time he tries to use you as a punching bag. I’m not going to even be on this continent the next time he spends all your mortgage money on booze and hookers. So maybe locking him up will finally make you see you’re better off without him.”

  She involuntarily touched her still-yellowish bruised eye.

  “He only did that the one time and he wouldn’t have been so riled up if you just would have helped him, like you always help me.”

  I laughed, and it was so broken, I felt it lash across both of us.

  “Are you seriously trying to blame him smacking you around on me? Nice try, Ma, but that isn’t going to fly with me anymore. I’m finished trying to force something better on you, trying to pull you into the light. If you want to live in the dark, it’s your choice, Ma, and you have no one left to blame but yourself.”

  I was going to walk away, but her hand on my elbow stopped me. Her bottom lip was quivering and I would like to say it broke my heart, but I knew her concern wasn’t for me or for herself, but for that selfish bastard sitting in a cell for trying to kill my dreams.

  “If you go and he’s in jail, I’ll be all alone, Jet. I can’t be alone.” The last word was said on a whisper that I barely heard.

  “You know what, Ma? Alone is better than one second spent with that asshole. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make you see that I would take care of you, that I would never leave you alone. That all changed when you let them shove me in the back of police car for trying to protect you. It’s time you start protecting yourself.”

  I shook her hand off, which was surprisingly easier to do than I thought it would be. I couldn’t look at her anymore, couldn’t let her shadow pull me under with it, so I took a step away from her and said, “I’ll call you when I get back. Maybe the time alone will do you some good and we can talk. If not, I’m done with this. If the old man thinks he’s going to fuck with me, fuck with my band and my music, he better get a wake-up call. I tolerated it for years, because I was so worried about you and what he would do, but now I’m only worried about me. Bye, Ma.”

  I walked away with the sinking feeling I was walking away from her for good. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called the Marked, the tattoo shop where Cora and all the boys worked. Since the shop had caller ID, Cora was less than professional when she answered the phone.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, is Rowdy around?”

  “Did you just get out of court?”

  Man, that little pixie was like a pit bull when she had something in her teeth.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Fine. Seriously, Cora, I want to talk to Rowdy if he isn’t busy.”

  “You know all of them are going to be hounding him to know what happened as soon as he gets off the phone with you anyway, so you might as well just tell me, so I can tell them. It saves everyone time.”

  I sighed and relented.

  “I got a ton of community service, a million fines, and a restraining order. The old man got the cuffs and a ticket to lockup. I’m sure my mom is going to try to bail him out, but the cop assured me the theft was enough to keep him there a for a good long while, and that the bail isn’t going to be cheap. I’d like to say he was gonna be there for the whole time I’m gone, but I don’t know that it’s very realistic. I’m fine, Cora, really.”

  She muttered something under her breath and I heard her call Rowdy’s name across the shop.

  “I’ll consider you fine when you stop playing hide-and-seek with Ayden and just talk to her.”

  I snorted. “That ship has sailed, girly.”

  I think she was going to snap something back, but I heard the sounds of a scuffle and Rowdy’s gruff voice came on the line.

  “Yo.”

  “And it’s team Jet for the win.”

  “No doubt, dude. What’s up?”

  “What does your schedule look like today?”

  “Hold on a sec and I’ll check it out, that is if I can get the Tasmanian Devil to move her fine ass outta my way.”

  I heard Cora shriek in outrage, and more scuffling sounds, only this time male laughter rang loud in the background.

  “My last appointment is at four and it should be quick. Some girl who just wants a little fleur-de-lis on her foot.”

  “Wanna start something for me?”

  “What did you have in mind? Something big or something little?”

  “Big.”

  “We won’t have time for that before you leave.”

  “I know. I just want you to draw it and get the outline done.”

  “Talk to me.”

  I had been thinking about it since the studio got trashed, since Ayden had pulled out my heart and tossed it away. I wanted something that captured the way music exploded out of me, the way the fire flowed in and out of me with the words when I was onstage.

  “I want an old-school microphone broken, like split open, with a bunch of fire spilling out of it. It needs to look shattered and rough, not old-school or traditional.”

  I could hear him scratching stuff down on paper as I talked.

  “The fire needs to be hot and out of control and I don’t care how big you make it. My whole back is open, so you have whatever space you need.”

  He whistled between his teeth.

  “All right. I’ll get something sketched up and text it to you. If you like it, stop by around five.”

  “Don’t worry about the text, just draw it and let’s go. Come on, dude, you know me; this tattoo is all about me and my music. I know you got it.”

  “You can be totally insane, you know that, right?”

  It was funny because for the first time in a long time, I was feeling like I had things figured out and insanity played no part in it.

  “Don’t they say all great art comes from suffering or madness?”

  He laughed. “I think you have both of those covered. I’ll see you later.”

  I had avoided going to the house during the day, on the off chance I would run into Ayden, but I didn’t want
to be in court clothes anymore, so I decided to risk it. I swore out loud when I saw her Jeep was still parked in the driveway. I locked my jaw and decided I was grown-up enough to handle a run-in with her, even if looking at her made all my exposed parts hurt.

  I pulled the front door open and stopped dead in my tracks. Clearly she had just gotten back from a run, because she was in those stretchy black pants that made her legs look like something out of a wet dream, and a sports bra and nothing else. That was entirely too much skin, and too much Ayden for me to deal with in my current state of mind, so I was just going to slide past her, and totally pretend like I didn’t even see her in all her too-hot-for-my-own-good glory. Apparently she had other ideas, because she put down her water bottle and leaned back against the sofa to stare at me.

  “How was court?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask how she knew where I had been, but then I remembered the fancy duds and the fact that Cora had the biggest mouth ever. I shrugged out of my leather jacket and tossed it next to her, and counted backward from ten until I felt like I could talk to her. I wanted to interact with her without spilling and choking on all the bitterness I struggled with every day.

  “It went fine.”

  I saw her look away. Clearly she was as uncomfortable as I was.

  “That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

  I let out a bitter laugh and shoved angry hands through my hair.

  “Yeah, it’s every kid’s dream to send his dad to jail because he ripped them off and tried to screw them out of a chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity.” The sarcasm was like a blade that sliced through the discomfort between us.

  She cleared her throat and pushed up off the couch, crossing her arms over breasts that I would dream about until I died.

  “You deserve to be happy, Jet. You deserve to take care of yourself for once.”