by Kira Blakely
“Do you have to be such a dick to everyone?” Ava asked.
I glanced over at her tense figure sitting the passenger seat. “How was I being a dick?”
“You were being one to Emily. She’s my best friend. She’s just concerned about me.” She glanced nervously at the speed limit sign as we blew by it. “Which she has every right to be, with how fast you’re going.”
“I drive fast for a living,” I said, grinning. “You think I don’t know how to handle a fast car?”
Ava didn’t bother responding as she sat thin-lipped, with her hands clutching the seat uneasily. We drove in awkward silence for the next ten minutes along a flat stretch of road until I pulled into the private drive for the small and privately-owned airport. I parked in front of the hangar near the center of the runway.
“I’m confused,” Ava said, glancing at the small airplane that was being fueled up. “Do you actually make enough money to own a small airplane?”
I reached across the center console to open the glovebox. My fingers brushed against Ava’s outer thigh in the process. Sparks went through my fingers in response to the touch. Ava jerked her leg out of the way as I tossed the car keys in there before closing it.
“Does it surprise you that I own a plane?”
“Just a little,” she said. “I didn’t think you made that much money.”
“And you wonder why my parents are always begging me to send them money?” I asked darkly.
Ava pushed the door open without a reply. The pilot, Kevin Charles, came up to shake my hand with a grin. He took Ava’s bag after introducing himself before she climbed up into the plane without sparing either one of us a glance. Cold shoulder treatment was back on because of her nerves.
“I didn’t realize we were taking an extra passenger,” Kevin remarked curiously. “Is this an old friend or—”
“Friend. Sort of.” I set my bag down on the ground. “We’re landing in Chicago, right? That’s where Chuck is waiting with the bus and trailer.”
“Yes, sir. We will be landing there in two hours.”
“I’m ready to get the fuck out of this flatland,” I said. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to waste any more time in this shithole.”
I climbed up the plane steps to find Ava already buckled in her seat. I took a seat across from her to buckle up as well, while Kevin loaded up the luggage down below.
“You aren’t nervous about flying, are you?” I asked.
Ava didn’t tear her gaze away from the plane window. “If I were, why would I be on here with you?”
“Because you find me sexy and charming?”
“Don’t kid yourself, JJ. I’m here for a business deal. That’s it.”
I refused to let those chilly words dampen my spirits. There was plenty of time to win Ava’s heart. I didn’t expect it to happen over the course of two hours.
I waited until we were up in the air before trying to broach conversation again.
“How do your parents feel about all of this?” I asked, even though I already suspected the answer. They hated my guts. They wanted me in the ground, not their son.
Ava shifted in her seat as she glanced coldly at me. “What are we now? Friends? What the hell do you think?”
“I imagine they aren’t very happy about it,” I replied, shrugging. “Do they think you’re still some sweet, innocent virgin?”
“Shut up,” Ava snapped, glaring at me. “Don’t start on that, okay? What’s in the past is in the past. Nothing is going to happen between us. Got it?”
“Sure,” I said simply.
Ava opened her mouth to reply, but she clicked it shut after a few seconds. She turned to look back out the airplane window.
Fifteen hours from Chicago to Boston. That was plenty of time to get Ava’s defenses lowered a bit. I broke the stretch of pointed silence an hour later after listening to music.
“I’m glad you’re coming along with me,” I said. “I don’t trust people doing this type of interview because they don’t get me. You get me, though.”
“Hmm.”
“Are you going to ignore me the entire flight?” I asked, exasperated. “What’s the point of doing this interview thing if you aren’t going to talk to me?”
“Is this the interview?” Ava asked. “Has it already started?”
“No,” I said, glum.
The second the plane touched down on the tarmac of Chicago, I knew it was not going to be easy winning Ava’s trust back. I was up for a challenge, though. It would give me some entertainment, at least, for the next few weeks on the road. I led Ava through the private part of the Chicago airport that only the wealthy and celebrities used to keep their privacy, before spotting Chuck outside in the parking lot with the bus and trailer.
Ava looked at the bus and trailer in confusion as I saluted to Chuck with a grin. “I thought we were going to fly to Boston tonight.”
“I like to drive with my gear and bikes,” I said.
“So we’re driving to Boston, then?”
I arched an eyebrow at the dread in her voice. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”
“Do I have a choice about any of this?” Ava muttered, adjusting the strap of her purse in visible agitation. “If I would’ve known you were going to trick me into coming on a bus with you for fifteen hours, I would’ve told you no in Gypsum.”
“Maybe you should start asking the right sort of questions,” I said. “Fifteen hours with you on the bus is no problem to me.”
I could be patient. I could wait it out. Even if I was already wanting to burst from the tension mounting in me.
Chuck stuck out a hand to Ava when we finally reached him. “Pleasure to meet you, Ava James. I’m Chuck Ambrose. We spoke on the phone briefly the other day.”
“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. “About what you wanted to talk about in the piece. Thank you for forwarding the invoice to my boss.”
“Of course. This is a business deal.” Chuck gave me a pointed look as I pulled out my phone to check through messages and voicemails. “Have we talked about what we want to do yet?”
“We could do the interview in the room,” I said. “It’s private and—”
“I better talk to your manager first,” Ava cut in harshly. “This is a business deal. Not a personal deal. Remember?”
Irritation bubbled in me. I nodded curtly to Chuck before stomping up into the bus without sparing Ava another glance. Fifteen fucking hours. I didn’t know how I was going to do it.
Chapter 6
Ava
I looked out the window of Jude’s bus, feeling uneasy. The flat lands of Illinois had long since disappeared. It was too late to turn back now, even if a part of me desired it. I rubbed at my aching wrists after finishing up three short articles that my boss needed immediately for print tomorrow morning. I closed my laptop on the small table I’d been working at. I had situated myself here to keep my distance from Jude whenever I felt his presence overwhelming me.
I didn’t care what Jude said. Riding on a bus for fifteen hours was not the most ideal way to travel to Boston. The next two days meant sleeping on the bunk beds outside of Jude’s private bedroom at the back of the bus. It meant sharing a bathroom with three men who didn’t care about cleanliness. It also meant being in close quarters with Jude at all times.
I was used to rolling with the punches, but this was a stake in the heart, being so close to Jude without being able to touch him. I let my gaze settle on him. He was currently stretched out on the couch with his long and lean legs in front of him. His hands were clasped behind the back of his tattooed neck casually while he spoke with Chuck, who sat across from him. From afar, it wasn’t hard to see why legions of fans were in love with the idea of Jude Jacobs.
Passion. Risk. A hint of darkness. He exuded all three. The cocky asshole could win any competition he wanted to race in, and he could get any woman he wanted. There was no doubt about that. But I knew the real Jude Jacobs was laying undern
eath all of that somewhere. No one knew the actual truth about his childhood, about his past. Not like I did, at least.
His parents were the type who used to have screaming matches out on the front lawn. Everyone knew that the Jacobs family was a dysfunctional one. I couldn’t remember a day that Jude’s father and mother weren’t drunk, yelling at Jude, and then taking their anger out on one another. No one knew that the man they saw walking around with his hair in disarray and so many muscles and tattoos used to come running to our house to hide from it all. No one knew that he would hide beneath blankets with Andy and me when we camped out in the backyard because the monsters we imagined were real for him.
All of that had changed over the years. Jude stopped coming by our house to hide from it all. He no longer sported dark bruises anymore, but his knuckles were cracked and scabbed from fights. He drowned his sorrows in a bottle instead of crying on my shoulder. My heart ached, thinking of that little boy beneath the man sitting across from me. He had made a living thriving off the pain of his childhood, but he couldn’t escape the consequences of living dangerously, either. It was a ripple effect.
And that ripple effect had crashed through my entire family.
“All finished?” Chuck called out, looking up from his iPad. “We can talk about the interview now?”
Jude glanced over at me while I gathered up my pen and pad from inside of my leather satchel. I sat down on the little couch opposite him to keep distance. It put me on the other side of the table from Chuck, who turned to face me eagerly.
“I have a few notes to hand over to you,” he said. “I have a lot of ideas for this piece. Maybe a long autobiography?”
I clenched my teeth to keep control of my temper. I didn’t have a problem with Chuck, but he did seem overly bossy and protective when it came to handling anything with Jude. This piece was no exception.
“Ava wouldn’t be here if we were doing that,” Jude replied calmly as he gazed at me with a small smile. “She grew up with me. She knows more about my family and childhood than you do.”
“So, you plan to talk about all of that then?” Chuck asked.
Jude shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah. Maybe it explains why I’m an asshole.”
I bit the tip of my tongue to keep back my snarky remark to that. “I was actually thinking that we could do a three-thousand-word piece that my boss could publish. Just little snippets adding up to the final piece.”
“What would be the final piece?”
“Whatever Jude wants it to be,” I replied, looking over at Jude, who shrugged his shoulders again. “I don’t want to this to be an autobiography of his life. I could do all of that from home if I wanted to.”
“I don’t care what you do as long as you appeal to his fans,” Chuck said. “Those fans are what got JJ to where he is. There is a dedicated legion of them buying our merchandise. They are following us around the six cities. They are the reason he keeps going. They are the money makers here.”
“Endorsements, too,” Jude added. “We have a lot more endorsements this year.”
Chuck nodded in agreement. “Yes, much more. He’s going to the top this one.” He grinned at Jude widely. “I’ve been a manager for many supercross athletes before. No one has the talent that JJ has. He lives on the edge, which is what it takes to make it in this sport. His bad boy appeal brings in a great female fan base as well.”
Jealousy burned my chest, which irritated the hell out of me. Why was I so jealous of that? It didn’t surprise me that Jude’s appeal was sexual to many women. Resisting his charisma and charm was hard even for me.
“I’m sure it does,” I responded coolly. “I’m sure his dick really loves that part of his job, too.”
Jude burst out laughing. “Damn, Ava. I’m not some sort of man-whore here. I can’t even remember the last time I had sex.”
“Don’t look at me,” Chuck said, holding up his hands up with a grimace. “I keep track of our schedule, and that’s all I keep track of.”
My cheeks burned when Jude glanced at me. His icy eyes were a turbulent blue that reminded me of the ocean on a stormy afternoon. There was something lurking behind those eyes, waiting patiently. Something told me he hoped to break that streak soon.
I shook that observation away before I let it go any further. “I don’t want to know. I’m just here to write the piece. That’s it.”
“Send me drafts, if you can,” Chuck said. “I’ll need to approve them, of course. You understand that, right?”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever I write, you’ll get to read. I won’t write anything that isn’t the truth.”
“That’s nice.” Jude snorted, shaking his head. “There are some things the general public doesn’t need to know about.”
“Like the blanket you used to carry around as a kid?” I suggested, poising a pen over my notepad. “I think it had spaceships on it, right? That’s what it was. You were obsessed with Toy Story and Buzz.”
“Keep that shit out of your piece,” Jude hissed, eyes flashing when I laughed. “I’m serious, Ava. I’d like to get laid in the future. That conflicts with my image here.”
I rolled my eyes to mask the undertone of his other sentence. “Right. You’re the bad boy of motocross. No one can know that you once were a pretty decent guy who was sensitive.”
“It’s an image, Ava,” Jude said. “It’s not who I am when I’m not on the racetrack. Keep that in mind for future reference when you see one of my races.”
“They are amazing,” Chuck added, grinning excitedly. “It’s nothing like you’ve ever experienced. Just wait until the one in Boston. You’ll love it.”
I turned to look out the window at the passing scenery because I didn’t care about going to these stupid races. A bubble of emotion filled me. I blinked back tears while Chuck and Jude continued their conversation without paying attention to me.
Andy would’ve been excited to go watch these types of races. He had the same damn dreams that Jude had about becoming a motocross star.
Yet, it was Jude who was sitting across from me with endorsements, a manager, a fancy tour bus with a trailer full of tools and bikes, and a legion of fans who wanted to know everything they could about him.
I pressed my head up against the windowpane with a sigh. My parents had argued vehemently about me going on this trip because of what happened. “You’re rubbing salt into the wound, Ava. Think about how your brother would feel about this. He wouldn’t be happy about it, and you know that.”
He wasn’t here anymore, though. I knew what Andy would’ve wanted for all of us. The only reason why Jude seemed like the asshole in this situation was because he knew what Andy wanted, too—he wanted us all to keep living our lives the way we had dreamed about before the accident.
* * *
The steady rocking of the bus, along with the rumble of Jude’s voice, lured me into a deep sleep for the first time in weeks. I had spent several sleepless nights back in my apartment in New York, wondering if Jude would come to the wedding. My energy was spent from the entire weekend of apprehension but also being back home, where it was a shrine to my brother’s death. Everywhere I looked, I thought of him. That was why I had briefly considered turning Emily down about being her maid of honor. I didn’t want to come back to old memories. I didn’t want to come back to the possibility of Jude Jacobs being around, but I had agreed to write about him while following him around the East Coast. It was a strange turn of events.
I woke up to the sound of a dirt bike engine, followed by soft cursing. Disoriented, I took in my unfamiliar surroundings before rolling over onto my back to find the one person I did not want to be next to.
Jude glanced down at me with a small smirk. The upper half of his body, bare and cut with muscles, was propped up on pillows. A blanket was draped over the both of us, and in his lap was an iPad with a YouTube video playing. He hit pause when I sat up quickly to clutch the blanket to my chest.
“What the hell am I doing he
re?” I fumed, shaking my head at him. “Jude. I told you no bedrooms.”
“You fell asleep,” Jude said. “I brought you in here. Those bunk beds are a human rights violation.”
I slipped off the rather comfortable and large bed with an aggravated sigh. “We need to set boundaries here because I know you. You’re going to keep doing things like this.”
“Doing things like what?”
He tossed the iPad onto the bed as he pushed the blanket away from the lower half of his body. My throat went dry when I realized that he was only wearing a pair of boxer briefs that gave a perfect view of his ample package. I sucked in a deep breath to calm my nerves, even though I was torn between giving in to that dark and wicked desire, and wanting to slap the shit out of him for being so forward.
“Sweeping me into your room while you’re half naked,” I hissed, motioning a hand at the cramped room. “What the hell are you thinking?”
“I’m not thinking about a damn thing,” Jude said as he came around the edge of the bed toward me. “I was trying to be nice, Ava. It’s uncomfortable sleeping out there. That’s all I was trying to do. To give you a place to sleep.”
“I’m fine out there!”
Jude sighed at me in irritation. “You’re overreacting to this. Just calm down a bit.”
I took a step back when he closed the gap between us. I shook my head at him in disbelief because there were no coincidences when it came to Jude. He had pulled me in here for a reason. A reason that was working, much to my horror.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sharp hip bones that protruded from his boxers. A trail of dark hair shot down from his navel to disappear below the waistband of his boxers. He was big, too. Bigger than I remembered.
“Hear me out,” Jude said, grasping my elbows in his hands. “Just listen to me when I say—”
I twisted my elbows from his fingers. “No, Jude. You can’t do this to me. You have to understand how hard this is on me.”
The sound of a car horn blaring took both of us by surprise. Then, the bus jerked off to the right, and I was tumbling down on the bed with Jude landing on top of me.