I turned on Venom as loud as it would go, to dissuade her if she tried to follow me and talk. The music was so loud it made even my head hurt, but it distracted me long enough that I got a few last-minute things done for the tour, and set in place a few details I had hanging with the recording for Black Market Alphas.

Really, helping start-up bands, getting new bands out into the world for other people to hear, made me happier than anything else at the moment. There was just so much good music out there that no one ever got a chance to hear, because they never made it big, never made it to the radio or on one of the big tours. It was a shame, and any part that I could play in changing that gave me more pride than anything that I produced for myself did.

When I left to head to the tattoo shop, there was no sign of Ayden and I didn’t know if that made me feel better or worse. I chose not to think about it too hard and headed downtown. I hated to leave the car parked on Colfax, so I went farther down where Nash and Rule lived in a converted Victorian and parked there. It took me a few minutes to walk back up to the shop, and even though I was a few minutes late, Rowdy was still working on a girl who barely looked sixteen.

Cora rolled her eyes and told me that the girl had been late and she was proving to have a low pain tolerance, so that my boy was struggling with it. I told her I would wait, but Rule came walking out of the back frowning at his phone as asked me if I had a minute. I wasn’t really in the mood to have him bust my balls, but the shop wasn’t that big, so I didn’t really have a choice. I nodded a greeting at Nash, who watched us walk out the front door with a frown. He was working on something intricate on a guy’s calf, though, so he didn’t say anything or make any move other than the frown.

Rule muttered something at the screen of the phone and tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Rome is headed home for good in a few months.”

I wasn’t expecting that, so I wasn’t sure what to say. Rule’s older brother was cool, and a total badass, take-no-shit kind of guy, and I liked him a lot. I knew there was some tension there with the family, and the fact that Rule’s twin brother—who was no longer living—had managed to take a pretty big secret to the grave with him.

“That’s cool.”

“It would be, if he would stop being an asshole. I want him to take over the lease on the Victorian when he gets back, so he doesn’t have to worry about trying to figure out where he’s going. I know he won’t go home right now. He’s still not talking to the folks.”

I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck and wondered why he wanted to talk about this away from everyone else.

“If he moves into the Victorian, where are you and Shaw going to go?”

“I’m going to buy her a house.”

I balked a little because I had known Rule for a long time, and while the idea of him settling down with one girl had been a shock, the idea of him making a permanent home with one was downright unthinkable.

“Wow, dude, that’s a huge step.”

He shrugged a shoulder and leaned back against the glass window that was the front of the shop.

“It doesn’t feel like one. She’s it for me.”

I lifted an eyebrow and copied his pose against the chilly glass.

“You thinking marriage and babies there, Archer?” It baffled me. He was the original lone wolf, and his track record with women was legendary and almost scary in its length. But once he had decided that he was going to commit to Shaw, he had done it with the same intensity that he applied to everything else in his life.

“Honestly, man, it’s whatever she wants. She wants a ring, I’ll by her one the size of her head. She wants a kid, I’ll take her to bed every night until she has one, and I won’t complain about it at all. If she wants to keep things the way they are now, until the end of time, then I’m cool with that, too. All that matters is that it’s her and me at the end of the day. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

His eyes were serious and pinned me to the glass. It was hard to look away from that winter storm when he turned its full force on you.

“When the right one comes along, Jet, you figure it out. You move mountains, you change your life and you do whatever it takes to keep them with you. I would be half the man I am without Shaw. She makes me better, she makes me happy, and I can see that Ayden does that for you, too.”

I was going to interrupt, going to tell him that I wasn’t the one who had walked away, that I had dealt with her secrets and her evasion, and still fallen in love with her anyway, but he held up a hand and stopped me.

“I know things with her are convoluted. I know she isn’t making it easy to love her, but that’s when it’s most important that you do it anyway. Trust me, I’ve been in her shoes. Shaw explained a little of what Ayd’s dealing with, and it isn’t pretty, and it sure as shit isn’t easy, but I know you could handle it if you just pushed through.”

I frowned and tried not to let his words rattle around in my head. I appreciated where he was coming from, appreciated that he really did think that love was something that could just prevail. It was beautiful coming from a guy like him, but he wasn’t the one trying to battle the walls Ayden had up, and he wasn’t the one there when that damn phone rang this afternoon. I sighed and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t going to lie about how I felt about her, but I also wasn’t going to pretend like I had hope for things working out beyond the way they had.

“Thanks, Rule. Seriously, I understand where you’re coming from and I wish, I truly wish I could have with Ayden the same kind of thing you have going on with Shaw. It just isn’t like that. I know what happens when you try to force something on someone, just look at my folks.”

We stared at each other for a long minute, his pale blue eyes glittering like chips of diamonds as he turned my words over in his head. Finally, he sighed and pushed off the glass.

“I just know that if you think the person is worth it, that the end game is worth it, then you shouldn’t give up.”

I followed his lead and pushed myself off the window. A group of girls walked by and checked us out, but neither one of us returned the attention or the flirty smiles sent our way. I wanted to kick something.

“I guess happiness is all relative now.”

We went back inside the shop and Rowdy was walking the girl he had been working on to the desk. Cora was giving her the stink eye and being particularly snarky as she cashed her out. Rowdy and I exchanged a fist bump, and he jerked his head toward the back room where they all had drawing stations and a little break room.

“Come back and check out what I threw together. If you don’t like it, I have enough time to change it up.”

Rule clapped me on the shoulder.

“He’s been working on it all day. It’s fucking amazing.”

I lifted an eyebrow and followed Rowdy to the rear of the shop.

“Thanks for pulling it together so quick.”

“It isn’t often I have a client who gives me free rein to just do what I want, so I had a good time with it.”

The stencil was massive. It would cover one entire side of my back, from the top of my ass to the base of my shoulder blade. The fire was the main focus, with twisting, twining flames that licked over an old-fashioned microphone that was split open in the center and looked similar to a screaming mouth with more swirls of flame spitting out of it. It was nasty, it was mean, it was bright, and it was full of life. It looked exactly like what I felt when I was onstage, and the colors he envisioned, the flow he found for it, was more like a watercolor painting than the typical hard lines of a tattoo. I stared at it in awe for a long minute, until Rowdy cleared his throat, and I noticed that he looked a little nervous.

“Is it kind of what you were after?”

I laughed, really laughed. Laughed so hard I felt water build in my eyes.

“Dude, if I didn’t think you would punch me in the face, I would kiss you. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

“It’s big. All we’re going to be able to get done tonight is the outline, and you’re looking at a solid four to five hours for that alone. You need to decide what side you want it on.”

“The side opposite the angel of death.” I figured that would look more balanced than having them on the same side, even though the death angel took up most of my chest.

“Cool, give me a few to set up and get the transfer ready. Nash said when he was done with the guy he’s working on, he’ll run out and grab pizza. Rule said he was gonna get a case of beer and come back. You have to wait until you’re done getting inked to drink though, otherwise you’ll push the ink out. We’re all just gonna hang out here.”

I readily agreed and kicked back while he went to take care of business. My family was as settled as it was ever going to be, my music was in the prime of its success, and I had the coolest group of friends ever. It was a shame that none of that seemed to do any good at filling the place in me that was still gaping wide open because of a whiskey-eyed brunette. Nothing made the fact that she was still talking to Sweater Vest easier to swallow, and none of it made the fact that we just couldn’t figure out how to be together suck any less.

Letting Rowdy hammer on me for a few hours with a bunch of needles seemed like a good way to get the endorphins and adrenaline flowing, and a good way to let some of that scorching, blistering emotion Ayden stirred up bleed out.

Chapter 15

Sacrificing so the person you loved would be better off should have made me feel altruistic and at peace. Unfortunately, in my case it was making me miserable and uncomfortable. Walking away from Jet before Asa could get his grubby paws into him, or before all the nasty things I thought I had a handle on could come between us was so much harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know what was worse, the awkward encounters I had with Jet when I ran into him in the house, or the nights he didn’t come home at all.

My head would spin around like a crazy person, trying not to wonder who he was with or what he was doing. I had always wanted him on a purely chemical and sexual level, but now that I knew him, now that I understood all the things going on behind those dark eyes of his, I wanted him for everything else as well. It broke my heart into a million pieces every time he looked at me like I was a pane of glass, and that he had not interest whatsoever seeing what was on the other side. It killed me when he just gazed right through me. The reality was, if he looked close enough, he would see all those shattered pieces of my heart in places they didn’t belong. They were in my throat, in my hands, and lost somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

He was leaving today. When I left for my run earlier, he had been getting his stuff together by the front door and talking on the phone to whoever was coming to pick him up. Part of me was glad that the tension that rolled between us would ease now that he was going to be thousands of miles away, but a bigger part of me, a louder part of me, was screaming that once he was out of the door with that guitar, it was over for good between us. I knew he deserved to know the real reasons why, but I just couldn’t seem to find the right words to tell him.