The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa. Jay Crownover
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to his feet. I tried not to drool when he stretched his arms above his messy hair and the hem of his T-shirt rode up over the edge of his pants. It would take torture to get me to admit it, but my main goal in life was to see how far down that damn angel tattoo went, and to trace the entire thing with my tongue.
I cleared my throat to try to get my head out of the gutter, and noticed he was watching me closely.
“That’s the whole point; you don’t see anything wrong with dating a dude who thinks a sweater vest is badass, and I don’t see anything wrong with picking up a chick who gets ranked by my shithead roommates the morning after. Two different worlds, Ayd, two totally different worlds.”
He ruffled my hair, getting several of the longer strands stuck in his rings as he walked away. I watched him solemnly until he disappeared in his room, before releasing the breath I had been holding. It took a minute for me to unclench my fingers from the coffee mug.
Jet had no idea what I was really like under all the polish and primer I had slapped on before moving to Colorado with nothing but the clothes on my back. No one really did. I had talked to Shaw about it briefly and vaguely, but even my bestie had no clue about the kind of life I had lived before starting college three years ago.
I was only twenty-two, but felt like I had lived a hundred lifetimes in this short amount of time. The good girl, the girl who Jet saw as so untouchable and so different from him, was all an illusion I fought on a daily basis to maintain. Having him so close and so present put my desire to leave the old Ayden buried in the rolling hills of Kentucky to the test, every minute of every day.
“Hey!” I sputtered indignantly as a dish towel suddenly slapped across my face. Cora plopped down in the chair Jet had just vacated and gave me a knowing look.
“I thought you might want that for the slobber on your chin.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Knock it off.”
“Whatever. Every time, Ayd—it’s like you’re in heat or something. I don’t know how you guys ignore all the snap, crackle, and pop that happens whenever you get within breathing distance of each other, but I’m telling you it’s exhausting to watch.”
I opened my mouth to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that we were not attracted to each other, but she held up a hand and lasered a pointed glare at me before I got one word out.
“And don’t give me that bull about just being friends. I have guy friends. In fact, I have more guy friends than I do girlfriends and I do not look at a single one of them like I want to have hair-pulling, bite mark–leaving, bed-breaking sex with them. When you look at him when he’s not paying attention, Ayd”—she made a big production of fanning herself down with the towel she reclaimed—“I feel like I need a cold shower.”
I didn’t know what to say to that so, I stuck with what I knew.
“We’re friends. We aren’t each other’s type and I told you what happened the one single time I let alcohol try to convince me otherwise.”
She leaned back in the chair and regarded me with her crazy eyes. The dark brown one was all censure and knowing regard, and the turquoise one was all good-humored mirth and friendly compassion. It was hard to pull anything over on Cora, but that didn’t mean I ever stopped trying. In order to build the life I wanted, the life I so desperately craved, I had to convince everyone that it was what I had deserved all along. Who I was before wasn’t allowed to be a factor in who I was now, and no matter how hot Jet was or how much he made me want to wander off the path of good intentions, I just couldn’t allow it.
“Besides, we fundamentally want different things out of life. Once I graduate I’m going right into a master’s program. Jet has been playing at being a rock star since he was a teenager. I can’t understand not having the ambition to want something more than that, to want a secure future. We want different things all the way around.” Not to mention the way he made me want to forget everything I already knew about the dangers of the wild side totally freaked me out.
She shook her head looking like a judgmental version of Tinker Bell. It was hard to fathom so much attitude packed in such a little frame.
“I’m going to be honest with you, babe. From the outside looking in, you and that boy want exactly the same things, only you’re both too scared of something to admit it. And FYI, nobody, and I mean nobody, looks good in a sweater vest, so you should just stop trying to sell that poor Adam guy as boyfriend material.” She climbed to her feet and gripped the back of the chair, and in typical Cora fashion switched gears while I was trying to process the last bit of insight she had dropped on me. “So you never gave me your ranking for the groupie of the day, what do you think?”
It bugged me every time a girl came stumbling out of that room, but I refused to acknowledge it, so I held up nine fingers and played along just like I was supposed to.
“She had a seven thanks to the missing bra and inside-out shirt, but after calling you a bitch and stuffing her underwear in her back pocket, she moved up.”
Cora burst into boisterous laughter and grabbed her sides. She was cackling so loud I was worried all the noise was going to bring Jet back out of his room.
“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