It was an effective way to stem the flow of words, and it also had the added bonus of making me lose my train of thought and settle more fully into his lap. He ran his hands up the outside of my bare arms and his rings trailed little paths of cool metal all along the skin.
“Ayden,” his tone was serious and his dark eyes were intent. “You never had to do any of this alone. I would have been there for you,”
I let my forehead fall forward to rest against his. This man, who was all metal and tattoos that bled out anger and frustration, really had the softest and kindest heart I had ever encountered in my life. Now that I knew how easy it was to snap in half, I told myself it was going to be my job to take care of it from here on out.
“I know you would have, but you’re here now when I need you the most, and that’s all that really matters to me. If you still want my forever, it’s yours, Jet. No one else has ever come close and you’re the only one I have ever wanted to offer it to.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow and grinned at me.
“You in love with me, Ayd?”
I closed my eyes and kissed him like he had just kissed me. We just made so much sense together even if we made no sense at all.
“I’m in love with us, Jet.”
That made him laugh out loud and wrap me in an even tighter hug.
“That’s even better. For what it’s worth, I shouldn’t have let hurt feelings and my own fears stand in the way of us being together. I knew you were a runner from the get-go, and I shouldn’t have been such a jackass and given up the chase so easily. Now that I know what you were trying to sort through all on your own, it makes me feel like even more of a pansy. Just a fair warning, if your bro pulls out of this mess, there is a good chance I might put him right back in that hospital bed.”
I sighed against his mouth and moved to climb off him. It did my heart happy when his hand clenched just a little to hold me close, before he finally let me go.
“You might have to get in line for that. Asa is Asa. He’s always going to be the way he is, but he’s also always going to be my big brother and he did the right thing by me when he ultimately had to. Come on, you know it’s nearly impossible to turn your back on family.”
He leaned back on his elbows on the bed and watched me with hooded eyes as I moved around the room.
“I finally let my mom go.”
I looked at him over my shoulder and sucked in a breath. If I wasn’t exhausted beyond measure, if my mind wasn’t still on Asa and his precarious condition, I would have jumped on him and not let him up for hours. I wondered if it was always going to be like that between us, or if the allure of all that tattooed skin and those dark eyes and devil spikes in his ears was going to wear thin.
“You didn’t let her go, you just finally gave her some room to find her own way. There is only so much you can do there.”
“I’m not letting you go, Ayden, and I’m not going to give you any kind of room, so you better be prepared to deal with all of that for a long time. You promised forever and I plan on holding you to it.”
The hesitancy in his voice tore at my heart. I hated that I had put it there, hated that I had added to his insecurity. I knew all about wanting a steady and secure foundation for the future. I just never knew it was going to come in the form of a good-looking boy in too-tight pants holding a guitar and singing to me in a beautiful voice.
“Old me, new me and everything that’s in between or yet to come, all of it is yours, Jet.”
He pushed off the bed and stalked toward me, until we were toe-to-toe and I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye.
“We can wait until your brother is all better to talk about this stuff. I have a couple days before I have to head back, and you look dead on your feet. I’m here to take care of you, not the other way around.”
I grabbed one of his hands that was hanging loosely at his side. It took a little bit of work to pry the fat silver ring off his finger, but when I had it free, I held it up between the two of us and looked him dead in the eye. He was watching me cautiously but didn’t ask me what I was doing.
“Do you love me, Jet? Despite it all, do you love me?”
“Ayden, I’m here. Of course I love you. I loved you before, I love you after, and I’ll love you for everything in-between.”
Had we not been in a grungy hotel room in Kentucky, there was a good chance that I would have gotten down on one knee to make the moment more dramatic, to prove to him just how serious I was about not running away anymore. But a girl had to have standards. I grabbed his left hand and put a kiss in the center of his palm.
“Jet Keller, I love you, and there is no future for me without you in it. I’m never going to bed with a man who isn’t you again. I don’t care if you’re a rock star or a car salesman, I just want there to be a ‘you and me’ forever. Will you marry me?”
I held his ring out in front of him and waited for him to answer me. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, and his eyes looked like they were going to bug out of his head. The entire thing would have been comical, if I hadn’t felt like I was going to swallow my tongue or pass out at any second.
“Are you serious right now?” I was surprised that his voice cracked a little. I had seen Jet in a lot of ways, but speechless and choked up wasn’t one of them.
“It doesn’t have to be today. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. Hell, it doesn’t have to be this year or five years from now. I want you to understand I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m never going to pick anyone over you, Jet, never again not even myself. This is it. You are it.”
“Shouldn’t I be giving one of those to you and singing you ballads?”
If he didn’t just answer me, I was going to kick him in the nuts.
“Jet, you already picked me. This is me doing the same thing now. Can you stop being difficult and just answer the damn question?”
He took the ring from me and put it back on his finger where it normally lived.
“Yes, Ayden Cross, I will gladly marry you. Supersmart chemistry major or barefoot country girl, it doesn’t matter to me, either. I just want me and you.”
I jumped into his arms and let him swing me around. This time when he kissed me it was full of promises and all kinds of good things to come.
“Now, as much as I want to put you in bed right now for a different reason, you really do look like you’re about to keel over, and I don’t even want to tell you how long I was on an airplane over the last few days. Let’s grab a few winks and get you back to your brother. You can share the good news with him.”
I nodded against his chest and let him lead me to the bed. I threw the ugly comforter on the floor and was glad to see the sheets were clean and at least visibly free of stains. I toed off my cowboy boots and flopped down, face first, and groaned as my head hit the flat pillow. As happy as I was to see him, as glad as I was that things between us were straight and there were no more secrets to hide, there was no way I could keep my eyes open any longer. I had to take a nap and get back to Asa. Jet climbed in beside me and pulled me on top of him so that I was using him as a pillow. I put my cheek on his heart, resting it on top of the death angel tattooed there, and closed my eyes. He stroked a hand from the top of my head to the base of my spine.
“Are we really gonna get married?”
I laughed a little. “Sure. Why not?”
“What if I want to do it sooner rather than later?”
I tapped the ball on his nipple ring through the fabric of his shirt with the tip of my fingernail.
“Whenever you want, Jet. I told you I’m not going anywhere.”
“I feel like I need to put a big-ass rock on your finger before I get back on that plane.”
I sighed and wrapped my hands around his waist.
“You can do whatever you want as long as I get a nap first.”
He snorted and said something I didn’t hear, because I couldn’t fight the pull of sleep anymore. With him here, I finally had a sense that everything had a chance of working out fine.
I slept like a log for two hours. The alarm on my phone went off after only one hour, but apparently I had been so out of it that Jet had turned it off and let me sleep for another full hour. When I woke up, I was rushing around, trying to take a quick shower and change into clean clothes, while he texted everyone back in Denver to update them on what was going on. He didn’t look any more rested than I felt, but he never complained, and when I told him I was probably going to have to stay overnight at the hospital again, he just shrugged and told me he would hang out until they made him leave.
When we walked into the intensive care unit, I noticed the way the nurses looked at us—well, looked at Jet, and not just because we were in the South and his style stood out. There was something about his wild hair and general swagger that just drew attention, primarily female attention, but I was okay with it. He was hot, he wore pants that were tight enough to leave little to the imagination, and he had eyes that were enough to break your heart between each blink. He was just something special and he was mine, so I was going to enjoy it. He put his arm around my shoulders and tucked me into his side when we walked into the room.
Asa didn’t look any better. He was still all bandaged up and he was still unconscious, but his chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm so he wasn’t dead and at this point I was considering that a win. Jet sat in the chair that had been my home for the last few days and I reached over the side of the bed to pat the cast that encased Asa’s hand.
“Hey, big brother, I brought someone to meet you. You should wake up and say hi.”
I was a little choked up. It was hard to see him like this, and it was awful to think he might not wake up and that if he did, he wouldn’t be the same ornery son of a bitch he had always been.
Jet pulled me down on his lap and we sat like that for a long time. We talked about the tour and how he was tired of being on the road, but that seeing Europe was amazing. He told me about how he was considering starting a record label, which sounded like the perfect career for him, and how that meant he was going to have to do more traveling between Colorado, L.A., New York, and Austin. He sounded excited, and that meant I was excited for him. I told him about growing up in Woodward and how Asa was the best liar, the slickest con artist that had ever lived. I told him that he was nearly impossible to not love, but somehow when it mattered, he came through and acted like a big brother should. I told him about Silas and how he was the one who tried to break into the house. At that point, I thought he was going to stage a full-blown lynching party, and I offered to go scrounge up some coffee and snacks to calm him down.
When I walked past the nurses’ station, the two young nurses had their heads bent together and were talking about Jet’s very memorable backside. They both gave me a startled look and all I could do was shrug and agree. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
The line at the little café took a lot longer than I thought, and I wasn’t really hungry for anything, but I didn’t know when Jet had eaten last, so I grabbed a whole bunch of different stuff hoping something would tide him over. When I got back to the room, the door was open a crack so I could slip in, but I stopped because Jet was on his feet next to the bed talking to Asa’s prone form. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he sounded intense and I didn’t want to interrupt.
