but I can tell you it won’t happen again. All right?”
I thought she was going to look remorseful or ashamed; I wasn’t prepared for her to be mad. Those whiskey eyes lit with a fire I had never seen in her and before I could react, she slapped me across the face hard enough to make my back teeth rattle and my face flame.
“What the fuck, Ayd!”
She brushed down her dark cap of hair, and turned to pull the door open herself. I hated that I loved how wrinkled and well-loved she looked, and that I was the one who had gotten her all messy and rumpled.
“In case you forgot, I offered you a night in a king-sized bed with silk sheets, asshole. You turned me down. You told me I wasn’t the type. If you took a freaking second to stop trying to tell me what I do and don’t deserve, maybe you could see that the location doesn’t matter, but the person does.”
She had stunned me into silence, but she was good and pissed and clearly not done.
“And just so you know, I broke it off with Adam yesterday because every time he tried to touch me, every time he tried to kiss me I had to pretend it was you to even fake getting through it. But you’re right, Jet, it won’t happen again, because you don’t know half of what you think you know about me. Every time I think you’re figuring it out or at least trying to, you just end up making me feel like an idiot.”
She threw the door open in a swirl of red and righteous indignation. The guys in the band were all staring at me with knowing looks, as she swept out of the room like a regal goddess. I saw Von open his mouth, but I just squinted my eyes and pointed a finger in his direction. “Don’t even start.”
I picked up my electric Les Paul and fit the strap over my shoulder. I shook my head to try to get my brains and my libido to settle back down, and shoved a guitar pick between my teeth.
“I wanna start with something a little different. You guys think you can just follow me in?”
We had played together for years, and there hadn’t ever been a time when I had spontaneously changed up a set that they hadn’t been able to just fall in line or pick up the rhythm and follow my lead. Boone narrowed his eyes at me and picked up his bass.
“It’s going to be one of those shows?”
I blew out a breath and tried not to think about how good Ayden felt, how perfect she had tasted and moved against me. Granted, I had had a thing for her for a hell of a long time, but I hadn’t been prepared for the reality to profoundly beat the crap out of the fantasy. She was a girl who wanted things in life I was never going to be able to give her. It shouldn’t make me go sideways every time we were close, when I knew that nothing was ever going to come of it. While I wasn’t opposed to being any pretty girl’s good time, something told me that when she walked away after having her fun, she would be taking with her more of me than I wanted to give.
The sound tech running the board at the venue called us onto the stage, and as soon as we walked out, the crowd erupted. I lifted a hand and saw Von give a little salute. Here, we were kings and what happened elsewhere didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. I loved to play live. Loved to give the crowd a show that made them move and sing. It was my way of getting all the poison that filtered around in my blood out, so that it didn’t kill me. The house lights went down and the red spotlight hit me squarely in the face. I looked around the crowd, refusing to admit I always searched for a certain dark head in the masses. I forced a wicked grin and shoved my hands through my hair, and heard a few ladies offer up loud whistles.
“It’s Valentine’s Day, motherfuckers!!!” Everyone screamed and Von struck a long chord on the guitar. I grabbed the mic with both hands and squinted into the light. “Unfortunately, for all you love birds out there, you came to see a rock show. We don’t sing songs about love.” There were more cheers and someone screamed “I love you, Jet!” at the top of her lungs. I laughed and felt the intensity ratchet up and up. I cocked a hip to the side and gave my best sneer, feeling all the things that had just happened with Ayden blazing under my skin.
“We don’t normally do cover songs, but tonight, oh tonight, I think we’ll introduce a little metal to one of my ol’ faves.”
I felt the anticipation blow across my skin, saw Von and Catcher share a slightly worried look, but before they could stop me, I strummed the opening bars to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Love the One You’re With.” I loved old rock and roll, when songs were written for a reason, and this one seemed to be a perfect fit for my night. I took the bluesy notes, the folksy undertone, and bellowed it out over suddenly screaming guitar riffs. Stephen Stills would be appalled, as I sang with every bit of dissonance I was feeling.
I was singing it directly to her, even if she didn’t know it. The crowd ate it up. The older group was singing along, and the younger kids were embracing it as an anti–love song. By the time I was done, the entire place was electric and the guys in the band were done worrying about me going eruptive and messing everything up.
We blazed through the rest of the planned set and I knew it was a good show. When I threw my guitar pick in the audience after our last song, I saw three girls wrestle each other to the ground to try to collect it, and that was a sure sign of success. We went backstage and I was instantly bummed that I had trashed a perfectly good bottle of whiskey in my rage earlier. I had to settle for doing a shot of tequila with Von and Catcher, while Boone stayed steady and chugged a Red Bull.
Von clapped me hard on the shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. “Want to tell us what the oldies were all about?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze so I picked up my guitar case and shrugged. “You know that I like to mix it up every now and then.”
“True, but why do I get the feeling that was directed at someone specifically? It’s not like you to throw a dedication out there like that.”
He wasn’t wrong. I never dedicated a song to anyone, ever, but tonight I was feeling turned inside out and I couldn’t get a handle on it so I shrugged.
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Normally, we had a huge after-party when we played a weekend show, but with Rule and Shaw being all coupled up and Nash and Rowdy surely hooked into whatever girls it was for them tonight, I knew no one was going to be lingering around. The idea of trying to pick up some girl, or more than likely letting some girl pick me up after what had happened with Ayden, made me kind of queasy. I didn’t really want to go to the house, but after killing as much time as I could backstage, I finally had to go. There was no one left to hang out with or tell us how wonderful we had been, so I left and made my way across town to Wash Park, dreading a confrontation with my sexy roommate the entire way.
It was dark when I walked in the front door, but there was a light coming from under Cora’s door. I tried to be quiet as I made my way down the hall to my room, but my combat boots sounded like a heard of buffalo on the old wooden floors. Ayden didn’t stick her head out of her room, which I was both grateful for and seriously annoyed at. After stripping down and showering off all the sex and sweat that clung to me, I went to my room and sat on my bed, rubbing a towel over my head and staring at my closed bedroom door until I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled on a pair of black sweats and walked barefoot across the hall to tap on her closed door.
“Ayd? We need to talk.” I waited for a second and frowned when I got no response. Granted we had crossed a major line tonight, but we lived together and were just going to have to figure it out so things weren’t weird or weirder than they already were.
“Ayden,
