Kitabı oku: «Rowdy»

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Prologue . . .: Salem

Chapter 1: Rowdy

Chapter 2: Salem

Chapter 3: Rowdy

Chapter 4: Salem

Chapter 5: Rowdy

Chapter 6: Salem

Chapter 7: Rowdy

Chapter 8: Salem

Chapter 9: Rowdy

Chapter 10: Salem

Chapter 11: Rowdy

Chapter 12: Salem

Chapter 13: Rowdy

Chapter 14: Salem

Chapter 15: Rowdy

Chapter 16: Salem

Chapter 17: Rowdy

Chapter 18: Salem

Chapter 19: Rowdy

Chapter 20: Salem

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Rowdy and Salem’s Playlist

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Jay Crownover

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

For anyone who doesn’t know my backstory, the long and short of it is I thought I had my life figured out. I thought I was on the path I was supposed to be on. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and in return I was going to live the dream and have the typical happily-ever-after.

Not so much. The path I was meant to be on was vastly different. My happily-ever-after didn’t involve love and marriage but instead a new career and a grand adventure I had only ever dreamed about when I was much younger. Really, what I thought I was supposed to be doing was just the status quo, the day-to-day rhythm I had fallen into because I didn’t know any better, and frankly because I was scared of what lurked outside the comfort of what I had known for so long.

Well, screw that. What I was meant to be doing was so much better, so much more challenging, so much more enlightening and fulfilling than the status quo. I wake up every single day thankful that my path has changed so drastically. Sure, it sucked at the time. It was one of the lowest points in my life and one of the most terrifying journeys I have ever traveled, but coming out of it on the other side stronger, totally independent, and absolutely creatively fulfilled, all I can do is tell the universe thank you for shaking things up.

It’s okay to be scared, I really think that’s how you know that whatever it is you’re meant to be doing matters, but it’s not okay to not find that thing you’re supposed to be doing because you’re afraid of something new, because the path less traveled is daunting and dark. Embrace the change, find your passion, know what your true joy really is about, and pursue it until the end of time. Live the life you were always meant to live. Honestly, nothing on earth will make you happier or more grateful for every single moment you have.

Just get out there and do you. The universe loves that shit!

PROLOGUE . . .
Salem

I don’t have a lot of great memories from my childhood.

There were too many rules. Too many regulations. Too many disapproving looks from my father and not enough support or backbone from my mother.

We lived in Loveless, a tiny Texas town with an achingly accurate name. I was the minister’s daughter, and if that didn’t come with enough inherent expectations, the man who was beloved behind the pulpit but a tyrant in our home heaped them on ever higher. I was meant to be quiet, compliant, and conventional. Problem was . . . that was never me.

When I was nine, I convinced my mom to let me try out for a very exclusive dance team. I longed for something different, something that would make the day-to-day less agonizing. I was so proud, so excited when I made the team, only to have my father tell me dancing like that wasn’t permitted and no daughter of his was going to make a spectacle of herself. He wouldn’t stand for it. It was how everything in my life went, and my mom never seemed willing to take a stand and defy him, even if it meant giving her daughter something she so desperately wanted. Anything that went against my father’s wishes or was deemed inappropriate and shameful got kicked to the curb along with any sense of uniqueness and enjoyment. My parents wanted to squeeze me into a too-small box, painted white and tied with a bow of tradition. Me being me would never be good enough.

It was a situation made even worse by the fact that my younger sister was the apple of my parents’ eye. The perfect golden girl. I loved Poppy with all my heart, too. She was gentle and kind but she was also docile and obedient, ready to jump whenever my father barked an order.

I was never going to be perfect and compliant like my adorable little sister. I had no plans to end up a happy homemaker like my mother. And I sure as hell was never going to fit into the conventional mold of the traditional Mexican woman like my father so desperately wanted me to. So at nine years old, I decided that I would make my own way. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, I just had to be patient.

When the time came, I broke free. I hit the road with exactly the kind of guy my father hated. I was barely eighteen, not really grown, but I had to get out. I had to run . . . I just didn’t see any other way to survive. I fled Loveless, shaking the dust off my boots and never looking back.

I have very few regrets about the choices I made for myself back then. To this day I am a woman that stands by my decisions—good or bad. I’m independent. I’m strong-willed. I’ve made my own way in life, and have, up to this point, been extremely successful at it. There’ve been times when I stumbled. There’ve been times when I lay alone in the dark and wanted to cry. There were quiet moments that snuck up on me that reminded me my parents weren’t the only people I ran from in that tiny Texas town. But overall I tried to accept full accountability for my happiness and well-being and that was the way I liked it.

I still kept in touch with my sister, Poppy. We were close even though she had married a man I wasn’t too fond of a few years ago. She still lived in Loveless. So deep was my hatred for that place and the memories that lived there I couldn’t even bring myself to attend my sister’s nuptials, which had of course taken place under my father’s watchful eyes in his church. I liked to move around, so Poppy would come visit and get a feel for whichever big city I was calling home for the moment. Her visits had become much sparser over the years, and now I could only get in touch with her every so often for a quick chat on the phone.

At first my gypsy ways had landed me in Phoenix and then Reno, all before L.A. had called to me, which had then been quickly followed by New York. I had tried New Orleans on for size and had a blast in Austin for a few years. Most recently I had landed in Vegas, and something about the lights, the noise, the constant flow of people, the way it really felt like a transient town, had stuck. I stayed in the neon jungle for far longer than any of the other places on the list and settled in to a really profitable career that hinged on all those decisions I had made that my parents were so sure were going to doom my future.

I had a great job, a killer apartment, and I was even seeing a guy that was hovering on the edge of something closer to serious than I normally liked, when I got a call out of the blue from Phil Donovan’s son.

Phil Donovan was legendary in my world—a veritable god in the tattoo industry. He was the tattoo guy other tattoo guys wanted to be. He was the artist you wanted to say had worked on you. He was groundbreaking. He was famous. The list to apprentice under him was a hundred million miles long. Phil was a supremely talented man, and according to his son, Nash, he was sick and his odds on pulling through were slim to nonexistent. Nash had inherited Phil’s shop in the heart of downtown Denver and had also been tasked with getting a new tattoo shop up and running in the more trendy Lower Downtown—“LoDo”—part of the city. Phil had thrown my name in the hat for Nash to consider as the shop’s manager.

I had only met the older man once. It was during a convention in Vegas, and I had just wanted to meet the notoriously handsome artist. Well, Phil was indeed a gorgeous example of a rock-and-roller aging well, but he was also charming, polite, and something about his demeanor had spoken to my very wayward soul. We ended up talking for hours and hours. He offered to tattoo me, and there was no way I was going to say no. I spent the next day under his needle and ended up spilling my entire life history under his watchful purple gaze. It was like being absolved of every sin I had ever committed by a very tattooed and cool pope.

When he asked where I was from and I told him “all over,” he had just laughed. When I mentioned I grew up in a very conservative town in Texas called Loveless, I could feel something change in his demeanor. He became more intent, asked a truckload more questions, and by the time the elegant, beautiful, and very traditional Lady of Guadalupe tattoo was done on my calf, I felt like Phil knew me better than I tended to know myself.

We said good-bye and I never really thought much past that encounter other than I had a killer tattoo from Phil Donovan, which totally gave me bragging rights. Nash’s call had taken me off guard, so I was prepared to blow him off. I was sad to hear about Phil and I didn’t really want to leave Vegas. Colorado was cold and had mountains. I had zero use for either of those things. I was getting ready to hang up when Nash told me to look up the shop on the Internet. To check out the artists and their work. He told me that Phil was absolutely sure I would be interested in the job and the move once I did. I shrugged it and him off and hung up, but my curiosity was piqued, so I did indeed pull up the shop on my phone.

The Marked had a stellar reputation. The ratings were out of this world and the portfolios of the work its artists were producing were breathtaking. But it wasn’t until I flipped over to the individual artists’ pages that my entire world and my future went from Vegas to Denver in the span of a heartbeat.

There on the tiny screen of my phone was the one solid and always good memory I did have from my youth. The one thing that I had held in a warm fuzzy place no matter where I was or how I was feeling. There looking back at me was the grown-up version of the blue-eyed boy who was the one person in my entire life to ever make me feel accepted. The only person who had ever made me feel like it was okay just to be me and that being me was actually a pretty great thing.

Rowland St. James . . . Rowdy. The boy next door who was so sweet, so wide-eyed, so afraid of being sent back into the system, so afraid of being alone.

The first time Poppy dragged him over to the yard to play with us I remembered watching him struggle to figure out how to have fun, how to loosen up and have a good time. He was so little, with such big, sad eyes, my heart squeezed for him. Every little kid should know how to play, should want to roll around in the dirt and cause a ruckus, and it seemed like every little kid did, except for Rowdy.

I think I felt so bad for him because I knew exactly how he felt. I was barely a teenager, and even then I didn’t want to think about how going inside with scraped knees or ripped clothes would go over with my tyrant of a father. I would get yelled at, I would be punished, I would have all my privileges—the few I had—revoked, and all the fun in the world wasn’t worth the repercussions it caused, so I typically resigned myself to sitting on the sidelines and watching everyone else enjoy themselves. Only, once Rowdy was part of the picture, I no longer had to sit there alone.

That was how I first found out how artistically gifted he was. Drawing on paper was clean and tidy, it was normally boring, and there was no possible way I could get in trouble or end up grounded for playing ticktacktoe or hangman. Little had I known that handing a few sheets of plain drawing paper and a few colored pencils to Rowdy was going to unlock artistic potential that would blow me away. Even at ten he had been able to craft images and landscapes that looked real enough they deserved to be framed and hung on a wall somewhere. The boy was skilled, and it was the first time I ever saw him really smile. He loved to draw, loved to sketch and mess around with paint, so whenever we ended up cast off to the side, that was what we did together. Draw and doodle. I sucked at it, but I loved that it made him so happy.

Even with our age gap and obvious differences, Rowdy just understood what it was like to want more and be more than we were currently stuck with. He was a kindred spirit, and he made my heart smile when my day-to-day was so dreary and desolate. We were two kids just trying to make do in households that didn’t really want us or understand us. We might have been on the outside looking in at our own families and our own lives, but at least we could stand outside together. He was quite simply the best friend I ever had—he still was. Sometimes, though, I wondered if he was content to be on the fringe with me, okay with his nose pressed against the glass just because he was another person in my life who was blinded by Poppy’s perceived perfection. We watched everything move around us, never feeling included or wanted, but he never took his eyes off of my little sister.

I had always known that Poppy was the Cruz sister for him, but somehow I forgot that in my last moments in Loveless. Just as the Belvedere was about to peel out of my parents’ driveway, I caught sight of his brilliant sky-blue eyes in the rearview mirror. I jumped out of the car, and in that split second something changed from kinship and our deeper bond of not belonging changed into something else. I saw him as older, saw him as so much more than a confused teenage boy. He was only fifteen, too young to have so much loss and despair in his heartbreaking gaze. Too young to suddenly look so grown-up and like something else. In that half of a heartbeat he became desirable and forbidden to my suddenly thundering heart. Neither one of us was ready for the other; at eighteen I didn’t have a clue how drastic my actions were going to be or how long the effects would last, but I had to kiss him good-bye, had to let him know that he mattered in so many different ways even though I was leaving and never coming back.

Only now, thanks to serendipity and Phil Donovan, Rowdy was staring back at me, all grown-up and gorgeous. He was still blond, still smiling in a way that made my heart trip, but he was bigger, badder, and those blue eyes now had to compete for attention with a riot of ink covering most of his visible skin. It was like staring at everything that I suddenly wanted in the center of a crystal ball telling me that was what my future was supposed to look like.

Without even taking a second to think, I called Nash back and accepted the job. I think he said something about interviewing, but I could hardly hear him through the blood rushing between my ears. Sure I would have more details to figure out before I packed up and left, but I had a new destination and a clear goal in mind. I wanted to see if it was still there, the synchronicity we had, the undeniable connection and pull that had made us work together so well when we were too young and too lost to know what to do with it.

It took a minute to cut ties with the current shop I was working at, mostly because they had just signed a deal to do some kind of tattoo reality show and I think having me at the front desk was one of the big selling points. I also had to break it off with Mr. I Want More and head to New York for a photo shoot I had booked for a tattoo magazine. As each day passed I got more and more anxious. I wanted to be in Colorado, wanted to lay my eyes on the grown-up version of Rowdy. I was dying to see what the years had done to him besides make him undeniably sexy. He had always had the best personality. Affable and laid-back even though his life had been anything but a bed of roses. I always admired him. I envied the way he seemed to just roll with whatever landed in his lap. I was the exact opposite. I made everything into a battle, a fight for survival, and it was exhausting.

Fighting for everything made fighting for the things that actually mattered get lost in the noise and lose their significance.

I threw everything I owned into my car and once again hit the road. It was the first time I ever left one place headed toward another with a clear destination in mind. Not only the anticipation of facing the one happy thing I held on to from another life, but also the lure of helping to build a tattoo empire, of extending Phil’s legacy out in the world with the next generation of tattoo gods, was exciting, and I loved a good challenge.

When I hit Denver in May I was stunned at how beautiful the place actually was. The city was so clean and the way the Rockies loomed out in the distance really was breathtaking. It had a life to it, a vibe that was different from any other place I had ever been and I instantly felt bad for dismissing it out of hand. When I sucked in a breath it was like I could feel the mountain air doing something to my insides. Or maybe I was just suffocating because of the lack of oxygen. Denver really was a mile above sea level, and for a city girl, trying to breathe at that elevation was proving to be a little tricky.

I found a tiny, furnished apartment. After all I was a master at uprooting my life and bouncing from one place to another. I gave myself a pep talk to convince myself that I wasn’t crazy to move to an entirely new state on a whim and a picture of a pretty boy. I got myself gussied up, did my hair, slicked on some bloodred lipstick and donned my most killer pair of heels, and went to charm my potential new employer.

My new boss was a babe. So was his business partner. Seriously they should be on a calendar featuring the hot tattooed and pierced men of Denver. They also considered me carefully. Checking out my ink, not in a leering, creeper way, but to see if I could tell the difference between good and bad work. I must have passed inspection because the tiny blonde with the baby and the attitude smiled at me and told them to hire me or else. Mr. Sexy with the flames tattooed on his head, Nash, like I wouldn’t have known who he was from the eyes alone, offered me the job. Of course I accepted.

The guy with the black mohawk and all the swagger made a few sarcastic comments and flashed me a grin that would have made my blood heat if I hadn’t noticed the very obvious wedding ring he was sporting. Those two were trouble. The very best kind, and I told them I knew it was going to be a good time and that I was excited about getting in on this opportunity with them on the ground floor. We were all set to go and I’d told them I was excited when I heard his voice.

It was deeper, smoother, but under the baritone was the soft Texas twang I remembered from all those years ago. When his head cleared the top of the stairs I saw his eyes widen, watched them fill with recognition and trepidation. I couldn’t help but smile. Even though he looked less than thrilled to see me, everything about seeing him made me happy, and I knew, just knew I had made the right choice. I moved toward him like there was a force field pulling us together and listened to my heels tap on the wooden floor in time with my heartbeat.

I stopped right in front of him. Even with him hovering a step down below the landing and with me in heels, he was still taller than me. He was broad and strong. He was watching me like I was some kind of apparition.

I was. I was very much a ghost from his past just like he was for me.

I ran a finger over the bridge of his nose, fought the urge to lean forward and press my lips to his slack mouth.

I said his name, his real name, so he could tell it was really me—“Hello, Rowland”—and it made his entire body jerk in response. “You sure did grow up nice.” We stared at each other in silence for a minute and I saw all the color bleed out of his face. He whispered my name back at me in a strangled tone.

He had a massive anchor tattooed on the side of his neck. It looked like it was alive with the way his pulse thundered rapidly under the ink.

I looked back over my shoulder and told the rest of our bewildered audience, “Strike that, it’s going to be a great time. See you guys at work on Monday. E-mail me whatever forms you need me to fill out.”

I made sure my hand brushed across Rowdy’s chest when I walked past him as I made my way down the stairs. I could feel his heart racing, could feel the way he trembled. I’m sure it was more from shock than any kind of appreciation of my feminine charms, but I didn’t care.

For the first time in my entire life I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 1
Rowdy

The pool balls cracked together with a loud smack and rolled aimlessly across the table. Not a single one, solid or stripe, found its way into a pocket. I leaned heavily on the pool cue I planted on the floor and glared at the table.

“Man, you are off your game.”

In more ways than one. I snorted and looked across the pool table at my best friend, Jet Keller. He wasn’t in town much anymore. He was usually off making up-and-coming bands into stars or busy playing rock star himself. It was a rare night when he was actually in town and not attached to his very pretty wife. Normally I would be all over some bro time with Jet, but like he said, I was off.

I reached behind me and grabbed the bottle of Coors Light I had left on the high-top table. Beer normally was the answer to all of life’s problems, but the things that were running around in my mind, the things keeping me up at night, no amount of beer could quiet. I shifted my weight on my feet and watched as Jet sank almost every single one of his shots. I had no idea how he managed to lean over the table and take the shots he did without his pants ripping in half. I kept telling him if he ever wanted to have kids he’d better buy some regular Levi’s; it was a long-running joke between the two of us. I felt bad for the guy’s balls.

I had known Jet for years and was used to his hard-rock style. It fit who he was. It fit his personality. He rocked it onstage and off. It didn’t, however, fit in at the run-down dive bar well off the beaten path I’d dragged him to. I was avoiding the bar closest to the tattoo shop because I had no intention of running into my newest coworker.

It was hard enough seeing her day in and day out at the shop. It was a struggle hour by hour to keep the nine million questions I had from flying out of my mouth. I wanted to know everything, wanted all the answers, but knew even if she had them it wouldn’t make up for the fact she had let me down all those years ago. So I just remained quiet. I kept my trap shut and went out of my way not to look at her, not to talk directly to her, and I sure as shit made sure not to be where I thought she might be outside of work. My avoidance tactics meant the watering hole by the shop was currently off-limits and so was the Bar, the run-down dive owned and operated by a close friend. Those were the only two places that I frequented with my friends and the rest of the gang from the tattoo shop, so it made sense that those would be the places Salem might pop up. Ergo, I dragged Jet’s ass to a place that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Colorado experienced the gold rush and where every pair of suspicious eyes were on us.

“It’s been a strange few weeks.”

Jet arched a black eyebrow at me and motioned for me to rerack the balls.

“That have anything to do with the babe from Vegas?”

I felt my shoulders tighten involuntarily. “Maybe.”

I took my time getting the colored balls back in the triangle, and when I was done, I stood and leaned on the table with my hands braced on the edge. My tattooed knuckles almost turned white under the pressure. That was the thing with having a tight-knit group of friends that substituted as family. No one’s business was off-limits and everyone wanted to stick their fingers in the mess and try and help.

I narrowed my eyes at him slightly as he ordered us another round of beers from the cocktail waitress that looked like she had been doing this since the womb. “Haggard” didn’t even begin to cover her worn appearance, and it annoyed me. If I wasn’t being such a nut case we could’ve been at the Bar, where Dixie was the cocktail waitress. She was a doll. A redhead with an easygoing attitude and a bright smile. She was also down for spending quality time with me naked and not expecting anything the next morning, so that made the fact I was getting snarled at by Betty, the Devil’s very own cocktail waitress, even more aggravating.

I snapped at Jet, “What have you heard?”

He grinned at me in the way he had that let me know I was being a dumb-ass. I didn’t get riled up easily. I never saw the point. Things always had a way of figuring themselves out and it was the harder people worked at trying to change the outcome that really made everything a clusterfuck. I firmly believed whatever was meant to happen would happen and there was no way to control the outcome.

He tipped the waitress and took the beers and handed me one.

“Just that she is something else. I heard she can give Cora as good as she gets, that she’s awesome with the customers, that she knows her shit when it comes to managing a tattoo shop and that she’s not just a ten, she’s a ten times ten, and that you’re avoiding her like she came from a leper colony not Sin City.”

Cora Lewis was the business manager for the Marked, the tattoo shop I worked at. She was tiny, mouthy, and the real boss of all of us, and next to Jet she was my closest friend in the world. The fact that she had immediately taken to Salem, had brought her into the fold without even stopping to ask me how I felt about it, bugged me and also made me feel like the odd man out. Everyone seemed to love Salem, couldn’t stop singing her praises and touting about what a lifesaver she had been with the shop expanding into a new location. If you asked anyone else I worked with, she was the saving grace of the Marked.

I wanted her to go back to where she came from and to take all the memories, the feelings that she had tied to her with her. I had worked long and hard to bury most of my pre-Colorado life and I didn’t need a daily reminder that I had loved and lost both Cruz sisters.

“She’s beautiful. She always was.”

Salem Cruz had everything a modern-day pinup girl needed to have in order to be a showstopper. There were the curves she had for days. There were miles of amazing, dark hair that seemed endless and it had a brilliant shot of bright red in the front of it. She had eyes the color of obsidian winged in black liner and a mouth painted in a perfect bloodred pout. Every day she looked like something out of a hot rod magazine. Her style was perfectly designed to be both sassy and sexy in a way that made her almost impossible to ignore. Every day the little ruby, Monroe piercing she wore above her lip winked at me and every day I tried not to notice that her tattooed arms were masterfully done and filled with artwork that I envied as a professional and as an artist. I also tried really hard not to remember when she wrapped them around me when I was young and scared all the time as she tried to make me feel better.

“You know her from way back when?”

Jet had no idea how loaded that question was.

“Yeah. I grew up next to her family in Texas. I spent a lot of time at her house when I was just a kid.”

She had looked different then, far more conservative and traditional. Her hair was darker then, but her eyes were still midnight black and mysterious. Her smile was the same and so was the way I could feel my blood thicken when she walked past me or accidently brushed by me. Back then I thought it was wrong. I thought it was terrifying and dangerous to react to a girl that I knew wasn’t for me, but now I knew Salem was irresistible and it was physically impossible not to react to her.

“So what’s with the freeze-out?”

Normally I was charming, affable, and engaging with the opposite sex. I just had a way of talking to them that let me get my way and left everybody happy at the end of the day. With Salem I couldn’t do that. With her I couldn’t find words that weren’t accusation, blame, and downright hatefulness. I was mad at her for leaving and madder at her for suddenly showing back up.

“She left Loveless when I was fifteen. She packed a bag and took off in the middle of the night with the town’s biggest weed dealer. Her parents were big in the church and her little sister worshiped her, so it was hard on everyone when she disappeared.” I sucked down a heavy swallow of beer and sighed heavily. “It was really hard on me.”

I had loved Salem’s sister, Poppy, with every piece of my young soul. She was my one and only, she was the center of my entire world. At least she had been until I followed her to college and ultimately had her tell me we were never going to be a thing. Salem, however, had been my confidante, my confessor, and maybe most importantly she had offered a lonely and unwanted boy friendship and acceptance. She was my very best friend and I was lost without her. When she left without so much as a good-bye it had been the second time in my life that I felt like I was being abandoned. I was once again left behind by someone that was supposed to care about me forever. Salem left me gutted and hollowed out.

“So you were tight and then she bounced and this is the first time you have seen her in ten years and now you’re all twisted up about it?”

If only it was that simple. The Cruz sisters had done a number on me coming and going. I would be perfectly happy to have never had to see or think about either one of them again.

If I didn’t have my hair slicked up and styled like a character out of Cry-Baby, I would have shoved my hands through it in frustration.

“I’m not twisted up. I just don’t have anything to say to her. A decade is a long time. She’s a stranger.” And anything I said wasn’t going to come out right anyway. The words would be twisted with rage and memory.

Jet gave me a look and pointed the open end of his beer bottle at me. “Right. She’s a stranger, a superhot stranger, and instead of talking to her or flirting her up like you normally do, you’re acting like a mute weirdo. Nope, not twisted at all.”

I contemplated cracking him over the head with my pool stick, but I had a soft spot for his wife, Ayden, and I wouldn’t want her to get upset with me.

“Shut up. You’re not around enough to make commentary on how I’m acting anyway.”

I meant it as a joke, a way to change the topic of conversation, but I saw him flinch and his hands tightened involuntarily on his beer bottle.

Jet worked hard. He was hell-bent on making a name for bands he had faith in. He was killing it as the head of his own record label, but the trade-off was that he had to go where the music was. That meant he was forever off to L.A., Nashville, New York, Austin, or even Europe. It was hard for him considering he and Ayden had only been married for a couple of years and they were in love—really, really in love. I could see it wearing on both of them but neither one had said anything, and like I said, there was no stopping fate no matter what that nasty bitch had in store for you.

“Everything all right with you on the home front?” I didn’t want to pry but it was way better than dredging up my past for him to dig through.

“Ayden and I are great. It’s everything else that sucks.” He shook his dark head and looked at me from under a frowning brow. “She’s going to apply to transfer to the grad program in Austin.”

I paused for a second so I didn’t say something stupid.

“You want to move to Austin?”

He chugged back the rest of the beer in his hand and laid the pool stick across the table.

“Want to—no, but it makes the most sense. She can transfer to UT Austin and finish school and I can actually see my wife more than two or three times a month. It just sucks. Our friends are here. Her brother is here and Cora just had the baby.” He shook his head again and his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “It was her idea, but it still makes me feel like shit. I renovated the studio thinking it would be enough, but it just isn’t.”

It did suck but it was understandable.

“When will she find out if she gets in?”

“Not for a while. It takes some time to get into grad school, and even if they do want her she has to go and do an interview and jump through a million hoops before it’s official. Try not to say anything to Rule or Nash. She hasn’t told Shaw or Cora yet. She wants to wait until we know for sure what we’re doing.”

Rule and Nash ran the tattoo shop and Shaw was not only Ayden’s best friend but also Rule’s brand-new wife. All three of the girls in our little world were supertight, and if one of the dudes let this major development slip it, there would be carnage to follow for sure. Those girls were a solid unit and the idea of one of them leaving was definitely going to be the cause of some serious emotional upheaval.

“That’s some pretty big news. Keeping it quiet might not be the way to go. Has she told Asa she’s thinking about leaving?”

Asa ran the Bar and was Ayden’s older brother. He was a little bit of a wild card and the only reason he had settled in Denver was to be closer to his sister. The two had a strained relationship due to the fact that Asa had a history of being a major shithead and petty criminal, but they were just starting to mend some long-broken fences.

Jet nodded and propped a hip up on the table. I really did expect those jeans of his to split in half every single time he moved. It was endlessly fun to rip on him about it.

“They talked about it. He told her to do whatever makes her happy. I think it bummed her out he didn’t ask her to stay.”

I grunted and cocked my head to the side a little as I noticed a group of guys several years older than us giving us squinty-eyed looks from the far corner of the bar. I mean I knew we didn’t fit in with the run-down ambience, the rough-and-tumble vibe of the place, but we were minding our own business and we always respected the locals’ territory.

I told Jet absently while keeping an eye on the group, “He spent her entire life asking her to do things for him. After he almost died it makes sense that maybe for once in his life Asa would want her to do something for herself. He knows you’re what makes her happy. He isn’t going to try and keep her from being happy anymore.”

Asa was an enigma. He sort of just showed up out of the blue and had dragged Ayden into a mess full of her past and a group of angry bikers. The end result had landed Asa in a coma and Jet and Ayden in matching wedding rings. We all had welcomed the blond southerner into the fold, but everyone watched him with careful eyes. He was lucky Rule’s brother, Rome, had come home from the war and ended up owning the Bar. For some reason the older Archer took a shine to Asa and had put him to work. I think we were all just kind of waiting to see how it played out.

The group that was watching us bent their heads together and the guy I figured was the leader met my gaze and flipped me off with a sneer.

I set my beer down and looked back at Jet.

“The natives are getting restless. We probably wanna go.”

I didn’t mind a good old-fashioned bar brawl. After all, I had played football up until I had dropped out of college at the end of my freshman year. I was still built like an athlete even if on the outside I looked more like James Dean. I was taller than most of them and definitely in better shape, but I liked to think I had grown and matured in the last few years. Avoiding bloodshed and broken knuckles that would mean I couldn’t tattoo was obviously the better option.

Jet looked over my shoulder and dipped his chin down in agreement, only our decision to depart came a split second too late. We were walking toward the door, eyes up and alert, when the men decided they couldn’t just let us walk away. I stopped and Jet paused next to me when we were suddenly faced with three fairly drunk, middle-aged guys that looked like they worked long hours doing manual labor. The one that had flipped me off made it a point to scan me from the top of my head to the toes of my worn black cowboy boots. He made a face and elbowed one of his buddies in the ribs hard enough to make the other guy grunt.

“Who do you think this joker is supposed to be? Elvis?” His gaze flicked over to Jet. “And who are you supposed to be? Ozzy Osbourne? Marilyn Manson? Someone needs to remind you boys that Halloween is in October.”

I felt Jet tense next to me but neither of us moved.

“How long did it take you to make your hair all fancy like that? It would be a real shame if someone went and messed it all up.”

I had awesome hair and it did in fact take longer than I liked to admit to get in the lifted, retro style. If this dude thought he was putting his hands anywhere near my head, he had another thing coming. I was going to tell him that we didn’t want any kind of trouble, that we were happily on our way out the door, when I saw his arm start to lift up. I was going to grab his wrist and tell him to fuck off, when the guy he had tagged in the ribs beat me to the punch.

He reached out and smacked his mouthy buddy’s hand out of the way and pointed at me.

“You look familiar.”

I cut Jet a sideways look and he shrugged.

“I don’t see how. It’s our first—and last—time in here.”

The guy considered me. I mean really looked at me for a long minute until it got kind of awkward. The guy with the mouth looked like he was ready to pipe up again when the gawker suddenly snapped his fingers and broke out into a huge grin.

“I know! You played college ball for Alabama.”

I blinked and it was my turn to stare. No one recognized me from that part of my life. I mean no one. Those days were long past and I had only been on the field for one season.

“Uhh . . .” I heard Jet snicker a little next to me but I didn’t want to waste this chance at making a clean escape. “I did play, a very long time ago.”

“I graduated from the University of Alabama, so I follow the Crimson Tide like it’s my religion. You were a running back. I remember everyone saying that you had a boatload of potential. I remember thinking the coaches had some serious balls putting you in first string. You were fast, fast enough to help them get to the Sugar Bowl that year. Rowland something . . . right?”

I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. The rest of the superfan’s cohorts had fallen quiet and were now looking at me in an entirely new way. Nothing like football to soothe the raging blue-collar beast.

“Rowdy St. James.”

He nodded. “Right. Rowdy, because you were wild and unpredictable. No one could ever tell what kind of pattern you were going to run. Something happened, though. I don’t remember what but I remember you didn’t play in the bowl game or the following season. I remember them taking about you on ESPN. You just vanished and everyone wondered why.”

That was not something I wanted to discuss, especially not with a group of guys that had been all too eager to start shit a second ago.

I shrugged and forced a sheepish grin. “Well, you know, the pressure got to me. I wasn’t ready for the big show. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

A professional football career really wasn’t in the cards for me, but it had nothing to do with the pressure and everything to do with me not being invested in it. But I wasn’t about to share that with these guys.

“You were a talented kid. It’s a shame you didn’t follow through.”

I gritted my back teeth and offered a shrug. It had nothing to do with follow-through and everything to do with the fact I nearly beat the starting quarterback to death with my bare hands a few weeks before the bowl game. Man, what was it with the ugly past rearing its head and refusing to stay in the dark where I left it?

There was only one way we were getting out of here. I reached out and clapped the superfan on the shoulder and hollered as loud as I could, “ROLL TIDE!”

It was immediately followed by an answering holler from the guy that recognized me and that of course started an epic debate about college football and the Big Ten, which of course transitioned into talk of the Broncos and their tragic loss in the Super Bowl earlier in the year. Before the guys had noticed, Jet and I managed to slip out the front door, leaving the sounds of arguing male voices and clinking beer bottles echoing behind us.

In the parking lot Jet doubled over in laughter and I couldn’t help but smack him on the back of his head as we made our way to the flashy Dodge Challenger he drove.

“Shut it.”

“What the fuck does ‘Roll Tide’ even mean?”

He popped the locks on the car and we got in.

“How about, ‘Thanks for saving us from having to fight our way out of there, Rowdy’?”

The car started with a sexy purr and I had to cringe when thundering guitars and screaming vocals assaulted my eardrums. I dug what Jet did for a living and there was no doubt that he was a very talented dude, but that metal music he liked and played was not my favorite. I reached out to turn it down without asking, which made him laugh again.

“It’s a football thing. Something you musicians wouldn’t understand.”

“Hey, I watch football when it’s on.”

“I’ve watched games with you. You watch for five minutes then check out and either get falling-down drunk or go find something to write with and end up writing twenty new songs by half time. That is not watching the game, my friend.”

He didn’t argue with me. “Still, I had no idea you were seriously famous for throwing a ball around. I mean I knew you played when you were younger, but not that you were like on ESPN and shit.”

I groaned and leaned back in the seat. “I didn’t throw a ball. I caught a ball and ran with it, and the only reason anyone cared one way or the other was because I walked away from all of it without an explanation.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and I purposely looked away.

“I don’t suppose you want to explain it now?”

“You suppose right.”

“Well, hell. I thought my old lady was the master of keeping the past a secret. Turns out she don’t got nothing on you.”

I just grunted in response.

The truth was I never really thought about my past. I had put my heart on the line after I followed Poppy to college, watched it get shredded, and had decided then and there I was never going to invest myself anything or anyone like that ever again. I dropped out of school, not like I really had a choice after the incident with the quarterback anyway, and ended up doing the same thing Salem did, packed a bag and hit the road, leaving everything behind.

I left Texas—all the memories she held, football, college, and Poppy Cruz in the dust, where they had stayed until a few weeks ago when Salem sauntered back into my life like she had never left it.

Jet was right. I was twisted about Salem being in Denver. So twisted that I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to get myself straight again as long as she was around. That girl had ruined me once when I was young. I would never forget the way I felt when she walked away. I didn’t want Salem anywhere near me. I couldn’t trust myself not to fall back into caring about her, trusting her, being captivated by her, only to have her move on once again, leaving me empty and alone.