Marked Men: Rome Part 25

"I'm not sure. Margot said something happened to the convoy he was in when they were out on patrol. He was in a pretty bad accident I guess. She said his arm was broken and he had a few cracked ribs. She was pretty upset so I had a hard time understanding her when she called."

"Rome would have called me."

"Rome was doped up and spent the last two days being debriefed. He asked your mom to call because you Archer boys are nothing if not persistent. Margot told him that you wouldn't answer, but he told her to keep trying."

My brother was hurt and was home, but I hadn't known about it. I closed my eyes again and let my head drop back against the headrest. "Well, h.e.l.l, that's good news I guess. Are you going to go by and see your mom?" I asked her. I didn't have to look at her to know that she had stiffened even more. I could practically feel the tension rolling off her in icy waves.

"No." She didn't say more and I didn't expect her to. The Archers may not be the closest, warmest bunch, but we didn't have anything on the Landons. Shaw's family c.r.a.pped gold and breathed money. They also cheated and lied, had been divorced and remarried. From what I had seen over the years, they had little need or interest in their biological daughter, who, it seemed, was conceived in order to get a tax deduction rather than time spent in a bedroom. I knew Shaw loved my house and loved my parents, because it was the only semblance of normalcy she had ever experienced. I didn't begrudge her that; in fact I appreciated that she took most of the heat off me. If Shaw was doing well in school, dating an affluent undergrad, living the life my parents had always wanted for their sons but had been denied, they stayed off my case. Since Rome was usually a continent away, I was the only one they could get to so I took no shame in using Shaw as a buffer.

"Man, I haven't talked to Rome in three months. It'll be awesome to see him. I wonder if I can convince him to come spend some time in D-town with me and Nash. He's probably more than ready for a little bit of fun."

She sighed again and moved to turn the radio back up a little bit. "You're twenty-two, Rule. When are you going to stop acting like an indulgent teenager? Did you even ask this one her name? In case you were wondering, you smell like a mix between a distillery and a strip club."

I snorted and let my eyes drift back shut. "You're nineteen, Shaw. When are you going to stop living your life by everyone else's standards? My eighty-two-year-old grandma has more of a social calendar than you, and I think she's less uptight." I wasn't going to tell her what she smelled like because it was sweet and lovely and I had no desire to be nice at the moment.

I could feel her glaring at me and I hid a grin. "I like Ethel." Her tone was surly.

"Everybody likes Ethel. She's feisty and won't take c.r.a.p from anyone. You could learn a thing or two from her."

"Oh, maybe I should just dye my hair pink, tattoo every visible surface of my body, shove a bunch of metal in my face, and sleep with everything that moves. Isn't that your philosophy on how to live a rich and fulfilling life?"

That made me crank my eyes back open and the marching band in my head decide to go for round two.

"At least I'm doing what I want. I know who and what I am, Shaw, and I don't make any apologies for it. I hear plenty of Margot Archer coming out of your pretty mouth right now."

Her mouth twisted down into a frown. "Whatever. Let's just go back to ignoring each other, okay? I just thought you should know about Rome. The Archer boys have never been big on surprises."

She was right. In my experience surprises were never a good thing. They usually resulted in someone getting p.i.s.sed and me ending up in some kind of fight. I loved my brother, but I had to admit I was kind of irritated he hadn't, one, bothered to let me know he was hurt, and, two, was still trying to force me to play nice with my folks. I figured Shaw's plan for us to ignore each other the rest of the way was a winner, so I slumped down as far as the sporty little car would allow and started to doze off. I was only out for twenty minutes or so when her Civil Wars ringtone jarred me awake. I blinked my gritty eyes and rubbed a hand over the scruff on my face. If the hair and the hickey didn't p.i.s.s Mom off, the fact I was too busy to shave for her precious brunch might just send her into hysterics.

"No, I told you I was going to Brookside and won't be back until late." When I looked across the car at her she must have felt my gaze because she looked at me quickly and I saw a little bit of pink work its way onto her high cheekbones. "No, Gabe, I told you I won't have time and that I have a lab due." I couldn't make out the words on the other end but the person sounded angry at her brush-off, and I saw her fingers tighten on the phone. "It's none of your business. I have to go now, so I'll talk to you later." She swiped a finger across the screen and tossed the fancy device into the cup holder by my knee.

"Trouble in paradise?" I didn't really care about Shaw and her richer-than-G.o.d, future-ruler-of-the-known-universe boyfriend, but it was polite to ask when she was obviously upset. I hadn't ever met Gabe, but what I'd heard from Mom when I bothered to listen was that he was custom-made for Shaw's future doctor persona. His family was as loaded as hers; his dad was a judge, or lawyer, or some other political nonsense I had no use for. I was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the dude wore pleated slacks and pink polo shirts with white loafers. For a long moment I didn't think she was going to respond, but then she cleared her throat and started tapping out a beat on the steering wheel with her manicured fingers.

"Not really, we broke up but I don't think Gabe really gets it."

"Really?"

"Yeah, a couple weeks ago, actually. I had been thinking about doing it for a while. I'm just too busy with school and work to have a boyfriend."

"If he was the right guy you wouldn't have felt that way. You would have made the time because you wanted to be with him."

She looked at me with both blond brows raised to her hairline. "Are you, Mr. Manwh.o.r.e of the Century, seriously trying to give me relationship advice?"

I rolled my eyes, which made my head scream in protest. "Just because there hasn't been one girl I wanted to hang out with exclusively doesn't mean I don't know the difference between quality and quant.i.ty."

"Could have fooled me. Gabe just wanted more than I was willing to give him. It's going to be a pain because my mom and dad both loved him."

"True that; from what I've heard he was pretty much custom-made to make your folks happy. What do you mean he wanted more than you were willing to give? Did he try to put a rock on your finger after only six months?"

She gave me a look and curled her lip in a sneer. "Not even close, he just wanted things to be more serious than I wanted them to be."

I laughed a little and rubbed between my eyebrows. My headache had turned into a dull throb but was starting to be manageable. I needed to ask her to swing by a Starbucks or something if I was going to get through this afternoon.

"Is that your prissy way of telling me that he was trying to get in your pants and you weren't having it?"

She narrowed her eyes at me and pulled off the freeway at the exit that took us toward Brookside.

"I need you to stop by Starbucks before going to my parents' house, and don't think I didn't notice you aren't answering my question."

"If we stop we're going to be late. And not every boy thinks with what's in their pants."

"The sky isn't going to fall on us if we show up five minutes behind Margot's schedule. And you have got to be kidding me-you strung that loser along for six months without giving it up? What a joke."

That made me flat-out laugh at her. I laughed so hard that I had to hold my head in both hands as my whiskey-logged brain started screaming at me again. I gasped a little and looked at her with watery eyes. "If you really believe that he wasn't interested in getting in your pants, you aren't nearly as smart as I always thought you were. Every single dude under the age of ninety is trying to get in your pants, Shaw-especially if he's thinking that he's your boy. I'm a guy, I know this s.h.i.t."

She bit her lip again, conceding I probably had a valid point as she pulled the car into the coffee shop's parking lot. I practically bolted out of the car, eager to stretch my legs and get a little distance from her typical haughty att.i.tude.

There was a line when I got inside, and I took a quick look around to see if I recognized anyone. Brookside is a pretty small town and usually when I stopped by on the weekends I inevitably ran into someone I used to go to school with. I hadn't bothered to ask Shaw if she wanted me to grab her anything because she was being all uppity about having to stop in the first place. It was almost my turn to order when my phone started blasting a Social Distortion song in my pocket. I dug it out after ordering a big-a.s.s black coffee and took a spot by the counter next to a cute brunette who was trying her hardest to not get caught checking me out.

"What up?"

I could hear the music in the shop blaring behind Nash when he asked, "How did this morning go?"

Nash knew my faults and bad habits better than anyone, and the reason we had maintained our friendship as long as we had was because he never judged me.

"Sucked. I'm hungover, grumpy, and about to sit through yet another forced family function. Plus, Shaw is in rare form today."

"How was the chick from last night?"

"No clue. I don't even remember leaving the bar with her. Apparently I did a huge piece on her side so she was a little p.i.s.sed that I didn't remember who she was, so ouch."

He chuckled on the other end of the line. "She told you that, like, six times last night. She even tried to pull her top off to show you. And I drove your dumb a.s.s home last night, drunko. I tried to get you to leave at, like, midnight but you weren't having any of it, as usual. I had to drive your truck home and then take a cab back to get my car."

I snorted and reached for the coffee when the guy behind the counter called my name. I noticed the brunette's eyes follow the hand that wrapped around the cardboard cup. It was the hand that had the flared head of a king cobra on it, the snake's forked tongue making the L in my name that was inked across my four knuckles. The rest of the snake wound its way up my forearm and around my elbow. The brunette's mouth made a little O of surprise so I flashed her a wink and walked back to the BMW.

"Sorry, dude. How did your appointment go?"

Nash's uncle Phil had opened the tattoo shop years ago on Capitol Hill when it mainly catered to g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers and bikers. Now with the influx of young urbanites and hipsters populating the area, the Marked was one of the busiest tattoo parlors in town. Nash and I met in art cla.s.s in the fifth grade and have been inseparable since. In fact, ever since we were twelve our plan was to move to the city and work for Phil. We both had mad skills and the personality to make the shop b.u.mp with business so Phil had no qualms apprenticing us and putting us to work before we were both in our twenties. It was killer to have a friend in the same field; I had a plethora of ink on my skin that ranged from not-so-great to great that chronicled Nash's evolution as a tattoo artist, and he could state the same thing about me.

"I finished that back piece that I've been working on since July. It turned out better than I thought and the dude is talking about doing the front. I'll take it, because he's a fat tipper."

"Nice." I was juggling the phone and the coffee, trying to open the door to the car when a female voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Hey." I looked over my shoulder and the brunette was standing a car over with a smile on her face. "I really like your tattoos."

I smiled back at her and then jumped, nearly spilling scalding hot coffee down my crotch as Shaw shoved the door open from the inside.

"Thanks." If we had been closer to home and Shaw wasn't already putting the car in reverse I probably would have taken a second to ask the girl for her number. Shaw shot me a look of contempt that I promptly ignored, and I went back to my conversation with Nash. "Rome is home. He got in an accident and Shaw said he's got a few weeks of R and R coming to him. I guess that's why Mom was blowing my phone up all week."

"Kick a.s.s. Ask him if he wants to roll with us for a few days. I miss that surly b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

I sipped on the coffee and my head finally started to calm down. "That's the plan. I'll hit you up on my way home and let you know what the story is."

I flicked my thumb across the screen to end the call and settled back into the seat. Shaw scowled angrily at me and I swore her eyes glowed. Really. I have never seen anything that green, even in nature, and when she gets mad they are just otherworldly.

"Your mom called while you were busy flirting. She's mad that we're late."

I sucked on more of the black nectar of the G.o.ds and started tapping out a beat on my knee with my free hand. I was always kind of a fidgety guy and the closer we got to my parents' house, the worse it usually got. Brunch was always stilted and forced. I couldn't figure out why they insisted on going through with it every single week and couldn't figure out why Shaw enabled the farce, but I went, even when I knew nothing would ever change.

"She's mad that you're late. We both know she couldn't care less if I'm there or not." My fingers moved faster and faster as she wheeled the car into a gated community and pa.s.sed rows and rows of cookie-cutter minimansions that were built back into the mountains.

"That's not true and you know it, Rule. I do not suffer through these car rides every weekend, subject myself to the delight of your morning-after nastiness because your parents want me to have eggs and pancakes every Sunday. I do it because they want to see you, want to try to have a relationship with you no matter how many times you hurt them or push them away. I owe it to your parents and, more important, I owe it to Remy to try to make you act right even though lord knows that's almost a full-time job."

I sucked in a breath as the blinding pain that always came when someone mentioned Remy's name barreled through my chest. My fingers involuntarily opened and closed around the coffee cup and I whipped my head around to glare at her.

"Remy wouldn't be all over my a.s.s to try and be something to them I'm not. I was never good enough for them, and never will be. He understood that better than anyone and worked overtime to try and be everything to them I never could be."

She sighed and pulled the car to a stop in the driveway behind my dad's SUV. "The only difference between you and Remy is that he let people love him, and you"-she yanked open the driver's door and glared at me across the s.p.a.ce that separated us-"you have always been determined to make everyone who cares about you prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You've never wanted to be easy to love, Rule, and you make d.a.m.n sure that n.o.body can ever forget it." She slammed the door with enough force that it rattled my back teeth and made my head start to throb again.

It has been three years. Three lonely, three empty, three sorrow-filled years since the Archer brothers went from a trio to a duo. I am close to Rome-he's awesome and has always been my role model when it comes to being a bada.s.s-but Remy was my other half, both figuratively and literally. He was my identical twin, the light to my dark, the easy to my hard, the joy to my angst, the perfect to my oh-so-totally f.u.c.ked up, and without him I was only half the person I would ever be. It has been three years since I called him in the middle of the night to come pick me up from some lame-a.s.s party because I had been too drunk to drive. Three years since he left the apartment we shared to come get me-zero questions asked-because that's just what he did.

It's been three years since he lost control of his car on a rainy and slick I-25 and slammed into the back of a semi truck going well over eighty. Three years since we put my twin in the ground and my mother looked at me with tears in her eyes and stated point-blank, "It should have been you" as they lowered Remy into the ground.

It's been three years and his name alone is still enough to drop me to my knees, especially coming from the one person in the world Remy had loved as much as he loved me.

Remy was everything I wasn't-clean-cut, well dressed, and interested in getting an education and building a secure future. The only person on the planet who was good enough and cla.s.sy enough to match all the magnificence that he possessed was Shaw Landon. The two of them had been inseparable since the first time he brought her home when she was fourteen and trying to escape the fortress of the Landon compound. He insisted they were just friends, that he loved Shaw like a sister, that he just wanted to protect her from her awful, sterile family, but the way he was with her was full of reverence and care. I knew he loved her, and since Remy could do no wrong, Shaw had quickly become an honorary member of my family. As much as it galled me, she was the only one who really, truly understood the depth of my pain when it came to losing him.

I had to take a few extra minutes to get my feet back under me so I sucked back the rest of the coffee and shoved open the door. I wasn't surprised to see a tall figure coming around the SUV as I labored out of the sports car. My brother was an inch or so taller than me and built more along the lines of a warrior. His dark-brown hair was buzzed in a typical military cut and his pale-blue eyes, the same icy shade as mine, looked tired as he forced a smile at me. I let out a whistle because his left arm was in a cast and sling, he had a walking boot on one foot, and there was a nasty line of black st.i.tches running through one of his eyebrows and across his forehead. The Weedwacker that had attacked my hair had clearly gotten a good shot at my big bro, too.

"Looking good, soldier."

He pulled me to him in a one-armed hug and I winced for him when I felt the taped-up side of his body clearly indicating some injury beyond the busted ribs. "I look about as good as I feel. You look like a clown getting out of that car."

"I look like a clown no matter what when I'm around that girl." He barked out a laugh and rubbed a rough hand through my spiky hair.

"You and Shaw are still acting like mortal enemies?"

"More like uneasy acquaintances. She's just as prissy and judgmental as always. Why didn't you call or email me that you were hurt? I had to hear it from Shaw on the way over."

He swore as we started to slowly make our way toward the house. It upset me to see how deliberate he was moving and I wondered if the damage was more serious than what was visible.

"I was unconscious after the Hummer flipped. We drove over an IED and it was bad. I was in the hospital for a week with a scrambled noggin, and when I woke up they had to do surgery on my shoulder so I was all drugged up. I called Mom and figured she would let you know what the deal was, but I heard that, as usual, you were unavailable when she called."

I shrugged a shoulder and reached out a hand to steady him as he faltered a little on the stairs to the front door. "I was busy."

"You're stubborn."

"Not too stubborn. I'm here aren't I? I didn't even know you were home until this morning."

"The only reason you're here is because that little girl in there is bound and determined to keep this family together regardless if we're her own or not. You go in there and play nice; otherwise, I'll kick your a.s.s, broken arm and all."

I muttered a few choice words and followed my battered sibling into the house. Sundays really were my least favorite day.

If Rome and Cora rocked your world, get ready for Jet and Ayden's story ...

'You keep telling me that I don't know you, but the truth is, we don't know each other, and I don't know that either of us is really ready to handle the other. What I do know is that I want you more than I want to keep breathing.'

Click here to buy now or turn the page for an exclusive extract

SO IT BEGINS.

Ayden

It was totally against everything I was supposed to be doing in my new life-to ask a really cute boy in a band to take me home. There were rules. There were standards. There were simply things I did now to avoid ever going back to being the way I was-and sticking around to wait for Jet Keller was right on the top of the no-no list. There was just something about him, watching him wail and engage the crowd while he was on stage that turned my normally sensible brain to mush.

I knew better than to ask my bestie what was wrong with me.

She was all about boys covered head-to-toe in ink and littered with jewelry in places the Lord never intended boys to be pierced. She would just say it was the allure of someone so different, someone so obviously not my type, but I knew that wasn't it.

He was entrancing. Every single person in the packed bar had their eyes on him and couldn't look away. He was making the crowd feel-I mean really feel-whatever it was he was screeching, and that was amazing.

I hated heavy metal. To me, all it sounded like was yelling and screaming over even louder instruments. But the show, the intensity, and the undeniable vibe of power he was unleashing with just his voice-there was just something about it that drove me to drag Shaw to the front of the stage. I couldn't look away.

Sure, he was good looking. All the guys who Shaw's boyfriend ran around with were. I wasn't immune to a pretty face and a nice body; in fact, at one point those things had proven to be weaknesses that had gotten me in more trouble than I cared to think about. Now I tended toward guys who I was attracted to on a more intellectual level.

However, one too many shots of Patron and whatever crazy pheromone this guy was emitting right now had me forgetting all about my new and improved standards in men.

His hair looked like he had just shaken off whatever girl had messed it up. At some point during the set he had peeled off his wife-beater to reveal a lean and tightly muscled torso that was covered, from the base of his throat to somewhere below his belt buckle, in a giant black and gray tattoo of an angel of death. He had on the tightest black jeans I had ever seen a guy wear, decorated with a variety of chains hanging from his belt to his back pocket, and they left little to the imagination.

That might have been why Shaw and I were nowhere near the only female fans at the front of the stage.

I had seen Jet before, of course. He came into the bar where I worked on a pretty regular basis. I knew that the eyes, now squeezed shut as he bellowed a note that was enough to have the girl to my left spontaneously o.r.g.a.s.m, were a dark, deep brown that gleamed with easygoing humor. I knew of his penchant for outrageous flirtation. Jet was the charmer of the group and had no qualms about using that, combined with his heartbreaking grin, to get what he wanted.

I felt a warm hand land on my shoulder and turned to look up at Shaw's boyfriend, Rule. He towered over the rest of the crowd and I could tell by the twist of his mouth that he was ready to go. Shaw didn't even wait for him to ask, before turning to me with guileless green eyes.

"I'm going with him. Are you ready?"