72. Chapter 72
Wear it when you want to drive him wild , Billy had said with a devious grin. The leather getup probably brought Jason Young to his knees back in their day.
Unfortunately, his son was another animal.
There was none of the playfulness from the beach. None of the shameless innuendos from Austin. Jase hadn’t said a word on the shuttle and had hardly looked at her since the hotel lobby where he said she looked hot and did absolutely nothing about it.
The concert grounds looked as though it had risen from the sand and could disappear at any moment.
Miles of desert surrounded the small pop-up city complete with a stage, a dozen food trucks, band swag booths, and a giant tent serving alcohol to anyone with a neon green wristband.
Every goth and metalhead in a hundred-mile radius had crawled out of their bat caves for cover bands with names like Twisted Hipsters and Royal Bloodbath.
Jase pressed his hand into the small of her back, fingers on both leather and her bare skin, to guide Lindsey through the undulating waves of black T-shirts, nose rings, lip rings, nipple rings, wallet chains, and pot smoke.
She shrank into his side, away from the many black-rimmed eyes skimming her up and down, faces alight in the greens, blues, and yellows flashing onstage, and Jase set a protective arm around her shoulders.
No one would mess with him, or her while she was with him.
His were the only definable muscles in attendance.
His hand didn’t move lower, didn’t graze the side of her breast. Jase’s eyes scanning the crowd were determined, not heavy or heady or wanting.
If she was writing this scene, it’d be the story of a woman desperate to be seen by the man who wasn’t interested.
The moronic woman who drew a hard line in Austin and grew frustrated every time she tested the boundary, and Jase didn’t turn around and obliterate it.
That’s what she was waiting for, wasn’t it?
Why she dressed like a last-ditch effort and served herself up as the kind of woman who belonged on the back of his bike.
He was the leading man of a different kind of book.
One where women like Lindsey, who hadn’t owned any leather until yesterday, had never even sat on a motorcycle, and had dated the anti-hero’s brother for a year, didn’t fit in the script.
Where happily ever afters only existed for the heroine if she could somehow convince the chrome-wheeled cowboy to change his Devil-may-care ways.
Lindsey was certainly not that heroine. She’d been trying to rewrite their story ever since writing the rules in Austin that ensured she’d sleep alone for the rest of the trip, and failing miserably.
Creating a boundary felt like the smart thing, the only way to ensure she kept her promise to Jason Young.
Somewhere between the diner in Austin where he’d kissed her and finding her getting stoned with Declan and his friends, Jase had decided to abide by her rule, no matter how many carrots—leather and otherwise—she dangled in front of him.
Lindsey hadn’t understood why until tonight.
Until she overheard his conversation with Graham. Now Jase was scanning the masses like a man looking for his next meal because they really were just friends, okay?
The phone buzzed in her purse with another message from Declan. She was with Jase near the drink stand at the back of the crowd, and Declan waited near the packed sand at the front of the stage. The trip was going to end soon anyway, no matter what she did tonight.
If she texted back, Jase would comment on her continued lack of self-preservation because he didn’t know latching onto another man—any other man—was how she would protect herself from trying to follow some bad boy book boyfriend in a leather jacket on a motorcycle into the sunset.
He didn’t want her, and her character didn’t belong in his story.
Book boyfriends were only good on the page anyway.