Prologue #2
He watched her walk to her dad and brother, thinking he
shouldn’t.
But he just couldn’t stop.
She said something to her pops when she skirted him to get
in the backseat, and after she did, the man looked right to Jag.
He then dipped his chin Jag’s way.
Well, shit.
She’d told him that Jag was Note Guy.
And the dude was cool.
Jag gave him the salute he’d seen Hound give every once in a
while, finger to temple and out.
The man quirked a grin, lifted his chin this time, and
angled into his car.
The brother glared at him.
Jag ignored that, tried to catch sight of her in the car,
but couldn’t.
So he walked into Arby’s, hoping like hell there was a
“later.”
Later turned out to be later.
The next time Jag saw her, it was at a party, and well over
a year had passed.
She hadn’t left him a note.
Since she hadn’t, he hadn’t left her one either.
And he hadn’t because he didn’t want to be that jerk,
creeping on some girl who’d lost her mom, doing it by leaving notes on her
mom’s tombstone.
The party where he saw her was a party she shouldn’t have
been at.
He knew her the instant he saw her, even though she’d grown
up—a lot—in the time in between.
He’d never forget her, though.
Never.
And the second she locked eyes on him, he knew she hadn’t
forgotten him either.
The minute she saw him, she immediately looked guilty.
As she should.
He was eighteen. He was the son of a biker (actually two,
but only one was blood). It was a rough crowd, and a big one, everyone (that he
knew) was of age (or at least, not a minor). There was definitely booze, some
drugs, some folk who he knew could get rowdy, and not in a good way.
Jag could be there.
She was maybe sixteen, at most, seventeen.
She had no business anywhere near there.
He went right to her, fighting his way through the crowd to
get where she was.
And when he got close, he saw she’d already started tatting
up.
Shit.
Not huge tattoos, little ones here and there on her arms,
her fingers.
He had no problem with tats. He had some of his own.
But at sixteen?
Nope.
The first thing he wanted to talk about when he saw her
again was to ask her name. It seemed like forever since that birthday, their
note exchange, running into each other at Arby’s, and he’d thought about it a
lot.
Was she an Ann? Or Amy? Andrea? Amanda? Abby? Audrey?
He didn’t ask her name or say hi.
He said, “You got a lift home?”
“Yeah,” she’d muttered.
Mm-hmm.
She knew she had no business being there.
“Then get them and get outta
here,” he ordered.
He saw right away some attitude start surfacing.
“I’m just havin’ fun.”
“You can have fun. Just not here.”
“I’m all right here.”
Jag shook his head decisively. “No, you’re not. You’re too
fuckin’ young to be here. Can you even drive yet?”
Chin tilt and, “Yeah. And by the way, I’m my own lift. I
don’t need anyone to drive me around. I can take care of myself.”
Oh yeah.
The attitude was surfacing, and he sensed she was digging
in.
So it was time to blow past this and get her safe.
“Your dad is probably worried like fuck about you.”
That did it.
She looked away.
Hung her head.
Caught herself doing that and looked back to him, trying to
keep her chin high.
“A, go home,” he urged.
“J, you’re a pain,” she retorted.
She remembered his initial.
That felt good.
It also spoke to their connection.
So, it wasn’t all in his head. It wasn’t only on his side.
It was on hers too.
He put his hand out toward her. “Let’s go.”
It didn’t take real long before she put her hand in his.
He led them through the crowd like he was her bodyguard.
He took some shit along the way from friends and
acquaintances about showing and then immediately nabbing the prettiest girl
there.
Jag stopped once through this, when some asshat called her
“talent.”
He was in staredown with the
asshat when A put her hand on his back and said, “He’s a douche. Let it go. I
don’t care. I am talent and he’s never gonna get that lucky.”
She was right.
Still, Jag gave it a couple more seconds to make his point
before he broke contact and kept moving.
Her car was parked at the curb and it was nice. A solid
Honda a dad would think his girl was safe in.
She beeped it and he opened the door for her.
“So, you’re, like, a gentleman?” she teased.
“My dad is dead, I was raised by my mom, so yeah. A woman
raises you, you got no choice but to learn to treat women right, unless you’re
a moron or born a dickhead.”
She kept eye contact with him all the time he said this, but
when he was done, she looked away.
“A—” he started.
“You know it hasn’t gotten better,” she told the road.
He felt like an imposter.
Because, yeah, he knew that.
But she’d been fourteen (fifteen?) when her mom died.
He’d been three when his dad was gone.
He still said, “It doesn’t get better. You just get used to
it.”
She looked back to him and she looked pissed.
Or hurt.
He’d get it when she said, “My dad’s dating someone.”
For her, it was a betrayal.
For him, if his mom got her shit together and started moving
on, it’d be a relief.
Which was why he said, “That’s good.”
And now she was definitely pissed. “No, it isn’t. She died,
like, yesterday.”
“It wasn’t yesterday, A,” he said softly.
She got that stubborn expression on her face before she
turned her attention to her toes.
He got closer to her.
Not too close, but close.
She looked up at him.
Perfect height, even if she had on heels.
He was tall, he wasn’t into short women.
But he wasn’t into tall women either.
She was neither.
Yeah.
Perfect.
“My mom isn’t over my dad and we’ll just say my dad’s been
gone way longer than your mom has, and it sucks,” he shared. “It fuckin’ hurts.
Every day, wakin’ up and seein’
her in pain. I get it doesn’t feel good seein’ him
with another chick or thinkin’ what that means about
how he felt about your ma. But trust me, the alternative is way fuckin’ worse.”
“It just…makes me remember, not that I’d forget. But the
pain comes back, you know?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, seein’
as Ma hasn’t gone there. But I just want her to be happy. That’s, like, the
only thing in this world I want. Because she’s the mom who made it so I want
for nothing else, so it’s more like, I need that for her. You get me?”
She nodded and said, “I’m sorry, J. That does sound like it
sucks.”
“Don’t be too hard on your dad and don’t make him worry
about you. It’s not cool.”
She nodded again and started to fold into her car.
He was about to ask her name, get her number. She was
underage, but just.
And they’d just had the deepest conversation he’d had since
Hound sat him down to share about the birds and the bees and how he’d knock
Jag’s block off if he took a girl ungloved.
But someone called his name and he looked to the house
they’d exited.
Some dude he knew was shouting something he couldn’t hear.
Jag called, “What?”
And in that time, she got in her car, closed her door and
her Honda started.
When he heard the engine catch, he looked down and through
the window at her.
She waved, gave him a smile she didn’t really mean because
she was sad and had learned too young how big life could suck.
And he stepped back wide when she pulled her car out of the
spot and drove away.
The next time he saw her was maybe a year later. At a
concert. At the Gothic.
She was coming his way when he spotted her. She’d seen him
before he saw her.
She smiled and waved.
She looked good, happier.
He still saw the weight she carried, something he carried
too.
But yeah.
Happier.
And he was glad to see that.
He waved back and started her way.
But since it was a punk act they were catching, and they
were in the mosh pit, a surge hit the pit, they both got caught up in it, he
lost sight of her, and even if he looked (all night), he didn’t see her again.
That was a serious bummer.
Though, he was glad to know they liked the same kind of
music.
He was glad just because they liked the same kind of music.
But also because it meant they might run into each other
again.
He saw her a few months later at Taste of Colorado
downtown.
They caught up then.
She was with a dude.
He was with a chick.
But she dragged that dude right to Jagger, smiling big.
And Jag stood next to his chick, watching her do it, smiling
big right back.
“Hey, J,” she greeted.
“Hey, A,” he’d returned.
And Christ.
Yeah.
She just got prettier and prettier.
She barely glanced at his chick when she started up their
convo, which did not go over well with his chick.
Or her dude, who Jag felt no remorse about the fact it
seemed she forgot he was even there.
“So cool to finally run into you again,” she started it,
still smiling big. “I was gonna leave you a note at our place, but the last
time I went to visit Mom, there was this other dude who looked like you there
and I didn’t want him to get it.”
And he knew what she meant.
Our place.
Reaching out using his dad’s grave.
“That’s my brother, and yeah, no.” He shook his head, for
some reason, the thought of Dutch knowing about her, getting her note to him,
not understanding what it was, reading it.
Yeah…
No.
“Babe, we’re supposed to meet Slammer, we’re already late,”
her dude said, pulling on her.
Another barely-there glance, this time at her guy while she
said, “A second,” and looked back at Jag. “He dumped her.”
“What?” Jag asked, his chick grabbing his hand and tugging
on it to get his attention.
“Dad,” she said. “He dumped the woman he was seeing, and you
were right. It made me sad because it made him sad too. So I should have just
chilled and let him have it.”
“Hey, baby,” his chick murmured to Jag, “you said we’d go to
that ice cream booth and you’d get me a cone.”
He glanced at her, “A sec,” then back to A. “Sorry, but
he’ll move on again. You’ll get it this time when he does and give him that.”
After she nodded, he went on, “Anyway, you look good.”
When he said that, her dude got closer to her.