Rome: A Marked Men Novel (44 page)

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 crap 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 pissed 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 piss 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-God, 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. Manwhore 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

quantity.”

“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 shit.”

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 attitude.

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-ass

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 pissed 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 ass 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

gangbangers 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 class 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 bump 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 ass. Ask him if he wants to roll with us for a few days. I miss that surly bastard.”

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 gods 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 passed 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