AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 3
Jet
“Goddamn it, this is just like him! He doesn’t even stop to think about how worried we’d be. He just bolts. Selfish.”
Jet stood outside the door of his childhood home and listened to the raised voices from within. That one had been Troy, his oldest brother.
“He’s been in a rough place since Mom and Dad died. You know that.”
Donovan. The protector. Donovan had always needed to make sure everyone was all right. Jet wasn’t surprised that, out of all of his siblings, D was the one who might stick up for him.
“It hasn’t been a picnic for the rest of us, either, bro. But none of us have blown up our lives and the lives of everyone around us.”
Oh, yeah. That was Gavin. The military man. He viewed things in black and white. To him, the world was rules and the excuses for breaking them were thin on the ground. His response was expected and, Jet had to be honest, warranted.
“But is he okay? I just want to know that he’s safe and okay!”
Oh, shit. That tear-filled, tremulous voice belonged to his kid sister, Mila. She was only….shit…was she thirteen already? Yeah.
God, he’d been wrapped up in himself. There were very few people in the world he loved in a way that was so pure, so unconditional, that he’d rather die than hurt them– but Mila topped that list. And, yet, his shitty behavior had made her cry.
Time to put an end to this. He manned up and rang the doorbell.
“Who could that be this late?” Troy’s voice hit his ears, but it was immediately overshadowed by Mila’s high-pitched squeal.
“I’ll get it! I’ll get it! Maybe it’s him!”
A quick pounding of feet sounded across the floor inside the house, and then the front door flung open and he looked into Mila’s tear-stained face.
Almost at once she launched herself into his arms. “I knew it was you! I knew you’d come here! I knew you wouldn’t let me worry about you like that!”
He squeezed her hard. “Of course not, kiddo. I’d never put you through that. I’m sorry you had to worry this long.”
She pulled back, her face split by a huge, sunny grin. “That’s okay! I’m just glad you’re here. Come in!”
He looked over her shoulder, meeting the faces of his brothers, which were considerably less sunny and were decidedly not wearing grins of any size.
He raised his eyebrows. When none of them responded, he said, “I don’t know, kid. It’s kind of late. I just wanted to check in. I should probably go start looking for a place to stay.”
Mila whirled around and spoke to Troy in a panicked tone. “No! Troy! He has to stay here. Tell Jet he has to stay here!”
Troy’s face softened when he looked into Mila’s eyes, and when he raised his gaze back to Jet’s, it was resigned. “Don’t be an idiot. Come in and drop your stuff.”
It might’ve been a half-hearted invitation, but by Jet’s reckoning, it was more than he deserved, and he was going to jump on it while he had the chance. He stepped in and set his duffel by the front door.
Fuck.
The sense memory of the hundreds of times that he’d done the same thing when coming home from music camp as a kid, coming home for the weekend from college, coming home to visit his parents in between tour dates…God, the sense of déjà vu was nearly overwhelming.
He heard his mother’s voice in his memory, the second step of this little coming home ritual. After his duffel bag thumped onto the floor in the entryway, her voice would echo through the house from wherever she happened to be. “Jet, honey? Is that you? Welcome home!”
The silence that greeted the thump now was deafening. The fact that he’d never again hear that familiar refrain when he walked in this house was a big reason that he’d avoided it.
But, no more. Avoiding his feelings was what had led to the shitstorm he was currently in. A shitstorm of his own making. It was time to start facing them instead.
Even if, like now, that caused a grief-cannon to hit his chest with such force that he had a hard time staying on his feet.
He was strong. He could handle it. He had to believe that.
