WORK IN PROGRESS: Jet and Parker

Chapter 3 (Parker): That Next Dedication

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

The second book dedication from Jet to Parker:

This book is dedicated to the woman who means more to me with each passing day.

The woman who fills my heart.

My life.

My Parker.

I sat at a small round table outside a quaint little coffee shop, the hole-in-the-wall kind of shop where you know they made the best, no-bullshit coffee and bakery treats. I should know. For the past four mornings, I'd camped out at one of their little bistro tables that dotted the sidewalk outside the shop. Today I was slowing down and had only two treats on the plate in front of me. The first morning after I'd arrived in Nashville, I'd had five treats piled on a plate.

And I'd eaten every damn one. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of those people whose appetite deserted them when they were sad or upset. No, my pain demanded food. Feed the pain, Parker! Feed the pain! Nom nom nom.

Now, four days later, I was enjoying the little cocoon I'd wrapped myself in. I hadn't turned on my phone even once. I hadn't even been tempted. My pain was a river, and right now I was floating in it, unwilling to let it pull me under or smash me against the rocks. That would come later, but for now, the river's cold water numbed me so I could get through each day.

To Rhonda, whose help on this book was invaluable. I appreciate your help and friendship. This book wouldn't have been possible without your help.

I'd met Jet about three months before his first book was published. If I'd had a type, it wouldn't have been Jet. I preferred my men to be somewhat understated and generic in their looks. Clean cut, not overly muscular, slight, sweet, non-threatening in any way.

Jet was the complete opposite of everything I wanted in a man -- or at least everything I thought I wanted. He was tall, making me, at five feet nine inches, feel short for the first time in my life. He had short, black hair and intense blue eyes as opposed to my usual sandy-haired, pale blue-eyed men. He was built like a defensive lineman with broad shoulders, a wide, well-defined chest and thick, muscled thighs. He was, in a word, powerful and his tattoos gave him a dangerous edge.

He'd taken one look at me in the convenience store and followed me out to my car, which just happened to be parked by his Harley.

"I want to call you, so I need your number," he'd said, and for some reason, I hadn't been scared at all having this ginormous man following me out of the store. From the start, even before I knew his name, I'd recognized Jet, felt like I was meeting someone I'd known all of my life. Like he should have been in my life sooner, but things hadn't worked out that way. So I gave him my number.

He wasn't easy as far as relationships. I was twenty-five and he was twenty-nine when I met him, and he was set in his ways. He was also a cut-wearing member of a motorcycle club, which meant I'd been shocked to find out that he might be a biker, but he also was getting close to publishing his first book.

He'd grinned at my incredulous expression. "Judging a book by its cover. Shame on you," he'd teased me.

We'd had to negotiate a lot in our beginning. He told me that he was surrounded by women all the time at the club, but it didn't matter because he was with me.

"Park, I'm not that guy, and you don't ever have to worry that I'll stray in any way. But I also won't put up with being questioned. You either trust me or you don't. You either take me at my word, or you don't. If you don't, we won't make it because we're shit without trust. Plain and simple. And I'll give you that same trust right back. I don't expect you to be glued to my side, and I won't be glued to yours. We can be together but still be independent, do our own thing at times, handle our shit. Now tell me what you want, what you expect."

Then it had been my turn to share that I expected honesty in everything, and I had male friends that I wasn't going to give up if he turned out to be an insecure jerk.

"No need to be insecure if you promise me your faithfulness, Park. I got female friends, too. So we're both solid on that."

His responses to me when I called him just a few nights ago when he was at the clubhouse with Rhonda were typical Jet. He expected me to be OK with it because he wasn't doing anything wrong. He'd been asserting that stance when he refused to rush home, telling me he'd be home in an hour.

In his own way, Jet had been showing me I was off base in my thinking. But I wasn't. Rhonda had been around way past her expiration date, and I was sick of her taking my husband's time, especially when I knew that time was limited before he immersed himself in his next book. So, yeah, I was tired of her presence when she should have been long gone. She'd had a job. It was complete. Bye.

Then to hear her talking about me in the background the way she had been made me wonder what the hell Jet had been telling her. Confiding in her. He hadn't been talking to me much in the last four months, not since the advent of Rhonda.

Stop, Parker. Don't ruin a perfectly beautiful fall morning thinking about the two of them.

For the moment, I was content to not think but to just allow myself to people watch and wonder about their stories. Were they happy? Sad? What secrets were their smiles concealing? What hidden aches did they carry in their hearts? What unrealized dreams lived in their heads? I always wondered about the two lives everyone lived -- the external ones the world saw them leading compared to the internal ones only they knew.

As some people looked at me, sipping my coffee, I wondered what they saw in me. Sadness? Aloofness? Maybe they saw raw pain because they never held my eyes for more than a second. That sort of thing is hard to look at and nothing anyone wants to face.

After I finished my coffee, I spent the day wandering the city, poking my head into any odd or quaint little shops, nothing catching my attention because I just didn't care.

That night I was having dinner at a bar near my hotel (that my step-sister's credit card was paying for until I could pay her back) when I decided that I needed to quit being a coward and turn my phone on.

I had a ton of messages and my voice mail box was full. I started thumbing through Jet's texts, realizing they ran the whole gamut of emotions. Pleading. Angry. Apologetic. Sad. Hurt. Worried. Frantic. Loving.

Then my phone rang not two minutes after I powered it on and I knew who it was.

"Hello, Jet," I said. "How're things going? How's your girlfriend doing? Bet the two of you have been busy writing that next dedication to her."

Go figure. That hadn't been the right thing to say because Jet went off like a bomb.