JAX: A Rockstar Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

are you?"

 
    Chapter Seven
    Liliana
     
    "Okay, I see you," I told my father, then hung up the phone, shaking my head.
    He was in the van. I could not believe he still had that thing.
    I was on the sidewalk outside of the airport, hysterically laughing at a van.
    My father forced the sticky driver's side door open and emerged to find me nearly weeping with laughter. I wiped my eyes and try to explain, then dissolved into a fit of giggles again. "That's, that's the van…" was all I managed to say.
    "Sure is," he growled, patting the battered old relic from the 80s with a fondness he usually reserved for guitars, and only occasionally, me. "She still purrs like a kitten too."
    "That's the van you picked me up in." I was shaking my head at the symmetry of it all, wishing I had a notebook out so I could write it down.
    But my dad didn't get it. "Yup," he rumbled, picking up my suitcase. "You wanna get going?"
    "Sure, Dad." I nodded, my chest deflating slightly. He didn't remember picking me up from Graham's house in this van. The start of our wild adventure together. Or if he did remember, he wasn't sentimental about it like I was.
    Stop it, Lily. I settled back in the cracked vinyl seat and tried to compose my thoughts.
    But the noise from the radio won't let me think. My father has always kept the radio in the van perpetually on "scan." It was an irritating habit of his, left over from the days when he was an itinerant roadie, picking up jobs here and there. He liked to scan for the bands he'd worked for, then shout and crow about them while I nodded in mute, uncomprehending approval. This was going back to my very early childhood. Back before he got tagged by a friend of his to load amps for Annie Blue's comeback show and saved the day by recognizing that her amp stack was hooked up backwards.
    "We headed to a hotel?" I asked my dad between bursts of static.
    "A hotel? No, why in the hell would we do that?" My dad swore and I stiffened, before I realized he was trying to shove his way into a left turn lane at the last minute. When we were on the road, the guys called him Captain Rageball because every time he drove, the slightest thing would set him off.
    "Erm, last I knew, you and Annie lived at the Chateau Marmont," I ventured.
    "Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, Lil…" He'd been forgetting to tell me a lot of things, it seemed. "Annie and me, we're starting a studio. She wanted it in her own space, so we got our own place."
    For a moment, the only noise in the van was the staticky radio changing stations and my own shocked exhalation.
    "You bought a house?" I gasped. I couldn't keep the shock out of my voice. "First you tell me you're getting married, now you tell me you’ve bought honest-to-God real estate?"
    My dad shot me a shy look as the radio switched stations again. I swear we had already run through the dial ten times. "Guess I'm growin' up, Lil Bit. Took a while, huh?"
    I felt a rush of affection for my big, bearded dad and reached out my hand. His huge ham hocks swallowed mine entirely, the way they always had. "My father, the family man," I teased. "Do you 'putter around' in the garage? Wait… have you joined a golf club too?"
    "Smartass," my dad growled, letting go of my hand. "You sound like Jax."
    The station switched again. As if summoned like a genie from a bottle, the thumping bass of "Cocky" blared out of the speakers.
    I froze in my seat, my body flashing between ice-cold water flowing in my veins and hot nausea swimming in my stomach. This song was following me, I swear it was.
    "Heard that enough for one lifetime," my father snapped, punching the on/off switch. Uncharacteristic silence flooded the van, the better for me to hear the wild beating of my own heart.
    Oblivious to my torture, my dad kept talking. "I don't think Jaxson was ready for that song to blow up like it did. His mother's tryin' to help him, but he's such an arrogant ass-face sometimes you just want to shake the little shit…"
    "Truer