Kristen Ashley - Rock Chick Revolution

“Are you kidding me?” I yelled before Ren could say a word, and Lee looked at me.

“Ally, I’m your brother. Do you think I wouldn’t say anything?”

“I’m thirty-two, not sixteen,” I retorted.

“You’ll always be sixteen to me,” he shot back, and my body jerked as I blinked.

Oh God.

Oh shit.

Fuck!

It was coming on. My nose was tingling. My eyes got hot and my throat had closed.

“Fuck, she’s gonna cry,” Hank muttered, staring at me, lips twitching.

“Am not,” I forced out.

Ren shifted me so I wasn’t pressed back to front to him but tucked into his side and he spoke. “We all know she’s not gonna get through the gamut out there unscathed, so we’re movin’ on to that scene in this ongoing drama so we can then move the fuck out.”

He started us toward the door, but stopped and I looked up at him to see him looking between Hank and Lee.

“And to answer your question,” he stated. “Yes. I get you. And I take it seriously.”

Oh God.

Oh shit.

Fuck!

I’d managed to control it and it was coming on again!

I looked away quickly so none of the men in my life would send me over the edge, and luckily Ren started us again to the door.

He opened it and let me precede him. The instant I did, I got hit by a wave of Rock Chicks.

“Christ.” I heard Ren say.

But I was being pushed backwards down the hall and I saw him recede until he disappeared when Ava and Shirleen—who were the ones who had hands on me, the rest of them were just following—shoved me in the safe room.

Tex, the last one in, slammed the door and glowered at me.

He wasn’t the only one glowering at me.

Again.

Here we go.

Shit.

I tore my eyes from Tex and moved them through the Rock Chicks, but stopped when I saw Indy.

She was not head of the pack. She was at the back. This was not only not her usual place, but the look on her face as she stared at me made my lungs start burning.

“I… I… I…” Shirleen stammered, and I looked her way, stunned she was stammering. Shirleen didn’t stammer. Then she stopped stammering and shouted, “I don’t even know where to begin!”

“I know where to begin,” Tex boomed from the back, and I looked at the mammoth wild-blond-haired, wild-russet-bearded man that stood head and shoulders over the Rock Chicks (and gay guys). “Woman, you know, you got action, you give some to me! I mean, you women have been quiet for fuckin’ months. Some woman in the mountains was buried alive and I was cut out?” His face started getting red before he shouted, “Unacceptable!”

Brody.

It had to be Brody. Darius wouldn’t talk. How I’d kept Brody’s mouth shut as long as I did was a miracle. But that miracle had ended.

Not surprising.

I had no idea when the news hit what I’d get, if they knew about my activities, or Ren, or both.

I suspected both, considering the number of phone calls I had and the news Brody received that morning about Ren and me.

But, at the very least, a bomb blast was hard to miss.

Before I could reply to Tex, Daisy shoved up to the front. “And Ren was up there with you. And Ren was at your apartment with you when it exploded. And Ren was walking out of Lee’s office two seconds ago and he was doin’ it with you.”

At her last two words, her mass of platinum blonde hair was shaking and she’d planted her hands on her hips.

In other words, I’d hit the Daisy Danger Zone.

But Daisy wasn’t done.

“And just so you know, you take a swing at a hot guy at a Rock Chick wedding then disappear—completely—we know you’re off doin’ the nasty, as in the angry nasty, which is some of the best nasty you can get,” she declared.

She was not wrong. I knew this because Ren and I had existed almost entirely on the angry nasty for going on a year.

She was also still not done.

“And you know, when you’re doin’ the nasty, we know all about that nasty!”

She wasn’t wrong about that either.

She kept going. “But you’re zipped tight for months, like you totally forget you make everyone else spill. Well, sugar,” she leaned in and her eyes narrowed, “the time has come for you to spill. Comprende?”

I’d already comprende’d.

Before I could explain this to Daisy, Tex started up again.

“Don’t give a shit about that. Her apartment exploded,” he said to Daisy then looked on me. “I’m in on whatever that shit is. Starting now.”

I opened my mouth to say something to Tex or Daisy or all the Rock Chicks, but I ended up looking at Indy and just calling, “Indy?”

Everyone looked at Indy.

Indy just looked at me.

Then she opened her mouth to speak as the door flew open.

Ren was there and he didn’t delay in cutting a swathe through the Rock Chicks, gay guys, Tex, Duke and Smithie.

He grabbed my hand and turned to the group. Everyone’s eyes dropped to our hands. Some of them widened, some mouths fell open.

They looked back at Ren when he commenced in giving a Macho Alpha Speech.

“Ally and I have been together a year,” he declared.

He also ignored the gasps, big eyes and Sadie whispering, “A year?”, and kept talking.

“She had her reasons for keepin’ that from you. She also had her reasons for doin’ other things and keepin’ that from you. Now it’s all out and you want answers. But you’ll wait until she’s ready to give them to you, which will be sometime after I take my woman out to dinner. So you’ll hold your shit until Ally’s ready. Is that understood?”

Apparently it wasn’t, and this was proved when Roxie asked, “Do you actually think that’s going to work?”

Ren said nothing, but he leveled his gaze on Roxie.

Roxie pressed her lips together and gave big eyes to Stella. Stella bit her bottom lip, but that didn’t mean both her lips weren’t curled up in a big way.

So maybe I was wrong. It was going to work because no one else said a word.

Maybe that macho alpha gig wasn’t such a bad thing. At least it was good to know it had its uses.

Or it had its uses until Smithie spoke up.

Smithie, by the way, owned a strip club. Jet worked there as a waitress during her drama. Jet’s sister was currently the headliner there as a stripper. He was a big black guy gone slightly soft. And strip club owner or not, there was nothing “slightly” about his soft heart.

He was also a nut. Then again, the Rock Chicks, as a collection of nuts, collected their own.

“Are you sayin’ her apartment just exploded not two hours ago and you two are goin’ on a date?” he asked, brows raised, eyes big.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Ren confirmed, then muttered, “We’re done here.” And he made that statement true by dragging me through the Rock Chicks and out the door.

But as I went, I locked eyes with Indy and mouthed, Are we cool?

She just watched me go and gave me nothing.

In Ren’s bathroom, I spritzed with perfume, set it aside and looked at myself in the mirror.

After the Rock Chick Confrontation, I’d spoken with the police in reception at Lee’s office for five minutes, giving them my semi-statement, which was only semi seeing as I had no involvement in the activities, outside my apartment exploding, so I had nothing to give them that The Kevster hadn’t already provided.

Then Ren had guided me to his Jag and we left.

He took me straight to Cherry Creek Mall, valet parked (total class) then dragged me to Nordstrom’s. There, he found a comfortable chair, pulled out his credit card and handed it to me.

“You got an hour. Use it wisely,” he ordered.

I knew what his wisely meant. I couldn’t help but know. My apartment exploded, the only clothes I owned I was wearing. We were going out on our first date, he considered my dresses foreplay, and we were at a mall.

I just didn’t know what the credit card meant.

“Zano, my purse didn’t explode with my pad. I had it with me, and just saying,” I pointed to it on my shoulder, “I still do.”

Ren ignored this and replied, “Text me when you decide on something to tell me where it is. Give them the card so they can ring it up. I’ll go and sign.”

This didn’t address my remark.

“What I’m saying is, I have my own money,” I told him.

“Ally, we’re not arguing about this,” he told me.

I was trying to be confused and not pissed, though, in truth, I was both.

In order to acquire the information needed not to be confused, or pissed, I asked, “Are you saying my emergency provision purchases are on you?”

He looked at the card I was holding aloft and then at me.

However, he didn’t verbalize his answer.

That was still an answer.

So now no confusion and I was stuck with trying not to get pissed.

I pushed the card his way. “I’ve got it.”

“And I said we’re not arguing about this.”

“Zano, I make my own money.”

To this, he asked strangely, “Was it you sittin’ in that booth with me, beer, bourbon and the Bears?”

“Yes,” I answered the obvious.

“And was it you cryin’ in my arms over Sadie?”

“Yes, Zano, but—”

“And was it you who opened my Christmas present naked in my bed on Christmas morning?”

I narrowed my eyes on him. “Where is this leading?”