Ren’s body stopped shaking.
That didn’t bode well.
“Thinkin’ you two can talk about that on your date,” Lee returned.
That didn’t bode much better.
This brought me to the hard part, and I braced before asking, “Right, then now I’d like to know if anyone was injured in the blast.”
“Blast was contained to your apartment,” Hank answered. “One of your neighbors got knocked over and sprained a wrist. Shit fell off walls of other units. Yours was pretty much decimated. Other than that, nothing.”
This time when I heaved a sigh, it was of relief.
“So now,” Lee started. “We’re done here.” He looked at Ren. “Except to say, I think you get, we leave her in your care, you better take that seriously.”
“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 f**k 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.
Chapter Ten
Show Me How Special
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 g*y guys). “Woman, you know, you got action, you give some to me! I mean, you women have been quiet for f**kin’ 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, g*y 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?”