Dream Chaser - SETTING

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Dream Chaser - SETTING Page 20

by Ashley, Kristen


  And mind you, that worst day bested the fact that I’d been in a firefight in the parking lot of a goddamned mall and was currently barred from seeing my beloved niece and nephew because of my pathologically self-involved not-quite sister-in-law and alcoholic brother.

  So we could just say that was a bad fucking day.

  But noooooo…

  My mega-alpha dominant damned Dom of a maybe-kinda boyfriend thought this was all about him, threw a mood and stalked out.

  Huh.

  Obviously, the girl gang decided something needed to be done about this (not the Boone part, he could go fuck himself as far as I was concerned, or, at least at that moment I thought he could—about the Smithie part).

  Thus, we made the decision to haul our asses to the club and let Smithie know exactly how we felt about all this shit.

  Mo was not a big fan of this.

  What Mo was, was a pushover for his woman.

  So, even though he was by no means hip on driving me and Lottie in his truck with Evie, Pepper and Hattie trailing in Evie’s Prius, that was what he did.

  Commence us storming into Smithie’s office en masse, which I thought was pretty cool, and I loved my girls even more for having my back in doing it.

  But before any of us could open our mouths to get one word out, Smithie decreed, “My decision is final.”

  To which maybe (okay, definitely) stupidly, I replied, “I’m not accepting pity money.”

  “It’s not pity money,” Smithie shot back. “Think of it like you’re on vacation. Which right now you are, seeing as, to assuage your fuckin’ pride, we’ll start with your PTO.”

  Huh, again.

  “Vacation in hiding from bad cops?” I asked.

  To which Hattie asked, “Are the guys putting you in hiding?”

  I looked to her. “I don’t know. Boone and I didn’t get that far.”

  “I bet Hawk has like, a gazillion safe houses. Probably on about three continents. Maybe four. Maybe he has one by a beach,” Pepper said.

  “I’m not going to a safe house,” I declared.

  “I would, if it was by a beach,” Pepper replied.

  “A beach would make it seem like a vacation,” Evie put in.

  Unfortunately, she was right.

  And if Boone came along, it’d be a great vacation.

  I could not focus on this. I had to focus on important shit.

  Yeah.

  You’re reading it right.

  That would be focusing on the “important shit” of having the absolute wrong reaction to all that was going down with me.

  And that would be getting in the face of people who were trying to look out for me.

  By the by, it would take a while for me to have this epiphany, so wait for it.

  In that moment, however, Smithie cut in to share, “I’m not changing my mind. Until it’s safe for you, you’re not onstage. And Ryn, when you get your head out of your ass about all of this, you’ll realize that’s not only about looking after your best interests, but the shit at play here, I gotta protect a whole lot more than just you.”

  He swung his arm out, indicating the “whole lot more” included the other girls then went so far as twisting to swing his arm behind him toward the back wall to indicate the club.

  “We’re talking dirty cops,” he continued. “I run a strip joint. I bet you can think of at least a dozen scenarios where they could find reasons to fuck with me, you, and my entire staff. I’ll also bet they can think of three dozen. Are you understanding me?”

  Okay, so at that juncture, it was dawning on me that it might be me that was being pathologically self-involved.

  Cue us leaving the club with our tails tucked between our legs.

  Though Lottie, surprisingly, the most together of all of us, the most mature, was the one not feeling it.

  So not feeling it, she ranted and raved the entire way home about how life couldn’t just come to a complete stop because some assholes had targeted me.

  This meant by the time we got home, I was no longer feeling it.

  And thus, when we reconvened with the other girls, we got them to not feeling it (and just to say, Mo did a lot of studying the ceiling during all of this, as well as heavy sighing, but he spoke not a word), and in the end, Lottie got on the phone, starting with Jet, her sister.

  She ran it down, on speakerphone, after which Jet, the second Rock Chick to face her ordeal, said, “I hear you. I get it. But take it from one who knows, and I’ll just say, I said this same thing to all the Rock Chicks that came after me. Don’t fight it. Keep your head down. The boys do eventually sort it out and the only thing you’re doing is soothing your pride and mucking up the works.”

  Lottie (who, I should share at this juncture, was a pretty tough broad, and I was also seeing she could be a dog with a bone) refused to accept that response, rang off with Jet, and called Ally.

  I thought Ally was a good bet and Lottie should have started with her first. Mostly because I didn’t know her all that well, but what I did know was that Ally was a badass and wouldn’t take any guff from anyone.

  Especially a guy.

  “Normally,” Ally said over the speaker, “I’d say stick to your guns. The thing is, at this point, we have no idea how big this is. We just know it’s big. So it’s an uncertain situation that means better safe than sorry.”

  Well then.

  Hell.

  That made sense.

  It sucked.

  But it made sense.

  After that, I stopped Lottie from running through all the Rock Chicks mostly because it was getting late and she, Pepper and Hattie all had to get to the club to dance.

  But not me.

  Oh no.

  I was on “vacation.”

  (Huh.)

  The girls left, but Lottie didn’t go until Mo was relieved by Axl, who showed at my place not hiding the fact he was ticked at me that I’d pissed off Boone.

  We had a terse (his side), awkward (my side) convo about his security detail that included him sharing he was the night guy and would be sleeping on my couch.

  He did not accept my offer to cook him dinner (probably a wise choice, I was no kitchen diva, still, I thought my offer was nice) and took what I suspected were way more than needed opportunities to go outside and “scan the area.”

  I went to bed early, because, you know, I’d had a rough day.

  I also went to bed before I got any more ticked that Boone had not called or even texted to apologize.

  Not surprisingly, I did not find it easy to get to sleep.

  And this did not center around all the shit swirling in my life or how angry I was at Boone.

  This centered around the aforementioned epiphany that I probably should have taken a second to cool my jets rather than confront Boone angrily about his domineering.

  Yes, absolutely, it was not okay that he went to speak to my boss before he spoke to me and decisions were made about me and my life and my employment that I was not a party to.

  And yes, absolutely, we needed to have words about the fact that Boone was big on interrupting me, so communication was seriously fucking lopsided.

  But shit was extreme.

  Like, extreme extreme.

  Like, sex-offender-at-my-back-door-shot-dead extreme.

  Extreme for me, but also through me, for him.

  After a good freaking deal of restless bedtime thought, it did not escape me that if this or something like it was happening to him, I’d go into hyper-charged protection mode.

  And okay, maybe I couldn’t do that swinging my big dick because I didn’t have a big dick (Boone’s dick, by the by, I had not actually seen, but I’d felt it, and one could say it was sizable, gah!). I had also not gone through military training. And I did not have in my history protecting a sheikh’s son.

  But no matter how new we were, deep down, I knew we were special. I knew he was important. I knew this was way meaningful, what we’d just begun to build, and I kn
ew that before bathroom sink sex.

  I knew that before we even began.

  Which was what scared me about beginning, because if I had it, the good I knew I’d have with Boone, I couldn’t mess it up.

  But there I was, messing it up.

  Because I would protect the shit out of him, but this wasn’t happening to him. It was happening to me. And he was doing what I would do. His best to protect the shit out of me, doing it being the man he was, which was mega-alpha dominant.

  And with his reaction to what I said, I was now realizing he was experiencing some (unearned) guilt at feeling responsible (when he was not) that I’d been vulnerable to attack.

  But that was also the guy he was.

  I might not know him all that well, but that I knew.

  Not to mention, the not small fact that I’d promised him that very morning I wouldn’t let him fuck us up, and there I was, letting him fuck us up and doing that participating fully in the same thing.

  And Boone couldn’t know this (or maybe he did, which would be an additional reason behind what he did), but there was no way in hell I was going to share with Smithie, or Ian, what was going down for two reasons.

  I didn’t want them worried.

  And I didn’t want them to do what Smithie had done.

  Which was seriously pathologically self-involved because I didn’t see beyond myself to see that would have put Smithie in a bind because, if he or anyone at the club was targeted, he’d be blindsided.

  And that would be on me.

  This was the uncomfortable thought upon which I fell asleep.

  And when I was asleep, I did not sleep well.

  Or long.

  * * *

  Like the day before, I was woken up early by my phone ringing.

  It was not Angelica or Brian.

  It was Mom.

  I tried to erase the grogginess from my voice, and avoid any indication that I’d woken up with not only a small amount of heartache that Boone was not beside me, but also not a small amount of remorse and also fear that I’d been (partly) responsible for that (and Mom would read all of that, as moms had eerie abilities to do, even over the phone).

  “Hey, Mom,” I greeted.

  “You okay?” Mom asked.

  See?

  “I didn’t sleep great,” I told her. “What’s up?”

  “Okay, well, I hate to ask this, but Angelica called, and Portia is still acting up. So we have to go back on our plan since Ang was unable to get her to school yesterday, so she called her in sick, and your brother showed to help, but he was inebriated and…”

  All of a sudden, her words stopped.

  And this was because her voice cracked.

  I had a moment of skull-splitting fury at this before it hit me (fortunately, though unfortunately belatedly) that maybe going with the emotion of the moment wasn’t working for me.

  Evidence suggesting this was very, very correct was I’d screwed things up with Boone when he gave me the info about Angelica’s bullshit because I’d rolled with the moment, blaming him for something that wasn’t his fault. And if I hadn’t been kidnapped, who knew where we’d be?

  Though my guess was, we wouldn’t have had bathroom sink sex.

  I’d then torn out to confront Angelica before thinking how that confrontation should go, which got me banned from the kids’ lives. And now Portia was acting out, and even if that wasn’t fully on me, I had to put my hand up that I was partially to blame because, even if I was justifiably furious at Ang, I had so not taken the high road in that sitch.

  And then there was the fuckup of yesterday (and it was early, but I’d noted when I’d picked up the phone that Boone still hadn’t texted).

  Not to mention, hauling me and my girls’ asses to Smithie to get up in his face, only to have it made known that I was behaving like I was pathologically self-involved.

  So I had to learn to calm my shit.

  And in taking a second to calm my shit, the enormity of all my shit hit me, and I was currently shoved into a situation where I had to land that on my mother, who was already dealing with too much…

  Goddamned…

  Shit.

  But the bottom line was, if these assholes had targeted me, I did not need to lead them directly to Portia and Jethro.

  Or Mom.

  Or really (as angry as I was with them, I still loved them) Ang and Brian.

  “Mom,” I started. “I’m sorry. This is heavy for you and it’s tearing you apart, but I gotta share something.” I sucked in a huge breath then let it out with, “You know that sitch that happened a few months ago, when I was kidnapped?”

  That would have been something I kept from her as well, but I’d had to tell her, seeing as it was on the news, including cell-phone video footage of me being dragged among the cars with bullets flying.

  Not a stellar evening-cooking-dinner-watching-the-news-catching-up-on-current-events time, something my mom often did.

  “Ryn,” she whispered.

  Yeah, she remembered me being kidnapped.

  And she wasn’t liking me bringing that up.

  “I…there’s some more stuff happening, uh, kinda with that, and as much as it sucks, I need to stay away from the kids. And probably you.”

  “Are you in danger?”

  Her voice was high-pitched.

  Damn.

  I did not check, but no doubt the murder yesterday was on the news. I hadn’t seen any news trucks outside my house, but I also didn’t look. So who knew?

  But obviously, she hadn’t seen it.

  That I wasn’t going to share.

  Yet.

  (Or maybe ever.)

  “I just need to lay low. It’s nothing I did. Nothing anyone did, really. It’s just getting caught in something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. And mostly, it’s being super safe when probably nothing is going to happen.”

  God, I was blathering and just making it worse.

  Time to sum up.

  “But Mo and his friends are looking out for me so it’s going to be okay. I just need to be careful.”

  “I don’t understand this, Ryn.”

  Honestly?

  I didn’t either.

  “Can you bear with me until it’s over, which should be soon?” I said that last fast. “Then I’ll fill you in.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “We can still talk on the phone,” I offered.

  When she continued to say nothing, I kept going.

  Even though what I said next hurt.

  “Mom, I haven’t shared this either, because it’s new, but Boone and I started seeing each other and he’s a good guy. I think he likes me a lot. And he’s going to go all out to make sure I’m okay.”

  With Axl there I knew that last part was true.

  And the good guy part was true.

  The “he likes me a lot” part was now up for debate.

  And that was the part that hurt.

  “Have I met him?” she asked.

  She’d been at a party at Lottie and Mo’s that Boone was at too, but I didn’t think they’d met.

  “I don’t think so. But he was at Lottie and Mo’s that time. He’s the tall, blond one with the green eyes.”

  Such were Boone’s good looks, this filtered through the freak-out I knew she was having because she breathed, “Oh. Nice.”

  Incidentally, that caused the only smile I’d have for three days.

  Boone’s good looks, as well as his relationship to Mo and the other guys on the team also served to calm her freak-out. And as such, she shared she’d go see what she could do with Portia and report back frequently on how that was all going down.

  We disconnected, and thus commenced me giving some time to being pissed at whoever was out there fucking up my life.

  Onward from which I spent probably fifteen minutes (or more like twenty) trying to figure out what to say in a text to Boone.

  You see, I’d been here with dudes.

  H
e’d fucked up, but I’d fucked up too.

  And in order to grease the wheels of his apology, you had to make the first move.

  I settled with:

  Missed you at my side last night.

  Can we talk?

  Just to say, he didn’t reply.

  * * *

  I didn’t bother taking a shower that morning because of the plans I decided on that day, but I got dressed, went out, offered an already-awake Axl breakfast (he declined, and his declination was frosty—awkward), drank some of the coffee he’d made, and told him my plans for the day.

  Which were to go to my house and work.

  Then I asked, “Is that okay?”

  “You do what you gotta do,” he replied in a way that it would not be lost on any woman with even a modicum of experience with prideful, alpha guys actually ended with the unspoken, you will anyway.

  Hmm.

  “Aug’s gonna be here in thirty, so if you could manage to hold off until the pass-off, that’d be appreciated,” he said somewhat formally.

  Okay, the good news about this was, Boone’s buds were loyal.

  Very loyal.

  The bad news was, just the day before, I’d realized what truly awesome guys they were, and clearly, I’d lost that.

  The other bad news was, even trying to keep myself tight and not go off half-cocked, I was thinking Axl was kinda being a dick because, as mentioned, shit was extreme and in the eye of that storm through no fault of my own was me.

  However, I did not share that with him because there I was. The new Ryn. Thinking before I did or said anything stupid.

  Instead, I reiterated my invitation to make him breakfast. He reiterated his aloof declination. Auggie showed.

  And I was passed off.

  * * *

  The only good part of the rest of that day was that Auggie had so much testosterone swirling through his system, he was completely unable to watch me tear out carpet soaked in dried cat urine without helping me do it.

  As in, seriously seeing to helping me do it.

  It took, maybe, five minutes before he was on the phone.

  The next minute, he was at my side, helping me rip up carpet.

  It took, maybe, thirty minutes after that before the driveway to the house was filled with bikers on bikes.

  And thus, in order to watch me, help me, get more help for me, and more help for him watching me, Auggie had called in reinforcements.

 

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