I met them, these members of the Chaos MC, and they included a hot dude I’d met before during Evie’s thing that got us introduced to Brett (huh), a guy named Dutch. Also his equally hot brother, who was named Jagger. Their brother through their MC, the also hot Joker. And a scarier-than-Mo-looking dude (who I would find was hilarious), Hound.
By the end of the afternoon, I not only had all the carpet out in the house, they’d pulled their bikes out of the driveway, arranged for a dumpster to be hauled in and dropped, that dumpster was full of carpet, and the debris of two of the walls in the living room that they’d helped me demolish.
So yeah, that was a good part of my day.
The bad part was, I ended it in bed with my phone in my hand, Axl on my couch, my last text to Boone on my screen, hanging there like a lonely, desperate soul.
I added to it:
I know you’re angry. I understand why.
I’d like to get us beyond that.
Can we please talk?
By morning, and through the next day that was a lot like that day, though Joker didn’t show, but some dude called Boz did, Boone did not text.
Mom had gotten in touch to share she’d managed to get Portia to school the day before, and she did not say things were still not all that great in the world of Angelica, Brian and the kids, but I read between the lines.
Lottie had also gotten in touch, and I had not shared that the boys were not my biggest fans at the moment, but somehow I had a feeling she was reading between the lines.
And thus all the girls had checked in, but they were all busy, so they couldn’t come over and provide moral support.
But all day I got a bunch of fun gifs and memes to bolster my spirit.
Their intentions were super sweet.
It just didn’t work.
* * *
Day three Post Fuckup with Boone, my emotional check was slipping.
I’d woken up not with a phone call from my family, also not with a response to my latest string of texts from the day before.
These included,
Honey, we need to get past this.
Please text me.
And,
Right, you’re beginning to scare me.
I fucked up. You fucked up. The only way to
get beyond that is to talk it through.
Please.
Text.
And last,
I’m going to bed without you again.
And I don’t like it.
Needless to say, I was doing all the work in trying to unfuck us and Boone’s completely ignoring that, coupled with his buds treating me like I’d cheated on him or something, making a bad situation worse, meant my control on behaving like an adult in a relationship that was important to her and thus she was going to put in the work slipped.
Though this was assuaged by some guy named Tack (also in the Chaos MC) coming to the house with a plumber (definitely Chaos had taken on this project, and me, like they had a financial stake in it, and an emotional one in keeping me safe, I mean, super sweet guys) and treating me like I knew what I was talking about.
Then, in his gravelly voice, Tack bossed said plumber around (and said plumber was not treating me like I knew what I was talking about, and okay, I was no plumber, but I knew what I wanted for the space, I’d also had a contractor in to discuss it, so I knew it could be done—he was just trying to make me feel like the little woman trying on her man’s boots).
Tack kept glancing meaningfully at me with his sapphire (no joke, straight-up sapphire) blue eyes, which I took (correctly) as, Watch and learn. This is how you talk to them. Don’t let them give you any shit.
I tried it out.
So when the guy said flat out that I could not move the sink in the kitchen, I said, “I’m moving the sink where the fridge was. And the fridge was plumbed. I’m moving the fridge where the sink was. And obviously it was plumbed. If you don’t know how to do that, I’m sure I can find a plumber who can.”
Tack gave me a crooked grin that was sweet (and hot, what could I say, he was a good-looking guy, but clearly from what I’d seen of all his MC brothers, this was a prerequisite for membership) while the plumber verbally fell all over himself to share that it actually could be done, it was just more work and time and expense.
Some of the guys took off to get sandwiches for lunch, and my daytime detail was Mag, who was avoiding me, doing this keeping vigilant and shooting the shit with Joker, who did not go off to get sandwiches with his brothers.
So I took that opportunity to send Boone my first text of the day.
Or as it was, texts plural.
Cat urine carpet gone. Check.
Walls demoed in living room, dining room
and kitchen. Check.
Both baths gutted. Check.
Working on cutting door to small bedroom
to make it closet door to master.
I love the Chaos MC.
And I miss you.
♥♥♥♥
I was trying a new gambit, going for conversational, but still being a little bit mushy and opening the door for him to make his move.
He did not reply.
* * *
Later in the evening, when I was home, exhausted, Axl was back on duty and watching TV with me (silently), I tried a new gambit.
Portia didn’t go to school that first day. Mom
had to wade in by asking me to
wade in and I had to tell her
about the whole thing with me
and all the drama, though I didn’t go
into specifics, this being why I couldn’t
go see to Portia.
She was definitely freaked but I told her
you and the boys have me covered.
That helped a lot with her freak-out.
Mom got Portia to go to school and she says
things are better but I think she’s
protecting me.
So that’s what’s happening with that.
I still miss you.
♥♥♥♥
So okay, maybe I was going the woe-is-me, my-family’s-a-mess, my-life’s-a-mess, we’re-a-mess, feel-sorry-for-me gambit and that took me to a new low.
But by the time I hit my bed, he still didn’t reply.
* * *
So now was now.
It was three days after my fight with Boone.
I was lying in bed, Axl stretched out on my couch in the living room, no idea what was happening with Brett, the dirty cops, or any of that because I was now kinda mad at the guys for being semi-dicks to me when none of this was my fault, so I wasn’t asking.
And seriously.
Even if each day passed making it seem like it was over before it had begun and Boone and I had actually been able to make a go of it, we’d have occasions where we fought.
I hadn’t lost my mind in a fit of rage and set our bed on fire.
We’d had a fight.
Just a fight.
And it wasn’t even a huge one.
And he’d walked away and shut me out.
I was trying.
But he’d shut me out.
So now the boys had shut me out.
Even if I was trying with them too (I offered Axl breakfast every morning, and the Machismo Factor was at rocket rises around me, what with the addition of Chaos to my life, but at least every day I tried to pay for sandwiches for all the guys for lunch).
So yeah, the last three days had been not-so-great.
And they were ending now, with me texting,
Right.
Loud and clear.
Thanks for arranging for the boys
to look out for me.
You’re a really good guy, Boone.
And I wish you well.
And then…
Well then…
After over a decade, dry as a bone…
I turned to my side, curled up, and I cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Oh Hell to the Yeah
Ryn
The bed moving woke me up and flipped me out.
Like, huge.
So huge, when I felt a touch on my hip, I whirled and fought like an animal.
I connected with what I thought might be a jaw, heard a grunt, went back with nails bared at the same time positioning to catapult myself from the bed in order to commence running screaming from my house.
But I got my wrists captured, a man on me and my arms pressed to the bed at the sides of my head.
I was about to open my mouth and scream, terror racing through me not only about what might be about to befall me, but also, if whoever this was got to me, what had become of Axl, when I heard Boone whisper, “Chill, baby. It’s me.”
I went stiff.
Then I went lax.
And when I did and Boone’s hold on my wrists relaxed, the last three days hit me like a freight train, and I totally forgot my promise to take a moment and think about my reaction before I reacted.
I yanked my hands from his grip, lifted a knee high, and would have connected with this junk if he didn’t shift his hips so quickly.
“Christ, Ryn,” he bit off.
I made no verbal reply.
Commence massive wrestling match on my bed with me really going at it and Boone not. Instead he was trying to stop me from doing him harm, or the same to myself.
He did not succeed, since we rolled off the bed with me on my back and Boone’s entire weight landing on me.
I let out an “Oof” when my breath left me.
Boone instantly rolled so I was on top and not taking his weight.
I got my breath back and went at him again.
He knifed up to sitting, and with some difficulty (I could say proudly), he eventually got control of my wrists and yanked them behind my back.
This putting me in the position of straddling him with my chest pressed tight to his and my wrists bound behind me, which was sexy as fuck.
I wasn’t feeling sexy.
I was feeling raw, vulnerable, scared, sad and hopeless.
“Ryn, Jesus, what the fuck?” Boone clipped.
He was there and I had a feeling I knew why he was there in the middle of the night.
You didn’t wake up some chick to officially break up with them in the middle of the night.
I didn’t suspect he was there to get himself some either.
I suspected he was there because my last text ended us, and suddenly, after three days, he wasn’t down with that.
And Boone was the kind of guy who felt perfectly okay with waking a woman up in the middle of the night and scaring the crap out of her to communicate that.
Many women would think this was sweet and romantic (after they got over having the crap scared out of them, of course).
But me?
I was done.
“Let me go and get out of my house,” I returned, my voice cold as snow.
I felt his hands tense on my skin, then his body get loose under me, before he whispered gently, “Baby.”
“I’m serious, Boone.” I jerked at my wrists ineffectually, and then gave that up, but didn’t stop talking. “Let me go and get out.”
“Ryn, take a breath, yeah?”
I couldn’t.
I’d thought we were done.
I’d cried myself to sleep.
Cried myself to sleep.
Me!
And this time, they were not stressy tears.
They were the real enchilada.
Heartbreak tears.
I could feel it then, the results of that jag, my eyes scratchy and puffy.
I could feel something else.
My nose felt funny, my throat too.
Shit, it was going to happen again.
I turned my head away, even though it was dark, and he probably couldn’t see much of me, because I couldn’t see much of him, but I couldn’t hide my voice being husky when I said, “Please, Boone, just go.”
“I’ve been a dick,” he replied, his voice soft and filled with remorse.
Yeah.
He had.
And this was exactly what I was trying to avoid by not going there with him.
But no.
He’d talked me into it.
And what?
We’d had a couple of days?
And then he broke me.
Not once…
For years…
After my dad broke me…
Had a man broken me.
But Boone?
A couple of days and he’d broken me.
I decided not to speak anymore and maybe if I just absented myself (without, obviously, absenting myself since I was astride him and he had a lock on me), he’d get my message and leave.
He did not.
He transferred my wrists to one hand, slid the other in my hair and urged, “Sweetheart, look at me.”
I continued to look away and pretend, no matter how ridiculous it was, that he wasn’t there, but I did it breathing heavily through my nose.
“Ryn, fuck,” he bit out. Then back to soft and sweet, “I’m sorry, baby.”
I kept breathing through my nose, his apology getting to me, just a little bit, I could feel the prickle of it pushing through, and it gave me hope.
Hope I could not have.
We couldn’t do this.
We were both way too fucked up.
He was also too proud.
And I was too volatile.
We didn’t work.
“I fucked up going to Smithie,” he whispered, stroking the back of my neck under my hair with his knuckles, something I felt not only there, but also over my scalp and down my spine, and all of that was good, which meant all of it I was attempting to ignore. “I fucked up, getting pissed and walking out. I fucked up getting my pride stung and leaving it too long, coming back.”
“Yeah, you did,” I confirmed through sharp breaths. “But it gave me a chance to think and while I was thinking, I came up with the fact that we don’t work.”
I had not been thinking about that.
I’d spent three days trying to make us work.
I’d just come up with that.
But even so, I was thinking I was right.
“We had a fight,” Boone contradicted. “Just a fight. Now we’re gonna talk it through and make up.”
“No, we’re not, because you’re gonna go.”
“Ryn—”
I looked at him through the shadows. “Really, I can’t do this.”
“Kathryn,” he bit out.
“We’re done.”
“Someone apologizes, and they mean it, babe, you should accept their apology.”
“You broke me.”
I heard and felt him suck in breath.
Oh God.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck.
I’d put it out there.
And when I did, my voice was not right.
Fuck!
I was going to lose it.
He heard it, let my wrists go, wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, his arm around me, and held tight.
I knew there was no hope of getting my hands between us to push him away, so I let my arms dangle at my sides, dragged in a ragged breath and repeated, “You broke me. We’re done.”
“Please listen to me, Ryn,” he begged.
“I can’t…I can’t do this.”
My tone was deteriorating again.
He moved his hand at my neck up to cup my head, shoved my face in his neck, and murmured in my ear, “Take a beat. Breathe.”
My breath was hitching. I was trying to hold them back.
And I was worried I was failing.
“Or don’t, sweetheart. Just let go,” he urged.
“No,” I croaked.
“Why?”
“I can’t be this person.”
“Why?”
“I have to hold it together.”
“Why?”
“Because if I don’t…”
I didn’t finish.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“What, Ryn? What’ll happen if you don’t hold it together?”
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know what would happen.
My mom would distance herself from me because she had a life of eating shit, taking shit, and working like hell to raise her kids, and Brian repaid her with more shit, so she didn’t need mine?
Or Boone would decide in the end I just wasn’t worth it because I wasn’t only a mess, I was weak and a loser?
“Baby—”
“Stop it, let me go,” I whispered.
“Rynnie,” he whispered back.
Rynnie.
God!
I couldn’t take any more.
I yanked back and screamed in his face, “Stop it, let me go!”
He didn’t let me go, mostly because I collapsed against him and started bawling.
Great.
Just great.
He wrapped his arms tight around me and held me, rocking me gently at the same time stroking my back.
But, apparently, you hold back tears for long enough, you run up a huge store, and even if you’d let some go not too long ago, there were more ready and waiting to be unleashed.
A lot more.
So this was lasting awhile, and since we were on the floor and that obviously wasn’t uber comfortable for Boone, he managed (shockingly) to maneuver himself to his feet with me still in his lap and his arms. And then he put us both in my bed (with me still in his arms).
I cried through this.
And I cried some more.
But as this stuff goes, thankfully, I eventually cried myself out.
Which left me feeling exhausted, my nose was all stuffy, and I was embarrassed as all hell.
“You need Kleenex?” Boone murmured.
All I had in me was to nod my head.
I didn’t have Kleenex in my bedroom, so he got up, went to the bathroom, and came back in record time.
I was again in his arms but trying to twist away at the same time wipe my face and blow my nose (smartly, he’d brought the whole box).
Boone was having none of the pulling-away business.
And really, I was just too tired to fight it.
When I was done, he took the used tissue from me (gross, but still sweet). I guessed he threw them on the floor (though I didn’t care what he did with them).
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