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 knew 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.