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.

He’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.

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.