He returned it, and I rushed into the dressing room feeling bad.

This was because Boone was my bodyguard that night and I wanted to be fast so he could get home, but I also wanted to talk to Ryn so she’d stop avoiding Boone and go out on a date with him.

I was going to work on all the girls, but since I’d had my chat with Auggie, and it was clear Pepper was not (yet) ready to go there, and Hattie seemed a tough row to hoe, I’d decided on Ryn.

I hit the room and saw the girls all there.

That was, all of them except Ryn.

“Where’s Ryn?” I asked.

“Don’t even,” Pepper answered tetchily.

Hattie looked at me and mouthed “Bad.”

“Bad?” I mouthed back.

She gave me big eyes.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“She and Boone had a thing,” Pepper told me. “So, even before we got the signal, she left the stage, hustled in here, and I can only assume she escaped, seeing as she wasn’t here when I got in here.”

I moved deeper into the room. “She and Boone had a thing?”

“Yeah, after a lap dance,” Pepper replied.

Oh boy.

I couldn’t even let Mag watch me strip. Just the idea of him seeing me do a lap dance made me think I’d pass out.

Not that I did lap dances. I’d tried it once, and it wasn’t any good for me or for the creepy dude who bought it.

Good money.

But serious euw.

“I tried to talk to her, but she told me to butt out,” Pepper continued. “And she wasn’t super cool about it either.”

When I turned my gaze to Hattie, she was giving me a look and she repeated her mouthed “Bad.”

Oh boy!

“Speaking of,” Pepper went on, “are you gonna quit now that you have Mag?”

“We haven’t been seeing each other for even two weeks,” I told her, heading to my makeup station, and more importantly, my towel.

“You’re living together,” Pepper noted.

“Out of necessity,” I reminded her, shrugging off my robe so I could begin to towel off the oil.

“Not sure I’d move on, I bagged me that one,” Pepper muttered.

“You’d have one of your own, if you’d just agree to go on a date with him,” I pointed out.

Pepper decided she was finished talking.

I gave Hattie a look.

Hattie gave me a shrug.

I didn’t push it further, partly because I wanted to get out there so Boone could get me home, and thus he could get home. Partly because I was fired up to have a chat with Ryn, not Pepper. This meant I wasn’t prepared to chat with Pepper and chats like this needed preparation. And partly because I was dying to know what went down with Boone and Ryn, and I could only find that out while interrogating him in his car.

So, I dashed through toweling down, swiping off as much makeup as I could with a few disposable cleansing towels (which I’d ascertained were biodegradable), pulling a brush through my hair, shoving my tips in my bag and throwing on clothes.

I said my farewells, met Boone in the hall, he escorted me out to his black Charger, and we were away home.

I decided not to take the direct approach, but that wasn’t the only reason I started with “Thanks for playing bodyguard tonight.”

“Not a problem,” he grunted, like it was a problem.

Though I sensed the problem was not guarding me.

It was having a thing with Ryn.

Even so, I looked to him and said, “It’s been days since I’ve been kidnapped. Not to mention, Danny and me went to my apartment yesterday to check it out. It’s still a mess, but I have a window and the mess was the same mess, not a new one. So hopefully I’m out of the woods and you boys will be off Evie duty soon.”

He just grunted again, but this time it formed no words.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Sure,” he lied.

Hmm.

Time to take the direct approach.

“So, um…Pepper said you and Ryn had a thing. Is everything all right with that?”

He said nothing.

“Not my business,” I muttered, turning to look out the windshield.

After a long while, he announced, “We all got it, you know.”

I looked to him again. “Got what?”

“Issues,” he stated. “After shit we’ve seen, shit we’ve done.”

“Right,” I said softly.

“We share, talk it out.”

I was glad they did that.

Boone kept going.

“Mag’s told us you’ve seen him lose it.”

Hmm.

“It is what it is, Boone,” I replied. “I can’t say how right now, but as his friend, I want to assure you, I like him a lot, so I’m determined we’ll find our way.”

“Me, it’s sex.”

I blinked at his profile after he shared this in a way he sounded like he didn’t want to, he had to, and I whispered, “Sorry?”

“Sex. For me. Outside talking to the guys, that’s how I work it out.”

“Okay,” I said softly. Then quickly, I went on, “You don’t have to—”

“And control.”

I pressed my lips together.

“You get what I’m sayin’ to you, Evie?”

“I don’t know,” I replied carefully.

“You don’t need this shit,” he muttered.

That was when I really looked at him in the dashboard lights.

And what I saw was that he was messed up.

“I can take whatever shit you wanna give me, Boone,” I told him quietly.

“Yeah, that’s you. You lived your whole life taking shit. You don’t need mine.”

“Well, the shit I took was from people who didn’t care about me. You just gave your Sunday night to keep me safe. You tackled the bad guy for me through smoke grenades billowing. In this kind of thing, it isn’t tit for tat. But just to say, you’ve given yours, but that isn’t the only reason I’m down to give mine.”

He didn’t say anything.

“But if you don’t want to share, Boone, I won’t be hurt. Promise.”

“I had it in me, you know, before shit went down when I was in the service. It went into overdrive after.”

“It?”

He glanced at me.

He looked back to the road.

Another glance at me.

Then back to the road and, “I’m a Dom.”

“A Dom?” I asked.

“A Dominant. A Dom. In sex.”

Okay, so we weren’t sharing.

We were sharing.

“Boone, I—”

“She’s a sub.”

“Ryn?” I asked in surprise.

“Yeah,” he said.

That didn’t track.

Outside Lottie (and Mag), Ryn was one of the most dominant personalities I knew.

Then again, I didn’t know how these things worked, maybe she was so in charge all the time, she had to find ways to let go.

“You really don’t have to share this with me if you don’t want to,” I told him quietly.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No, I mean, you just watched me strip for eight hours.”

“Yeah.” He was back to grunting.