Rock Chick 08 Revolution (14 page)

“You fought over her that night.”

His head jerked and he asked,
“What?”

“That night!” I shouted. “That
night we hooked up. You fought with Luke over Ava.”

Suddenly, his body went completely
still, as did the air in the room, and his eyes didn’t leave me but they’d gone
funny as he whispered, “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I hissed.

He shook his head, not in the
negative, like he was trying to clear it.

Then he asked disbelievingly,
“You’re tellin’ me we’ve been in each other’s space for over a year and you’re
throwin’ this shit in my face
now?
”

“Well, if that’s not enough…” I
shot back instantly, slamming my hands on my hips, something Ren’s eyes watched
before they came back to mine and I saw they were heating.

This was a warning signal I’d made
a habit of not heeding. And at that point, I did the same and kept right on
talking.

“There was the night at the art
gallery where you said you had eyes on me but I never caught your eyes on me.
But I
did
see you
gazing
at Ava!”

I sounded like a jealous bitch. I
knew it. And I didn’t care.

Because the big bossy jerk asked me
to Ava’s wedding!

Those eyes I was talking about
narrowed and he returned, “I might have looked at Ava, Ally, but fuck, only
because she was there.”

“You didn’t
look
, Zano, you
gazed.
”

He blinked then asked, “Jesus, have
you lost your mind?”

“No.” I answered. “I’m a woman and
I
know.
”

“You know,” he replied.

“Yep,” I bit out. “I know.”

“You know, for a year I’ve been
bangin’ you, busting my ass to find a way in with you, you gave me every sign I
was succeeding… and before you open your mouth to deny it, I’ll remind you
about Christmas morning,” he warned me.

Since I’d opened my mouth to deny
it, at his reminder, I snapped it shut.

He kept going.

“And that entire fuckin’ year
you’ve been thinkin’ I’m in love with another woman and you didn’t say
anything?”

God.

Was he serious?

“What do I say, Zano?” I retorted.
“What questions do I ask when I don’t want the fucking answers?”

“If you’d asked, you might have
found you wanted the answers,” he fired back.

Then, all Italian hothead badass,
he lost it.

Lifting a hand, he tapped the tips
of his fingers to his temple and jerked his hand out at the same time leaning
into me and shouting, “You’ve totally lost your goddamned mind!”

“You know I haven’t,” I snapped.

“No,” he clipped as he turned. His
movements rough with suppressed anger, he stalked to my jeans, still talking.
“What I know is, I wasted a goddamn year on a lunatic. Jesus. Fuck me,” he bit
out, bending and tagging my jeans. He turned and tossed them to me, continuing,
“You hide it well, Ally. All that fucking crazy under all that hot. You had me
snowed, thinkin’, you allowed me to dig deep, I’d get the warm and sweet with
the hot, not a hot fuckin’
mess
.”

I’d caught my jeans and I had
nothing to say to that remark but no chance to say it before he prowled by me,
his anger now at such an extreme that his movements were fluid as his
adrenaline flowed.

And he kept talking.

“You wanna go. Go. Be my guest,
honey.” He bent and grabbed his own jeans, tugging them on and not looking at
me. “You want this over, you get it, ‘cause now, with this, I see I’ve wasted a
year on your bullshit, and honest to Christ, I never wanna lay eyes on your
jacked ass again.”

Ouch.

That hurt.

No, that wasn’t right. It killed.

But I took his invitation.

And not only because it was the
only option open to me.

Also because it
was the smartest.

As fast as I could, I dressed and
made sure I had my phone and all my belongings (not that I came with many, Ren
dragged my ass there in another Italian hotheaded tizzy).

But I knew Darius and Brody were
staying in the same hotel, I just didn’t know their room numbers and I needed
to get from here, to one of their rooms, then home, and fast (my pick, Darius).

But at the door, because he didn’t
get me, I decided before we were
over,
he was going to fucking
get me
.

Hand on the knob, I turned to him,
dredging up what had been haunting me for over a year. Something that had
killed the hope I had for my own kickass Rock Chick fairytale. Something that taught
me the death of hope was the worst thing you could experience.

I saw he was pulling his shirt over
his head and started, “That night, beer and bourbon and you liking the Bears?”

He yanked his shirt down and
twisted only his neck so his burning eyes locked on me but he didn’t turn to
face me.

I sucked in breath as his gaze
boiled away my flesh.

Then I did what I always did. I
pulled it together, straightened my spine and held his eyes.

“The next morning, I woke up happy.
So happy I was fucking
smiling.
It
was the best date I ever had and it wasn’t even a date.”

That muscle in his jaw jumped but
he didn’t say anything.

I didn’t need him to.

My voice quieter but no less
emotional, I laid it out.

“Naked with you in your bed,
smiling to myself and happy, you pressed into me, curled your hand around my
breast and said Ava’s name in my hair.”

I watched his face blank even as
his chin jerked back.

“So think what you want but I know
I’m not jacked,” I whispered. “That, Ren, when a woman lies naked, thus exposed,
in a man’s arms, when all she’s thinking about his him, and he calls her
another woman’s name,
that’s
how she
knows.”

And with that, I was done.

I turned, whipped off the chain,
twisted the handle and pulled open the door.

I got it open halfway before Ren’s
hand landed palm flat on the door. I was pulling but he was stronger. Thus the
doorknob slipped out of my hand and the door slammed shut.

Before I could take a breath, I was
pressed front to the door with Ren’s heat pressed in behind me. Further defeating
any chance of retreat, his hand snaked across my belly and his arm turned to
iron.

Great.

“Let me go,” I snapped.

His lips came to my ear. “Baby—”

“
Let me go!
” I shouted, trying to yank away but his other arm wrapped
high across my chest and he held me tighter, closer, his lips not leaving my
ear.

“I was unconscious,” he whispered.

I jerked harder but he didn’t let
go.

So I gave up but didn’t give in. I
strained against his hold, rested my forehead against the door and waited for
this to be over.

“Listen to me,” he urged.

I closed my eyes and stated, “You
tell me, the situation was reversed, you wouldn’t think the same damned thing.”

“I was asleep.”

I opened my eyes. “Bullshit. You
were into her. You’d fought over her that night. You took her back through that
whole thing, even
after
we had
our
thing.”

“I see this, honey. I get you, why
you’d think what you’re thinking. But you gotta listen to me.”

God!

Why couldn’t he ever let it be
over?

“Say it so I can get gone and this
can be
done
,” I hissed.

His arms gave me a gentle squeeze.
“Come sit on the bed with me.”

I jerked against his hold again,
clipping, “Fuck no.”

“All right, Ally, baby, calm down.”

I went still, not because he told
me to, just because I needed my strength. I was holding on by a string.

When he didn’t go on, I ordered,
“Just say it so I can go.”

I heard and felt him draw in a deep
breath.

Then he said, “I get you’re not in
the place right now that what I’m gonna ask is gonna be easy, but I need to
give you what you need and some of it isn’t going to be what you wanna hear.
What it is gonna be is honest.”

I closed my eyes again and clenched
my teeth.

“Are you gonna stick with me and
hear me out?” he asked.

I opened my eyes and snapped, “Just
get it done, Zano.”

“All right, honey.”

God.

Sweet.

Someone kill me.

“I was into her,” he admitted
quietly and my throat closed. “But that night, beer, bourbon and me tellin’ you
I like the Bears was not about her. It was about you and me. Then you snuck
away and I get that, Ally,” he said the last swiftly, his arms going tighter as
he felt my body go solid. “I get why you’d do that. But I didn’t get it
then.
I thought it was something else,
honey, and you know what I thought it was.”

“Yeah, you came over to my place in
the middle of the night and made
that
perfectly clear,” I reminded him.

“I also apologized,” he reminded
me.

Crap.

He did.

I shut my mouth.

“So yeah,” he continued gently as
well as cautiously. “I had feelings for Ava and I had to work through those.
But, Ally,” his arms gave me another squeeze, “she was with another guy. Deep
in it with him. I had no shot. I knew that. We’d never been out on a date. I
hadn’t even kissed her. I was definitely never in love with her.”

“You took her to Carmine’s,” I
reminded him.

“That wasn’t a date, honey,” he
told me. “And you know it. I took her to dinner and took her home to Stark. A
man taking a woman to dinner and dropping her off with another man is not a
date.”

Okay, I had to give him that.

“I thought we’d connected,” I found
myself whispering then I found I couldn’t stop doing it. “We were naked. You
were holding me. And you were thinking about her.”

“She had a lot of shit happening
around her, and I was involved. So it’s not surprising that shit was swirling
in the back of my head. But I
wasn’t
thinking about her. I wasn’t in control of my thoughts. I was unconscious.”

“You just said you were into her,”
I reminded him.

“And I found another woman I was into,
we had a great night, the fuckin’ best, and she blew me off. A man did that to
you, you had no idea why, how would you react? What would you think?”

Oh crap.

That made sense.

And he thought that night was the
best?

“Can we stop talking pressed to the
goddamned door and move to the bed?” he asked.

“Let me go,” I demanded softly.

“Ally—”

“Please let me go, Ren.”

His arms got tight before they went
loose and I stepped away.

I turned and saw him standing
there, eyes on me, but they weren’t pissed. Not even close.

They were warm and concerned.

I closed my eyes against that
beauty and dropped my head.

I had one way to explain this and
make him let me go. Only one.

Was I going to use it?

I opened my eyes and lifted my
head.

I was going to use it.

“For Lee, it was Indy.”

He did a slow blink before he
asked, “Baby… what?”

“For Lee, it was Indy. Only Indy.
It had always been Indy.”

Understanding moved through his
features and he made to come at me but I lifted my hand to him and he stopped.

I dropped my hand. “Eddie screwed
everything that moved, but I swear, the minute he got a load of Jet, he was
gone.”

“Ally, let me—”

I cut him off. “I think you know I
could go on.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“I want that for me,” I shared.

“Honey,” he started carefully, “you
weren’t my first.”

“I wasn’t your first several
things,” I replied.

“I wasn’t in love with her, Ally.
Baby, I hadn’t even kissed her,” he told me.

“Yeah, Ren. But that doesn’t mean
anything. I know because I fell for you
before
you kissed me. It was just that I knew I’d done it the morning after.”

His head jerked, his brows shot up,
but his eyes stayed locked on me.

Then something moved over his face
I didn’t quite get, but it was more than a little alarming, and he growled,
“Come here.”

I had to get this done and get the
hell out of there, so I shook my head. “No, I—”

“Ally. Get. Your ass. Over here,”
he ground out and I blinked.

Then my spine straightened again.

“Zano, don’t you—”

“Fuck it,” he bit off then he was
on me and half a second later he was
on
me
as in, I was on my back in the bed and his body was covering mine.

Macho Alpha Maneuver!

How had I not seen it coming?

“Zano!” I shouted, shoving at his
shoulders

The shoving at the shoulders and
shouting gig didn’t work in the slightest (then again, it never did).

But this time, it was because Ren
was focused.

Like,
really
focused.

“You’re in love with me?” he asked.

“Well, I
was,
” I snapped.

“So you
were
in love with me and then you spent a year sleeping practically
every night at my side, every morning eating breakfast with me, even though you
thought I had feelings for another woman, and you’re not in love with me
anymore,” Ren replied immediately.

That sounded absurd.

Still, I was realizing that maybe
I’d landed myself in hot water and perhaps silence was the key to the hungry
Italian hothead that was lying on top of me not making a meal of me.

Ren didn’t need me to participate
in this discussion and give him more fodder to chew me up and spit me out.

I’d already given him plenty.

I would know this when his eyes
narrowed and he noted, “A year I’ve been busting my ass to get in there and the
whole fucking time I wasn’t just in there, I was
in there.
”

I kept my mouth shut and just gave
him big eyes. Indy cuted her way out of things. She was good at it. It even
sometimes worked on Lee.