Rock Chick 08 Revolution (24 page)

And he did all of it while he
answered, “Ma couldn’t let go of shit, but she had to get rid of it. She bided
her time for years, keeping it for her kids, and when we left home, she divvied
it out. I got a champagne bucket I never needed until now, and ‘cause she had
to unload that shit, I didn’t argue. What I did do was keep it just in case she
changed her mind and wanted it back.”

I remembered during Brother’s, beer
and bourbon he said his mother couldn’t deal when his dad died and I was
curious to know more. Most especially why Ren relayed this seemingly tame,
though sad information without looking at me.

But I sensed now was not the time
to dig into that.

So I just said, “Right.”

He dropped his fork on his plate,
went back to his flute and held it up to me. “Toast, baby.”

Oh shit. A toast could mean
anything and that anything could include more of my undoing.

In order to ascertain whether or
not to prepare, I asked, “Are you going to say something that’s going to make
me feel warm inside?”

His beautiful espresso eyes lit,
his lips quirked, and he asked back, “I make you feel warm inside?”

Like he needed me to confirm that.

I gave him a look as answer.

He gave me a grin.

“Okay, how’s this?” he began,
lifting his flute half an inch. “To my top ten. Eyes. Ass. Pussy. Hair. Tits.
Lips. Neck. Legs. Backs of your knees. Ankles. In that order.”

My brows shot up because I was
shocked.

“My ass is before my happy place?”

At that, his beautiful espresso
eyes were actually
dancing
(no joke),
his body was shaking and his words were rumbling with laughter when he asked,
“Your happy place?”

“Dude, totally happy.”

He let fly and burst out laughing.

I watched, enjoyed the show, and
when it waned, I lifted my glass and said, “To your top ten.”

We clinked. We drank. But before we
set our glasses aside, Ren’s hand snaked out, hooked me behind the neck and
pulled me to him for a hard, closed mouth kiss.

When he was done, he turned his
attention to his food and I followed suit thinking I really liked his dining
room table.

I’d had a bite when he demanded,
“Right, let’s get the bad out of the way. Update.”

I forked into a piece of kung pao
shrimp and gave him what I knew he wanted, which was what I’d gleaned from a
variety of phone calls I took while shopping.

Though it wasn’t much.

“No hack. Brody was affronted it
was even suggested that could happen. But it hasn’t. The author’s website is
registered to a non-existent address somewhere in bumfuck Wyoming. The name
it’s registered under is not the author’s name, but it’s also a person who
doesn’t exist.”

“Dead ends,” Ren murmured, sounding
displeased.

“Sorry, honey,” I murmured back.
His eyes caught mine and he nodded. “They’re widening the net,” I assured him.

He nodded again while turning his
attention back to his plate.

I took a bite, swallowed and kept
to our current theme of getting the bad out of the way by saying, “I got some
more bad news today.”

His eyes came to me and, seriously,
no joke, I could do nothing for a year but stare into those eyes and I’d be
totally cool.

Maybe two years.

Or three.

“What?” he asked when I said
nothing.

I stopped focusing on his eyes and
focused on him.

“Called my landlord to check in.
He’s letting me out of my lease, which is his nice way of saying he’s evicting
me.”

The easy we’d fallen into being
together
together
disintegrated when
his anger hit the room with a heavy weight, and I felt my back straighten.

“Say that again,” he ordered.

“It’s okay, Ren. If you’re okay
with me hanging here awhile, I’ll find a new place.”

“No, Ally, it isn’t fuckin’ okay.
Everything you own is ash in an explosion that was not your responsibility. It
had nothing to do with you and everything to do with a pot-addled moron in New
Mexico you haven’t seen in two years. So it’s not okay that you pay further for
that guy bein’ a moron. You’ve tolerated too many knocks in too short a period
of time. Your landlord isn’t going to land another one.”

He reached to his champagne, threw
some back and finished his alpha badass statement while placing the glass on
the table.

“I’ll have a word with him. You’re
good to stay here until they repair the damage.”

“Ren, I’m down with being let out
of the lease.”

He again turned his gaze to me.
“I’m
not
down with it. I’ll have a
word.”

“But—”

“Ally, no.”

I waited for him to say more. But
it seemed he figured,
Ally, no,
was
the end of it, and I knew this because he resumed eating.

I took in a deep breath. Then I ate
more shrimp. Then I took a sip of champagne. After that, I took another deep
breath.

Nope.

None of that worked. I didn’t feel
calm. I felt like mouthing off, being a smartass and making a massive point.

However, that was not an option
open to me during a special dinner with my hot guy.

So I turned my eyes to Ren and did
everything I could to break our pattern of fighting instead of conversing.

That was to say, I struggled to
sound calm when I said, “It’s both cool and hot, this gig of you wanting to
protect me and stick up for me. But I just want to make it clear right now,
honey, that you don’t get to make and carry through decisions about my life
without discussing them with me. And just to be
crystal
clear, discussing is a courtesy I extend to you. My life is
my life, and in the end, I make the decisions.”

His head had turned to me while I
was talking and I was feeling pleased with myself for dropping the “honey” in
my statement, thinking that softened it nicely.

“Your life is not your life,” he
replied, and I expected a lot of things, particularly him saying something in
Asshole or him dismissing me.

That
I didn’t expect. I also didn’t understand it.

“I don’t follow,” I told him.

He shook his head and stated, “I’ve
changed my mind. I won’t talk to your landlord.”

That was better.

Surprising. Surprisingly easy. But
better.

Maybe he wanted to break the
pattern of shouting at each other too.

“Thanks, honey,” I said softly.

“Because you’re movin’ in with me.”

I blinked.

“What?”

He put his fork down and turned
fully to me and I didn’t suspect this boded good things.

I would be proved right.

“Ally, your life is not your life.
We love each other, and in case you missed it, that means we’ve committed to
each other. So your life and how you lead it affects me. So yeah, we discuss
things. But you don’t make decisions we disagree on about shit that affects me—in
other words, your life. You also need to have a mind to my need to protect you.
I know this is not news that I have this need. You picked me, you signed on for
that. But all that’s moot. We already decided you’re gonna stay awhile.
Yesterday, you lost everything. Today, you found out you can’t go back. Backed
in a corner by circumstances, thinking on it, shit often happens for a reason
and even bad shit leads to good things. And this particular good thing is that
there’s absolutely no reason not to make the arrangement we already agreed on
permanent.”

“Zano, making that permanent is a
big leap from what we had to roomies.”

“Baby,” his voice (and expression,
I’ll add—double whammy) turned sweet, “there is
never
a time we’re gonna be just roomies.”

My eyes narrowed, not because I
didn’t like what he said (a lot).

They narrowed because I was getting
a sneaking suspicion he turned on the sweet in order to get his way. I’d missed
it for months because usually by the time he turned on the sweet, we were
shouting at each other.

Things were now coming clear.

I tried to keep the sarcasm out of
my, “Maybe I think there are absolutely
some
reasons not to make the arrangement we agreed on permanent.”

It should be noted, although I said
it, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to make it permanent.

If pressed though, I’d make
something up.

He leaned into me. “Tell me, since
Sadie’s thing, when you’re not working or gallivanting, when have you been at
your apartment and I haven’t been there with you?”

Uh-oh.

He was making sense.

And I wasn’t fond of the word
“gallivanting.”

Sure, one could say I gallivanted.
My net was not wide, but I got around.

Still.

“And tell me,” he continued, “when
have you had downtime at all when you were not in your apartment, with me, or
you weren’t here…” He paused to drive his point home. Then he drove it home. “
With me.
”

More sense.

Gack!

“Babe, we already live together,
and we’ve been doin’ it for eight months. It’s just that our clothes were in
different closets,” he finished.

Jeez, we were so totally not fuck
buddies. No wonder Ren found that amusing.

This thought and his words meant I
kept glaring at him, mostly because he was right and that sucked.

But as I did this, something stole
through me.

And what that was was the fact that
Lee essentially moved Indy in with him the day her thing started. They never
separated after that.

And now they were married.

Jet had succeeded in keeping a hint
of distance between her and Eddie for about a week. Then he moved her in and
she never left.

And now
they
were married and
she
was pregnant.

Much the same thing happened with
Roxie, Jules, Ava, Stella and Sadie.

And when I said “much the same
thing” I meant near on
exactly.

Holy crap.

I wasn’t a Rock Chick.

I was a
Rock Chick!

That meant…

That meant…

That meant Ren and I were getting
married!

Holy
crap!

I fought hyperventilating and did
it by sucking back champagne.

This was a stupid move because,
once done, I started choking.

“Ally? Baby?” Ren called, and I saw
him move and then he was leaned into me, hand rubbing my back. “You okay?”

I sucked in oxygen, twisted my neck
to look at him, and declared, “We’re getting married.”

His chin jerked back and his brows
shot up. “Now?”

“Not now!” I cried, falling back in
my chair. He straightened to standing, but I tipped my head back so I could
keep my eyes glued to him. “During her thing, Indy and Lee moved in together.
The same with Jet and Eddie. Roxie and Hank. Jules and Vance. You get my drift.
Now all of them are married. Ava and Luke are getting hitched on the weekend.
And three weeks ago, Sadie strolled into a Girls Night Out with a diamond on
her finger.” I stretched my torso up to him and announced, “Ren, we’re
screwed.”

At that, his brows knit.

“You don’t want to get married?”

“No,” I answered, and completely
ignored his expression shutting down in order to continue to have my nervous
breakdown. “For the next five years I want to engage in copious amounts of
hanky-panky until my biological clock starts ticking so loud I can’t ignore it
anymore. Then I want to engage in copious amounts of hanky-panky in order to
get pregnant. Prior to part two, I want to get married.”

He sat down but didn’t take his
eyes from me as he stated, “This doesn’t sound like a bad plan.”

“It’s not. It’s a righteous plan.”

“Then why are you freaked?” he
asked.

“Because no way am I falling into
the pattern of meatloaf, Letterman and missionary, and with practice, that’s a
possibility.”

His head jerked before he asked,
“Ally,
what?
”

“I like meatloaf but it’s boring,”
I explained. “I like chicken parmesan way better. Letterman rocks but I’d
prefer to do other things when he’s on. And missionary is my fifth most
favorite position behind lotus, cowgirl, scissor and doggie.”

It was Ren’s turn to blink.

Then he again burst out laughing.

When he was done laughing, but he
was still chuckling, he calmly picked up his fork and speared some sesame
chicken before he said to his plate, “So you’re movin’ in.”

Shit.

“Yeah,” I answered, spearing another
shrimp.

“Baby?” he called, and I looked at
him.

Oh God.

The look on his face was a new
look. It corresponded with the tone of his voice earlier that day. And it was
so beautiful, my heart skipped a beat and I lost the ability to think.

And speak (mostly).

“We’re never gonna have meatloaf,
Letterman and missionary,” he said softly.

“’Kay,” I replied breathily.

“And if you can pare down that five
year fuck-a-thon to two or three, I’d appreciate it,” he went on.

“’Kay,” I repeated.

“Though, during that two year
fuck-a-thon, you may have one, then two of my rings on your finger.”

Oh shit.

Even me, Ally, Rock Chick, that
didn’t make me warm inside.

It made me melty.

“’Kay,” I breathed, and his eyes
warmed.

“Just to give you something to look
forward to, we’ll stop the fuck-a-thon when we have to, but we’ll resume soon’s
we can after you give me healthy babies.”

Oh
God.

I felt my eyes get hot.

Ren and I were getting married.

Not now.

But eventually.

Oh.

God
.

“You really love me,” I whispered.

“Do not ever doubt it,” he
whispered back.

“How did that happen?” I kept
whispering.

“You accepted my devotion to the
Bears only dishin’ out minimal shit.”