Rock Chick 08 Revolution (5 page)

When I quit flinching, I noted his
angry attention was back to me and he asked, “Were you drunker than I thought
last night?”

“No,” I answered.

“So you remember what went down
last night.”

“Yes,” I snapped, then tried to get
him onto a subject I wanted to talk about, namely him leaving, but I didn’t get
the chance.

He kept talking.

“
All
that went down last night?”

“Yes!”

My voice was rising because I
did
remember all that went down last
night. And how I felt when I woke up that morning. But mostly I remembered the
name he called me when I was lying there, thinking he was my
one,
and he was lying there holding on
to a substitute body that, since he had no shot with the real one, was just
going to have to do.

“So tell me, honey, if you weren’t
hammered and you remember all that went down last night, why did I wake up to
an empty bed this morning?” he asked.

“I had shit to do,” I answered, and
it wasn’t totally a lie. I always had shit to do. I was a busy girl.

“You had shit to do,” he said low,
and his eyes were a tad bit scary.

But I didn’t scare easily.

“Yep,” I replied.

“And it was so pressing you
couldn’t wake me and tell me you had to go?”

“Yep, it was that pressing.” Now,
that was totally a lie.

“And it was so pressing you
couldn’t find a minute to jot down a note?”

Okay, suffice it to say, I was done
with this bullshit. If he needed someone to give it to him regular while he
waited for Ava, and to continue to give it to him regular when he realized that
he’d never get Ava, he’d have to find someone else.

In order to communicate that to
him, I stated, “Dude, we hooked up. That’s it. Or that’s all
I
remember. But maybe I
was
drunker than I thought. Did I miss
the part where you slid a ring on my finger?”

This was the
wrong
thing to say, and I knew it when the room filled with
something so oppressive, it was stifling. No joke. I literally couldn’t
breathe.

As I mentioned, I didn’t scare
easily.

But the truth of it was, I didn’t
get scared. There wasn’t a situation that I remember ever being in where I
didn’t feel in control or think I could find a way to regain control. I also had
the gene passed down through my family where I could sense when things were
going bad in a way that I would lose control and not get it back, and I was
smart enough to get the fuck out of Dodge when I found myself in those kinds of
situations.

But right then, feeling suffocated
by the sheer force of Lorenzo Zano’s anger, I felt a hint of genuine fear.

Then his anger dissipated.

Vanished.

It did this instantly when he said,
“I get it. You’re a Nightingale.”

My back snapped straight at his
tone, which said it all about his implication. I just didn’t know for certain
what he was implying, just that it was no good.

So I asked, “What does that mean?”

“That means both your brothers laid
waste to most of the talented pussy in Denver. Took what they wanted, walked
away and never looked back. Not surprising, you a Nightingale, that’s your
thing. Except you collect cock.”

And on that very effective parting
shot, he turned, jerked open the door and slammed it behind him.

Standing in my apartment in the
dead of night staring at the door, I didn’t feel my heart squeeze.

I felt it shrivel up and die.

* * * * *

Not surprisingly, in the coming
days as Ava’s drama (that partly had to do with her courtship with Luke, but
mostly had to do with the fact that the Rock Chicks were magnets for trouble)
played out, I saw Ren again.

Both times he was up in Ava’s
business, giving her soft looks and taking her back.

However, he did look at me. Once.
When Ava’s drama reached its grand finale.

But the look he gave me was far
from soft.

Unsurprisingly.

I acted like I didn’t give a shit.

Deep down, though, I knew it didn’t
make any sense.

I also knew it killed.

Chapter Two

We Got a Deal

Rock Chick Rewind

Three
weeks later…

I was sitting at the bar in Club, a
happening hotspot in Cherry Creek that posed as a posh eatery but was mostly a
pickup spot. I had on a little black dress that did the best it could (and its
best was far from bad; the dress was
scorching
)
with what little cleavage I had. I had on killer strappy black sandals that I’d
borrowed from Indy, who had borrowed them from our friend Tod, the premier drag
queen in Denver, and she’d not returned them.

Tod wouldn’t mind. He was generous
with his shoes. I had three pairs of them in my closet already. He also had two
pairs of mine.

I was there because I had my eye on
Zach Gilligan, the guy a friend of mine, Helen, was dating. They’d been
together for a while and she liked him a lot. But she suspected from some of
the behavior he was exhibiting that he had a nasty habit that was the reason
she had cash going missing from her wallet more than once. And last week, she’d
“lost” the diamond pendant her grandmother gave her when she graduated from the
University of Colorado ten years ago.

She feared her cash and the diamond
she treasured was going up his nose.

I had no idea how I was going to
prove this fact, outside of watching him with his buds, eating steak, drinking
martinis, laughing, and him being the loudest and liveliest of the lot because
he was so obviously coked to the gills. But I couldn’t just tell Helen he
looked high. She was into him and
really
didn’t want to believe he was stealing from her.

It was going to have to be an eye
witness account.

I was hoping that eye witness
account wouldn’t include me following him to a meet with a dealer. I tried to
give dealers a wide berth. Jules got jacked up by a low level dealer and ended
up killing him before he killed her because he’d already put a fair amount of
effort into that (in other words, two bullets in her body). For obvious reasons
I wanted to avoid situations like that.

I didn’t even own a gun. I wasn’t
prepared for getting on dealer radar, nor did I ever think I would be. Though,
since I planned to keep doing what I was doing, I knew it might happen.

I just wasn’t prepared (yet).

So I was waiting for my shot to
follow him to the bathroom. If guys were in there and they saw me when I
entered, I’d pretend I was tipsy and went in the wrong door. But I was willing
to do it in the hope I’d catch him in the act. If I caught him in the act,
Helen would believe me. Totally. We were tight.

I was thinking this when I heard a
familiar voice say from behind me, “Ally.”

Chills slid over my skin and weight
settled in my gut as I realized my mistake.

In order to watch Zach with his
boys in a back booth, I’d put my back to the door.

Which meant I was ripe for attack.

Fuck.

I turned on my stool and looked up
at Ren.

He was wearing a well-tailored suit
that looked good on him.

As for the rest, everything that
was him, top to toe, was the thing of dreams.

It was then something I always
loved—the fact that Denver was huge, sprawling,
dynamic, eclectic, diverse and energetic, but could still be a small
town—became something I hated.

Living there my whole life, I never
went out without knowing there was a very good chance I’d bump into someone I
knew, liked, and would shoot the shit with them in a grocery aisle or arrange
to go to a movie or end up in a bar sucking back Fat Tires until we had to
order a taxi.

Then there were times, and there
were few, when I ran into someone I most definitely did not want to see.

Like now.

“Hey,” I greeted.

“Hey,” he replied. He looked at the
empty stool beside me and back at me. “Got a minute?”

I didn’t. I had to keep an eye on
Zach and time his bathroom break so it worked for me, and hopefully for my
friend Helen.

But I didn’t want to blow off Ren.
That might give him the impression he’d shredded me. Or at the very least upset
me.

He
had
shredded me. No doubt. It made no sense. Drinks, conversation,
great sex and just one night. How that could lead to me feeling dead inside, I
had no clue.

I just knew it did. And I wasn’t
one of those chicks who denied things. I was real with everybody. Including
myself.

But not including Ren. No way
in hell
I was going to let on he’d done
that to me.

Therefore, I said, “Sure,” and
turned my whole body his way.

He sat and caught the bartender’s
eye.

As we were waiting for the
bartender to arrive, I looked for a hot babe hanging back and found none, so I asked,
“You here alone?”

His eyes came to me. “Business
dinner. Saw you, told them to start without me.”

That was interesting. We hadn’t
really parted on good terms. If it were the other way around, I wouldn’t make
the approach.

Before I could dig deeper, or, the
better option, find some way to blow him off without letting on I was doing it,
the bartender came.

Ren ordered, “Vodka gimlet,” and I
felt my eyes widen slightly. “What?” he asked when he looked at me.

“You’re a gimlet man?” I asked
back.

“I like booze,” he answered. “I’ll
drink anything but tonight I’m in the mood for sour.”

I didn’t know what to do with that.

His brows went up a couple of
centimeters. “You got a problem with the gimlet?”

“I’m a bartender, Ren. A gimlet
order is rare. But when it comes, it’s women who order it.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Know
you’re tight with men who drink blood and eat nails, babe, but just to say,
what a man drinks does not make that man.”

I didn’t know what to make of that
either, except I didn’t like it all that much. Much like I didn’t like his
parting shot of weeks ago, also a slur on my family.

“Do you have a problem with my
family that I don’t know about?” I asked.

“No, and don’t know how you got
that from what I said. What I got a problem with is you giving me shit about
what I drink.”

“I wasn’t giving you shit. I was
just surprised,” I corrected him.

“Ally, in case you don’t know this
already, a man is not gonna take kindly to anyone sayin’ he drinks a woman’s
drink or does a womanly
anything.
”

I had to admit, he had a point. And
I had to admit, I’d done that. I also had to admit, that was a wee bit uncool.

Still, he didn’t have to get so
irritable about it. I mean, I was very well acquainted with his manhood
and
his ability to utilize it with
exceptional proficiency. I’d communicated learning this knowledge by having
orgasms the likes of which he could not mistake as fake. Therefore, I’d hardly
question it.

Whatever.

Seriously time to move on. I
shouldn’t have said yes to his “minute.” I shouldn’t give a shit about what he
thought about me. I didn’t anyone else. Why him?

Instead of pondering that question
now, I decided to do it later and asked, “I see you stopped by to spread cheer,
but I’m in the middle of something. So maybe we can wrap this up so I can get
back to it?”

His eyes looked to my untouched
martini, my dress, my legs, my ass in the stool and around the restaurant
before coming back to me. “What are you in the middle of?”

“Something,” I replied. “Now is
there something you needed?”

He studied me, again did his
scanning thing of me and our surroundings, then he looked back at my face and
stated straight out, “I fucked this up.”

That was a surprise statement so my
head cocked to the side. “What?”

His gimlet arrived, taking his
attention again. He told the bartender to put it on his table’s tab and turned
again to me.

“I didn’t come over here to be a
dick. I came over here to apologize for being a dick.”

Now that…

That
threw me.

The men of my acquaintance didn’t apologize.
They admitted no wrong verbally and instead did things (maybe) to make amends
physically.

Of course, most of that was the Hot
Bunch dealing with their Rock Chicks so I had not experienced it personally.
Still, I’d heard about it.
All
about
it. And sometimes I’d witnessed it. But I’d never experienced it.

I said nothing.

Ren kept talking.

“I had a good time with you. You’re
funny. That whole thing you got goin’ on.” He flipped a hand out to me, my
guess his flip indicating all that was me. “It’s good. It works for you. It
works in a big way for me. You’re fuckin’ gorgeous. You’re a fantastic fucking
lay. It was a good night. I got pissed you took off when I wanted more. Came to
your house, acted like a dick and you didn’t deserve that shit. No excuse for
it. But you gotta know, I felt like an asshole because I
was
an asshole. I’m glad I had the chance to tell you I know I was
an asshole.”

On that, as I stared at him, lips
parted, he grabbed his drink and slid off the stool.

Looking down at me, his gaze moving
over my face and hair, he finally caught my eyes and said quietly, “And you
look good tonight, honey. Beautiful.”

Still staring at him, lips parted,
he turned and walked away.

It took me a while to stop focusing
on all that he said, and the vision of him burned into my eyeballs walking away
(he seriously could rock a suit), in order to pull myself together.

But I was Ally Nightingale, so pull
myself together I did.

I turned back to Zach, but grabbed
my martini on the go. I wasn’t a martini girl. More like tequila. Though I was
like Ren, I enjoyed booze and could drink anything. But the martini was what I
had and I needed to wash what just happened away, at least for now, so it would
have to do.