Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick 0.5)(24)

Uh-oh.

“Uh…no.”

“Daisy—”

“Honey, you’re bein’ all kinds of sweet. You’ve been all kinds of sweet. Even after I was a bitch to you and you didn’t deserve it.”

“You’re going through a good deal.”

“You still didn’t deserve it.”

He inclined his head, conceding the point like only a gentleman would.

Lord.

“And I appreciate it,” I continued. “Last night wasn’t good. But it happened and now I can get a lock on it. I promise. Swear. It means a lot to me you stepped up when I called. I feel bad I did that, pullin’ you from your bed in the middle of the night, but it felt good you stepped up and did it so sweet. But I’ll get a lock on it. That’s a certainty. So I’m good now and I’m not movin’ in with you.”

“Then I’ll move in with you.”

“Marcus—”

He slid the bacon off the burner, switched it off, set the fork aside, and then turned fully into me, wrapping his other arm around me.

“Last night wasn’t not good, Daisy. Last night was bad. The time it took for me to get to you, I could tell with one look at you in that corner, you were in hell. After I got to you, it didn’t get much better. I’m not allowing that to happen again.”

“But, now it’s happened, I can—”

“I have a guest room. It’s nice. You can stay in there. Alternately, if you prefer to be in your own home, since you don’t have a guest room set up, I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s where you wish me to be.”

“This is—”

“And you need to talk to someone about what happened to you.”

I felt my eyes get squinty. “Will you let me finish?”

“Not if you say things that, I’m sorry, darling, aren’t smart. You’re not looking after yourself. You’re not letting Smithie and LaTeesha look after you. And since you’re not, I’m stepping in.”

“You been gone a week,” I pointed out snappily.

“You needed time, and I assessed from our last conversation, space. I gave it to you. You curled up, terrified in a corner, I’m done doing that.”

“You don’t get it.”

“No, I don’t. You’ve attempted to explain and I still don’t. Mostly because I never got the concept of bullshit and I still don’t, even when a beautiful woman is trying to feed it to me.”

Honestly?

I couldn’t take any more.

And because I couldn’t, something snapped in me.

It snapped inside and it snapped me right out of his arms.

I took a step back but lifted my hands and planted them in his chest, shoving him.

He rocked back on a foot but I retreated three, lifted my hand, and jabbed a finger at him.

“You don’t get it!” I shrieked.

“Then give it to me,” he whispered.

The change in his tone didn’t register on me. The look on his face.

Nothing.

“I forgot my lip gloss. My lip gloss!” I screamed. “Not my tips. Not my phone. Not somethin’ important. My…f*cking…lip gloss.”

“Okay, honey,” he said gently.

“Went back for f*cking lip gloss.”

“All right, Daisy.”

“Out of the blue,” I swung my raised arm wide and dropped it, “he jumps me. Do you know how it feels to be somewhere you think you’re safe, doin’ something you got every right to do, and some * jumps you?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t feel real good,” I shared.

Marcus didn’t say anything.

“I can take a slap. I can take the back of a hand. Daddy taught me that. Not to mention a number of Momma’s other men who had that kinda thing honed real good.”

I watched his jaw get hard, a muscle shift up his cheek, but that didn’t register on me either.

“I can even take a punch. More than one * I let in there gave me that lesson.”

“Christ,” he bit out.

I ignored that and the emotion behind it.

“But that, that, and what he gave me after he gave me my beating, that I hadn’t been taught.”

“No woman needs that lesson.”

“Well, I got it,” I snapped.

“And he’ll get his.”

“Right, with you puttin’ a bullet in his brain?”

“Precisely.”

I cocked my head to the side, feeling my hair move with me, and ground out, “You barely know me and you got that much feelin’ for me you’re willin’ to take that on your soul?”

“Yes.”

At that, the firmness of it, the simplicity, I rocked back like he’d shoved me.

“You don’t want me to do that, he didn’t rape me. That’s your call,” he stated. “I’ll have him brought to the police. You don’t give a f*ck about that *, he’s dead. At my hand. And I won’t take pleasure from it. But it cannot be denied, when it’s done, it won’t give me satisfaction.”

“Now you are tryin’ to scare me,” I accused.

“No.” He shook his head. “In my world, actions have consequences. You are far from dumb, Daisy. You know the world I live in. You might not know the rules but you know there are rules. And no one breaks them. If they do, they suffer retribution as decreed by the laws of the street. He violated my turf and I mean that in the sense I own part of Smithie’s. But he violated something that’s just plain mine and for that, he suffers the ultimate reckoning.”