Rock Chick Revolution (Rock Chick #8)(29)

I didn’t know why I did it. I just knew I needed to do it and he was the only one around.

So I did it.

I pressed my hands and face into his chest and let it all hang out.

“I thought she’d been mean to Daisy. I thought she hated Hector. And I came to Lee’s office the day she came to Lee’s office to ask for his protection.” My head shot back and I cried, “And I was mean!”

His hand soothingly stroking my back (and I had to admit, I’d lost it, but it still was soothing) moved to cup my jaw and he replied, “I know what went down with Daisy and Sadie, and also Sadie and Hector, and Sadie’s not the kind of girl who lets people in. So at the time, honey, you couldn’t think anything different.”

“She got raped that night, Ren!” I stated loudly.

“I know, baby,” he said comfortingly.

“Now she’s a Rock Chick and you heard her tonight!” I kept talking loudly, tears sliding from my eyes. “And I haven’t figured out how to make amends.”

“You and your posse taking her in and having her back is doing that, Ally,” he pointed out.

“Obviously not fast enough!” I returned. “But none of my posse was ugly to her. Except me and Shirleen, but Shirleen got her chance to make amends. Sadie even asked for her.”

And this was true. Shirleen was Darius’s aunt, Lee’s receptionist, and also a Rock Chick of the Daisy variety (which meant she wasn’t attached to a Hot Bunch boy, but she was a Rock Chick all the same).

She’d been snippy with Sadie that day. But when Sadie finally reported her rape, she’d asked for Shirleen to be there.

“Ally, baby, what happened with Sadie tonight didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“I know that,” I snapped, yanking out of his arms and taking a step away. “But she…” I shook my head. “God, that monster broke her wrist. Gashed her face. Made her feel tawdry.”

“Come back to me, honey,” Ren urged.

I shook my head again. “No. I can’t.” I stopped talking, started pacing then kept babbling. “I have to sort this out in my head.”

I continued pacing and Ren didn’t say anything.

This didn’t last very long before he said something.

“Jesus, you really can’t deal with being mean,” Ren murmured incredulously.

I stopped pacing and whipped around to face him. It was dark but I still could feel he was watching me.

“Not to someone who doesn’t deserve it!” I yelled. “I’m all for a smackdown if a bitch is a bitch. But Sadie is no bitch.”

“No, she’s not,” Ren agreed cautiously.

“So that means I kicked a sister when that sister was low. I don’t do that shit, Zano.”

“Fuck, you’re back to Zano,” he muttered.

“What?” I asked sharply.

“Nothing, honey. Just come here, will you?”

I shook my head again. “No. I…” my eyes narrowed on him and I re-asked an earlier question. “What are you doing here?”

He gave me the same answer. “I was worried about you.”

“You ditched your date because you were worried about me?”

“Yes,” he answered immediately.

Shit.

What did I do with that?

“Ally, look at me,” he ordered.

I was looking at him, or at least I was looking at his shadow. But he sensed I wasn’t focused, and how he could sense that, I had no clue. It weirded me out and made me feel all warm inside at the same time.

Still, I focused on him and he sensed when I did that, too.

Yikes.

When I did, hesitantly and gently, he asked, “Did something like what happened to Sadie happen to you?”

Oh God.

He thought I’d been raped.

That was why he was worried.

I couldn’t let him think that so I replied softly, “No, Ren.”

“Back to Ren,” he whispered.

Oh shit.

He was trying to figure me out.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Okay, time to end this.

“I—” I started to do that, but that was as far as I got.

“Shut up and listen to me.”

I clamped my mouth shut, and I did this with a bit of surprise and not a bit of temper since he’d suddenly turned macho alpha on me.

Before I could start yelling, he started talking.

“I don’t know what’s up with you, but tonight, watching you at the gallery in a dress that succeeded in making me fight my dick getting hard faster than that other one, and your response to what went down with Sadie, I don’t give a f**k.”

He’d been watching me?

When?

And how did I miss that?

Ren kept talking.

“You take the backs of that crew of yours like your blood flows through their veins. Indy may be their foundation, Daisy and Shirleen the emotional support. But you’re the backbone.”

Jeez.

How did he know so much about the Rock Chicks?

And why did what he said make me feel even warmer inside?

And last, why the hell was he saying this shit at all?

He didn’t make me wait for an answer to the last.

“You don’t need to make amends to Sadie. You’re set on giving her a lifetime of sisterhood the like she’s never had before and never even dreamed of having. That’ll do it, so you can let that go.”