And mind you, that worst day bested the fact that I’d been in a firefight in the parking lot of a goddamned mall and was currently barred from seeing my beloved niece and nephew because of my pathologically self-involved not-quite sister-in-law and alcoholic brother.
So we could just say that was a bad fucking day.
But noooooo…
My mega-alpha dominant damned Dom of a maybe-kinda boyfriend thought this was all about him, threw a mood and stalked out.
Huh.
Obviously, the girl gang decided something needed to be done about this (not the Boone part, he could go fuck himself as far as I was concerned, or, at least at that moment I thought he could—about the Smithie part).
Thus, we made the decision to haul our asses to the club and let Smithie know exactly how we felt about all this shit.
Mo was not a big fan of this.
What Mo was, was a pushover for his woman.
So, even though he was by no means hip on driving me and Lottie in his truck with Evie, Pepper and Hattie trailing in Evie’s Prius, that was what he did.
Commence us storming into Smithie’s office en masse, which I thought was pretty cool, and I loved my girls even more for having my back in doing it.
But before any of us could open our mouths to get one word out, Smithie decreed, “My decision is final.”
To which maybe (okay, definitely) stupidly, I replied, “I’m not accepting pity money.”
“It’s not pity money,” Smithie shot back. “Think of it like you’re on vacation. Which right now you are, seeing as, to assuage your fuckin’ pride, we’ll start with your PTO.”
Huh, again.
“Vacation in hiding from bad cops?” I asked.
To which Hattie asked, “Are the guys putting you in hiding?”
I looked to her. “I don’t know. Boone and I didn’t get that far.”
“I bet Hawk has like, a gazillion safe houses. Probably on about three continents. Maybe four. Maybe he has one by a beach,” Pepper said.
“I’m not going to a safe house,” I declared.
“I would, if it was by a beach,” Pepper replied.
“A beach would make it seem like a vacation,” Evie put in.
Unfortunately, she was right.
And if Boone came along, it’d be a great vacation.
I could not focus on this. I had to focus on important shit.
Yeah.
You’re reading it right.
That would be focusing on the “important shit” of having the absolute wrong reaction to all that was going down with me.
And that would be getting in the face of people who were trying to look out for me.
By the by, it would take a while for me to have this epiphany, so wait for it.
In that moment, however, Smithie cut in to share, “I’m not changing my mind. Until it’s safe for you, you’re not onstage. And Ryn, when you get your head out of your ass about all of this, you’ll realize that’s not only about looking after your best interests, but the shit at play here, I gotta protect a whole lot more than just you.”
He swung his arm out, indicating the “whole lot more” included the other girls then went so far as twisting to swing his arm behind him toward the back wall to indicate the club.
“We’re talking dirty cops,” he continued. “I run a strip joint. I bet you can think of at least a dozen scenarios where they could find reasons to fuck with me, you, and my entire staff. I’ll also bet they can think of three dozen. Are you understanding me?”
Okay, so at that juncture, it was dawning on me that it might be me that was being pathologically self-involved.
Cue us leaving the club with our tails tucked between our legs.
Though Lottie, surprisingly, the most together of all of us, the most mature, was the one not feeling it.
So not feeling it, she ranted and raved the entire way home about how life couldn’t just come to a complete stop because some assholes had targeted me.
This meant by the time we got home, I was no longer feeling it.
And thus, when we reconvened with the other girls, we got them to not feeling it (and just to say, Mo did a lot of studying the ceiling during all of this, as well as heavy sighing, but he spoke not a word), and in the end, Lottie got on the phone, starting with Jet, her sister.
She ran it down, on speakerphone, after which Jet, the second Rock Chick to face her ordeal, said, “I hear you. I get it. But take it from one who knows, and I’ll just say, I said this same thing to all the Rock Chicks that came after me. Don’t fight it. Keep your head down. The boys do eventually sort it out and the only thing you’re doing is soothing your pride and mucking up the works.”
Lottie (who, I should share at this juncture, was a pretty tough broad, and I was also seeing she could be a dog with a bone) refused to accept that response, rang off with Jet, and called Ally.