I thought Ally was a good bet and Lottie should have started with her first. Mostly because I didn’t know her all that well, but what I did know was that Ally was a badass and wouldn’t take any guff from anyone.
Especially a guy.
“Normally,” Ally said over the speaker, “I’d say stick to your guns. The thing is, at this point, we have no idea how big this is. We just know it’s big. So it’s an uncertain situation that means better safe than sorry.”
Well then.
Hell.
That made sense.
It sucked.
But it made sense.
After that, I stopped Lottie from running through all the Rock Chicks mostly because it was getting late and she, Pepper and Hattie all had to get to the club to dance.
But not me.
Oh no.
I was on “vacation.”
(Huh.)
The girls left, but Lottie didn’t go until Mo was relieved by Axl, who showed at my place not hiding the fact he was ticked at me that I’d pissed off Boone.
We had a terse (his side), awkward (my side) convo about his security detail that included him sharing he was the night guy and would be sleeping on my couch.
He did not accept my offer to cook him dinner (probably a wise choice, I was no kitchen diva, still, I thought my offer was nice) and took what I suspected were way more than needed opportunities to go outside and “scan the area.”
I went to bed early, because, you know, I’d had a rough day.
I also went to bed before I got any more ticked that Boone had not called or even texted to apologize.
Not surprisingly, I did not find it easy to get to sleep.
And this did not center around all the shit swirling in my life or how angry I was at Boone.
This centered around the aforementioned epiphany that I probably should have taken a second to cool my jets rather than confront Boone angrily about his domineering.
Yes, absolutely, it was not okay that he went to speak to my boss before he spoke to me and decisions were made about me and my life and my employment that I was not a party to.
And yes, absolutely, we needed to have words about the fact that Boone was big on interrupting me, so communication was seriously fucking lopsided.
But shit was extreme.
Like, extreme extreme.
Like, sex-offender-at-my-back-door-shot-dead extreme.
Extreme for me, but also through me, for him.
After a good freaking deal of restless bedtime thought, it did not escape me that if this or something like it was happening to him, I’d go into hyper-charged protection mode.
And okay, maybe I couldn’t do that swinging my big dick because I didn’t have a big dick (Boone’s dick, by the by, I had not actually seen, but I’d felt it, and one could say it was sizable, gah!). I had also not gone through military training. And I did not have in my history protecting a sheikh’s son.
But no matter how new we were, deep down, I knew we were special. I knew he was important. I knew this was way meaningful, what we’d just begun to build, and I knew that before bathroom sink sex.
I knew that before we even began.
Which was what scared me about beginning, because if I had it, the good I knew I’d have with Boone, I couldn’t mess it up.
But there I was, messing it up.
Because I would protect the shit out of him, but this wasn’t happening to him. It was happening to me. And he was doing what I would do. His best to protect the shit out of me, doing it being the man he was, which was mega-alpha dominant.
And with his reaction to what I said, I was now realizing he was experiencing some (unearned) guilt at feeling responsible (when he was not) that I’d been vulnerable to attack.
But that was also the guy he was.
I might not know him all that well, but that I knew.
Not to mention, the not small fact that I’d promised him that very morning I wouldn’t let him fuck us up, and there I was, letting him fuck us up and doing that participating fully in the same thing.
And Boone couldn’t know this (or maybe he did, which would be an additional reason behind what he did), but there was no way in hell I was going to share with Smithie, or Ian, what was going down for two reasons.
I didn’t want them worried.
And I didn’t want them to do what Smithie had done.
Which was seriously pathologically self-involved because I didn’t see beyond myself to see that would have put Smithie in a bind because, if he or anyone at the club was targeted, he’d be blindsided.
And that would be on me.
This was the uncomfortable thought upon which I fell asleep.
And when I was asleep, I did not sleep well.