“How you doin’?” he asked, still gentle.

“Good,” I lied in answer. I was not good, not with him in my car looking beautiful and being sweet. Not with me being a bitch to a girl who’d been raped. Not simply knowing someone who’d been raped. “You?” I asked.

He looked at me, his eyes traveling down my torso before his head turned to look at the pool hall.

He came back to me. “Been better.”

He knew Sadie. He also knew what happened to Sadie.

This was not a surprise. Marcus, Vito, and Sadie’s now incarcerated dad, Seth Townsend, all occupied the upper echelons of Denver’s criminal underworld. It would make sense they and their families would hobnob.

“Can I ask what you’re doin’ here, honey?” Ren requested.

I held his eyes and whispered, “You know.”

He studied me a moment before nodding. He knew.

Then he said, “Let me deal with it.”

On one hand, I liked this idea. I’d seen Ren in action against Luke. On the badass scale, Luke blew the lid off, totally redefining the scale. And Ren not only held his own against Luke, he matched him. It was a fair fight that didn’t go long enough to declare a clear winner. Seeing this, I knew Ren could undoubtedly f**k Ricky Balducci up big time. Because if he could go mano a mano against Luke, he could kick anyone’s ass.

And if he did, I wanted to watch.

On the other hand, I’d been a bitch to Sadie, a girl who was Hector’s, which meant she was a Rock Chick (though she didn’t know it yet), which meant she was going to be family. And I’d done it the day of the night she got raped.

I needed to make amends.

“Zano, I—”

“Let me deal with it, Ally.”

“What are you gonna do?” I asked, and his anger hit the car, stifling me, just as his eyes flashed with a light that even I found scary.

Right.

There you go.

Ren was going to deal with it.

“Don’t hesitate to make a mess,” I invited, giving in, and I actually felt him relax as the heavy air shifted out of my Mustang.

“Dry cleaning blood out of suits costs a f**kin’ whack,” he replied.

Yikes!

I was absolutely not going to go there.

“Take care of yourself, honey,” he said quietly, ending our conversation, ending our time together, reminding me he’d ended us and that I was the reason there was no us.

In other words, major ouch.

I powered through the hurt and nodded. “You too, Ren.”

He continued to hold my eyes, and long moments passed. Those moments feeling like he was waiting for me to say something, do something.

I did neither.

Then he turned, opened the door and angled out.

I watched him saunter to the pool hall and kept watching, even after he disappeared through the door.

I did this with a knot in my stomach, something stuck in my throat.

Then I pulled my shit together. Something I’d had to do a lot since Ren entered my life, and more after he exited it.

I decided I’d find another way to make amends to Sadie, though I didn’t know how I’d do that.

I just knew I would.

I turned the ignition, put my car into gear and drove away.

* * * * *

One month, one and a half weeks later…

I was at Sadie’s art opening at her gallery, but a more apt way to put it was that I was in hell.

This was because Ren was there and he was with another woman.

This was also because he was avoiding me.

This was not surprising. We were done and he was with another woman. I got a look, a chin lift and that was it.

It was the classy thing to do, not ignoring me, not getting in my space and being sweet or cool, and thus reminding me we were over and all I was missing.

Still, it hurt.

But this was mostly because, even avoiding him, that didn’t mean my eyes, against my strong directive, kept moving to him.

Therefore I’d caught him watching Ava.

Worse, he did it with a soft look on his face I’d never seen. I was too far away to be certain it was longing. I just knew it was something.

He was still hung up on her.

The only thing I had going for me was that I looked hot. My dress was awesome, showed enough skin and was tight enough to be slinky, but not enough of either to be slutty. And my high-heeled sandals were my own, and they were even better.

That was all I had.

Sadie and Hector were, I was hoping, heading toward the Rock Chick Reward. That was, everything got sorted and they moved into their version of happily ever after. There were still issues, all the Rock Chicks knew, and it wasn’t only because of the Balducci brothers (all of them were giving Sadie problems), we just couldn’t put our finger on what.

“You okay?” I heard from my side, and I turned my head and saw Indy there.

My best friend had lots of fabulous red hair and a lush body of the Ava variety. In other words, old-fashioned Hollywood bombshell: great rack, lots of ass, long legs and the ability to work them all in a huge way, as her current dress and strappy heels, which were (almost) as awesome as mine laid testimony to.

“Yeah,” I told her.

She studied me closely. “You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” I answered casually.

Indy didn’t take her eyes off me.

She’d been my BFF for so long, we were so tight, we knew each other’s deepest secrets (well, in Indy’s case, only most of mine). We’d been through pretty much everything, so even with the additions of the Rock Chicks, I would never have a BFF who was more of the “B” than Indy. I loved her. I would lay down my life for her and that was no joke. I knew she would do the same for me.

I also knew her just as well as she knew me.

And right now, she knew I was full of shit.

She leaned in, her eyes never leaving mine, and started, “Honey, you haven’t been—”

She didn’t finish. This was because a brouhaha was commencing. That was to say, Sadie’s loud voice was coming at us and she was being sarcastic and bitchy.

Not good.

Indy and I looked that way to see Sadie was into it with some woman who Sadie clearly did not like.

“Here we go,” Indy murmured and looked at me.

I threw her a grin and did what we Rock Chicks always did.

Got close to a Rock-Chick-in-need in order to take her back.

And I was right. As the events unfolded, one after the other, it became clear something was still very wrong with Sadie. It wasn’t that she wanted that outed. It was just that what happened gave her no choice. Being recently raped and consistently traumatized by four criminally insane brothers (literally, to all of that), it was time for the lid to be blown off.