Rock Chick Reckoning

by Kristen Ashley

  It was then my phone, which I was holding in my hand, rang.

  “Sorry,” I muttered to the assemblage when all eyes swung to me.

  I looked at the display; it said “Buzz Calling”. I flipped it open but before I could put it to my ear it was pulled out of my hand.

  My head shot up and I saw Mace, my phone to his ear, his back to me, walking away.

  “Erm, excuse me?” I called, getting up from my perch on the arm of a couch and following him.

  “Buzz, she’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Mace told the phone. “Yeah. She’s all right.” Then he flipped my phone shut.

  Do something! My brain ordered me.

  I did something. I poked him in the back. The Tribe had melted from existence (not really, as people can’t melt, except in movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, they just melted from my mind) and my pissed off vibe came back with a vengeance.

  “Excuse me?” I repeated to his back.

  Mace turned. I put my hand out for my phone.

  Mace shoved my phone in his back pocket. My eyes followed this action then narrowed and shot back to Mace’s face.

  “Give me my phone,” I demanded.

  “No,” Mace replied.

  “Give it to me.”

  “No.”

  “Mace, give me my goddamned phone!” My voice was rising.

  Mace leaned into me and responded calmly, “No.”

  “I need to talk to Buzz,” I explained with rapidly waning patience. “He’s gonna need me. His girlfriend had her head blown off tonight, for God’s sake!”

  “Lindsey’s head was blown off by Sid’s men. She’s the reason they were able to get close to you, watch you, figure you out, find a way to get to you. She’s the reason they knew Buzz would call you and knew you’d come running when he did. Lindsey got herself killed so you could be target practice as a warning to me.”

  My mouth snapped shut and I took a step back. I had not put this together but it made sense and the idea that I had anything to do with Lindsey’s death felt like the gut kick to end all gut kicks.

  Mace took a step forward and his steps were longer than mine.

  “Stella, I’m not gonna let any of the members of that fuckin’ band of yours put you in harm’s way. No phone. No communication. Not until we know the lay of the land. Your band wants to talk to you, they do it through me.”

  Oh no. He did not just say what it seemed like he just said.

  “Don’t call them ‘that fuckin’ band’,” I snapped.

  Mace was silent.

  “And you can’t take my phone!”

  Mace remained silent.

  “And you aren’t going to order me around and stand between me and my boys!” I went on.

  “Wanna bet?” Mace asked.

  I stared at him. He stared at me.

  He didn’t look blank and broody and that emotional flash didn’t cut through his eyes. He looked determined and angry and I got the weird impression that it didn’t have to do simply with Linnie being dead, me getting shot and us being sequestered at The Castle.

  I changed tactics. “God! Were you this overbearing when we were together?”

  “I should have been,” Mace fired his shot without hesitation.

  My head jerked and my hands formed into fists. I couldn’t believe he just said that. I didn’t even know what he meant by that.

  What did he mean by that?

  “Girlie, hate to break this up, it’s great for entertainment value alone, but you do know you two have an audience,” Tod called from somewhere behind me.

  I sucked in breath through my nose, too angry to be embarrassed.

  “Thank God we’re over,” I threw at Mace as my parting shot.

  That’s when I saw the flash dart through his eyes again. It was there then gone before I could read it.

  “I’m keeping your phone,” Mace informed me.

  “Have at it.” I gave up and walked away.

  That was it. Daisy got busy getting everyone settled and we disbursed.

  Juno put her front paws on the pull out bed, taking my mind from my thoughts.

  “You can’t get up here. Momma’s got a gunshot wound and there isn’t enough room.”

  Juno woofed.

  “I know, baby. The floor is cold and hard but it’s all you’ve got tonight. We’ll be home soon.”

  Juno woofed again.

  “Quiet, girl. It’s six o’clock in the morning and there’s a house full of people trying to sleep.”

  A soft woof then Juno plopped down. I heard her big dog groan as she stretched out on the floor. Then another big dog groan slash sigh as she fell to her side.

  “You’re such a good dog,” I whispered and I meant it.

  I heard an even softer woof and I felt my lips form a small smile.

  I punched my pillows, rolled to rest on my unwounded side and laid smack in the middle of the bed. The doctor said the painkillers might make me drowsy. He was not wrong.

  Within minutes, I was asleep.

  * * * * *

  It was an awake/asleep dream. I knew it because I had a lot of them. Always morning, my favorite time of the day when I was with Mace.

  For your information, I would have welcomed asleep/asleep dreams of Mace but I normally dreamed of weird shit like mutant snakes terrorizing Denver or being on a road trip with Charo, her shouting, “Coochie Coochie,” at passing truckers. I didn’t know what these dreams said about me or the state of my unconscious mind and I didn’t want to know.

  The awake/asleep dreams were always like this, part-conscious, part-unconscious, right when I woke up but before I was really awake. It was then I would feel Mace’s imaginary heat behind me, his hard body pressed to mine, his arm tucked tight around my belly, his breath against my neck.

  I went with it as I always did, liking the memory. It was one of the seven hundred, twenty-five thousand things about him I missed most, waking up with him holding me, feeling safe, feeling wanted, feeling loved, all three of those feelings I’d never really felt in my whole life.

  I snuggled into his imaginary heat and hit something very solid and very real.

  I froze.

  “You’re awake,” Mace said.

  Oh my God. What was going on?

  “Mace?” I asked just to make sure.

  “We need to talk.”

  Yep, he was there all right.

  Effing hell.

  I tried to move away. The tight arm got tighter.

  “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  Erm, excuse me?

  “Let me go,” I repeated.

  “We’re gonna talk.”

  “Fine, great, wonderful. We can talk not lying in bed.” Then it hit me. “What are you doing in my bed?”

  “I told you I wasn’t leavin’ you.”

  Erm, excuse me?

  “Yeah, you said that right before you left me,” I reminded him.

  “I didn’t leave you.”

  “You walked out of the room!”

  “I walked out of the room but I didn’t leave you.”

  “You didn’t stay.”

  “You were embarrassed, Luke was there. You needed the girls. You said it yourself.”

  “You still left.”

  “Stella, I didn’t leave.”

  “You did.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” he clipped. “End of topic. We’re talkin’ about something else now.”

  Nunh-unh. No we bloody well were not. We weren’t talking about anything.

  I pushed against his arm again. He didn’t let go.

  “Move your arm,” I demanded.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been shot?”

  “Move your effing arm.”

  The arm tightened and shook gently, shaking me gently with it.

  “Answer my question,” Mace demanded.

  “If you remember, you were a little busy. I was okay. No big deal.”

  “Not fond of the idea of you calmly bleed
in’ in the backseat of an SUV that I’m also in, Kitten. In fact, not fond of the idea of you bleedin’ at all.”

  What he said shook me.

  I had to ask again, what on earth was going on?

  Nope, no, I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. I was over him. Over. Him.

  I shifted my focus. “Stop calling me Kitten.”

  He ignored me. “No tellin’ the way this is gonna go down. You’re gonna have to get over your attitude and communicate with me.”

  Erm, excuse me again?

  “Get over my attitude?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I started, my voice showing my barely controlled patience, no longer pushing against his arm, I rolled toward him. He shifted. I fell to my back and he got up on his elbow. I glared up at him and tried to ignore how fucking gorgeous he was in the morning. His eyes alone were enough to make you want to wake up and face a new day. “A year ago…” it wasn’t a year ago, it was one year, three weeks and three days, not that I was counting, “you broke up with me, walked out of my life. Now someone is shooting at me, using my band to get to you, killing people because of shit you’re involved in and you want me to ‘get over my attitude’?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, unaffected by the damning statement I just made.

  I got up on both my elbows, which brought me closer to him. He didn’t move.

  Then I shouted, “You’ve lost your mind!”

  “Calm down,” he ordered.

  “Calm? Calm? I was shot last night!”

  His jaw got tight. “I haven’t forgotten that, Kitten, in fact, that’s what we’re fuckin’ talkin’ about.”

  Then something else hit me, something important, something I wanted an answer to right away. “Why was I shot last night? Why am I involved at all? We aren’t together. I’m not your woman. I’m not Indy to your Lee, Jet to your Eddie, Roxie to your –”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  My elbows went out from under me and I fell back to the bed. A weight hit my chest, it felt like it weighed a ton and it took my breath away.

  Move! My brain demanded.

  I rolled and tried to escape. I had no idea where I was going but I was going there.

  Mace’s arm grabbed me around the waist; he threw me back to the bed flat on my back. Before I could do a thing about it, he shifted, both his hands came either side of me, he did a semi-push up and landed on top of me but his weight was slightly skewed to my healthy side.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t going “there”.

  “Get off me!” I screamed, shoving at his shoulders.

  “Stella, listen.”

  “No! Get off!”

  “Listen to me, God damn it!” he yelled.

  For your information, Mace had a short fuse. We argued when we were together, quite a lot. He was a passionate guy but also, like I said, he had a short fuse. It wasn’t always happiness and light. Then again, the make up sex was magnificent.

  “Piss off!” I yelled back.

  “Sid’s boys were there that night you sang Hank Williams to me.”

  Oh no. I just knew that’d come back to haunt me.

  I thought back and remembered Linnie was there that night too, with her bad dudes. Now I knew they were Sid’s bad dudes.

  Shitsofuckit!

  “I didn’t sing Hank to you,” I lied.

  “You did.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did, everyone knew it, everyone saw it. Even Sid’s boys.”

  “You’re a big guy. The bar was dark. You were just a shadow that I focused on. And anyway, I was lost in the song.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Get over yourself, Mace. You broke up with me, I’ve moved on,” I told him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got another man?”

  Oh dear. Well, there we were.

  “Yes,” I told him and this was not a lie. I was semi-dating a guy named Eric. He was very good-looking, he was into me and he was clear he wanted to be more into me if you catch my drift. I was holding back because, first off, he wasn’t Mace and second, I wasn’t sure about him, there was something about him that I thought wasn’t quite right.

  I saw Mace’s eyes flash again. This was a different kind of flash, an unhappy flash.

  “Don’t lie to me, Stella.”

  “I’m not lying. His name is Eric. We’ve been dating for about a month. We’re considering taking it to the next level.” Eric was considering it. I wasn’t so sure but Mace didn’t need to know this.

  Mace stared at me as if trying to assess the validity of my statement.

  Then he spoke. “Your relationship progression with Eric just stalled.”

  I felt my eyes get wide. “Erm, excuse me?”

  “He’s out of the picture.”

  At that, I felt my eyes narrow. “He is not.”

  “He is.”

  “Who do you think you are?”

  “In our current scenario, I’m the guy who’s gonna keep you safe. I’m the guy who’s gonna keep you alive. And I’m gonna do it however I need to do it and while I’m doin’ it, I don’t need to have to deal with any of your groupies.”

  My groupies?

  Okay, I had groupies. I was in a band, a somewhat successful band at least locally. Groupies came with the territory.

  However I wasn’t a collector of groupies. I had enough to deal with considering Pong and Hugo were both in my band because they were dedicating their life to perfecting the art of collecting groupies.

  And anyway, when did Mace turn into such an asshole?

  “He’s not a groupie!” I yelled.

  “Discussion about Eric just ended.” He said Eric’s name like it tasted bad. If I was smart, I would have read something into that. Instead, I was seething that he was being so bossy. “Now you and I are gonna get things straight –”

  “No we aren’t,” I interrupted him.

  He ignored me. “You and Juno are movin’ in with me.”

  Uh… what?

  “No we aren’t!” I shouted

  “Okay,” Mace said amicably. “Then I’m movin’ in with you and Juno.”

  “No you aren’t!” I screeched.

  He kept ignoring my outbursts. “You don’t go anywhere unless I’m with you or I know where you’re goin’ and I got a man on you. Got me?”

  I decided to extricate myself from the current conversation and start my own.

  “You’re a jerk.”

  “I’ll tell Pong, Leo, Buzz and Hugo that you’re out of commission as their twenty-four-seven babysitter.”

  What he said pissed me off but I ignored it in order to stay with my own theme. “You’re not a jerk, you’re an asshole.”

  “I’ll call Floyd and tell him what’s goin’ down and he’ll back me with the band.”

  Effing hell, he was pulling out the big guns.

  My eyes narrowed again and I hissed, “Don’t you dare.”

  “Floyd knows I can keep you safe and Floyd won’t take any shit from the band.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I shouted.

  “And when this is all over, you and me gotta talk.”

  I did not like the sound of that.

  “This is all over. I’m not your woman, just let it be known to Sid’s boys that you don’t give a fuck about me and I can go about my life –”

  “You and I both know that’s bullshit and, obviously, so does Sid.”

  “It isn’t bullshit.”

  “We’re over but that doesn’t mean you weren’t once my woman.”

  “I’m not now.”

  “No, you aren’t, but that doesn’t stop the fact that I’d care, a great fuckin’ deal, if you got filled with bullets.”

  I had nothing to say to that. Nothing at all. I was trying not even to think of that.

  “You fight me, Kitten, then I’ll take you and them on at the same time. I don’t give a fuck and I always win. Always.”

/>   He wasn’t wrong. He always won. He’d once been a professional surfer, the best. He’d moved on to become a professional snowboarder and he was the best at that too. Now he was a PI and, from what I could tell by the respect he got from the tough guys around him, he was pretty damn good at that too.

  I decided it was high time to give up and battle on when Mace and I were not in bed and Mace’s body was not on mine.

  My eyes slid away from his face.

  “Please get off me,” I asked, softly, quietly, politely.

  “Kitten,” he called and my eyes slid back. “Something else you should know.”

  “What?”

  “This is a serious situation. You gettin’ soft and sweet isn’t gonna work on me, not like it used to.”

  I decided it was the perfect time to battle on. “Thanks for sharing. Now, get off!”

  I bucked. Mace slid off.

  I rolled off the bed then rounded it, Juno at my heels ready for her morning bathroom break. I grabbed Daisy’s track bottoms and tugged them on. I chanced a glance at Mace and he was on his side, elbow in the pillows, head in hand, watching me.

  I felt the gut kick. He’d done that before, lots when we were together. Lying in bed, on his side, head in hand, watching me put on clothes, watching me feed Juno, watching me play guitar, the way he looked at me making me feel warm, pretty and interesting.

  What I did for a living meant people were always watching me. I was onstage in front of a crowd a lot, singing and playing. I loved it, fed off it, especially when the crowd found the groove and came along for the ride.

  But not even our best groove felt as good as Mace watching me, his eyes lazy, his face soft, his thoughts, I knew, all about me.

  Inexplicably, even though we were over, even though I was not his woman, even though he admitted that, I knew the way he was looking at me now was no different than all the times before.

  What was going on?

  “I don’t like this,” I told him.

  He moved, fast, lithe, graceful and he was out of bed, standing in front of me wearing nothing but a pair of white boxers. I hated to admit it but his body was even more delicious than I remembered and I’d touched it, tasted it, almost every inch of it and I thought I’d never forget how good it looked… or tasted.

  But I forgot.

  Effing hell.

  His hand came to my hip and his long fingers bit in gently.