However, none of it had ever trickled in by banging on my door in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe in the not so wee hours of the morning, but everyone knew not to disturb my neighbors.

I threw back the covers, opened my nightstand, got my stun gun and flipped it on.

I stomped to the front door of my apartment and aimed an eye to my peephole.

Then I whispered, “Fuck.”

Ren was standing out there, head turned to the side looking absently down the hall.

By the time I got to the door the banging had stopped, but as I kept looking out, wondering what to do, I saw him turn his attention from the hall to my door. I noted he looked a might angry, and I heard as I watched him start banging again.

It would appear he wasn’t going to go away. And seeing as I kind of liked my apartment, but mostly liked that my neighbors were all pretty cool—either old as the hills, thus went to bed early and didn’t have the energy to get in my business (outside of finding it diverting, should they bump into an informant in the hall), or young and hip and digging the life of living in the awesome environs of Washington Park (much like me)—I wanted to stay in that apartment. And some hot Italian dude banging on my door might wake my neighbors and make them tetchy.

So I turned off the stun gun and set it on table by my door. I threw back the chain, unlocked the locks and pulled open the door.

“God, Zano, are you trying to wake the dead?”

This was a pertinent question, seeing as some folks in my apartment building had one foot in the grave.

I didn’t get the chance to share that info with Ren. His eyes pinned me to the spot and I was right earlier. He was angry.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“What?” I asked back.

“What…” He took in a breath through his nose. “The.” He went on and kept scowling at me. “Fuck?” he finished tersely.

I was confused, and I wasn’t a big fan of being confused. Especially not late at night when a hot guy who had fucked me but who was in love with a good friend of mine was banging on my door and asking me bewildering, but clearly angry, questions

“What the fuck what?” I asked.

He kept scowling at me.

Then it became apparent he was done simply scowling at me. I knew this when he put a hand in my belly, shoved me back and followed me, walking right into my apartment.

He slammed the door.

I lost my mind.

“Zano, hello?” I snapped. “I didn’t invite you in. And something to know about me, I’m not the kind of girl who gets off on some guy doing whatever the hell he wants to do, especially around me, and especially especially when it happens to be something I don’t want him to do.”

“You invited me in, Ally,” he replied. “Around the time you came when my mouth was between your legs on my stairs. Then again when you came when my cock was driving into you in my bed. Then again when you wrapped your mouth around my cock, also in my bed. And a-fuckin’-gain when you found it while riding my cock, also in my bed. And last, when you wrapped your sweet, hot, naked body around me and passed out in my bed.”

Okay, I’d had a variety of Rock Chick chinwags where the girls let it all hang out about their guys and how they communicated in Asshole, but I’d never experienced it personally. And Ren had just demonstrated he was fluent in Asshole.

It must be said, I didn’t like it much.

Therefore, I invited acidly, “Rewind and try that again.”

He didn’t accept my invitation.

Instead, he turned. I saw him locate the light switch and flinched when the overhead light came on.

When I quit flinching, I noted his angry attention was back to me and he asked, “Were you drunker than I thought last night?”

“No,” I answered.

“So you remember what went down last night.”

“Yes,” I snapped, then tried to get him onto a subject I wanted to talk about, namely him leaving, but I didn’t get the chance.

He kept talking.

“All that went down last night?”

“Yes!”

My voice was rising because I did remember all that went down last night. And how I felt when I woke up that morning. But mostly I remembered the name he called me when I was lying there, thinking he was my one, and he was lying there holding on to a substitute body that, since he had no shot with the real one, was just going to have to do.

“So tell me, honey, if you weren’t hammered and you remember all that went down last night, why did I wake up to an empty bed this morning?” he asked.

“I had shit to do,” I answered, and it wasn’t totally a lie. I always had shit to do. I was a busy girl.

“You had shit to do,” he said low, and his eyes were a tad bit scary.

But I didn’t scare easily.

“Yep,” I replied.

“And it was so pressing you couldn’t wake me and tell me you had to go?”

“Yep, it was that pressing.” Now, that was totally a lie.

“And it was so pressing you couldn’t find a minute to jot down a note?”

Okay, suffice it to say, I was done with this bullshit. If he needed someone to give it to him regular while he waited for Ava, and to continue to give it to him regular when he realized that he’d never get Ava, he’d have to find someone else.

In order to communicate that to him, I stated, “Dude, we hooked up. That’s it. Or that’s all I remember. But maybe I was drunker than I thought. Did I miss the part where you slid a ring on my finger?”

This was the wrong thing to say, and I knew it when the room filled with something so oppressive, it was stifling. No joke. I literally couldn’t breathe.

As I mentioned, I didn’t scare easily.

But the truth of it was, I didn’t get scared. There wasn’t a situation that I remember ever being in where I didn’t feel in control or think I could find a way to regain control. I also had the gene passed down through my family where I could sense when things were going bad in a way that I would lose control and not get it back, and I was smart enough to get the fuck out of Dodge when I found myself in those kinds of situations.

But right then, feeling suffocated by the sheer force of Lorenzo Zano’s anger, I felt a hint of genuine fear.

Then his anger dissipated.