Renny (The Henchmen MC 6)

And I had just had a hell of a day.

I had needed to deal with my parents. That, in and of itself, pretty much guaranteed sleepless nights for the next month.

But on top of that, I had had that God-awful fight with Renny.

In general, I didn't have fights. Granted, I disagreed with others plenty. It would even come to words on occasion. But those words were always calm and carefully chosen. I didn't just... shriek and screech and say whatever came to me. That wasn't how I operated. It was ugly and messy.

And I liked my life as neat as possible.

So amid having that fight like a CD on a loop going around and around in my head, making me cringe at the things I had said, the volume at which I had said them, the carelessness with which I had done it all, and the sick-stomach feeling that all gave me, I also had to come to grips with what the argument had ended with.

It had ended with Renny telling me he loved me.

A part of me wanted to shrug that off, roll my eyes, say it was silly, it was too soon. It was impossible.

But it was possible. It wasn't like Renny was some guy I met at a bar and went back to his house for a long weekend and had some fun.

I had known him for months. I had gotten to watch him from afar and interact with him on pretty much a daily basis. I got to know his quirks, his flaws, his positive attributes. I had a begrudging respect for his skill set, one that, despite what I had told him upon meeting about how I was way out of his league skills-wise, if I was honest, surpassed mine. He was funny and charming and forward-thinking. As a whole, he was good with his brothers as well as the kids and women. He was, bad moods and all, a favorite of Maze's and Penny's. He was a worthy opponent in a video game and by leaps and bounds, the best sex I had ever had.

I knew him.

And, in turn, he knew me.

It was entirely plausible that he loved me.

And, even as I tried desperately to find some kind of reason that it wasn't possible, the bigger part of me knew that it wasn't only possible, it was the damn truth.

He loved me.

He loved me and no one had ever really loved me before.

That was a hard horse-pill to swallow.

It was lodged in my throat and choking me.

It was dissolving and leaving a God-awful bitter taste in my mouth.

Ashley watched me for a long minute, likely seeing a range of emotions cross my face. I wasn't going to cry again. I was pretty sure I had gotten that out of my system before climbing into Reeve's truck.

He had been a surprisingly good companion while I was trying to put myself together. While I still didn't get him, I was starting to understand parts of him. In that car, his presence was calm and comforting. He didn't ask me questions. He didn't expect explanations. He just let me have my 'moment'. He just instinctively understood that not everyone needed or wanted to talk things out.

I didn't need to talk things out with people. If ever there was someone who understood their reactions and the motives behind their reactions, it was me. No amount of jaw-jabbing would change that. It was useless noise.

I appreciated Reeve's silence.

And when he pulled up to the gates and I thanked him and moved to grab my door handle, his hand had slammed down on top of my other hand and made my head snap back at him.

"You've had your moment," he told me. "You needed that to clear your head. Now you need to give this some thought, Mina. I don't know a fuckuva lot, but I know that some shit, shit like I saw between you and Renny, it's not common. You gotta decide if one fight, one fuck up, is worth throwing away something rare like that."

With that, he released my hand and I jumped out, uncertain.

I hadn't pinned him as sentimental, as wise. To be honest, I found that almost more unsettling than thinking he was just an enigma.

"My father said something really interesting to me when I was younger," Ashley said suddenly, breaking me out of my own swirling thoughts. When my gaze found hers, she shrugged a small shoulder. "He told me that the people who make the biggest impact in your life, the ones who shake you to the core, who make you really think and feel are usually the ones we desperately try to push away.

"Somewhere along the way, and he blamed Disney for this," she added with a smirk, "and romance novels, we have been convinced that love is pretty and flowery and heart-warming. But it's none of those things. Anyone who has ever been in love, truly, magnificently in love, knows that it is torture. It is ugly and messy and brings out the absolute worst along with the best in you. It hurts because it forces you to confront every aspect of yourself. It forces you out of your comfort zone. And people, well, we love our comfort zones. In fact, we tend to love our comfort zones more than we love our partners. So anyone who comes in and tries to drag us out of them, well, we make sure we push them away so we can jump right back into that comfortable feeling."