Page 35 of Renegade Ruin

I roll my eyes with a smile on my face as I reply.

WILLOW: Some of us are trying to work.

Ever since we were in school, we have tried to celebrate our birthdays together. Indie dubbed Birthdaypalooza the week before and after your birthday, all of which is fair game to celebrate. And this year they are going above and beyond to make sure I’m not alone.

INDIE: Work-shmork.

WILLOW: But also, I’m excited you two are coming.

INDIE: Asses Willow! Some of us are surrounded by tiny hands with large attitudes all day, every day. SEND US ASSES.

I chuckle at the visual of my two best friends up to their eyeballs in kids. Neither of them have ever particularly liked children, but in the last year both of them have been thrust into situations where kids rule their lives. Leigh became a mom unexpectedly after a one-night stand, and after the crash, she took over running Renegade Hearts for me. She splits her time in the city and at the camp upstate. Not because she needs to but because, like me, she knows what it’s like to lose your parents and believes in our cause with her whole chest.

Indie, on the other hand, is a movie-star-turned-nanny. Well, that’s how she describes it anyway. She’s in Europe filming her next movie, which apparently is a rom-com set at some ballet boarding school where she is the new teacher, and all the students hate her.

Sounds like my life except replace students with the majority of the Renegade’s upper management.

Smiling, I text back my response.

WILLOW: No asses. But I’ll have plenty of sun, dirty books and alcohol waiting for you.

INDIE: Sisterhood of the traveling smut!

LEIGH: Bishop really did get it right giving us that name.

INDIE: oooooh Bishop is going to be there, right Wills? How’s that going? Is he still being an asshat?

LEIGH: Oh, he’s an asshat. An asshat with the face of a brooding alphahole. Holy shit did you see the death glares he gave those reporters when they tried to follow him out of the stadium?

INDIE: Oh fuck. No! Show me!

LEIGH:

INDIE: Tell him you’ll kiss that frown off his face if he gets his head out of his ass. He likes when you do that.

WILLOW: Trust me my kisses aren’t effective in head-from-ass removal.

LEIGH: WILLOW MAE ARE YOU KISSING BISHOP LAWSON.

Shit. I instantly regret my fingers moving faster than my brain.

It’s not that I don’t want to tell my best friends about what happened between Bishop and me. I do. Usually, I tell them everything. But Bishop, our night, is something I don’t want to let them in on. That moment is ours, and anything they saymight taint the beauty in the sorrow I feel. I want to hold on to that. It’s mine.

INDIE: Go on…

WILLOW: It’s nothing. We kissed. He told me I was a good distraction. End of story.

LEIGH: Start from the beginning.

I begrudgingly recap the story of what happened on the plane, leaving out the part where I was practically grinding on his cock through his pants and the subsequent visit to his hotel room. It’s selfish, but I’d rather they continue to see him as somewhat of the villain. It will help my resolve to end things if they aren’t pressing me to explore things—hopeless romantics that they are.

INDIE: That fucker. When I get there, I swear he won’t know his mouth from his ass because I’ll have inverted them myself.

I love fired up Indie, but maybe I took this too far.

WILLOW: Really that’s not necessary.

LEIGH: Okay, so he’s an asshole, but also, I sort of get it.

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