Rock Chick Reborn Read online

  Rock Chick Reborn

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Ashley

  Cover Art by:

  PixelMischief

  Interior Design & Formatting by:

  Christine Borgford, Type A Formatting

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Contents

  ROCK CHICK REBORN

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Enjoy an Excerpt of Mystery Man

  Discover the Other Titles in the Dream Man Series

  About the Author

  Books by Kristen Ashley

  Connect with Kristen Ashley

  This novella is dedicated to Malia Anderson, whose enthusiasm inspired me to write a story for a character who has always deserved one, but I never thought she’d get one.

  This novella is also dedicated to Kristin and Brandon Harris.

  And I think once Kristin reads it, she’ll understand why.

  A BIG THANK you to all my Rock Chicks on Facebook, who were so excited about this story and helping me name Shirleen’s hero, they pulled out all the stops to help me find his name.

  And especially to Judy Keating, who gave me Shirleen’s Moses.

  It’s important to note that although Gilliam Youth Services Center is a real place in Denver, Colorado, obviously I’ve fictionalized Moses Richardson’s employment there. And here I must thank Marvy McNeese for assisting me with some insights into juvenile detention.

  Last, a gratitude shout out to Liz Berry and Erika Wynne for helping me title this novella. Although we had a few good ideas, E came up with “Rebirth,” which informed Shirleen’s journey and became Rock Chick Reborn.

  And as I hope you’ll now discover, it was perfect.

  Your Attention

  “CHICKEN AND WAFFLES.”

  “Dude, are you crazy? No chick is gonna want you making her chicken and waffles.”

  “I’m makin’ her chicken and waffles. Everyone likes chicken and waffles.”

  “Yeah, and your bitch probably likes ’em too. The thing is, she’ll never want you to know she likes ’em or that she likes any food at all.”

  At that, I stopped us all on a skid.

  “If you call a woman a bitch one more time, Sniff, I’m gonna clock you back to the seventeenth century,” I warned.

  Me and my boys were standing in the floral section of King Soopers.

  This was because Sniff and I had been warned the day before that we had to skedaddle from the house for the night because Roam was bringing over one of his bitches (and I was an adult, I could think that and say it) to make her dinner.

  So we were shopping for said dinner and for everything else it took to raise two teenage boys, this last necessitating me being at the damned grocery store at least three times a week.

  Case in point, I’d seen Roam eat an entire pack of Oreos in one sitting, open a second and hoover through a whole row.

  Not an ounce of fat on the boy though.

  As an aside, why was the world so unfair? A woman did that her ass would follow her into a room three weeks after she entered it.

  And by the by, I mentally asked about the world being unfair a lot.

  I never got an answer.

  Though I shouldn’t ask, because I knew the answer.

  It was partly about people doing stupid shit their own damned selves, me included.

  It was also that the world was just unfair.

  Needless to say, raising two teenage boys meant most of the store would be in my Navigator in about an hour.

  It should be noted that they weren’t exactly my boys, in the sense I didn’t birth either of them, and that was only obvious with one—the white one.

  I was their foster mother.

  They were still my boys.

  Sniff, as usual, acted like he hadn’t heard my warning.

  He said, “Shirleen, tell him. No girl is gonna want him to make chicken and waffles for dinner, because she’ll want him to make chicken and waffles for dinner and it’ll be torture pretending she doesn’t want to snarf down chicken and waffles at dinner.”

  I studied Sniff, eighteen and long-since having grown out of his skinny, acne-ridden early teens.

  Now the boy was six foot of lean muscle, not skin and bones, and although he had a couple of acne scars, which only made his face look interesting, the excellent insurance plan I was enrolled in at work and a good dermatologist had taken care of the rest.

  In other words, now he was hot.

  It made me throw up a little in my mouth to think that about my boy, but the evidence was standing right in front of me wearing jeans that every mother in the country would declare illegal and a cream, short-sleeved thermal that molded to various features of his developed chest, narrowing ribs, and flat stomach.

  The power that package had over teenage-girl pussy I blamed on the Hot Bunch. It was them that took the boys under their wing, this including physical training, but also the inescapable soaking up of general badassness. So it was them that had honed the bods my boys now had, including Roam’s, who was a lot bulkier, taller, and a different brand of hot.

  Chocolate hot.

  Effective chocolate hot.

  As evidenced by his serial dating.

  Leading to chicken and waffles.

  Sniff didn’t serial date.

  He serial banged.

  Due to an uncomfortable conversation Hank and I had some time ago—one that put me in my bed with the vapors for two days, and one that made Hank look like he might expire from trying not to bust a gut laughing after I’d talked him into having “the talk” with the boys—Hank kept them in condoms.

  They could buy their own, of course. They not only got an allowance from me for keeping their rooms clean, taking out the trash and looking after the house, they were paid interns for Nightingale Investigations.

  They didn’t do any of the dangerous stuff. They did stuff in the control room and stuff on the computers.

  Or at least they didn’t tell me if they did the dangerous stuff. On that I just had to trust Liam Nightingale and his band of merry badasses would do the right thing with my boys.

  I was all about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” With two teenage boys in my crib, who I loved beyond reason but who were Hot Bunch in the making, this was my new life motto and my only hold on sane.

  But Hank made sure they were supplied so I didn’t have to take up residence in Babies ’R’ Us or factor child support into their allowances.

  Thus Hank had taken me aside not two weeks ago to share that Sniff, particularly, might want to get a second job to keep him at the necessary level of prophylactics, and that I might want to buy stock in Trojan.

  It was a warning.

  I requested Hank engage in another conversation with both boys, roping in Roam just to make sure.

  Then I took to my bed with the vapors.

  “If he wants to make his girl chicken and waffles, he’s gonna make his girl chicken and waffles,” I decr
eed.

  I did this even though Sniff was right, no girl was going to show she loved chicken and waffles in front of a boy.

  It was ludicrous, at that age or any age. I had long since learned the only way to live in order not to do your own head in was to let it all hang out.

  It was also the way of the world.

  Until you learned.

  Although I tried to teach my boys other practical knowledge the Hot Bunch would never be able to transfer on them—like the importance of keeping a house, laundering your clothes and being able to cook—Roam was hopeless in the kitchen.

  The kid could grill a mean burger.

  But other than that, frying some chicken and manning a waffle maker were the only culinary skills he’d mastered.

  Sniff, on the other hand, was a savant in the kitchen. All he had to do was watch some show on Food Network, look up the recipe online, go out and get the stuff, and boom! There it was on a plate in front of his brother-from-another-mother and me.

  He had the touch.

  Good kid.

  In a lot of ways.

  If he’d quit trying to make up for being scrawny and pimple-faced when he was younger by tagging every piece of ass who glanced his way and would not have glanced his way two years ago.

  “It’s gonna be a bust,” Sniff muttered.

  “It’s gonna be awesome,” Roam returned.

  “It’s gonna . . .” I trailed off when something that felt like a finger traced lightly down the back of my neck.

  For some reason, maybe instinct after being around the Hot Bunch for so long, this made me turn my attention to the rose section.

  And there stood a man with an empty cart, not moving, his eyes locked on me.

  And oh sweet Lord, he was beautiful.

  Tall as Roam, had to be, at least six-two. Close cropped hair, close cropped beard that was thicker around his mouth, scanter but not sparse on his cheeks. Both were sprinkled very minimally with a little white.

  He had wide set, big, deep-brown eyes and a beautiful brother’s nose, thick and strong. Making that better, at the bridge there were a couple of creases. There were some creases in his forehead that were interesting as well, and with the white in his beard, they were the only things on his burly, wide-shouldered frame that told tale of his age.

  He was just . . . perfect.

  Even the shape of his skull sitting on the column of his neck was divine.

  As I stared at him, his gaze unlocked on me to drop to my hands on the cart then it went to the boys, and a slash of white formed between his beautiful full lips, exposing strong, white teeth.

  He gave us a group scan then turned to the display of roses.

  “Is that brother seriously checkin’ you out in front of us?” Roam asked, not happy about the possibility and not hiding it in his tone.

  I turned my attention to him to see him scowling at Idris Hottie at the roses.

  “No,” I answered.

  “He fuckin’ was,” Sniff rumbled, and I looked to him to see him glowering at the beautiful black man now examining a bouquet of beautiful orange roses.

  “If you say fuck in front of me one more time, or at all, I’m knockin’ you back to ancient Egypt,” I promised.

  Sniff ignored me, still busy frowning at the hottie at the roses.

  Right, there were groceries to buy, I was hungry and I wasn’t going to get to eat until they were bought, taken home, put away and Sniff and I left Roam to hopefully make his girl chicken and waffles then do nothing more than hold her hand while watching TV.

  So we needed to get shit done.

  “You boys are going to Walgreens,” I announced.

  Slowly, they both turned to me.

  “Say what?” Roam asked.

  “You work my nerves in a grocery store, I got things I need from the drugstore and we don’t have a lot of time. I got a list,” I stated, opening my raisin Artsy MM LV bag and yanking out my drugstore list, a pen and my wallet. In order for them to get the right stuff, I scrawled some words on the list before I shoved it with some cash at Sniff. “Go. Get that stuff. Come back and get me.” I dug for my keys, got those and handed them to Roam. “Be good to my baby. You break it, I break you.”

  Sniff stared down at the list a beat then looked at me. “They got all this stuff at King Soopers.”

  “They do not have my nail varnish at King Soopers,” I retorted.

  Sniff looked back to the list then to me. “I am not buyin’ nail polish called Clothing Optional.”

  I crossed my arms on my chest. “Tell me, boy, one day when you done notched so many marks on your bedpost you got no bedpost anymore and you want yourself an Indy . . .” No reaction. “A Jet . . .” None there either. “Roxie . . .” Nope. “Jules . . .” Surprisingly, since they were both tight with Jules and I thought they both crushed on her, that didn’t hit it either. “Stella . . .” Hmm, nothing. “Sadie . . .”

  His eyes flared.

  So he went for the fairy princess bitches.

  If they were white.

  Though I’d noted my boy had a thing for the sisters.

  Then again, those were the fairy princess ones too. I’d seen him with more Brandys and Gabrielles than I could shake a stick at.

  “Right, you want yourself a Sadie someday, boy, you’re gonna be findin’ yourself buyin’ a lot more than nail polish to make her happy. You think Hector blinks at nail polish?”

  “Yes,” he declared.

  So they hadn’t learned all they could learn from the Hot Bunch.

  “You’d be wrong, ’cause I might not’ve seen him buy nail polish, but I sure as shit saw him snatching up some o.b.s and he did it like he was grabbin’ a six-pack. In other words, it made no never mind to Hector Chavez he was gettin’ his woman her o.b.s.”

  Sniff looked at Roam. “What are o.b.s?”

  Roam started to look sick.

  “Tampons,” I educated.

  Sniff started to look sick.

  I could not talk about my boys having sex and the necessity of condoms.

  I could sure as shit talk about this.

  “You do know the menstrual cycle is a fact of life and unless there’s some sad reason that makes a woman not have them, all women do,” I shared. “It’s entirely natural. And something you both are gonna have to deal with on a hopefully normal and healthy occasion, that is, when you settle down in a monogamous relationship with a woman you love more than your own life.”

  Both boys looked ready to hurl.

  I heard a chuckle, and it wasn’t only my eyes that went in that direction as Rose Hottie wandered into the fruit and veg section with that big bouquet of orange roses having been wrapped in pretty paper at the floral station sitting in the child seat at the top of his cart.

  He had a woman.

  Again, why was the world so unfair?

  Sure, he looked my age and it would stand to reason that man with that face and that bod (and that deep chuckle) at his age would have a woman in his bed.

  Still.

  I watched him disappear around the chill case filled with Odwalla.

  “Sniff can go get your nail polish. I’m stayin’ with you,” Roam decreed.

  I turned to him. “What?”

  “That guy’s gonna pounce,” he told me.

  “He’s got flowers in his cart,” I told him.

  “He’s gonna pounce,” he repeated.

  “He’s got flowers, boy. Means he’s got a woman,” I returned.

  “He’s. Gonna. Pounce.”

  I shut up.

  Roam did not like repeating himself.

  I hadn’t had them long. Both boys had been fifteen when I took them on, now they were both eighteen and nearing on graduating high school.

  But even back then, after all he’d been through, all he’d seen, all that had been done to him, all he’d lost, Roam had honed that edge of steel that made him, and it was the kind you never lost. It didn’t matter what love you found in your life—and Jules
had led both those boys to a lot of love, case in point, me—that kind of steel never went away.

  Steel like that replaced the marrow in your bones.

  It was just what happened.

  When he and his bud, Park, had taken Sniff under their wing, they’d protected Sniff from a lot of what they’d endured.

  And when both he and Sniff had lost Park to bad dope, Roam hadn’t been able to protect Sniff from it, or protect Jules, and it was my feeling that loss, and also the fact he hadn’t been able to prevent it, had changed him irrevocably.

  He did not waste time.

  He did not suffer fools gladly.

  And he did not let anyone harm someone he loved.

  He’d taken a bullet to prove that to Jules.

  There were grown men who didn’t have it in them to make that kind of sacrifice.

  Roam had done it at the age of fifteen.

  “Got no need for a man in my life, baby,” I said softly. “Got the only two men I need right now, and I’m seein’ to them, and only them, until they start seein’ to themselves. So don’t you worry, Roam. You can go to Walgreens with Sniff and I’ll make sure I got enough Double Stufs to last you the week. Now you get my varnish and don’t forget the lip gloss. Smoldering Eclipse.”

  Roam kept scowling, and this had nothing to do with him imminently having to find lip gloss in the shade of Smoldering Eclipse.

  Sniff huffed out a sigh.

  I endured this until eventually Sniff tagged Roam’s arm and muttered, “Let’s go. She won’t back down. You know it. Faster we get her girlie crap, faster we can get back.”

  “You need us, you call,” Roam ordered.

  I did not inform him I was a fifty-three-year-old woman and could take care of myself.

  I just rolled my eyes.

  They took off.

  I watched them go, thinking there was more to what I said to Roam and it wasn’t the fact that man with his flowers clearly had a woman in his life.

  It was that I was not going to take on another man for the rest of mine.

  I’d had one and he’d changed me irrevocably, and not a bit of it was in a good way.

  He hadn’t left steel in the marrow of my bones.

  He’d left dust.