I blinked and asked, “What?”
“That shit, Tab, that went down with us four years ago when I acted like a dick and did and said serious-as-fuck stupid shit that drove you away from me? You changed after that.
I
did that to you and I don’t want that shit to come back up, you to figure it out and—”
I got it then.
“I’m not leaving you, Shy,” I cut him off to say firmly, giving his thigh a firm squeeze.
“Shit festers, Tab, and—”
“Shut up,” I ordered and his head gave a slight jerk.
I ignored that and kept going.
“Shy, I was nineteen. I had no idea who I was. I
still
haven’t discovered all of me. You didn’t see it but between that time and when you came back in my life, I went through a whole load of phases. Music. Friends. Places I’d hang. Clothes I’d wear. I don’t know why I did it.” I grinned at him. “I do know it was fun.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” he returned. “That shit started when I came down on you unjustified.”
I felt my grin leave me and I leaned in in an effort to cushion the blow when I admitted, “Yeah.”
I watched a shadow drift over his face so I went on quickly.
“But Shy, darlin’, it would have happened anyway. Maybe differently but anyone at that age goes on a journey to discover who they are. You did and it took you to Chaos. I did and, in a roundabout way, it brought me back home and to you.”
The shadow lifted but only slightly before he said softly, “First, what I gotta live with is it took you away from me and led you to that guy. Yeah, babe, it led you back to me but I almost lost you and, in the meantime, you had to suffer losing everything. Second, and what’s on my mind right now, I do not want you goin’ back there for any reason and lettin’ what I did get under your skin.”
I shook my head and leaned so close, my breasts brushed his arm and I lifted a hand to rest on his chest. “Shy, that’s done. All of it. Jason’s gone and that’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just what life had in store for me. And we’re past that bad history we had. It is not gonna come back.”
“The shit Mom left Dad for he did to her in college. Over a fuckin’
decade
before she left him for it.”
There it was.
“I’m not your mom, darlin’,” I told him carefully.
“Shit festers,” he repeated.
“They died,” I announced and that pain he thought he hid behind grins or casual conversations, shot through his eyes. Still, I pushed on, “They didn’t leave you, Shy. They died. I promised I wouldn’t leave you and, honestly, you strong-arm my landlord against my wishes and haul me around where you want me to be, and if there were reasons for me to be pissed, for us to butt heads, somewhere along the line in the last month, with our personalities, they would have come up. But I get that’s you. You get whatever it is is me and we both know what we have. We also know how it feels not to have it, so we don’t let that shit get in between.”
His brows went up. “You don’t like it when I haul your ass around?”
“At first, it freaked me.” I grinned again. “Now, I think it’s kinda hot.”
He studied me a moment before his eyes cleared and his lips twitched.
I let my smile fade and pressed my hand into his chest.
“I’m not leaving you, Shy. You’re not gonna lose me, because to do that I’d lose you, and that isn’t going to happen.”
He held my eyes two beats, I saw his turn warm and intent then he whispered, “You’re the fuckin’ shit, Tabby.”
“I know,” I told him airily on another smile. “My man tells me that all the time.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth and his lips ordered, “Kiss me, baby.”
There it was. All was good.
I leaned forward and did what he told me.
He tasted of beer with a hint of tequila.
All Shy.
All mine.
All amazing.
* * *
We stayed at the honky-tonk for more beers, dinner, and ten games of pool. I won four, Shy won six. However, the bet we’d waged this time was a lot more interesting and included me sucking him off regularly.
Since I did it regularly already and I liked it, this was not a hardship, and I wouldn’t admit it to him, but I threw that last game purposefully.
I was thinking about giving him his winnings when he let us into my apartment, my thoughts so pleasantly occupied I didn’t notice the kitchen light was on. I also didn’t notice Shy stop dead until I ran into him.
“Shy, darlin’, what on—?” I started, stepping to his side and following his gaze toward the kitchen.
What I saw made me go statue-still.
Kane Allen, my dad, was sitting on a bar stool.
I was his daughter, but Dad was hot in a way that even I knew he was serious hot. Dark hair salted with a bit of silver. A kick-ass biker goatee that was long at the chin that also had some light in it. He gave me my eyes, sapphire blue, his, I knew, could be warm or piercing. He had a big body that his good genes kept fit, since he sure as heck didn’t work out and drank and ate what he wanted. He also had lines going out from his eyes that I loved because they deepened when he laughed.
He was not laughing now.
He had his heels up to the highest rung on the bar stool, his legs splayed wide, elbows to his thighs, a bottle of beer held loosely in both hands and his eyes to us.
He knew. I knew he knew by the feel of the room and the look on his face.
He knew.
Oh God.
“Dad—” I started, taking two steps toward him.
“Pete told me,” he cut me off, and his tone made me stop dead. “My daughter didn’t tell me. Pete came by here yesterday mornin’ for a visit, saw Shy leave. Saw you two suckin’ face by Shy’s bike. Pete sat on that for a night, wonderin’ if he should tell me. Then he told me.”
I pulled in breath and opened my mouth to say something, but Dad got there before me.
“Lied to me. Lied to Tyra. Your brother. My brothers.” His eyes moved to pierce Shy. “
Your
brothers.”
My blood ran cold and I began, “We just—”
“Lied,” Dad clipped, putting his beer bottle next to the three that were already on the counter indicating he’d been there for a while and then he straightened from the stool, his eyes going back to Shy.
“She’s my fuckin’ daughter, man.”
“I’m aware of that, brother,” Shy said in a low rumble.
“I get that so what I don’t get is what… the…
fuck?
” Dad returned, his voice lower and very scary.
This was not good.
“Dad, please, let me explain why—”
His brows shot up and his eyes sliced to me. “You lied. Told you, Tab, long time ago, you did that shit again, you would not like the consequences.” He pointed to the floor. “Now you get the consequences.” He started walking and his gaze moved to Shy. “You do too.”
He stopped close to Shy, nearly nose to nose, and kept talking.
“My daughter, my brother. Not cool. You know it. That’s why you hid it. Do not think for one second this shit washes. Brace, brother. I’m all over your ass. You fuck up, even minor, I’ll jump all over that shit to get… you…
out
.”
I sucked in a harsh breath that burned, Shy’s body jerked and I watched as Dad stalked by us, straight to the door.
Shy turned to him.
Then he opened his mouth and blew my mind.
“Tack, brother, I’m in love with her.”
Dad already had the door open, most of his body out of it, but he turned and leveled his eyes on Shy.
He didn’t hide his disgust.
“Brother, you do not know what love is.”
And with that, he was gone.
I stared at the door, too much happening to process it all.
Then it all slid into place, the thing that happened that was priority hit me like a bullet, and I turned woodenly to Shy who was also staring at the door, that muscle ticking in his jaw.
“You love me?” I whispered.
He turned slowly to me and the muscle in his jaw kept ticking until his eyes locked on mine.
“You lost that guy, respect, you found the strength to carry on. Know this, Tabby, I lost you, it would be sixty years of goin’ through the motions. I know that in my dick. I know it in my gut. I know it in my heart. I know it deep down in my goddamned soul.”
Oh my God.
Oh my God!
Tears filled my eyes and I stood frozen, staring at his lanky, tall, biker badass gorgeousness.
“Your dad just threw down and I just laid it out,” Shy stated when I didn’t speak. “Now’s the time to share, Tabby.”
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Good, but don’t say that shit to me three feet away. Get the fuck over here.”
I launched off on a foot, took one step and flew through the air.
Shy, as he’d been doing awhile, caught me.
I wrapped my limbs around him and looked down in his beautiful green eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered again.
“Good,” he whispered back, his hand sliding up my neck, into my hair. He pulled my face to his and he kissed me.
And he kept doing it until he laid me in bed.
He only stopped to make love to me.
Three days later…
I drove into the forecourt of Ride, scanning the space. I saw Shy’s bike, Dad’s bike, Big Petey’s Trike, and Tyra’s Mustang.
“Excellent,” I muttered under my breath, irately. “The gang’s all here.”
Suffice it to say, I was in a mood.
This mood had part to do with the fact that I just got off work and, in my absence, Dr. Dickhead had not taken time to reflect on the error of his ways (not a surprise). I wasn’t his sole target anymore but he was worse than before, so it still felt the same. The problem was, now that I’d jacked them around, I felt I had to prove that I was stable, they could count on me, and part of doing that wasn’t moaning about a douchebag doctor right after I put them through the hassle and expense of an unnecessary hiring process.
This mood also had to do with the fact that Natalie
still
hadn’t called, even though I’d phoned her every day since she took off.
And last, this mood had to do with the fact that neither Dad nor Tyra had returned my calls, calls I’d made repeatedly, and that ticked me off.
Although Tyra and Dad were not taking my calls, Rush called me, reamed my ass for ten full minutes without letting me get a word in, saying some crap about Shy I was trying to block out so I would maybe be able to forgive him sometime in the distant future, then he hung up.
Hung up!
On me!
I’d called Big Petey and asked him why in
the
hell he talked to Dad before he talked to me.
“Honeybunch, this kinda shit, I know your dad, he’d wanna know,” he explained to me.
“Pete, this kinda shit, you think maybe there’s a reason he
doesn’t
know and the only people who can explain that reason would be
Shy
or
me
?”
“I weighed my actions, Tabby, and in the end did the right thing,” Pete replied and I knew he had his back up at my tone because, although he was a great guy, I adored him and he adored me, his ass was stubborn. Not to mention, he was a biker and not a young one. He wasn’t used to women giving him crap, thus the reason he’d been divorced (three times).
“Well, you would be
wrong
,” I told him before I hung up on him.
That was yesterday, two days of messages that went unreturned from Dad and Tyra, Rush’s tirade, and Natalie’s continuing grudge. And this didn’t even include the fact that Shy was trying to gloss over things were not so great at Chaos for him. Not that he’d come right out and said that, but I could tell by the look on his face and
his
mood.
The brothers were about as pleased as Dad upon the news spreading that there was a Shy and me, and when those men got ticked off about something, they didn’t go gab with their psychologists about it. All hell broke loose.
So by the time I got Pete on the phone, I was over it.
Now I was
totally
over it.
Yes, okay, Shy was a brother, I was the president’s daughter, this had ripple effects on the family.
But, to coin Shy’s phrase, I was twenty-three years old, and I really did not have to report to my Dad, stepmom, and extended motorcycle family who I was fucking.
Seriously!
So I was raring to go when, still wearing my scrubs, I stomped up the steps to the office and stormed right in.
Fortunately, I saw my little brothers Rider and Cutter weren’t there, like they often were, hanging with their mom while she worked.
This was the only good thing.
The bad thing was Tyra turning to the door with a smile then seeing it was me. Her face went blank, her mouth set, and she lifted a hand and announced, “Tabby, I was hoping you were getting the message when I didn’t pick up your calls. I need a few more days to process what you’ve done before I talk to you.”
She could not be serious.
She was talking to me like I was sixteen.
Uh-uh.
No way.
I stared at her in her cute little top and I knew she had a slim, smart but tight skirt and high heels on behind the desk that hid her. Even after years as the office manager of Ride, a garage run by bikers, she didn’t give up her professional sex-kitten look. I knew Dad (and all the other guys) totally dug it. I also knew, staring at her right then, that was a look I had once adopted. Another phase, the phase I was in when I was with Jason. A phase that was Tyra, not me.
I walked fully in, closing the door behind me, stopped a couple feet from her desk, and repeated, “You need a few more days to process what I’ve done?”
Her eyes narrowed on me and I knew she was pissed but I also knew I was
more
pissed.
“You heard me,” she replied.
“Oh yeah, I did. I just don’t understand you. What, exactly, have I done?”
Her head jerked with anger before her eyes got big and she stated, “You lied to your dad and me.”
“When did I do that?” I asked. I saw her nose scrunch, it was cute but it was also an indication of anger.
“Don’t be smart—you know lying by omission is the same thing as lying.”