Own the Wind(61)

Yep, not good.

“Vote about what?” I asked.

“Club business, Tabitha, move your ass out,” Dad clipped.

Oh no, that “Tabitha” business was not going to work on me. Four years ago, yes.

Now, absolutely not.

“Vote about what, Dad?” I clipped back.

“Shy, she’s yours, that’s what you say. Control your woman,” High demanded. “Get her ass out.”

My eyes went to Shy to see him looking at High, and he wasn’t looking pissed.

He was looking reflective.

Then he said, “Tab and I don’t play it that way. You wanna order your old lady around, do what you do, not for me to say. I asked her to go, she didn’t go. Not gonna make her. But you try, you’ll deal with me.”

God, I loved my guy.

“She don’t mind you?” Boz asked, brows to his hairline but Shy ignored him and looked to Dad.

“Vote,” he agreed, and my throat got so tight, I suddenly was having trouble breathing. What he said next didn’t make it any better. “You want my cut, vote doesn’t swing my way, I’ll leave it with you and you’ll see the back of my bike. I’ll black out the Chaos ink. What I won’t do is give up your daughter. So f*ckin’ vote. You don’t want me there, text me the results and send a man to pick up my cut. You know where I’ll be. I’ll be with Tabby.”

Oh God. Shy’s cut, any of the boys’ cuts, were held sacred to them. They were given the leather jacket with the Chaos patch on the back upon induction to the Club. Their “cut.”

Once they earned it, they never gave it up.

Never.

Not for anything. Not unless forced, say, should they do something heinous to get kicked out of the Club.

“No. No, no, no,” Tyra breathed behind me, but I couldn’t move or speak.

“You’d give up your brothers for a woman?” Brick asked incredulously and Shy’s eyes moved to him.

“Abso-f*cking-lutely.”

“Seriously?” Boz asked.

“Not any woman,” Shy nodded my way then invited, “Now, ask again.”

God.

God!

God, I loved my guy.

“Holy f*ck,” Tug whispered.

Shy looked at Dad. “You vote. Let me know. But you move to take my family from me, Tack, know this, you’re dead to me. Tab loves me, it’ll suck for her to have a man separate from her family but she’ll deal. But you call this vote, no matter which way it goes, you will be dead to me.”

Oh my God.

“No. No, no, no,” Tyra breathed again.

“Shy,” I forced out.

He ignored me and his eyes moved through the men standing behind my Dad. “I do not get in your business. I might make a call about what you do and who you f*ck but I keep that shit to myself. And some of your shit is almost as close to home”—his eyes pinpointed Hop—“and you know it.”

What did that mean?

Shy didn’t explain but he did continue to look through the men and speak.

“Not once has this Club had a sit-down about how they feel about who a brother has in his bed. Tack calls that sit-down, you boys sit down, I’ll say now, it doesn’t matter how the vote goes. You sit down, your message will be clear. You’ll get my cut. Part of bein’ in this family is me bein’ free to be me. Not me answering to my brothers about the woman I fall in love with or, actually, any-f*cking-thing. You take my freedom away from me, there is no longer any reason for me to be here. So I won’t be.”

Shy looked back at Dad.

“Just so I’m clear, if you make it Tab or my cut, I pick Tab. You’ll get my cut and you, personally, will not ever, brother, not ever again see me.”

“Well, f*ckin’ hell,” a familiar voice I hadn’t heard in years and wished it had been decades said from behind me. “I’m gone for-freakin’-ever and it looks like Tabby’s still causin’ mayhem and heartbreak.”

Woodenly, I turned to see my mother, defying all reason because I knew that not only Dad but all of Chaos threw down with her and told her she was banned from their property.

I felt the unhappy vibe ratchet up to apocalyptic levels then I felt movement, looked over my shoulder, saw Dad shifting toward Mom but Shy was already on the move.

I’d never seen anyone move that fast.

One second he was six feet behind me, the next he was passing me.

I knew why. Even though it happened well before Shy and I hooked up, all the brothers knew my mom and I didn’t get along. They knew how she tore me down. They knew how relentless she was with that. They knew the hateful things she’d said to me, done to me, how it made me feel and how it made me act out when I was younger.

It was my doing, my fault, but it was my mom who made me feel like nothing, and then I found myself at sixteen with a boyfriend way too old for me who hit me when I didn’t put out.

It wasn’t just me. Mom threw down with Tyra, they even had a catfight in the forecourt of Ride, and she was always a screaming bitch to Dad.

In the end, she tried to sell custody of me and Rush to Dad in order to get her now-dead husband out of debt with drug dealers. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but family talked and Chaos was family, so I found out. Dad had made the deal in order to get her out of our lives, mine especially, because her abuse cut me that deep.