Own the Wind(95)

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and searched the floor frantically for my nightie even as Shy wound things up with Natalie.

“Woman, hear me. This phone is comin’ with me so you can’t call and freak Tab any more than she’s already freaked. Be smart, for f*ckin’ once in your life. I’m takin’ care of your shit once. This is the only chance you get. Don’t blow it now and know you won’t get the chance to blow it later. You f*ck up again, even somethin’ not this big, you’re done for Tabby. Hear me?”

This big?

She must have heard him for he touched his thumb to my screen and commenced dressing.

I had my nightie on, and since he didn’t say anything to me, just started tugging on clothes, I called, “Uh… hello? Freaking out here, Shy.”

He looked at me and did the worst thing he could do at that moment.

He took two long strides to me, lifted his hands and cupped my jaws, one hand still holding my phone. Then he dipped his face so he was all I could see.

Okay, I knew this was serious.

Now I knew it was serious.

“She’s hit bottom, and I’m seein’ from your girl that when she does somethin’, she goes big,” he explained.

“Wh… what? What’s she done?” I stammered.

“Not a lot of time. You need to get dressed and to the Compound, which is where I’ll be takin’ her after I get her ass. It’s also the safest place for you if there’s blowback.”

Blowback! I freaking hated that word.

“Shy—”

He cut me off to lay it out for me. “She got in deep with a dealer. She owes him big. He’s takin’ his money back from her in * and when I say that I mean, her eating it, hers getting f*cked, and all of this happening on camera. She’s right now dolled up and ready to give her first performance on a porno set.”

“They film pornos in Denver at three in the morning?” I breathed stupidly, focusing on that rather than the fact my best friend was preparing to make her film debut and not in a good way, and Shy stared at me.

Then he said, “Babe, pisses me off f*ckin’ more than I am already that you didn’t know that and now you do. This bitch of yours, she’s not teachin’ you any more of these lessons. She shared with me she doesn’t feel like girl on girl or takin’ cock from a guy she doesn’t know and havin’ all that on film. She wants an extraction which means, she’s your girl, she gets one.” His hands pressed gently into my jaws as he emphasized, “One, Tab. I know these *s, and Chaos is gonna buy a shitload of trouble for intervening.”

Suddenly, I had scores of worries and one was my mind suddenly dredging up the word firepower.

“What do you mean, Chaos is gonna buy trouble?” I asked but I knew.

Crap, I knew.

I was going to kill Natalie.

“That, I’m not gonna take the time to explain,” he replied, yanked me to him, kissed the top of my hair, let me go, turned, nabbed his boots, his tee, and prowled out the bedroom door.

I stared at the opened door. In order not to focus on the matter at hand which had my heart racing, I took in something that never failed to calm me.

I looked around our bedroom, taking in our new kick-ass bedroom furniture (my old stuff was in the guest room, Shy’s stuff was at the dump).

I loved our room. I’d gotten inspired. It was totally biker meets biker babe from birth. Black furniture. Deep purple sheets. Chrome accents. A black-and-white picture of me and Shy on his bike, taking off from the Compound, my arms around him, my chin to his shoulder, Shy looking badass cool in mirrored shades.

Sheila had taken that picture and I’d had it blown up to nearly poster size, framed in a black-and-chrome frame and it was hanging over the dresser. It might seem conceited to have a big poster of us looking awesome cool on our bedroom wall but I didn’t care. I thought it was the bomb.

Shy did too. I’d kept him away as I was doing up the room and when I unveiled it, he’d shown me he loved the whole thing by starting a marathon session that began on our purple sheets, moved to the floor and ended on that dresser. There was a handprint on the glass of that poster, mine, put there when my hand flew back to steady me as Shy gave me an orgasm. I didn’t have it in me to get out the Windex. I wanted to remember giving Shy a room he liked that much for a good long while. That handprint might stay there forever.

The last touch to the room was a wonky ball of pressed-together Christmas candy wrappers that I’d had put in one of those cases where you normally display signed baseballs. They were the wrappers Shy had cleaned up after my Hitchcock marathon right before what was not officially but still was (kind of) our first date. I’d found that ball of wrappers and saved it. I’d buried the reasons why in my pit of denial but I’d kept it and then had it mounted when we moved into our house. It was sitting on my nightstand.

When he saw it, Shy didn’t celebrate that in his normal way. He just cupped my jaw, slid his thumb tenderly along my cheekbone, held my eyes, his soft and warm as he muttered, “You were gone for me too.”

He was right. I didn’t admit it at the time. It was crazy.

But I’d saved a ball of discarded Christmas candy wrappers.

I was gone for him too

Firepower.

Shy took off with zero word from me that I wanted him to do so. He just went off to save Natalie, dragging the brothers with him.