Own the Wind (Chaos, #1)(23)

My breathing was shallow when he was done but I forced through it, “God, Shy. God. I didn’t know. That sucks, huge, so huge it’s impossible to measure how huge that sucks, it’s that huge.”

He grinned.

Yes, I said grinned.

Through his grin, he noted, “That about covers it, sugar.”

I ignored the grin that I knew, from experience, hid his pain and blathered, “What… I mean, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, uh… you don’t have to tell me but what happened after? To you and your brother.”

He leaned further back in his chair, shifting his hips so his legs were out to the side. He stretched them, crossed them at the ankles, casual, cool, like this could be any conversation.

“Mom and Dad, Lan, my brother, and me were tight. Dad was cool, there but not in your face, Mom was awesome. You’re right, f*ckin’ sucked huge they were gone and, after, Dad’s brother took us in. He was cool, a lot like Dad. My brother and I liked him. We didn’t understand until later there were a lot of things about him not like Dad.”

This, I thought, wasn’t a good beginning.

Shy kept talking and I found I was right.

“My aunt was not cool. Dad hated her. Mom detested her. Said straight out in front of Lan and me she was a bitch. My aunt hated us bein’ there, and she didn’t have a problem lettin’ us know. Doted on her two pieces-of-shit brats, acted like Lan and I stole the last slice of bread the family’d ever have and pissed on it.” He tipped his head to me. “Your mom, seen her around, Tab, before Tack stopped takin’ her shit. She’s a total bitch. My aunt makes your mom look like mother of the year. She was relentless. She had enough venom for a thousand snakes and she was not afraid to strike.”

“That sucks too,” I noted then finished, “Also huge.”

He grinned again and that grin, as well as the first one, in the face of our subject matter made me all kinds of uneasy. “You’re right about that too, babe.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I told him, and I didn’t. I mean, I really wanted to say something, I just didn’t know what that was.

He sat up in his chair, put his legs under the table, and leaned into me, all the while his eyes locked on mine.

“Nothin’ to say, Tabby. Life was shit. Lost my family, years later, found a new family. Then life wasn’t shit anymore.”

He was talking about his life but his point was clear.

My life was shit. I lost Jason. But someday, life wouldn’t be shit anymore.

He was right, and so was Tyra.

Losing Jason at all, much less at his age and three weeks before our wedding, sucked huge. So huge it was impossible to measure.

But time would pass and, if I was lucky, life wouldn’t suck anymore.

To express the epiphany he’d led me to, I whispered, “Right.”

“Right,” he whispered back.

Our food arrived.

It was time to eat and get out of the heavy, and I knew Shy agreed, because he tucked right in, so I did too.

I was forking into my eggs when it hit me.

I should never have had second thoughts about coming out with Shy because Shy was Chaos. I was Chaos. And Chaos was family.

So being out with Shy was right, because he was family.

“Thanks for draggin’ my ass out to breakfast, Shy Cage,” I muttered to my eggs then shoved some into my mouth.

“Pleased you hauled your ass out to come with me, Tabitha Allen,” Shy muttered back. I lifted my gaze to his and I saw his unbelievable green eyes warm and smiling at me.

I chewed, swallowed, and informed him, “Just that, I hope you know, you’re getting the check.”

Shy burst out laughing.

It sounded beautiful.

Good.

Right.

And again, I was right, this was right, this was good.

It was family.





Chapter Four


Let’s Ride


Two months later…

I stomped through the parking lot of the hospital and stabbed at my phone.

I put it to my ear, it rang once, then he said what he always said when he got me.

“Sugar.”

“Where are you?” I snapped.

Silence a beat then, with humor in his tone that I wisely decided to ignore, Shy asked, “Where do you want me to be?”

“My house for dinner. Twenty minutes. And I don’t care what it tastes like, Shy, you’re gonna eat it and you’re not gonna bellyache about it.”

“Your place. Twenty,” he agreed, still with humor in his tone, which I continued wisely to ignore.

Then he hung up.

I shoved my key into the door of my car and unlocked it.

I only felt better when I turned the key in the ignition and she purred to life.

My dad gave me my car, he restored it for me, and he still kept it purring for me. He did this with love, straight through from before I was sixteen to now, and he’d do it until he couldn’t lift a wrench anymore.

Every time she purred to life, I remembered that and it made me feel better.

I coasted on that feeling all the way home, even as my mind filled with the last two months.

In that time, I’d grown tight with Shy.

This was partly because he didn’t treat me as fragile like everyone else did. Shy treated me like me, and as the days wore on with Shy in my life, I felt more me than I’d felt in a long time.