“Shit to do,” he muttered and moved around the bar, eyes to his feet, mind centered on keeping his jaw relaxed, his hands unclenched.
He walked out the door, swung on his bike, and rolled out.
He didn’t hit Chaos again for three weeks.
* * *
Six months later…
Shy was moving across the forecourt toward the Compound in order to grab a shower and head out. His hands were filthy from grease. The car he’d been working on for the last three months was finally done.
Time to celebrate.
He moved into the Compound and felt the heaviness in the air immediately. Boys were moving out, faces alert, even alarmed, the vibe bad.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked Roscoe, who was shifting, like all the brothers, toward the door.
“Car accident,” Roscoe answered, stopping and catching his eye. “Tab’s fiancé.”
The force of that information knocked Shy so hard it was a wonder he didn’t fall to a knee.
The wedding was three weeks away.
Jesus. Tabby.
“What?” he whispered.
Roscoe shook his head. “Just got the news. She’s at Denver Health. He’s, brother, this shit is f**kin’ crazy, but the guy was DOA. Didn’t even make it to the hospital. Gone. Tack says Tab’s lost it. We’re movin’ out, takin her back, Tack’s back, seein’ if we can do anything.” His head tipped to the side. “Comin’?”
DOA.
Didn’t even make it to the hospital.
Gone.
Tab’s lost it.
Lost it.
“Anyone watchin’ the kids?” he forced out.
“Sheila’s headin’ up there.”
“I’ll go help her out,” Shy offered, turning, digging his greasy hand into his jeans for his keys.
“Help out Sheila with the kids?” Roscoe asked his back.
Shy didn’t answer. It was jacked, f**king lame, but it was doing something. Something away from Tabby.
She wouldn’t want to see him now.
She never wanted to see him.
But he had to do something.
He wasn’t her family.
But she was his.
* * *
Three days later…
Shy sat in his dark living room in his apartment, the first time he’d been there for months.
He was thinking and he was remembering.
Remembering for the first time in a long time that day when the news came.
Remembering that day when his life, at age f**king twelve, shifted and went from good, no great, to absolute shit.
Remembering the day years later when he found Chaos and he thought, finally, f**king finally, his life would no longer be shit and he was right.
And thinking that, six hours ago, probably wearing black, probably looking lifeless, just like she’d looked yesterday when he saw her walking out of the office with Cherry, Cherry’s arm around her holding her close, her head bobbing like she was agreeing to what Cherry was saying when he knew just by looking at her she didn’t hear a thing, Tabby stood in a cemetery and laid her man into the ground.
Her man was twenty-seven years old.
Shy’s age.
Shy lifted the bottle of vodka to his lips and took a deep pull.
He didn’t drop it before he took another one.
Chapter One
“I Dreamed a Dream”
Three and a half months later…
His cell rang and Parker “Shy” Cage opened his eyes.
He was on his back in his bed in his room at the Chaos Motorcycle Club’s Compound. The lights were still on and he was buried under a small pile of women. One was tucked up against his side, her leg thrown over his thighs, her arm over his middle. The other was upside down, tucked to his other side, her knee in his stomach, her arm over his calves.
Both were naked.
“Shit,” he muttered, twisting with difficulty under his fence of limbs. He reached out to his phone.
He checked the display, his brows drew together at the “unknown caller” he saw on the screen as he touched his thumb to it to take the call.
“Yo,” he said into the phone.
“Shy?” a woman asked, she sounded weird, far away, quiet.
“You got me,” he answered.
“It’s Tabby.”
He shot to sitting in bed, limbs flying and they weren’t his.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” her voice caught like she was trying to stop crying or, maybe, hyperventilating, then she whispered, “So, so sorry but I’m in a jam. I think I might even be kinda… um, in trouble.”
“Where are you?” he barked into the phone, rolling over the woman at his side and finding his feet.
“I… I… well, I was with this old friend and we were. Damn, um…” she stammered as Shy balanced the phone between ear and shoulder and tugged on his jeans.
“Babe, where are you?” he repeated.
“In a bathroom,” she told him, as he tagged a tee off the floor and straightened, waiting for her to say more.
When she didn’t, gently, he prompted, “I kinda need to know where that bathroom is, sugar.”
“I, uh… this guy is… um, I didn’t know it, obviously, but I think he’s—” another hitch in her breath before she whispered so low he barely heard “—a bad dude.”
Fuck.
Shit.
Fuck.
He nabbed his boots off the floor and sat on the bed to yank them on with his socks, asking, “Do I need backup?”
“I don’t want anyone…” she paused. “Please, don’t tell anyone. Just… can you please just text me when you’re here? I’ll stay in the bathroom, put my phone on vibrate so no one will hear, and I’ll crawl out the window when you get here.”
“Tab, no one is gonna think shit. Just give me the lay of the land. Are you in danger?”
“I’ll crawl out the window.”
He gentled his voice further and stopped putting on his boots to give her his full attention.
“Tabby, baby, are you in danger?”
“I… well, I don’t know really. There’s a lot of drugs and I saw some, well, a lot of guns.”
Shit.
“Address, honey,” he urged, and she gave it to him.
Then she said, “Don’t tell anyone, please. Just text.”
“I’ll give you that if you keep me notified and often. Text me. Just an ‘I’m okay’ every minute or so. I don’t get one, I’ll know you’re not and I’m bringin’ in the boys.”
“I can do that,” she agreed.