Chaos series by Kristen Ashley

“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.

This was also partly because there were times when I needed to be treated like I was fragile and with an acute sense that was a little uncanny (and something I was burying in my pit of denial, a place I created after breakfast with Shy that was seeing a lot of action these days), Shy knew when those times were and treated me accordingly.

Twice, I’d fallen sleep in his arms crying about Jason.

Twice, I’d woken up when he’d picked me up, cradling me and carrying me to bed.

I felt it when he laid me down. I felt it when he pulled the sheets over me. Last, I felt it (but was burying it in my pit of denial), when his lips brushed my temple and he moved away.

Incidentally, I was also burying in my pit of denial how it felt to be carried and essentially tucked into bed by a hot guy.

Since we’d gotten tight, it went without saying we spent a lot of time together. He came over and I ruined dinner, we talked, then we watched TV. I went to the Compound and we played pool or sat on a couch, gabbed and sometimes laughed, or we’d sit at the bar with some of the guys and shoot the breeze.

We didn’t see each other every day, just four, five times a week, but we talked every day on the phone, sometimes more than once, just checking in, chatting, Shy keeping his finger on my pulse (something I also was burying in my pit of denial).

With Shy’s help, I was coming back to myself and I was healing from the loss of Jason. I didn’t think of him every other minute, the times when I would feel empty were coming less frequently, and the times when I would smile or even laugh were coming more often.

As the days went by, with Shy in them, I was also realizing, in a way I couldn’t bury in my pit of denial, that it had been a long time since I’d been me, truly me, even before Jason died.

I was also remembering things. Like when I’d catch Jason staring a hair too long at my Harley tees in my drawer, his face expressionless, but the length of time he did it speaking volumes that now I was coming to understand but before I refused to acknowledge. I also recalled times like when we were sitting outside a restaurant and a bike would go by, I’d watch, listen to the pipes and when they died away, I’d find his eyes on me. I knew my face was wistful and his gaze was contemplative.

Having these memories, I wondered if Jason wondered if there was some piece of me I was burying that would eventually surface and, without Jason living, breathing, walking, talking, putting his hands and mouth on me, making it all good, I was wondering the same thing too.