I crouched and deep-breathed.
What the heck?
What the heck?
Okay, all right, okay.
No. Not okay. Not all right.
What the heck?
I lifted up and peeked over the stairs toward the Compound and my lungs burst into flame at what I saw.
Shy and the woman standing by his bike. Her hand was at his hip. His hand was at her neck. Their mouths were connected.
I jerked down and my lungs turned to ash, I struggled for breath as I heard a Harley roar, and I pressed against the cement at the side of the steps, my eyes glued to the forecourt so I could see them as they drove by, Shy on his bike, the woman pressed to his back.
Fortunately, Shy’s head was turned away from me.
Heartbreakingly, her cheek was pressed to his shoulder.
A huge wave crashed over me, pulling me under, whipping me around. I couldn’t get myself under control. I couldn’t strike out for the surface.
I was drowning
I’d grown up in the world of bikers and I knew.
I knew.
I knew what a piece of tail looked like riding on the back of a bike, and I knew what a biker’s woman looked like.
That woman was not tail.
She was Shy’s.
I hadn’t even recovered and another wave crashed over me, bigger than the first. So huge and powerful, I’d never make it to the top.
I watched until they disappeared and I kept watching, trying to surface, come up for air.
“Honeybunch, what in the frig are you doin’?” I heard Big Petey ask.
I shot up from my crouch and turned to see him moving my way, coming from one of the bays.
“Um…” I mumbled but couldn’t go on.
He looked at me and concern washed over his features. “You okay?”
“Uh… yeah,” I forced out. “Great.”
He stared at me then remarked, “You look like someone ran over your puppy.”
Oh God.
His eyes moved over my face, “You looked like when—”
I held my breath. Pete stopped speaking then turned to look at the entrance to Ride. Then he scanned the Compound. Then something moved over his features and he looked at me.
“He’s been seein’ her for three months.”
Oh God.
I clenched my teeth together so my mouth wouldn’t drop open. It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.
Three months.
Shy had been seeing her for three months.
Three months!
How?
How had he been seeing her when he’d been seeing me?
And why didn’t he tell me?
I came out of my fevered thoughts but not out of the haze of pain I was trying to deny because I didn’t get it. What I was feeling. How huge it was. How deep it hit me. How much pain it caused.
No, I did but I was burying it.
Pete’s hand curled around my upper arm. “Let’s get you a drink.”
My head jerked back to look up at him. “No, that’s cool.” I said softly. “I’m driving.”
His head dipped down to get closer to me. “Tabby, honeybunch, let’s get a drink. Promise, we’ll get one down you and we’ll get you out before they come back.”
He held my eyes and I knew, like always, he was looking out for me, even, in this instance (though I was denying it), saving me from myself.
Pete was the grandfather I never had.
Dad’s dad was inside, serving life for double homicide. Dad hated him, I’d never met him and, seeing as Dad felt the way he did, I knew I never would.
Mom’s dad was a good grandpa, but he didn’t understand the biker life. He also didn’t have a problem sharing this and frequently. He didn’t like his daughter being in it, and he didn’t like what he thought was my dad dragging her in. Before the divorce, when we were all together, this made family visits not real fun, and I was close with my dad, so I never really forgave Gramps for being such a pain in the ass.
He was down in Arizona now with my gram, and I never saw them. They sent cards and called on birthdays and Christmases, but they were checked out of the family. So much, for some whacked reason, they didn’t have it together enough to call and cancel the gift they bought for Jason and me. It, and the shot to the heart it carried, arrived five weeks after he died, when we would have arrived back from our honeymoon.
So for me it was Pete, it had always been Pete.
And looking in his eyes, I knew, since he only had one daughter, now passed, and no grandkids, it was always me.
So I took the hand he offered and let him lead me to the Compound.
He got me a drink.
He also got me the heck out of there before Shy came back with his woman.
Chapter Six
Tied to Your Strings
Two weeks later…
I walked up the stairs to my apartment, dog tired.
I was exhausted because I’d just had two days of back-to-back double shifts.
I had a shift the next day too, and though it wasn’t a double, I needed a break.
Thinking about tomorrow made me even more exhausted.
And as if being dog tired wasn’t bad enough, I’d had another run-in with Dr. Dickhead that day and it was bad.
Gossip was running amuck in the hospital that the nurse he was always banging in the supply closet was denying him his piece of tail until he asked his wife for a divorce. This did not make him happy. He was the kind of guy who wasn’t happy normally, but he was a lot less happy when he wasn’t getting it regular, and some woman trying to yank his chain just made things worse.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, he was taking this garbage out on me and (mostly) only me. I had somehow earned his focus. Maybe because I was the newest and youngest nurse on the ward and thus fresh meat. Maybe he just had it out for me because he was a douche.
The constant focus of his douche-ness escalated that day when he laid into me in front of a patient. It wasn’t cool normally, but in front of a patient meant I couldn’t stick up for myself. I had to take it.
So I did and it was bad.
So bad, I wanted to turn my head to the patient, say, “If you’ll excuse me,” round her bed and knee him in the ’nads. I did not do this. Instead, he finished up, stormed off, and I knew it was as bad as it seemed when the patient asked, “Are you all right?”
I assured her I was, but it stuck in my craw that I was assuring a patient that I was all right when it was my job to make sure she was all right.
I was tired of his crap. I was just plain tired, and what made matters worse was that I didn’t even have Shy to talk to about it.
Work sucked. Not having Shy sucked more.
Everything sucked.
I had been avoiding him for two weeks, not taking his calls, not returning his messages, not hitting Ride and finding ways to stay away from my apartment just in case he popped by.
I didn’t know why I was avoiding him, but I told myself I was doing it because I needed to get my head together.
No, strike that, I did know why I was doing it. I just let that fester in that deep place inside me that I was never, ever visiting.
So I had no one to talk with about my work crap, and I had no one to talk to about how I was feeling about Shy, because I wouldn’t even admit to myself how I was feeling about Shy.
I was screwed.
I was also beginning to think I was an idiot.
These were my thoughts when I let myself into my dark apartment, locked the door behind me, dropped my purse and keys on the table by the door, and moved through the dark living room to the lamp by the side of the couch.