“Since I was Shy’s old lady and my behaviour reflected on him, I backed down. But, since I was Tabby and he was Hound, I didn’t do it gracefully. “You’re off my Christmas card list,” I announced.”

“Do you always wear underwear like this, or is it for me?”I rolled to my back and pulled the sheet to my waist. “It isn’t for you, I’ve been wearing underwear like this since Gram gave me my first Frederick’s of Hollywood box on my sixteenth birthday. Now, I owe Victoria’s Secret my first-born child.”Before speaking again, Lee waited several seconds that can only be described as ‘loaded silence’. While this silence was going on, he pulled the sheet back down.“You’re tellin’ me that since you were sixteen you’ve been sittin’ next to me every year at Christmas Dinner wearin’ underwear like this?”

“Your dad just threw down and I just laid it out,” Shy started when I didn’t speak. “Now’s the time to share, Tabby.”“I love you,” I whispered. “Good, but don’t say that shit to me three feet away. Get the fuck over here.”I launched off on a foot, took one step and flew through the air. Shy, as he’d been doing awhile, caught me. I wrapped my limbs around him and looked down in his beautiful green eyes. “I love you,” I whispered again.”

“You’re the fuckin’ shit, Tabby.”“I know,” I told him airily on another smile. “My man tells me that all the time.”His eyes dropped to my mouth and his lips ordered, “Kiss me, baby.”

“Know this, Tabby, I lose you, it would be sixty years of goin' through the motions. I know that in my dick. I know it in my gut. I know it in my heart. I know it deep down in my goddamned soul”

“Shy, she’s yours, that’s what you say. Control your woman,” High demanded. “Get her ass out.”My eyes went to Shy to see him looking at High, and he wasn’t looking pissed. He was looking reflective. Then he said, “Tab and I don’t play it that way. You wanna order your old lady around, do what you do, not for me to say. I asked her to go, she didn’t go. Not gonna make her. But you try, you’ll deal with me.”God, I loved my guy.”

“Never before, never since have I felt for any woman, fuck anyone the way I felt about you. I want that back. I want my girl back.”