“I don’t get that,” Jagger said quiet.
Hound gave it to him.
“Did a lot in my life, son, some good, but there was bad. The worst kinda bad there is. You do what you feel needs to be done, do it without hesitation, do it even with pride, but it scores marks in your soul and you feel those marks. You can let them bein’ there take you over and make you think that’s all you got in you. Like you boys were, like helpin’ your mother out was, Jean was proof that what I got under those marks is still good and pure and right. No way she’d take me into her life the way she did if I wasn’t the kinda man who deserved that trust, her time, the love she gave me.”
I had to swallow again.
“Now,” Hound continued, “she’s gone and I’m seein’ I was selfish with that. Jean wanted to meet your momma and I let her do that, and she loved having time with your ma. She woulda loved you boys. I wished I’d a’ let you have her, but I wish more I’d a’ let her have you. I didn’t. I gotta live with that. But at least she died knowin’ your momma, knowin’ I had her, knowin’ she had you boys to give to me, so knowin’ that I had you too. So I’m hangin’ on to that.”
When he was done talking, no one said anything.
I was going to jump in but Hound got there before me.
“You feel me on that, Jag?” he asked.
“Yeah, Hound,” Jag answered.
He swung his head Dutch’s way. “You feel me, Dutch?”
They gave each other an intense look I didn’t get before Dutch replied, “Absolutely, Hound.”
Then Hound looked to me. “You okay, baby?”
I was not.
I could barely see him with the tears swimming in my eyes.
But I nodded, looked between my sons and said in a trembling, husky voice, “You guys would have loved her. She loved Hound like he was her own boy. And she made him not cuss and take his boots off before he put his feet on her coffee table. It was hilarious.”
Hound shot me a sweet grin.
“Seriously?” Jag asked.
I looked to him, sniffed and nodded.
“She a ballbuster?” Jagger asked Hound.
“She was a proper biker grandma,” I told my son.
Jagger guffawed.
I grinned.
“Ma makes us take our boots off before we put our feet on the table,” Dutch told Hound.
“I know, son. As it should be,” Hound replied.
Okay.
I was at my end.
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “Someone either pass me the bottle of wine or cut me another piece of cake. No! Both!”
Hound smiled at me.
Dutch grinned at me.
Jagger grabbed the knife on the plate and sliced into the cake (I knew he was being helpful but also doing this so he could get icing and pistachio mousse on his fingers so he could lick it off).
He did this muttering, “Bitches.”
“We’re about to have a no cussing rule in momma’s house,” I warned.
Jagger shot me a smirk.
I understood that smirk.
My sons were of Chaos and now just Chaos.
From the time they understood the words, I had a no cussing rule that ended when Dutch hit seventeen, he cursed better and more prolifically than his father (and Hound) and I gave up.
No way I could enforce it now. That had long since left the building.
Dutch got up to get the bottle of wine.
Hound adjusted to the side, stretching his long legs out toward Dutch’s side of the table, crossing his ankles, and asked Jag, “You talk to your profs about makin’ up the day?”
“Yeah,” Jag said, turning to his side and stretching out his long legs toward Hound. “Emailed this afternoon. Told ’em I got some twenty-four-hour flu. It’s all good.”
Dutch put the wine on the table, sat and then shifted in his seat, stretching his long legs out toward me. “Joke says, after he finishes this build, he’s gonna let me in on the next one.”
“Lucky,” Jag grunted.
“Do your time, son, do your time,” Hound murmured, like a biker lullaby.
I poured wine and ate cake.
And I kept my legs right under me.
The better to take it all in, the dream unfolding around me.
A total winner.
I’ll Do Anything It Takes
Keely
The next morning, I sat cross-legged in my bed, having pulled Hound’s tee over my head after we’d done our business and he’d gotten up to use the bathroom before I hit it to take my shower before work.
I was sitting facing the bathroom.
He came out, naked, his amazing tats on display, his thick, gorgeous cock still kinda hard, his beefy fur-covered thighs too much of a distraction (so I refused to focus on them), his eyes directed right at me.
“You got the twenty-four-hour flu too, babe?” he asked on a lip quirk.
“I love you.”
He stopped.
Dead.
“You said it yesterday,” I continued. “You didn’t give me the chance to reply. And so we’re open, it’s out there, you get it, you know, I loved you before I came to your apartment that first time. I loved you, which was the reason I went to Black’s grave to let him know he was going to have to deal. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and I started to fall in love with you years ago, when you laid it out about Dutch joining Chaos and that I needed to sort my shit. But every day I’ve been with you, I’ve fallen more and more in love with you in a way I think that’s going to happen, I hope, until the day I quit breathing.”
He stood there, staring at me, body frozen, face frozen, giving me nothing.
“I said, or started . . . a while back, in your bed, I started to tell you,” I went on. “I said, ‘You’re the . . . ’ but I didn’t finish because we weren’t there, well I was there, but you weren’t there yet so I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. If it would be giving up too much when I didn’t have you in that place I needed you to be. So I’ll finish it now. What I was going to say was that you’re the best man I’ve ever known, Hound. I’ve had twenty-one years of watching the kind of love and loyalty you give to the people you let in your heart, and I want there not to be another day, another second, where you live not knowing what an honor I feel it is that you gave me a place there.”
He made no move, no sound, not even a facial tick.
Um.
Okay.
What on earth did that mean?
“Hound?” I called, beginning to get freaked.
All of a sudden, he was a blur of movement. Then my hair was flying, a drifting cloud all around me, and my arms were forced up as he tore his tee from me.
After that, I was back in the bed with Hound kicking my legs apart with his knee.
“You got the twenty-four-hour flu,” he growled, his body coming down on mine.
Not frozen, not giving me nothing.
His blue eyes were burning straight through me.
“It’s going around,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he grunted, then, even though I didn’t even notice him getting hard again, he’d done it because he entered me.
Filled me.
Became a part of me.
Physically.
He was that already.
He had been for a long time.
And would be.
For always.
“Wow,” I whispered, rounding him with arms and legs.
“Yeah,” he groaned, thrusting.
“I take it, you, uh . . . absorbed what I just said.”
He drove in, stayed in and ground in (another wow), gritting, “Yeah.”
I put both hands to his stubbly cheeks. “Love you, baby.”
He stopped grinding and closed his eyes.
“Love you,” I repeated.
He opened his eyes and he didn’t say it back.
He didn’t have to.
Those expressive eyes he’d kept closed down on me for so lo
ng to hide the way he felt for me were open and sharing, no . . . shouting just what he felt, and how deep it ran . . . for me.
Then he kissed me and started up again fucking me.
That twenty-four-hour flu was a killer.
I stayed in bed all day.
It was the next evening and I was just about to turn down Bev’s street.
“Make sure she gets the message it stays between her, the boys, you and me,” Hound voice sounded throughout my car.
“I think I got that,” I replied, hitting my blinker.
“When you leave, text you’re on the way,” he ordered.
“Affirmative, cowboy, but where will I be on my way to?” I asked.
“Where else?” he asked back.
“Well, you’ve got a pad and I’ve got a pad so whose pad are we crashing at tonight?”
“Fucking then crashing,” he amended.
I made the turn, grinning.
I hadn’t had the longest, driest spell in history, but I was sure it was up there.
Still, it was clear Hound was dedicated to eradicating it in a way I might someday (soon) wonder if it even happened.
“Fucking and crashing,” I agreed.
“Your car sits under threat of being stripped or disappearing altogether and being dismantled at some chop shop every night you park it outside my place. So yours.”
“You leave your truck and bike there,” I reminded him.
“My truck has a Chaos badge in the back window and my bike is known to be my bike so if any motherfucker even looks at either funny, especially my bike, they know they better take a selfie so they’ll remember what they looked like before I rearranged their face.”
“God, it turns me on when you’re badass,” I moaned, semi-teasing, semi-totally-serious, driving down Bev’s street.
“Smartass.”
“No, really.”
“Text me when you’re on your way, Keekee,” he demanded.
“You got it, honey. See you later.”
“Her. The boys. You. And me,” he stated.
I rolled my eyes and turned into Bev’s drive.
“Later,” he finished.
“Later, Shep.”
I heard my radio come on just in time for me to shut the car down.
I turned to grab my purse, the bottle and the bag of stuff I’d gone out to get after work that day, threw open my car door, folded out and moved up Bev’s walk.
She lived in a one-story, two-bedroom in Englewood close to the brilliance of El Tejado and Twin Dragon, some of the best of south of the border and Chinese cuisine you could get in Denver.
It was also very close to Ride.
It was the area I’d always thought of Hound living in, one of those simple, not too old, definitely not new, on-a-big-lot, tidy houses close to good food . . . and Ride.
Bev and Boz had bought that house together and eventually they’d fought bitterly over it when she’d realized he wasn’t going to reconcile with her, even though he’d been in the wrong and she’d forgiven him. He wanted a pad close to Chaos. She’d probably partially wanted the same thing but mostly she wanted their life to start up as it was when Boz came back.
It was just that he never came back.
I wondered if she’d ask her insurance salesman to move in with her. I didn’t remember but I thought he lived in a bungalow in Platte Park. Or maybe it was Washington Park. His kids were both mid-teens and lived part-time with him. He’d probably want to stay put.
I just couldn’t imagine Bev moving.
She had the door open before I got to it and I smiled big.
I held up the bottle and announced, “Sofia sparkling rosé, because Coppola is a freak of nature, the man has the chops to make a damn fine film and a damn fine wine and we’re using that second talent to celebrate impending happiness.” I dropped the bottle and lifted the bag. “And spoiling the surprise, the sexiest damn teddy in the Denver metro area, edible body glitter, paint and massage cream, because if the man can’t find it with his fingers, we’ll get him there with his mouth.”
Bev gave me a look through her opened storm door before she busted out laughing.
This meant I came through, gave her a kiss on her laughing cheek and did both smiling.
She took the stuff from my hands.
Like her home was my home, as I always did when I hit her pad, I tossed my bag and jacket on her couch as I made my way fully in.
She went right to the kitchen, and by the time I hit it, she had her head in the fridge. She came out with a bottle in cellophane and lifted it up, my bottle in her other hand, and they were identical.
“Great minds think alike!” she cried.
“Gurrrrl, I shoulda Ubered,” I told her.
“We shoulda done this not on a school night,” she replied, putting my bottle in and keeping her bottle out, starting to take off the cellophane.
For a special night, even though I’d never done it (before yesterday), I would have called off work for Bev. Since I took off yesterday to have a fuck festival with Hound after my declaration of love (he celebrated mine way better than I celebrated his), I couldn’t.
But I could go to work hanging. It’d been years since I’d done that too. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever done that since I’d been at the school.
It was now time to learn if I still had it in me to ride out a hangover.
Best part, if I got trashed, by that time, Bev would know about Hound and he could come and get me.
We hadn’t had drunk sex yet.
Trashed it was.
“Uber doesn’t mind I leave my car in your driveway and you probably won’t either. I should have brought two bottles,” I said.
“We’ll call Dutch and tell him to bring us another one. I’m pretty sure waiting on old ladies, even de facto ones like us, is part of recruit duties,” she returned right before the cork popped.
“I’m on glasses,” I declared and headed to her cupboard that held them.
“I’ll pour,” Bev cut me off on my way. “I made one of those charcuterie boards. Tad taught me how and I’ve decided to do that at least five nights a week. All you do is open a bunch of jars and packets of different kind of salamis, cut some cheese and voilà! Dinner!” She jerked her head to the fridge. “Go grab it.”
I grinned at her and headed to the fridge, pulling out the big wooden board filled with meats, cheeses, pickles and olives she had in there.
Bev got the wine sorted and cut up some wedges of store-bought but fresh-baked bread, and we sat at her cozy kitchen table because she didn’t have a dining room and we usually camped out there because, as I mentioned, it was cozy. It was also closer to the fridge so we could keep our champers chilled.
I dug in.
She didn’t touch the food.
She yanked out the black teddy from the bag. It was made of mostly see-through mesh that melded with beautiful lace around a very plunging deep vee at the breasts (that very meaning it went all the way down to your midriff and opened all the way across to barely cover your nipples), had little ruffles along the hips and at the ends of the three-quarter sleeves.
We were sisters so I had no problem buying the same thing for me to wear for Hound. Except, in order not to make it gross, mine was red.
“Holy crap, Keely, this is beautiful,” she said reverently, stretching out the mesh to see the shape of it.
“I’ll buy you a white something-or-other for the big day,” I told her. “That’s for fun now.”
Her pretty blue eyes slid to me.
She’d changed over the years, her girl-next-door beauty maturing into woman-that-had-been-around-the-block beauty, but it was still beauty, and I’d watched as she’d done it.
She dyed her hair almost the exact blonde it used to be, maybe a shade darker. She still wore it long, with a tease at the back and flippy bangs that brushed her lashes. She had a few lines around her eyes, like I did. A few around her mouth, like I did not.
She’d pr
obably put on fifteen, twenty pounds since we traipsed around the Compound in frayed-edge, jean miniskirts or skintight jeans with slits in the knees, or, if it was a special occasion, spandex pants that had wide laces up the sides showing skin, these coupled with tees slashed down to our tits or tanks so tight, you couldn’t miss it if the day was cold.
But even back then, she’d looked like she was in costume.
She’d always looked more like the retired cheerleader, current banker’s wife who shopped at Nordstrom and sipped wine while her husband had his scotch while they watched Shark Tank on Friday evenings.
Or, maybe, the wife of an insurance salesman who was so happy she was wearing his ring, it was him that went out and bought bridal magazines for his forty-something second chance at love.
“I should have been more supportive from the beginning,” I started. “I should have immediately helped you plan a course to finding your happy.”
“I told him I was done with Chaos,” she proclaimed.
I stared and then did what Hound did a lot.
A slow blink.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“I thought he was going to start crying,” she told me.
My back started to go straight and she reached an arm out across the table to me.
“Not like that,” she said quickly. “He wasn’t being like that. He knows all about my past with the Club. About Boz. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t have a judgmental bone in his body. But he probably knew better than I did that I was holding on in the lame way I was to the life I’d had there in order to hold on to Boz. When I said it was done, he knew I was done with Boz.”
I put my hand out and took hers. “It wasn’t lame.”
“It was lame.”
“Beverly—”
“He cheated on me and then he made me feel like I was unfaithful to him because I wouldn’t get it. And you know what? That’s cracked. For years I kicked myself for making a big deal about it, but he put my cock in another woman. I wasn’t cracked. He could give me the biker lifestyle spiel until the day he died.” She pulled her hand from mine but not her gaze. “But I knew better. High’s back with Millie and it’s like the years in between didn’t happen. Shy nearly renounced the Club to have Tab. I swear to God, I melt a little every time Lanie walks into the room, the way Hop looks at her. And Naomi was a screaming bee-yatch and Tack might have thought about it, but he scraped her off before he had his fun. But then he found Tyra and the man walked through a hail of gunfire to save her life. It isn’t the lifestyle. It’s Boz.”
Wild Like the Wind Page 26
