Walk Through Fire (Page 133)

When Alan didn’t say anything, High decided he was done. So he made his way around the man and moved toward the front of the store.

He was five feet beyond him when Alan called, “Logan.”

High turned around.

“Millie calls me that. Dottie calls me that,” High stated. “I’m High to you. You don’t get that, man, I don’t give a fuck. Logan is theirs. It ain’t yours.”

Alan looked confused for a beat before he powered past it and focused, muttering, “Whatever.” Then, louder, like a command, “Be real.”

“I’m real,” High returned.

Alan again held his gaze steady and High could barely hear him when he repeated, “For Millie, for God’s sake, be real.”

He said nothing else and didn’t give High a chance to reply before he turned and walked away.

*  *  *

At five oh five that night, High found himself leaning against his truck again.

He was this way outside Deb’s work.

He’d called her and asked her for fifteen minutes after work to have a chat about Zadie.

When he’d done that, she’d replied, “Yeah. Figured Zade didn’t take this weekend too great.”

She said no more and agreed to meet.

High did not want to be there. It was the last place he wanted to be. The first place he wanted to be was at Millie’s waiting for her to come out in her sweater dress.

But their reservation wasn’t until seven.

He had time to do this and he had to do this.

So he was there, doing it.

He watched as Deb walked out, plastic lunch bag in her hand that she undoubtedly packed with carrot sticks, apple slices, and other shit that was good for you. Purse on her shoulder that he knew cost over five hundred dollars because he saw it on the credit card statement—handbags, dying her hair, and buying expensive makeup at department stores the only girl weaknesses she had.

Other than that, she was in jeans, a maroon button-down that had her company’s insignia over the breast pocket, her hair in a ponytail, her face made up like she did it for work: mascara, foundation, some blush, and done.

It’d help if she found a man. Zadie would begin to catch on if his ex also moved on.

He suspected she might go to a bar and hook up.

Other than that, she’d never bother.

“Hey,” she greeted as she got to him at his truck that was parked next to her car.

“Hey,” he replied. “Thanks for the time.”

She nodded.

“Won’t take a lot of it,” he told her. “But gotta share with you that Zadie was not good with meetin’ Millie.”

“I figured that,” she said. “She bitched about it a lot since you took them to pizza at Bonnie Brae.” She threw out a hand. “Sorry. I probably should have warned you about that.”

“She warned me at the time seein’ as she wasn’t pleased about it then and she’s Zadie. She had no problem communicatin’ that. I warned Millie but I didn’t know where she’d take what she was feelin’. Where it took her was pretty much dumpin’ her full Sprite in Millie’s lap even though we hadn’t even ordered dinner at the Spaghetti Factory.”

He watched Deb’s eyes get big and ticked.

“You’re kidding me,” she snapped.

“Wish I was,” he told her. “Consequences of that were we left without dinner. She hid the shit she did the next day and Millie didn’t share what it was. But got it outta her that Zadie said some things to her. Millie canceled plans because she thought the girls could use a break. She was right. I was pushin’ too fast, too soon. But I had a chat with them this mornin’, laid some things out about Millie and my history, and nothin’ sunk in with Zadie. She was a snot to Millie and she was a snot to me.”

Deb tipped her head to the side and asked with mild curiosity, “What’s your history with Millie?”

It struck him then he’d never given her that.

And it struck him then, since he hadn’t, even in the little he knew they had, how little they’d actually had. He didn’t dig deep with her. She didn’t dig deep with him.

He and Millie had talked all the time. It wasn’t just good times and good fucking. She knew everything about his life. His thoughts about it. His feelings about it. And she’d given the same.

He gave none of that to Deb.

And he got none of it back.

“We were together, my early twenties, and we were together awhile,” he explained. “We both wanted a family and were gonna start when she finished school. We started. Or we tried to start. She found out she couldn’t have kids. Instead of tellin’ me that, she dumped me so I could have them.”

Deb straightened her head and he saw understanding wash through her features.

She knew how much he loved his girls. She knew how tight he was with all the family he had. Fuck, it was him who opened the negotiations that led to them having Zadie.

And he reckoned the only things in her life she truly wanted, truly loved, were their girls.

“Oh, High,” she whispered.

Yeah, she understood.

“It sucked. We reconnected, wasn’t pretty ’cause I was in deep with her and didn’t take it real good when she cut me out. Eventually found out why she got shot of me. We worked it out. But she made a sacrifice for me that I get ’cause if I was in her shoes back then, I’d make the same one. That’s over now and we’re movin’ on. I just need the girls to move on with me.”

“I’m not trying to be a bitch, really I’m not, when I say that the way Zadie’s being has a good deal to do with you. You’re too soft on her, High.”