Wild Like the Wind (Page 23)

She shrugged off her suede jacket, unwound the long scarf from her throat, sent them and her purse flying toward his beat-up armchair, and suddenly Hound felt a need he’d never felt in his life.

To go furniture shopping.

She started digging in the bags, stating, “I’ve got this kid, who’s just a little shit. Now, I volunteered at King’s Shelter for three years, did an internship there when I was in school, had two boys of my own and it isn’t like I started my job a month ago, so I know kids can be shits. But most of them are just finding their way or have some reason that’s making them be total pains in everyone’s ass or seriously, hormones make you do whacky things. But this kid . . . no. His parents are rich. They’re still together. They spoil his punk ass rotten but neither of them are pushovers. They’re always at school events. All over coming in to chat with me when he skips. They care. And he’s still a punk ass. Skips school at least once a week. I’ve had so many meetings with his parents this year, I’m about to put them in my will.”

Hound wanted to laugh.

He didn’t laugh.

Because she was unearthing shit from those bags that was not grocery-store-bought chicken.

It was Tupperware and stuff folded up in foil.

“Babe, what’s that shit?” he asked.

She turned to him with one hand holding what looked like a glass container filled with brownies.

“What?”

“What did you bring to eat?”

“Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders, my potato salad, homemade biscuits, I brought butter, honey and apple butter because I’m guessing you have none of that, but I’m hoping you have water and a pot because I need to blanch the green beans. And we’re having my brookies for dessert.”

“Brookies?”

“Brownies with cookie dough cooked in them.”

Her potato salad was enough.

The rest . . .

“You said you’d bring chicken,” he reminded her.

“Well, I should have said I’m bringing my Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders but it’s a mouthful and bottom line, it’s still chicken.”

“In other words, babe, you cooked.”

“Uh . . . yeah,” she drew all that out, staring at him like she thought it best to check his temperature.

At this juncture, Hound was seeing the error of his ways.

She wanted his cock up her ass, he should have brought the lube from the Compound, refused the chicken and given her his cum whatever way she wanted to take it.

What he should not have done was opened himself up to Keely’s Buttermilk Goodness Chicken Tenders (something he’d say out loud only if a gun was pointed to his head), the return of her potato salad, the goodness of whatever the fuck brookies were—but with what was in them they couldn’t be anything but great—and her bitching about her work, which he wanted to hear so bad he might need to do something he would never in his life admit he needed to do.

Find a shrink.

“Pan, Hound,” she ordered, back to organizing food. “Water, on the stove. The rest is still hot. It won’t take long to deal with the green beans and then we can eat.”

He needed to draw this line. They didn’t have this. They fucked. They might cuddle and chat between fucks, but that’s what they had.

Not this.

Hound drew no line.

He went and filled a pot with water, and not only did he do that shit, he got out two plates and some cutlery.

“So, I think I need to read my employment contract, but my guess is, they don’t spell it out in the contract that you can’t slap a kid upside the head . . . repeatedly . . . for being a punk ass. Still, I think they’d frown on that. Now I’m at a loss, because I honestly just want to write him off and let the principal suspend him and let his parents take him in hand and not let him waste more of my time, but that will fuck with my perfect average of keeping kids in school or at least getting them back there and making them stay, which I’ve worked my ass off to do for six and a half years.”

Hound had the water going under the pan and was facing her over the bar.

“You have a perfect record of keeping kids in school?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s not my job not to let them smoke pot, meth, crack or inject heroin on school grounds. Or not to stick each other during fights. Or make them stop fucking each other in the bathrooms or fingering each other at assemblies. It’s my job to bring them back so they can do all that on school property.”

Hound stared at her a beat then threw his head back and busted out laughing.

When he righted his head, she was smiling at him in a way he was way too amused to let penetrate.

“Baby, not sure you take your job serious enough,” he told her.

“I have enough to handle with what I’ve got and that’s more serious than is cool. There are a lot of parents who do not give a fuck about their kids, Hound, not even a little bit. They care about their cars or their designer shoes and handbags. So many of them are Jeremy. So many, it isn’t even funny.”

“Jeremy?” he asked.

“Pearl Jam. ‘Jeremy,’” she answered. “Kids are not something Mom can wear. So they don’t give a fuck. They go shopping. The kids come home to an empty house but their bed is covered in shopping bags. They’ve got great clothes, the latest phone, hot wheels, and no love. But by the time they get to high school, Jeremy is not gonna be talking in class. That hurt is gonna have burned so down deep, no social worker attendance officer is gonna be able to heal it.”

“Baby,” he whispered.

She was needlessly arranging food on his counter she wasn’t going to open until the beans were ready and studying herself doing it.

This should have been a clue.

Hound was tuned to her, very tuned, and still, he did not field that clue.

And he’d wish he did.

“My boys thought it was a pain in the ass that we sat down to dinner every night. Every night. This was even before I heard this stuff from the kids, learned about it in school. I just know the way my folks were and the way . . . the way,” she lifted her eyes to him, “Graham came from money, but not the good kind, the up-its-own-ass kind. He didn’t fit and they treated him like shit.”

“I know,” he said when she stopped speaking, watching her closely now that she’d brought Black right out there, right there, between them.

“So we talked about it, him and me. And unless Club shit got in the way, we were going to have family dinner every night. Even if we got McDonald’s. We’d sit down and look in each other’s eyes and talk and ask about our days and let them know we gave a shit. I let them know I gave a shit. You know that. You’ve sat down to dinner with us.”

He nodded.

He had.

Not often.

But he had.

“It’s really that easy,” she continued. “I swear to God. I gave my boys a lot. Chaos gave my boys a lot. But I swear, the most important thing I gave them was my time every day during dinner.”

“You’re probably right, baby,” he agreed.

“And you.”

Hound’s chest caved in on itself.

This was such an extreme sensation he had to push out his, “What?”

“The only other thing I gave them that was important was not cutting them off from Chaos, which meant not cutting them off from you.”

Christ.