Wild Like the Wind (Page 42)

He had one more night.

A few more hours.

A few more hours of make believe.

He was going to fucking take it.

Then it would be over.

Defeat

Hound was awake before the alarm sounded.

Keely started in his arms and lifted her head.

“Fuck,” she muttered.

He slid his arm from around her waist, muttering back, “You best git.”

It was dark but he still saw the shadow of her head turn his way.

“Shep, baby—”

“You got work, I gotta get some more shuteye before I see to Jean then I got shit to do for the Club.”

And he fucking did.

It was time to knock some teeth down some throats and do it hoping he was bulletproof.

“I think something happened last night,” she said softly.

She thought?

“Keely, you need to get moving,” he reminded her.

“You told me we’d talk in the morning,” she reminded him. “It’s morning.”

“And we’re talkin’ but we don’t got a lot of time because, like I said, you got work and I got shit to do.”

“Hound—”

“Woman, shake a fuckin’ leg. We’ll talk tonight.”

She studied him through the dark before she asked, “You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

And he was sure.

They were absolutely going to talk that night.

More studying but he didn’t take it. He rolled the other way and turned on his light.

Then it was him that got out of bed, murmuring, “Before you go in there, I’m gonna hit the pisser.”

He did that and she came in wearing her underwear while he was washing his hands.

Her eyes were steady but searching on him in his mirror.

He didn’t touch her as he walked out.

He didn’t know what to do then.

Get in bed, which meant watching her put on clothes and get ready to leave his place, her not knowing it was for the last time, him feeling a hole in his soul because he did.

Or get in bed and turn his back to her like a sulking kid.

Uncomfortable and feeling like a fucking moron in his own goddamned house.

He should have kicked her ass out the night before.

In the end, Hound did neither.

He yanked up his jeans commando and strolled down the hall to his kitchen.

He didn’t have a coffeemaker, something Keely gave him shit for, told him last weekend that was her next addition, but he didn’t need one. If he wanted coffee, he went over to visit Jean.

So he had no reason to be in his kitchen either.

He still stayed there, leaning into a hand on the counter of the bar that faced his living room and scowling at the furniture she picked for him, wondering if it’d fit through his windows so he could just shove it out.

She walked into the room, and he stopped scowling at his furniture to turn a blank face to her.

Keely didn’t miss it.

But she powered through it.

“You want me to come earlier? I can make dinner for Jean before we talk,” she offered, like nothing had happened.

Like she hadn’t touched her tongue to her husband’s name on his fucking body with Hound’s cum up her cunt.

“That might be good,” he lied. “I’ll ask Jean and text you.”

She seemed to relax at that.

“Okay,” she said quiet, then came to him, put her hand on his stomach and tipped her head back.

He went through the motions, putting his lips to hers, even setting his hand on her waist.

When he lifted away, she looked confused and worried again.

“Are you gonna walk me to my car?” she asked.

Fuck.

He was so deep in his own head, he forgot.

“Right, yeah. Be back,” he grunted, walked around her, down the hall, tore on a tee, jammed his feet into his boots and then walked back.

He nabbed his keys off the kitchen counter and he was the first out.

She followed him.

He went down the stairs first too.

She followed him again.

At her car, so he didn’t have to tell more lies, eat more shit, he took her mouth in a kiss that was a fuckuva good-bye.

She just had no idea that was what it was.

But it worked. Her pretty eyes were hazy, her face soft, her body plastered to his when he finished it.

“Get home, babe. I’ll see you tonight,” he murmured.

“Okay, honey.”

She rolled up on her toes to give him one last lip touch.

Her good-bye.

And she didn’t know that either.

Then he waited until she folded in her car, closed her door for her and he was sure to stand on the sidewalk and watch her drive away.

When he went up to his place, he didn’t find his knife and slash the furniture to shit like he wanted to do. He didn’t yank the lamps out of their sockets and smash them against the walls like he wanted to do. He didn’t drag the stools and end tables out into the hall and send them crashing down the stairs like he wanted to do.

All that shit would have woken up Jean.

Instead, he got his phone, got his ear buds, walked to his bed, laid on his back and listened to “Use Me.”

Withers could write and sing a song.

But the motherfucker was fucked up if he thought that shit was all right.

The end of the end started thirty-eight minutes later.

It happened after he’d brushed his teeth. Taken off his shirt and splashed water on his face and in his pits. Toweled off, put his shirt back on and went over to Jean’s.

It happened after he let himself in.

It happened after he walked down the hall.

It happened after he knocked on her door and called, “Jean bug?”

That was when it happened.

Because she didn’t answer.

He pushed open the door and saw her lying on her side, her back to him, in her bed.

“Jean,” he called.

She didn’t answer.

She also didn’t move.

Dread and fear filled him. Dread that felt like a hand closing around his throat. Fear that built to terror that felt like a set of claws had sunk into his gut and was tearing up, splitting him open on a trajectory to his heart as he put one boot in front of the other on the way to her bed.

He had a moment when he made it to the side and he saw the covers up, her head on the pillow, her soft, wispy white hair framing her face, her eyes closed. A moment he thought she was just still asleep, like when he’d walked in on her napping in front of the TV.

“Jean,” he whispered, bending to her, reaching to her, his fingers out and searching.

They closed around her ice-cold hand.

He stared at his big hand around her little one, his knuckles scarred from fights, the veins standing out at the back, his calluses catching at her soft skin.

He didn’t need to look for her pulse.

He did it anyway.

But he got what he thought he’d get.

Nothing.

He moved his hand back to hold hers.

And then Shepherd “Hound” Ironside stood beside the bed of the old Jewish lady who owned his heart and he held her hand.

“I hope,” his voice came rough, raspy, tortured, “you knew even a little how much I fucking loved you.”

She lay there . . . sleeping.

Hound let her go.

He could only manage one step back before he fell right to his ass beside Jean’s bed.

He stared at her beautiful, peaceful face right there before his.

Then he cocked his knees, drew his wrists up to rest on them.

And he dropped his head in defeat.

Ride Free

Keely

Just over two months earlier . . .