Wild Like the Wind (Page 62)

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 probably 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.”