Wild Like the Wind (Page 76)

“I did leave it at that,” I told them.

“Well, keep doin’ that,” Dutch encouraged.

I lifted my hands up and to the sides, one holding a fork, one holding a knife, both dripping maple syrup. “Am I really sitting at my own kitchen table with my two sons instructing me on how to conduct my relationship?”

“Yeah, you really are,” Dutch answered without hesitation. “’Cause Hound’s like us, and Dad’s been gone awhile so you need a refresher.”

“Just to say, he may grunt,” Jagger put in, “but you should tell him you love him back and use your words.”

“I do,” I told Jagger heatedly.

He nodded at me like he was encouraging a small child and repeated his brother’s words, “Keep doin’ that.”

It was then, a continuous low, rolling noise coming from the stove caught my attention and I looked that way to see Hound’s shoulders shaking.

He was laughing.

“This is not fucking funny, cowboy,” I snapped.

He flipped Jagger’s two pancakes on a plate that already held four rashers of bacon and turned to me.

“Jean would be laughin’ herself sick, listenin’ to this shit. Her face all screwed up, wrinkles all movin’ in. I’d lose her eyes but get her teeth, she’d be laughin’ so fuckin’ hard,” Hound declared. “That is, after she read you all about talkin’ about bonin’ and bangin’ at the kitchen table, or anywhere,” he amended.

The room went silent.

Hound kept his eyes to me as the humor slid away. “I miss her. I’ll never stop missin’ her. It’s a pain that runs deep and will never die, I’ll just get used to livin’ with it. She’s the reason I got up every day to face that day, baby. Now you’re that reason. She’d feel joy knowin’ I have you for that reason. So let me have that reason and stop worrying.”

“Okay, honey,” I whispered.

He gave me a long look, took in the look I was giving him and nodded.

“And boys, listen up,” Hound kept going, his gaze moving between my sons. “Your mother doesn’t need a refresher. She knows how to take care of her man, and if you were payin’ closer attention to her than you were havin’ a mind to me that I know, ’cause I know my boys, also has to do with you bein’ worried about how I’m copin’ with losin’ Jean, you’d have seen it. But just to say, here on out, you best watch how that flows from your ma to me because that’s what you’ll be lookin’ for when you find the one you wanna make your old lady. You hearin’ me?”

“Yeah, Hound,” Jag mumbled.

“Totally,” Dutch said.

“I love you,” I piped in.

Hound looked to me and grunted.

Then he moved to put Jag’s plate in front of him.

He went back to the stove to pour more batter.

I smiled at my pancakes.

“Man, I’m totally coming back every morning,” Jag said, digging in to the butter to prepare his pancakes.

“Come later,” Hound said. “Your mother and I get down to business in the morning. We don’t need interruptions.”

Jag’s hand arrested in spreading butter, he started to look sick and mumbled, “I think I just lost my appetite.”

Dutch, on the other hand, busted out laughing.

I looked to my man.

He was smiling at the skillet.

His family was around him.

He was happy.

And I knew he was right, Jean would be happy for him.

So I forked back into my pancakes.

Just as happy.

That evening, seeing as I was in the garage, staring at Black’s bike, not in my seemingly sound-proofed house, I heard Hound’s bike as it pulled in at the back and the roar of the engine cut off.

I kept standing there, staring at Black’s bike like I was mesmerized, so my phone beeping in my hand with a text made me jump.

I looked down at it.

The text was from Hound and it said, You said you were home. I’m home. You’re not. Where are you?

He was home.

Home.

I let a smile drift across my lips before I texted back, In the garage, babe.

About one minute and five seconds later the back door opened, Hound prowled through but his gait slowed when he saw me standing by Black’s bike.

He looked at me, the bike, me and asked, “You okay?”

I nodded. “I’m trying to figure out the ceremony.”

My expressive Hound had appeared watchful and wary as he approached me, but now he looked perplexed.

“What ceremony?”

“The Give Dutch Black’s Cut Give Jagger Black’s Bike Ceremony,” I told him.

He stopped close to me and started staring at the bike.

“You have any ideas?” I asked.

His gaze came to me. “Hand Dutch Black’s cut and pass off the keys to Jag.”

“That’s not a ceremony,” I pointed out.

“Okay. Then crack open some beers after you do that.”

I grinned at him, shuffled the foot of space I needed to get to him and then leaned against his side, putting my head on his shoulder.

He slid an arm around my waist.

I did the same to him.

We both stared at Black’s bike.

“It hasn’t been started up since Graham shut it down. I’m not sure it works,” I muttered.

“Jag’ll get it goin’.”

I took my head off his shoulder and looked up at him. “Will you do that? So Jag can just fire it up and ride away?”

I didn’t even get all the words out before I felt his loose body get tight and his expressive face close down.

Okay, apparently, that was the wrong request to make.

“Sorry, that’s . . . sorry, obviously I shouldn’t have asked,” I whispered.

“I got his woman, not touchin’ his bike,” Hound replied.

Well, I wasn’t exactly Black’s woman, considering I was now Hound’s.

But that was a conversation for later.

I nodded, fast. “Yeah, yes, honey, I get it.”

“I hear you wantin’ Jag just to be able to fire it up and roll on out but he’ll like lookin’ it over. He and Dutch can do that together. Won’t take much. But they do that together, that’ll be something else they’ll both have.”

I kept nodding. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“And I won’t be there for that,” Hound declared.

I turned so my front was pressed to his side and wrapped my other arm around him. “I get it, when they work on it, get that bike running again, that they do it on their own. I get that, but whatever ceremony I come up with I think you should be there.”

“I’ll be there, if you bring all the brothers in, but not just me, Keely.”

“Just you, Hound,” I pushed. “You and Dutch and Jag and me.”

“And Black.”

“Baby,” I said carefully. “It’s about moving on from Black.”

“No, Keekee, it’s about you lettin’ him go in that way and givin’ him to your boys. And I got no place in that.”

“You do,” I pressed.

“I don’t, babe. That’s about your family.”

“You are our family.”

“I hear that and I love that, babe, but this is something else.”

“If it is, then who was at my back when I went to the morgue to identify him?” I asked.