Wild Like the Wind (Page 85)

“How many pitchers are there?” she asked.

I looked to my wall that ran behind the stove and farm sink and fed up to a slanted, vaulted ceiling. The entire wall above an area of tiled backsplash was shelves filled with different beautifully but brightly painted pitchers and canisters I’d started collecting even before Graham had died.

“A lot,” I answered.

“The fireplace is amazing,” she noted.

I turned my attention to the fireplace against the back wall that had a stucco mantel and chimney that was painted a deep, rustic yellow and adorned with decorative plates. It was filled with a wood burning stove that heated the kitchen in the winter in a way it was super cozy and suddenly walking my groceries from the garage to the kitchen didn’t seem like a chore anymore.

“Yeah, I . . . actually . . .” I turned from popping the cap on High’s beer to High. “Didn’t you paint that?” I asked, handing him his beer.

“Yup,” he answered, taking it. “With Hound.”

Yeah.

He’d painted it.

With Hound.

And Hound could help me paint our new kitchen.

I was back to thinking dragging my groceries from garage to house was a chore.

“I’ll grab the glasses,” Millie offered. “Where are they?”

“Over there.” I indicated the other side of the kitchen with a jerk of my head as High pulled the bottle from my hands in a way I couldn’t fight, so I didn’t.

“Corkscrew?” he asked.

I shifted, opened a drawer and handed him the corkscrew.

Millie came and set the glasses by him on the counter.

“Take a seat,” he ordered, like I was in their kitchen.

Ah, Chaos.

It was going to suck, having to hate them for as long as it took me to get over whatever they did to my man, because they were often just plain lovable (even if it was sometimes in an annoying way).

“We can take a tour later,” Millie declared, right then taking my hand and guiding me to my kitchen table.

We sat.

A cork popped out of a bottle.

I watched High start to pour but looked back to Millie sitting at corners to me as she put her hand on mine on the table.

“How are you, Keely?” she asked.

There was something weighty about that question that I wasn’t sure I understood.

“I’m good, babe. Though I’m sorry I didn’t reach out earlier when I heard you guys were back together, especially after what went down a while back, and definitely after seeing you at the funeral. Things have just been . . .” I hesitated before I decided it was safe to finish, “a little crazy.”

She nodded her understanding but did it watching me very closely.

When she said nothing, I carefully asked, “You?”

“I’m, uh . . . well, I’m . . . that is,” her hand squeezed mine, “I was so, so sorry to hear about Black, honey.”

Oh. Okay.

She’d been gone for a long time. The news might even be relatively new news to her. And like everyone, she’d loved Black. And as with everyone, Black had loved her.

“Thanks, Millie, that’s sweet, but it happened a long time ago,” I told her softly. “I’m more interested to know how things are going with you after what happened a few months ago.”

“I’m fine, it’s good. I mean, it took a bit to get there because that was, well . . . not fun.”

I figured, getting kidnapped and watching two men get murdered, that was the understatement of the year.

Before I could mention that, she carried on, only mumbling, “But, um . . .” before weirdly her eyes darted to High and back to me like she was nervous.

I put this down to High approaching with our filled wineglasses (though I still didn’t get the nervous part). He set them in front of us and then pulled out the chair at the head of the table, next to Millie, down from me, where I used to sit but now where Hound sat.

He sprawled out like he paid the mortgage.

I nearly laughed.

Seriously.

Chaos.

It was then I noticed the look on his face, and I wasn’t feeling like laughing anymore.

It was my eyes that were darting between High and Millie then.

She was nervous.

And he was vigilant.

Disturbingly so.

“What’s going on?” I asked slowly.

“Okay, uh . . . I just . . .” Millie stammered, looked to High, to me, to High, and I felt my body start to string tight.

Before I could ask again what was going on, High asked his own question.

“You okay?”

“I already answered that, and I was, until you two showed and my reunion with Millie got weird,” I answered.

“Jag’s ridin’ Black’s bike,” he announced.

I relaxed.

They were worried about my state of mind now that my son had my dead husband’s bike.

That I could handle.

“Logan!” Millie snapped.

“What?” he asked her.

“You could have led into it,” she told him.

“Like you were doin’?” he fired back.

“I was getting there,” she returned.

“When, next week?” he asked, but it was a sweet tease.

She moved in her chair in a way I knew was her kicking him under the table.

He didn’t mind, and I knew that when I saw him grin at her.

And I sat there watching them, my tension gone, tickled freaking pink that they had this back again.

“You guys, I’m fine,” I cut in on a smile and got both their attention. “It was just time. Time to let go. I had my little ceremony with Black and then gave Dutch his cut, Jag his bike, and . . .”

I trailed off because High had been watching me while listening to me but his attention turned to the back door.

My attention was turned from him when Millie asked, “Ceremony?”

“It was kinda . . .” How to explain it? The way Hound put it came to me. “All I had left of him that didn’t have a permanent place in my heart. And the boys are both earning their patch. Since they are, I know now that they would get the significance of getting those things of their father’s. So the time was right, I held a little ceremony and then gave my boys their father.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Millie replied. “But, Keely, honey, that couldn’t have been easy.”

“I took a long time saying my good-byes, babe,” I told her gently. “Really, I’m o—”

I was interrupted by the back door being opened.

In a flash, my entire body was tight as a bow, so I felt it in every inch as I twisted in my seat and watched Hound walk in.

I hadn’t heard him pull in at the back, but High had.

And since he pulled in at the back, he wouldn’t have seen High and Millie’s ride at the front.

Maybe it was time to get my hearing tested.

Damn.

Hound saw High first, then Millie, then me.

He stopped dead for just a beat before he stepped fully in and swung the door closed behind him.

He said nothing.

I said nothing.

High and Millie said nothing.

The air in the room was thick.

I knew that at least High knew that Hound looked after me all these years.

I also knew that High probably knew that in all that looking after, he’d never just let himself in the back door.

Furthermore, we couldn’t lie.

He was coming out to the Club soon, maybe even tomorrow. He couldn’t lie to High and Millie now and then tomorrow tell all the boys he was with me, we were living together, moving to a new house together, eventually getting married and building onto our family . . . together.