Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(111)

“I’m on an errand. I’ll be back for a longer visit. So now I gotta say I’ll see you later, baby. Love you,” I whispered.

I blew him a kiss, shot him a smile, turned right around and walked back to my car.

I got in and drove to Target.

Perusing my selections, I bought two new to replace the old.

One in the stars and stripes and one in navy.

I selected these because, on different occasions, I’d seen Hound wear the same of both (most often, the navy).

At the register, I didn’t accept a bag.

I just shoved the new bandanas in my purse.

When I cut the ignition of my car in my garage, I looked to the bike beside me with the patch stitched to leather sitting on it and pulled out my phone.

In a group text to my boys, I said, Did my goodbye thing with your dad. The cut and bike are in the garage, ready whenever you’re ready. All I ask is that you come together to get them and you work together to get your father’s bike running. I love you.

By the time I got upstairs, I had two return texts.

Love you, Ma. Forever. Always. Dutch.

Bottom of my soul, Ma. Jagger.

They were pains in the ass.

But Black and me made such good boys.

I put the glass of wine I’d poured myself on the nightstand, took my coat off, threw it and my purse on my sheepskin chair, took my phone to my bed and climbed in.

I bent my head to it.

Come home, baby.



Hound was home in ten minutes.



Black’s bike and cut were gone by the time I got home from work the next day.





Can’t Rein That Shit In Keely

I was on my bed with my laptop searching through vacation destinations, because I was on Spring Break with nothing to show for it but spending hours going through Jean’s stuff, donating most of it and getting rid of the shit in our basement by donating all of that, none of this all that fun, even if I did it with Hound and the boys.

So the minute summer break hit, Hound and I were going somewhere awesome.

Therefore, I was on my bed when Hound walked in wearing jeans that I found confusing because I loved them so much, I wanted to take them off him. His feet were bare. His torso was covered in a skintight wife beater that did fabulous things for his wide chest and awesome tats, showing enough your mouth watered thus making you want to witness it all. The top of his hair was pulled back in a little ponytail at the back of his head, something I also found confusing because it made him look cool and badass at the same time I wanted to yank it out and bury my fingers in his hair.

He was also carrying a laundry hamper full of folded clothes toward the closet.

I’d put a load in the dryer what was apparently a little over an hour before.

Watching this, I was pretty sure my mouth had dropped open but I was too in shock to notice if that was actually the case.

Hound had been living with me now for three weeks. He was all in. His and Jean’s apartments (mostly) were all cleared out. We didn’t have a lot of time in but we had some time. He made us breakfast every morning. I made us dinner every night. We slept together, woke up together, touched base during the day, and in that time, I’d had occasion to do a load or seven of laundry.

Hound had said nothing but he was a dude. Dudes didn’t thank you for things like having clean jeans. They just thought clean jeans miraculously made their way from the floor to a hanger for them to grab.

But as I had this thought it occurred to me that Hound’s jeans didn’t even hit the floor. They hit the hamper. As did his shorts, socks and tees.

He was categorically a dude.

He was also categorically a biker.

Ditto with a badass.

And last, a bachelor for thirty-nine years.

He’d said to me (and he was being nasty because he was pissed but I figured there was a modicum of truth to it) that he got rid of women when they started dragging on him. The truth part of that was that I knew in all his years he had never gotten serious with a woman at all, much less lived with one.

This was probably because in all those years, he’d been in love with me.

That would have been sad if he wasn’t right there with me, which was some serious happy.

But still.

Where did he learn, when the dryer was done, to fold and bring up laundry?

He walked out of the closet and looked to me. “Gonna get a beer and park it in front of the TV. You gonna come down?”

“You folded the laundry.”

He stopped on his return journey to the door and shifted to face me.

“Yeah,” he said. “Now you gonna come down or do you want me to bring you a beer up here and we’ll catch some tube in bed?”

“And you brought it up. Like, folded, in a hamper, to the closet.”

He looked to the closet then back to me.

“Yeah,” he said slowly.

“You also put your clothes in the dirty clothes hamper,” I went on.

“Where else would I put them?” he asked.

“On the floor,” I answered.

“They don’t belong on the floor,” he returned. “They been worn, they belong in the dirty clothes bin.”

I did a slow blink.

Hound started to look aggravated.

But if I wasn’t mistaken, he also looked kind of hurt.

“So, here we are,” he said quietly.