Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(113)

“You’re mine,” I went on.

“I definitely know that,” he bit out.

“So you definitely know you’re mine but you only just know I’m yours?” I asked.

Taking his arms from his chest, he planted his hands on his hips and looked to the ceiling, muttering, “For fuck’s sake.”

This wasn’t going to happen, stuff like this coming between us, so I made the decision right then that we were going to change things so it wouldn’t happen.

And they were going to change in a big way, and that big way would be permanently.

“We’re moving,” I decreed.

His eyes came right back to me. “Say again?”

“We’re moving. We don’t need four bedrooms for just you and me. Too much history here. And the boys are both gone in a way I know they’re gone. They’ll get it. They’re on the path to building their own lives. But you and me, we need a fresh start.”

Something chased across his face before it blanked.

And that something was not good.

Shit.

“What?” I asked.

“Babe, how ’bout we come out to the brothers before we get into real estate,” he suggested.

“What was that look that you just blanked?” I pushed.

“What look?”

Oh no he didn’t.

He wasn’t going to lie to me by hiding from me.

“What were you thinking when I said we need to move?”

“I was thinking I just moved a bunch a’ shit outta my place to make room for the shit you moved into my place and then I moved a bunch a’ shit outta two places to clear out Jean’s and move in with you, so I’m not real hip on talkin’ about movin’ a bunch more shit someplace else.”

This answer made sense.

He was still hiding from me.

“That’s not it.”

Hound started getting impatient. “That is it, woman.”

“Talk to me, Shep. We said we’d be open and we need to be open. What was it you thought when I said we should find our own place, get a fresh start?”

I mean, did he want me to keep this place because Black gave it to me?

That’d be sweet, but unnecessary. I had what I needed from Black and always would.

Or did he want me to keep this place for the boys, thinking that it was their home and they might get pissed if we got rid of it?

This was something that was also sweet, but unnecessary. Or I hoped so. We’d have to talk to the boys.

“Keely, just drop it,” he muttered, taking his hands from his hips and looking like he was going to walk out of the room.

“Don’t walk away from this conversation, Hound,” I snapped, and he stopped moving to lock eyes on me.

“We need to be careful here, baby,” he said warningly.

“I know,” I agreed pointedly. “What are you holding back from me?”

“Babe—” he started like he was going to keep trying to blow it off.

“Please, don’t keep anything from me. If something’s bothering you, talk to me.”

“Right now, my woman getting up in my shit to push me to talk to her is what’s bothering me,” he clipped.

I stared into his eyes then turned mine to the laptop while I reached out and slapped it closed, shutting away websites about fabulous vacation destinations.

Then I pushed off the bed and murmured, “I’m gonna take a bubble bath.”

“Babe,” he growled.

I kept walking toward the bathroom.

“Keely,” he called irritably.

I was at the door to the bathroom when he spoke again.

“Got two boys.”

I turned to him.

“That aren’t mine,” he finished.

So it was about the boys.

“They are,” I whispered.

“They are and they aren’t and it’s the way I lived my life, my choices that I didn’t make a kid of my own. Now I got you and you’re right. We should move. We should move because it’s always gonna be the house Black bought for you and that’d eventually get under my skin,” he admitted. “And we’ll get on that after other important shit is sorted. But you said you and me don’t need all this space. The boys have moved on. And it just dug in that you and me don’t need all this space.”

We didn’t need this space. We were just two people. I knew he’d long since broken ties with his family. He was standing in the room when I’d irrevocably broken ties with mine. It wasn’t like we were regularly going to have out-of-town guests (though my family, and Graham’s, lived in town … still).

Except …

I didn’t make a kid of my own.

Oh God.

I stared at him.

“You want a baby,” I said quietly.

“Never thought about it,” he grunted.

“But now, you’re thinking about it.”

He said nothing.

But now he had a woman.

Now he had a home with a woman.

A woman he loved who loved him back.

And I was that woman.

“You want a baby,” I repeated.

“Keely, babe—”

“So we’ll have a baby.”

It just came right out of my mouth.