Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(119)

It was me who couldn’t deal with it, and the closer it came, the harder it was to try to put myself in the place that I could, for Hound, for our future, even for Chaos.

I just didn’t know, if it came down to the gauntlet, if I could forgive them.

It was on this thought, and while I was shoving pistachio ice cream in the freezer (Dutch’s favorite, and also, I’d found, Hound’s) when a knock came at the front door.

I looked that way then moved that way.

It was the Saturday that heralded one last day of my spring break before having to go back to work. Hound was coming home to help me make dinner for the boys, but I didn’t expect him back for at least an hour.

We’d make dinner.

Then have dinner and tell the boys.

And the next step …

Well, at least we’d agreed on where we were vacationing when school was out. I’d even made the booking at a fantastic, pricey resort in Baja. I was excited about it. When I showed Hound the resort’s website and told him we had a booking, Hound had grunted through a smile, which I took as him being excited about it too.

Something else to look forward to.

It was just that before we got there, we’d have to deal with something I did not look forward to.

I sighed and moved through the house to the front door. When I hit the foyer, I saw through the oval of frosted glass that was in my door what looked like two figures, one taller than the other, one a woman, one a man … wearing a Chaos cut.

Shit.

Well, thank God Hound wasn’t due home for a while.

I peeked through the side of the window, which was a sliver of non-frosted glass.

Millie and High.

Okay.

What?

Why?

Shit.

One thing I knew with my door, if I could see them, they could see me.

In other words, I had no choice but to open it.

Which was what I did.

I looked from Millie to High and back to Millie.

Millie looked a little hesitant … no, actually wary. High looked like High. Tall, dark, good-looking, and right then clearly acting as a guard dog for his woman.

They hadn’t ended things well years before, and Millie had become persona non grata for all of Chaos, including me (even though Black had always said, unless we heard it straight from Millie’s mouth, we shouldn’t judge because we couldn’t know for sure what had happened, and again it seemed Black was right).

Obviously, even though Millie and I had exchanged a smile at Jean’s funeral, both of them thought I still held that ill will.

“Bev told me you two were back together,” I said as greeting.

“Yeah, uh … yeah,” Millie stammered, pulled it together and said quietly, “Hey, Keely.”

“Hey, Keely?” I asked.

Millie now looked a little confused and a lot more wary.

High looked like he was preparing to get extremely pissed.

“I mean, that’s it?” I asked. “‘Hey, Keely?’”

“I, well—” she started.

“Oh for God’s sake, get over here and give me a fucking hug,” I snapped on a smile.

The wary slid away, a relieved look hit her face and I didn’t wait for her hug.

I reached toward her, grabbed her and yanked her into my arms.

“God, I’ve missed you,” I whispered in her ear.

Her arms around me got tighter. “Me too.”

We pulled away but not too far, only enough so we were holding on to each other’s forearms.

“You look awesome,” I told her, and she did.

She used to be right there with me and Bev in our biker bitch clothes (Millie used to wear High’s T-shirts belted at the waist as her form of micro-mini dress, it was shit hot).

Now she was all proper in a beautifully cut tight skirt, high-heeled boots and a slim fitting sweater.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” she replied.

“I’ve given the spandex a rest,” I told her, and she laughed.

“I hear that,” she said.

That was when I laughed.

“Woman, you gonna make us stand on your front stoop for the next hour of gettin’ reacquainted?” High asked grouchily.

Since Hound wouldn’t be home for a while, in that time I could duck away from them and text to let him know it wasn’t safe to come home and he and the boys should hang tight until they heard from me.

So I shot a grin at High, let Millie go, stepped to the side and swept my arm in front of me, indicating they should come in.

“Beinvenido a mi casa,” I declared.

Millie smiled at me and walked in. High shook his head and followed her.

Even though Millie took a few steps into the living room, High stopped in the foyer and turned to me.

I thought he wanted me to take his cut or something (which would be weird, he’d been to my house, he knew he could dump it anywhere if he wanted to take it off) and I started to offer that.

He didn’t, and I knew this when he said, “My woman gets a hug and you’re dissin’ me on that shit?”

“You’re not a hugging type of guy,” I told him because he wasn’t.

Way back, he used to be a sweet and affectionate type of guy. But since Millie broke it off with him, he was a surly type of guy. As mentioned, he came to the house, helped out, he wasn’t a stranger. He’d loved Black too. And me. And my boys.