Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(33)

“So, I think I need to read my employment contract, but my guess is, they don’t spell it out in the contract that you can’t slap a kid upside the head … repeatedly … for being a punk ass. Still, I think they’d frown on that. Now I’m at a loss, because I honestly just want to write him off and let the principal suspend him and let his parents take him in hand and not let him waste more of my time, but that will fuck with my perfect average of keeping kids in school or at least getting them back there and making them stay, which I’ve worked my ass off to do for six and a half years.”

Hound had the water going under the pan and was facing her over the bar.

“You have a perfect record of keeping kids in school?” he asked, surprised.

“It’s not my job not to let them smoke pot, meth, crack or inject heroin on school grounds. Or not to stick each other during fights. Or make them stop fucking each other in the bathrooms or fingering each other at assemblies. It’s my job to bring them back so they can do all that on school property.”

Hound stared at her a beat then threw his head back and busted out laughing.

When he righted his head, she was smiling at him in a way he was way too amused to let penetrate.

“Baby, not sure you take your job serious enough,” he told her.

“I have enough to handle with what I’ve got and that’s more serious than is cool. There are a lot of parents who do not give a fuck about their kids, Hound, not even a little bit. They care about their cars or their designer shoes and handbags. So many of them are Jeremy. So many, it isn’t even funny.”

“Jeremy?” he asked.

“Pearl Jam. ‘Jeremy,’” she answered. “Kids are not something Mom can wear. So they don’t give a fuck. They go shopping. The kids come home to an empty house but their bed is covered in shopping bags. They’ve got great clothes, the latest phone, hot wheels, and no love. But by the time they get to high school, Jeremy is not gonna be talking in class. That hurt is gonna have burned so down deep, no social worker attendance officer is gonna be able to heal it.”

“Baby,” he whispered.

She was needlessly arranging food on his counter she wasn’t going to open until the beans were ready and studying herself doing it.

This should have been a clue.

Hound was tuned to her, very tuned, and still, he did not field that clue.

And he’d wish he did.

“My boys thought it was a pain in the ass that we sat down to dinner every night. Every night. This was even before I heard this stuff from the kids, learned about it in school. I just know the way my folks were and the way … the way,” she lifted her eyes to him, “Graham came from money, but not the good kind, the up-its-own-ass kind. He didn’t fit and they treated him like shit.”

“I know,” he said when she stopped speaking, watching her closely now that she’d brought Black right out there, right there, between them.

“So we talked about it, him and me. And unless Club shit got in the way, we were going to have family dinner every night. Even if we got McDonald’s. We’d sit down and look in each other’s eyes and talk and ask about our days and let them know we gave a shit. I let them know I gave a shit. You know that. You’ve sat down to dinner with us.”

He nodded.

He had.

Not often.

But he had.

“It’s really that easy,” she continued. “I swear to God. I gave my boys a lot. Chaos gave my boys a lot. But I swear, the most important thing I gave them was my time every day during dinner.”

“You’re probably right, baby,” he agreed.

“And you.”

Hound’s chest caved in on itself.

This was such an extreme sensation he had to push out his, “What?”

“The only other thing I gave them that was important was not cutting them off from Chaos, which meant not cutting them off from you.”

Christ.

Christ.

“Keely—”

She shook her head, lifted her hand palm out his way and interrupted him.

“It’s about time I said it and it requires no response. I know you did it for me, for them, for Graham, and you didn’t even think about it. It’s in your blood. It’s in all you all’s blood. But yours especially. I know, Hound. It’s just what you do. But I’ll never forget you standing in my backyard covered in blood, and what that meant you did for me, for us, for Black. I know with every lawn you mowed and every time you took the boys for burgers and every time I’d see you close to one of them, your head bent to them, and I knew you were delivering a man lesson I’d have no hope to give, but they soaked up like a sponge, how important what you gave them was. They love you down deep to their souls, and I’m grateful to you down deep to mine and it’s about time I said it.”

He just stood there staring at her over his countertop that had not, in nine years, ever had that amount of food on it and not ever had food that good on it, and he knew that shit before he’d even tasted it, and he said not a damned thing.

Not only because what she said meant so much he couldn’t speak.

Because what she said meant so much, there were no words to say.

“This is not about that,” she said low, her voice rippling over him like a soft touch. “What we got right now. What we have in your bed. Why I come to you every night. That’s about you and me. Please never ever, please, please, baby, never ever mistake what this is between you and me. And it’s not about that.”