Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(47)

“You did that,” he agreed.

They stared at each other.

She had on her killer suede jacket with a big scarf draped around her throat that had fringe and was the pattern of a blanket. She also had in long earrings made of beads, a tee on under her jacket and scarf and he could see she had a tangle of long necklaces over that. A kickass belt in the loops of faded jeans that were frayed in different places across both thighs. And she was wearing on her feet what she wore a lot, her beat-up cowboy boots that were light brown and had a lot of stitching on them, some of it in ivory.

Her hair was in sheets down either side of her face, tangled with her scarf, her earrings and feathery over the suede.

He’d had her every night but one for two months and he’d known her for twenty years, and he’d never gotten used to her brand of beauty.

He could tell she was what she said she was. Sorry. It was written in her face, the line of her body.

She was also all he ever wanted and everything he could never have, standing in his dumpy apartment among thousands of dollars of kickass furniture that he bought but she picked.

He gentled his voice when he asked, “Do we need to end this, Keely?”

“No!” she cried, making a move like she was going to burst from her space and launch herself into his before she stopped herself.

Hound’s body locked solid as she lifted both hands and pressed them down in front of her once, dropping her eyes to the floor for a beat before she lifted them to him again.

“No,” she said quieter, calmer. “I … that won’t happen again, Hound. I swear.”

He loved her initial reaction. He shouldn’t, it troubled him, but he still did.

But the fuck of it was it was looking like it was going to have to be him that looked after the both of them.

Like always.

“Seems to me we’re both gettin’ in over our heads, babe,” he pointed out.

“What we have is good.”

“What we have is good cooking, good company and good sex and we can’t let it get beyond that.”

He felt his chin go into his neck as he watched the flinch hit her face at his words.

A flinch that hit him like a stone in his gut.

A big one.

“Babe?” he called.

“You’re more than that to me,” she whispered.

He liked that.

But he already knew it and it didn’t change shit.

Because it would never be enough.

“You’re more than that to me too,” he returned. “But that still doesn’t mean that isn’t all we got.”

“I want more.”

“Keely, I’m asking you to look out for you, but I’m asking you to look out for me too.”

That got him her look like he’d slapped her face.

That he did not get.

So he growled, “What’s on your mind?”

“Do you want this to be over?” she asked back.

“Fuck no.”

“Then why does it sound like you’re ending it?”

“Because I’m looking out for you,” he explained shortly, and the short part of it was that he didn’t feel it needed explaining.

“And how is it looking out for me when I don’t want it to end?” she rapped out.

“I look after Jean. I mean I look after her … totally. I help her hit the pisser. I help her shower. I cook for her. I get her groceries in for her. I pay her rent and for the cleaner that comes once a week, even though her house doesn’t need it but she needs the company. The trust she’s got in me built up over nine years of knowin’ her and that’s where we’re at.”

“The real reason you won’t move,” she murmured.

He nodded at her once and kept talking.

“And the only ones who know I got Jean are you, because of this morning, and Tyra and Tack, but I only told them recently. Though I should have told them before just to make sure someone knew she needed looking after.”

She nodded at that when he stopped.

So he started again.

“What I’m sayin’ is, you’re right. I got a life that I go where I go and no one’s the wiser that I come home a lot to look after Jean. What they’re gonna be the wiser about is the fact that I don’t go back to the Compound at night to throw a few back or I don’t hit the pool tables or a biker groupie when they’re hangin’ around. I haven’t been around much for two months, not because a’ Jean. Because a’ you. Now, Dutch or Jag put that together with their mom gone at night, every night, what do you think is gonna happen?”

“They don’t come around at night.”

“Ever?”

She didn’t answer that.

He knew those boys.

They visited their momma.

And he knew now that she’d been putting them off.

“They come here and see me too, Keely,” he told her. “It’s luck of the draw Jag hasn’t needed money for somethin’ since he pissed away whatever he’s got, but sayin’ that, we’ve connected the last two months just because. It just happened during the day when I was able to meet up with him and not tell him to haul his ass here.”

“So you can keep putting him off,” she replied.

“They’re gonna figure it out.”