Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(70)

But also, what he thought, there was no going back.

In all this madness, it did not give me any warm fuzzies to note how both my boys, particularly Dutch, were watching me so closely.

It could just be they got how tough it was for me to let go of the final two, most important pieces of their father.

It could be something else I didn’t want to contemplate.

They knew me, even Jagger was watchful of me, tuned to me. And they both were tight with Hound. I knew they’d spent time with him that week. Jag had mentioned being mildly pissed that Hound hadn’t shared Jean with him and Dutch, but he wasn’t letting the fullness of that through because it would interfere with the support he was giving Hound now that he’d lost her.

It sucked I was glad Hound had that from my sons.

I was still glad he had that from my sons.

“While we’re waiting,” I said nonchalantly, “do either of you want cookies?”

Jag slid another sideways glance at his brother that continued not to give me warm fuzzies.

Never had I offered either of them cookies when they hadn’t pounced. They actually never even waited for me to offer. They took their bodies seriously. They still ate the shit out of my cookies.

“Yeah,” Dutch murmured, finally moving forward.

“Cool, Ma. Thanks,” Jagger said, like always, if Dutch gave the approval (or not) in a certain situation, Jagger followed his brother’s lead.

They ate cookies.

I took the last tray out of the oven, turned it off, and was in the act of scraping the cookies off and onto a wire cooling rack when the back door opened and Hound strode through.

He didn’t even knock.

That was new.

Actually, the back door was new.

He usually came to the front.

And knocked.

One look at his handsome, blank face told me what he was thinking in accepting the meet with my boys with me in attendance.

He was a badass biker who lived life wild, took it by the throat, and shoved aside anything he didn’t want in it.

I’d been shoved aside.

He was over me.

“We gonna do this shit in the kitchen?” he asked.

Not even a greeting for my boys.

I stared at that handsome, blank face.

It had been studiously blank for years, trying to hide what his actions screamed, how deep he felt for me.

That was different now.

It was just all gone.

Two months of watching him smile, laugh, climax, tease me, get pissed at me, it was all swept away, shoved aside, and he was moving on.

No, he’d moved on.

Standing in my own damned kitchen after he’d slammed me against the wall, caused me physical pain using my own fucking hair. Hair he’d slid his fingers through. Hair he’d wound around his fist. Hair he’d tangled his hand in while I went down on him. While doing that, he’d said the vile things he’d said to me.

And it was him that had moved on.

Fuck him.

“Let’s move this to the living room,” I said, and then I put down the tray, took off the oven glove and started them doing just that.

My house looked like the women who owned that Junk Gypsy business had come in, taken over and gone a little insane.

It was all, every inch wild and bold, bright colors, clashing prints (except the boys’ rooms, which I’d let them decorate, the extent of this being motorcycle, souped-up cars and mostly-nude women posters as well as dirty clothes on the floor).

I even had a round copper tub in the middle of my bathroom that was tarnished green on the outside, had a checkerboard of mismatched-colored square tile floors, a piece of distressed furniture made into a basin, red walls with stuff all over them, including a huge mirror with a wide, stamped-tin frame.

It was totally over the top.

I loved it.

Black would have loved to hate it.

And I loved that too.

Hound, I had no idea. He existed in his surroundings, filling them up with his badass biker vibe, but they didn’t matter to him in the slightest.

The last two months I’d wondered (often) if we’d both fit in my tub.

Now, I’d never know.

My living room we walked into had a red-orange velvet sofa and matching armchair, both nearly taken over with huge teal velour pillows mixed with ones covered in burnt-orange patterns with thick, little tufts of fringe around the sides. The wood floor was topped with a huge rug patterned in reds, golds, bricks, teals and browns that might cause a headache if all the other prints weren’t clashing with it, adjusting the eye to sheer design insanity. Gold-based lamps with shades that had a complicated print in hues of brick red sat on the two end tables.

This fed into the dining room that had a long, tall dining room table with bright red stools around it, ten of them, like I had huge dinner parties where I played happy hostess to all my friends.

Which I did not.

Mostly because, over the years, Bev had become my only true friend.

But maybe I would.

Maybe I’d ask some of those straight-laced, middle-of-the-road, hadn’t-tossed-back-a-shot-of-tequila-since-high school people I worked with over for a biker bitch meal that’d knock their socks off.

I’d tell them to Uber their asses to my house.

Then I’d get them drunk out of their brains and show them how to live.

How to burn bright.