Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(76)

Damn it.

And he had a key.

A lot of the guys had keys.

Definitely Hound.

Damn it!

I stared (okay, glared) in his guarded eyes and fought throwing my half-eaten cookie at him.

“Keely?” Bev called.

“I can do that,” I told her.

The relief reached through the phone at me. “Thanks, babe.”

“I think one of the boys is trying to get through to tell me about tonight’s meet,” I said.

It wasn’t a lie.

Hound was one of the boys.

“Okay, text me even though you don’t really need to text me. Text me anyway,” she requested.

“You got it. We’ll talk more about your wedding later. Especially the bachelorette party.”

Hound’s head tipped to the side and his eyes went to my phone at my ear.

The gratitude was practically dripping from her repeat of, “Thanks, babe.”

“I’ll text later and we’ll plan some facetime,” I replied.

“You got it. Later, Keely.”

“Later, babe.”

I took my phone from my ear and made sure the call was disconnected before I caught Hound’s gaze again and opened my mouth to blast him.

He got there before me.

“You said what you had to say earlier, baby,” he said gently, his deep voice wrapped around the words like a snuggly blanket. “I couldn’t get into that with you with the boys here and the meeting coming up. The meeting’s done. Jag’s in. So now I’m here so we can talk this shit out.”

“You said all that needed to be said, Hound,” I pointed out. “The only thing left right now for you to do is leave your key and get out of my house.”

“Keely—”

“Get out of my house.”

“Baby—”

Right.

Enough!

I threw the cookie at him, it bounced off his shoulder, fell to the floor, and I shrieked, “Get out of my house!”

He stared at me a beat (and I’ll note, did this and did not get out of my house) then his eyes dropped to the cookie on the floor.

Okay, the cookie was a loser move and I shouldn’t have let him see me lose my cool like that, especially on a loser move that huge, but he wasn’t getting out of my house.

He looked back to me.

“You threw a cookie at me,” he stated.

Were his lips quirking?

Oh no, they were not.

But they were.

They were quirking!

“Do you find something funny?” I asked dangerously, slowly reaching out to put my phone on the counter so I didn’t throw that at him too.

“You threw a cookie at me.” His eyes glanced down at it and back at me before he amended, “Half a cookie.”

“This is not funny, Hound.”

He wiped his face clean of amusement.

“Jean had died,” he said quietly.

“That’s no excuse.”

He flinched.

Christ.

Hound flinched.

Still with the quiet. “My head was messed up.”

“You didn’t fail to communicate that to me,” I shared sarcastically.

“You’re right, I missed the signs.”

That admission had me clamming right up.

“Been playin’ it in my head since I took off earlier,” he told me. “Got no idea what votes I cast at the meeting tonight and they were important. I don’t give a fuck. All I could think about was you. What you said. What you’d been doin’. All I’d missed. And gettin’ my ass back here to work this out.”

That felt good.

But it wasn’t enough.

“It’s too late,” I shared.

“Babe—”

“I’d forgive anything from you, Hound. Anything,” I stressed. “Not because you stood on my back walk with the blood of Black’s murderer all over you. Not because all you gave my boys. But because all you are to me. That, what you said, what you thought I’d done, I can’t forgive.”

“You came apart when he died,” he reminded me.

“Of course I did,” I snapped. “I loved him. He was my husband. He was the father of my sons. And he’d had his throat slit. So of course I did, Hound. But that was seventeen, almost eighteen fucking years ago.”

“You put yourself back together two months ago, Keely, and don’t try to tell me that wasn’t when it happened. That was when it happened. You gave him that amount of grief, suddenly you’re at my crib, strippin’ buck naked, comin’ on to me, what the fuck did you think I’d think?”

“Not that I was out for my biker bang,” I hissed.

His mood started deteriorating, and I could tell it not only by his vibe but by his voice.

“No indication, nothin’ before that and suddenly you’re naked in my living room, Keekee.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Didn’t hear dick about you givin’ up Black’s cut and his bike until after I blew my stack with you. So what’s that, babe? You held on even when you were with me so let’s get to the real of this. You weren’t ready to let go until you realized how far we’d gone and thought it was lost.”