Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(25)

“You are not instigating a Black Brothers Gossip Club right under our fuckin’ noses.”

Georgie burst out laughing.

Archie laughed too, but low.

Carolyn finally got some of the Carolyn Jag liked back, grinned unrepentantly at Dutch, and said, “You can’t stop us.”

“Girl, that was not the response,” Archie chided. “You just gave it all away. You should have said, ‘This is not all about you,’ when it would totally be all about them.”

More woman laughter.

Dutch looked at Jagger. “You got anything to say?”

He did.

“I have nothing to hide.”

“Do you have something to hide, darlin’?” Georgie asked her man.

Dutch made his point.

“If I did, it’d be only you I’d tell.”

“Right,” Georgie replied, giving the other women big eyes.

“Well, Archie’s cool, and obviously Georgie and I are cool, so can we have your permission to get together and not talk about the Black Brothers?” Carolyn requested.

“Knock yourselves out,” Dutch granted.

“Thank you, oh master, my master,” Georgie teased.

“That’s for later,” Dutch returned.

Georgie burst out laughing again.

Archie leaned further into him even as she reached for her wine again.

He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she wasn’t laughing this time, so he gave her a squeeze.

She glanced up at him.

“Family,” she said softly.

She didn’t have this.

Not with her brother.

He gave her another squeeze and mouthed, “Later.”

She nodded, looked away and took a sip of her wine.





They were on her fire escape.

She had a bunch of pillows on the ground by the window to it that she tossed out so they could sit on them and lean against them.

It was late September, nights getting darker earlier, but regardless, it was late, dark, and they were outside, sitting and leaning.

Jagger against the building.

Archie, between his legs and against him.

She had his hand in hers and was fiddling with it, but her eyes were aimed through the railing, where you could see a sliver of the deep purple hues of the Rocky Mountains silhouetted against the night sky between some buildings.

She also had double stamps of approval.

Between then and now, Georgie had texted I’m in love with her! I want her to be MY girlfriend!

Dutch had texted She’s cool, brother.

He didn’t need the approval, but it was good to have.

Now, they were in a weird zone.

Not a bad weird, but still weird.

Before they went out, she’d got him a beer, made herself a vodka tonic, they settled in, and again they had a million things to say.

But neither of them was saying anything.

And it was…

Right.

Jag didn’t know if he’d ever been like this with a woman. He was always up for tying one on, working toward getting it on, then getting it on.

In other words, having a good time one way or another.

If he’d ever had quiet time with a woman, it definitely wasn’t on the first date.

Then again, he’d never taken a first date to his brother’s for dinner.

He took a slug from his beer, set it aside, then gently pulled away from her fiddling and took control of her wrist.

Evidence was suggesting she hung out there a lot, because she had a lamp on the floor by the window that she’d switched on and set outside.

And with that light, he traced the tiny drops inked into her skin that fell from her shoulder, down her biceps and inner forearm to her wrist, where there was a slightly less tiny puddle with an extremely tiny splash coming up from it.

“Probably don’t have to guess with that means,” he murmured in her ear.

“No,” she agreed.

He swept the pad of his thumb across the puddle of tears.

She turned her head and pressed her temple into his collarbone.

Jag went after her hand.

On the side middle joint of each finger, there were miniscule words, one for each finger, from index to pinkie: Live, Love, Laugh, Rock.

Fuck.

He was into this girl.

He ran his thumbnail under each like he was underlining them.

Jag then turned her arm, and on the outside he saw the diminutive but decorative arrows pointing every which way in what seemed like a random pattern.

When he touched one, she said, “I wanna go everywhere. I wanna do everything. I want to skateboard in Iceland like Walter Mitty. I want to spend the night in an elephant hide in Zambia. I want to do a wine and cheese tour of Paris. I want always to remember I shouldn’t be going only in one direction. I need to head out in all of them.”

“What directions have you gone?” he asked.

“This year’s big one, I stayed in a Rajasthani tent in Portugal. Went to the beach, took surfing lessons, sucked at it, but it was fun. Mostly, I walked around the lake where the tent was, hiked in the wood there, and hung with the other people staying at the site or chilled outside my tent by myself and read.”

“Hang on a second, you went alone to stay in a tent in Portugal?”

“Yeah,” she said, not like it was an answer to his question, but like she was talking to herself. This would be explained when she finished, “Dad is gonna dig you.”