Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(39)

“I’ve taken some time with this, and I don’t blame them. I don’t hold any anger,” she said softly.

She shifted her gaze to him again and kept talking.

“They fell in love. That’s one of the simplest, most beautiful things people can do. Of course, life makes it complicated, but the emotion isn’t complicated. It’s effortless, pure. But they couldn’t have that. They had to fight for their love. They had to explain it. They had to defend it. They couldn’t go out together without getting looks, assholes saying shit. But your family is supposed to be about no conditions, and they couldn’t even be in love and be around the people who were supposed to love them. That’s gotta wear a soul down. They were together fifty years. That’s a success story. Something to celebrate. But they were forced to lose important things to gain each other. Then they lost their only baby. So no,” she shook her head, glancing again at the photographs, “I don’t blame them. Enough does tend to be enough.”

Jag reached out, caught her at the back of the neck, and squeezed.

She turned to him and started, “Sometimes, bikers have a reputation—”

He knew what she was saying.

There were MCs that were racist, some implicitly, others explicitly.

“Chaos is not about that. I can’t say we’re poster children for diversity, because I think my mom’s Apache blood is the only diversity we got. But you will not feel shit like that with my family.”

She nodded and then asked, “I’m living, breathing proof it works, Jag. Why don’t people get that?”

“If I had that answer, baby, I’d win a Nobel Prize.”

“One of the issues, and they are numerous, is that it’s a Black thing with Elijah. Along with other garbage, he’s putting that between him and Dad.”

Well, fuck.

“Maybe because there’s nothing else to put there and he’s reaching?” Jagger suggested.

“Dad’s new wife is white.”

“Well, fuck,” Jag muttered out loud this time.

“Unh-hunh,” she agreed.

Jagger didn’t let her go when he looked down at one of the photos, then back to Archie.

“She was gorgeous, Arch,” he said.

“I know,” she whispered.

“I was too young to remember my dad,” he told her.

Her eyes brightened with interest.

And again…

Fuck.

He quickly carried on, and not about that.

“But I know for certain I’d lose my shit if something happened to my mom. Honest to God, I don’t know if I’d survive that.”

“You would,” she said quietly.

“Maybe day to day, but an important part of me would be jacked until the day I died.”

“I get that, Jagger, obviously I do.”

He pulled her closer. “I know you do, and I don’t know what it’s like for girls, daughters. I’m absolutely not downplaying what you deal with every day. I just know there’s a time when a son stops being a son and he starts being a protector. And it holds no logic, we don’t control every part of our worlds, there are things we cannot change. Still, if something hurt her, my mom, it would be there. There would be a feeling of responsibility. Of failure. Regardless of how ridiculous it is to feel that way, unless something happens to my ma twenty, thirty years down the line, and it’s about life cycles and age, I’ll feel it’s somehow on me.”

He could see her working on that behind her eyes.

“Never met your brother,” he pointed out. “That’s just where I’d be.”

She nodded.

And he pulled her even closer.

“Loved seeing these pictures, baby,” he murmured. “Wondered what she looked like, figured she was gorgeous. I was right.”

She smiled and her next words were cautious.

“Do you have pictures of your dad?”

He let her go and sat back.

Her eyes flickered with disappointment.

Even so, Jag didn’t get into that.

He just said, “Somewhere.”

“Okay,” she murmured. “You want dessert?”

“You have dessert?”

“I have French vanilla ice cream and I have chunky peanut butter.”

That sounded promising.

“Like, you mix them together?” he asked.

“No, you plop a wad of peanut butter on a huge bowl of ice cream and eat it.”

Correct.

Promising.

“You dish up, I’ll clean up,” he ordered.

That got him another smile and, “Deal.”





Deep in the night, in Archie’s bed, Jag jerked awake, and when he did, he was breathing funny.

Archie roused at his side.

“Hey,” she called softly.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Just…weird dream.”

She said nothing but pushed up, draped herself mostly on him and stuffed her face in his throat.

“I’m okay,” he lied, moving his hands on her.

“This happen a lot?”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Sometimes,” he admitted.

She was silent, waiting for him to say more.

When he didn’t, she said, “I’m giving you this, baby, but repeating the caveat you’re eventually gonna have to open up for me.”