Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(154)

It was sweet as Rush could always be. He’d been a little boy on the go, something to do or see or experience and he didn’t want to waste any time doing it, seeing it, or experiencing it (thus his nickname was Rush).

But in all that, he was always sweet, a good kid, a loving son to his dad (and his mom, even though I knew that was more difficult for him because he was also a loving brother and Naomi never treated Tabby right).

So, for me, it had been a lovely reunion.

For the girls, it was an eye-opening one.

I’d worried in the dramatics of the kitty incident that I would lose headway with Cleo along with Zadie digging in against me.

Luckily, that didn’t happen. Cleo greeted me with a big smile the minute I’d walked in and with the way Chaos was with me, it just got better from there.

On the other hand, Zadie hadn’t been bratty, but she’d been back to sulky and mostly silent.

The good part about that was that she had plenty of attention to give what was happening at the Compound with Logan and Chaos.

And Logan was a part of that because he’d also changed his strategy.

Apparently, he had been withholding some of his displays of affection for me.

I knew this because at the Compound he’d let it loose. There was more touching, hand holding, arm around shoulders or waist, and a lingering (though not wet) kiss when I first arrived to meet them.

Not only in deed but in word and in look, he gave it to me.

He also gave it to his girls, lavishing the same on them at every opportunity in a way that was so natural, I knew it was just how it was with them.

It was cute.

No, not cute.

Beautiful.

Cleo obviously blossomed under it.

But Zadie did too.

I figured she just loved her dad. Though I figured it was more, his behavior with her when I was around being indication he was not angry with her and was moving on.

I just hoped she’d sort herself out and move on, too, the right way.

I would find out that weekend when Deb dropped the girls off at my house for them to stay the weekend.

“Mmm,” I mumbled to Kellie’s comment about the girls spending the weekend, my mind consumed with that, my eyes wandering to my computer monitor.

“Why’d you end it with him?”

Her question, voiced gently, but still a sneak attack, made my gaze fly back to her.

I’d never told them, not her or Justine. Only Dottie.

And I’d still not told them.

It was now time to tell them but both my bestest besties weren’t there and, after all these years, giving that only to Kellie wouldn’t be fair.

“I think that I should share that with you when Jus is around, babe,” I replied in the same tone she’d given me.

“You can’t have kids,” she declared.

I felt my lips part.

She shook her head, her face softening in a way that made my heart fill with such love, it became so heavy it hurt, and she leaned toward me at my desk.

“Me and Jus, we guessed a long time ago. Figured it out when you were all about trying to surprise him with getting knocked up and goin’ at each other like bunnies. Then, poof,” the word was a soft explosion, “he’s gone.”

I watched her eyes get bright and fought the same happening with me as she continued speaking.

“Then the way you were when Dot had Katy, then Freddie, all happy at the same time so f*cking sad. Same when Jus and Ronnie had Raff. Killed watching that, babe.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice husky.

She shook her head again. “Nothing to be sorry for. A girl’s no girl at all for her sisters if she doesn’t get that sometimes a sister has to share the hurt, sometimes hold it close. That happens, a girl’s gotta stand by her sister the way she needs her, not the way that girl needs to do it.”

God, I loved Kellie so... f*cking... much.

“Thank you for doing that for me,” I said.

“Not a hardship. You give back, Mill. The sisterhood works that way.”

That was true, and I was getting choked up, so the only thing I could do was nod.

I pulled it together before I shared, “I messed up. He understood when it all came out but I lost—”

She leaned back and her tone was now firm when she ordered, “Stop it.”

It was me shaking my head when I told her, “It keeps coming to me. I’m happy he’s back. We’re working. We slid right in to what we had before and it’s good. It’s good like it was, which means it’s great. But it’s actually better because we’re older and we know more about life and what’s important. But there are things that hit me. Like he’s a partner now, Kell. Not in the way he was before where he’d make me coffee when I had to study or tell me how beautiful I was any time he looked at me. He’s a partner. Like he takes out the trash. And I didn’t teach him that. Deb did.”

“See you’ll be having some things f*ckin’ with your head when you sit down to lunch with her too,” she muttered.

“I envy her, no doubt about it,” I confessed. “She had him for thirteen years. They weren’t a love match and that never grew between them. She still had him. And she gave him—”

“Stop that too,” Kellie cut me off.

“Kell, you have to know that cuts deep,” I told her.