Walk Through Fire (Chaos #4)(182)

“You let me know when that shit goes down,” he stated immediately. “I’ll drive you.”

She relaxed in his arms.

She got tight again when he went on to declare, “You gotta know, we’re movin’ and we’re doin’ that soon.”

“We are?” she asked.

“Your neighbors suck.”

He’d told her about her neighbor witnessing her being taken and doing nothing about it.

So when he declared that, she relaxed again and added a smile.

“House hunting,” she murmured. “Fun.”

If she thought that, she was nuts.

He didn’t share that mostly because she rolled up on her toes, touched her mouth to his, then pulled out of his arms to do as he’d asked.

So they could eat it warm, they ate their burritos at Chipotle.

It was cold outside.

But the best she could do was flip-flops.

It was cute.

It was Millie.

And it had made him laugh.

EPILOGUE

Today’s No Different

High

“YOU SURE YOU wanna play it that way?”

Standing alone with Tack and Hound in the Common Room of the Compound, when Tack asked that question after High told him how he wanted things to go down, High only nodded.

Tack studied him for a beat.

Then he said, “Your call, High.”

High looked at him, then he looked at Hound.

It was done.

So he said, “Gotta go look at a house.”

He said it like he’d rather voluntarily be bolted into an iron maiden, which was to say he said it how he felt it.

Tack’s lips twitched.

Hound grinned straight out.

“Later, brothers,” High muttered, and jerking up his chin, he walked away.

Tack

“We gonna play it that way?”

Hound asked this question the instant the door to the Compound closed behind High.

Tack took his eyes from the door and looked to Hound.

“Your call, Hound.”

“They got to Zadie, they took Millie.” Hound told him something he knew.

Tack didn’t reply but he knew where Hound was leading.

“They feel pain,” Hound said low.

That was where he knew Hound was leading.

“High has chosen the righteous path. It’s the right path. But I know you, brother, your path has always been your own,” Tack returned.

“Our world, wrong done to our own, righteous takes a different meaning,” Hound told him.

Yeah.

Hound’s path had always been his own.

“I get you,” Tack replied.

“I’m maverick on this, Tack. Club stays clean.”

Tack turned fully to him, shaking his head. “No, brother. We’re always at your back.”

Hound held his gaze a beat before he whispered, “Not this time.”

Before Tack could say a word, Hound walked away.

He was uncertain if that was good or bad. Knowing what he now knew, he wondered if Hound enjoyed riding the edge because it made him feel something when he knew what he wanted to feel, what he wanted to have, he couldn’t feel and he’d never own.

What Tack was certain of was that Hound was wrong.

He could think he was maverick.

But Hound’s brothers would have his back.

He took a stool by the bar, pulling out his phone.

He made some calls.

And he made that so.

High

All his girls in the truck, High slowed to a stop at the curb in front of the house that Millie had found on the Internet.

He bent and looked through Millie’s window and up the incline to the monstrosity sitting obnoxiously proud on its huge lot in Denver’s Highlands, overlooking the city.

Jesus.

No f*cking way.

“It’s like... like... better than a castle,” Zadie breathed from the backseat.

Shit.

“It’s amazing!” Cleo cried, also from the backseat.

Christ.

He heard their doors open, sensed his girls jumping out eagerly, but his attention was caught by Millie, who had been inspecting the house but now she was slowly turning her head his way.

He caught a look at her face, the face he fell in love with over two decades ago, a face now shining with excitement.

Fuck.

Without a word, she turned back to her door, threw it open, and practically fell out of it in her hurry to get out the door and up the walk to where the real estate agent was standing on the f*cking veranda waiting for them.

High sighed as he angled out of the truck, moved to the hood, and stopped to look back up at the house, now with an unadulterated view.

Millie had showed him the listing. It was bad enough in photos. It was worse in reality.

But he knew the house had been built in 1903 and in the past two years, roof to foundation restored.

It had a wraparound veranda with Italian tile. It had five bedrooms. It had six baths. It had a living room, a massive kitchen, a buttery (whatever the f*ck that was), a dining room, family room, study, and a f*cking library. It also had a renovated carriage house at the back where Millie could put her studio. Further, it sat on a huge lot that would require him buying a riding lawnmower because no way in f*ck he was gonna push a mower across that lawn. It’d take him two days.