Текст книги "Walk Through Fire"

Автор книги: Kristen Ashley

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

“Oh,” I mumbled. “Okay.”

“So shut up and drift,” he ordered.

Yes, years ago, I found the bossy hot.

Now it was kind of annoying.

Hmm.

At first I shut up because I didn’t have anything to say.

Then I had something to say so I stopped shutting up.

“You own a gun?”

“Own five, only got one with me. And you know I own guns, Millie. Owned three when we lived together.”

This was true.

“You have one with you?”

“Millie.”

“What?”

“How about we talk about this tomorrow when my cum isn’t drippin’ on me, irritatin’ as fuck?”

“I can go clean up, Logan,” I noted again.

He sighed, heavy and deep.

I shut up again.

It was then, with the reference to him having a gun, it occurred to me in all that happened, he didn’t know Benito Valenzuela visited me.

“Logan?” I called.

“I’d stop her talkin’ by fuckin’ her face but fuck if I don’t have that in my right now so do I stick a sock in her trap or listen to her babble?” he asked no one because he certainly didn’t say that shit to me.

I forgot about Benito and snapped, “Stick a sock in my trap?”

“Millie, it’s two in the mornin’. Even when I was twenty-four, after fuckin’ you hard, I needed some shut-eye before I had another go at you.”

This was true. Though those were catnaps and I usually stirred him from them with blowjobs.

A point to ponder.

“No clue how,” he muttered grouchily. “But forgot how much you liked my dick.”

“I’m not angling for more sex, Logan.”

“You pushed my buttons back in the day, babe, what’d you get?”

Oh man.

I got fucked.

Logan used sex for a variety of purposes, including ending fights, getting me out of bad moods, or turning the tables on a discussion he found aggravating.

I shut up.

Logan was silent.

I was the same.

Then the bed started shaking and it wasn’t me doing it.

“Logan?” I called.

He pulled me deeper into him and his voice was unsteady with his laughter when he said, “Fuck, it’s so good to have my girl back, it’s not fuckin’ funny.”

God.

I loved that.

Loved it.

Maybe we could do this. Maybe it was going to be that easy.

I melted in his arms and started to stroke his shoulders.

“Go to sleep, Low,” I whispered.

He found my mouth, touched his to it, then settled back in.

“ ’Night, beautiful. Drift good.”

I smiled, pushing in closer, my face at the base of his throat where I kissed him.

“ ’Night,” I whispered against his skin. “Sleep well.”

“Tangled in you, only good sleep I’ve had for twenty years.”

It was no surprise I felt the same, which made it even more unfortunate mine was messed up with jet lag.

I closed my eyes and snuggled deeper, shifting my hand to play with the ends of his hair.

I felt him enter dreamland and he did it rolling into me so I was to my back, his weight was partly to my side, but his hips were still between mine, his face in my neck.

I pulled the covers up over his shoulders, then kept playing with the ends of his hair, feeling him, smelling him, holding him...

And lying in the wet spot.

I tamped down my giggles.

Then, later, I finally fell asleep.

High

When he heard his phone ring, High opened his eyes, seeing, smelling, and feeling Millie.

This meant for the first time in two decades, Logan “High” Judd woke up smiling.

He heard his phone stop ringing, and although he wanted to stay right where he was, he couldn’t.

He had to get up, check his phone, and if it wasn’t who he thought it was, he had to make a call and do it while his girl was asleep.

It wasn’t that he wanted to hide that from Millie. It was just that he needed to introduce it to her slow-like.

One thing was certain from the last two days. He had to handle Millie with care. He had to pay attention. As they rode out their reunion, he had to have total focus on her even when he had other important things in his life that needed his focus.

This was because he needed to take care of her.

It was also because he was not about to let anything spook her so she slipped through his fingers again.

So he carefully extricated himself from her, exited the bed, made sure she was covered, and found his briefs. He yanked them on, and his jeans, pulling his phone out of his back pocket.

He checked the screen.

The call didn’t come from who he thought it came from.

It came from Tack.

Tack could wait. The call he needed to make couldn’t.

He went to the bathroom, took a piss, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and came back out to the bedroom. Eyes to Millie curled up in bed looking peaceful, his lips curved up. Then he nabbed the Henley he wore the day before off the floor and tugged it on as he walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He started to make coffee at the same time he hit the buttons on the phone and put it to his ear.

He’d called her yesterday, before Millie got up and again after Millie crashed the first time.

And he’d learned from Deb that his girls were disappointed the snow came right before a weekend so they were shut in but not shut out of school.

Though, Deb reported they had plenty of food and all was good.

The second time he phoned, he’d talked to his girls, both now ecstatic about the snow, both wanting him to come over so they could go out and do shit in it.

He couldn’t and he lucked out when he heard Deb say in the background, “I know you want to see your dad but I also know you don’t want him driving in this snow. It’s dangerous. You can see him after the roads are cleared.”

With her doing it, he didn’t have to say no to his babies, something he found difficult to do, which in turn didn’t make Deb happy.

On this thought, after pouring the water in the coffeemaker, he was shoving the pot under when she picked up.

“Hey, High,” Deb greeted.

She’d always called him High. Not once did she call him Logan. She knew his name—it was on their marriage certificate, their kids’ birth certificates—but he’d introduced himself to her at the bar where they met as High and he’d never been anything but all the time they were together.

Truth be told, not many people called him Logan anymore. Even his mom and dad had reverted to using High most of the time.

So that had become Millie’s.

And now he had her back so he had Logan back.

There was something significant about that that he wasn’t going to sift through while on the phone with Deb.

But he understood it. He remembered the man he was before her, with her.

He also knew the man he became when he lost her.

Having that name back was like having that man back. Washing away the shit of his life without Millie and starting clean.

It would take more than that but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel fucking great.

“Hey, Deb,” he replied. “The girls good?”

“They’re hoping for more snow so school will be canceled tomorrow,” she told him. “But it’s good. They’re clearing the roads. Company sent us home on Friday, so I’ll probably need to go in this afternoon to do some catch-up so I’m not swamped on Monday. But Mom said she could come around and look after the girls when I do.”

Deb had a great job, made good money as the manager of the shipping department of a computer parts factory in town. They had five factories all over the world and were corporate through and through, but they weren’t assholes, which was good in times like these since they did shit like send her home when a storm got bad.

And he knew Deb’s mom, Connie, would look after the girls. Her son had taken a job in Idaho, married a woman there, had kids there. Her other daughter had moved to Alabama when her husband had been transferred, and obviously their kids went with them. So Connie only had Cleo and Zadie to shower with love and attention and she had a lot of both for her grandbabies and she did it as often as she could.

High liked Connie. She was a good woman. Her husband had walked out on her when her kids were young and then did only the minimum of what a father should do for his kids financially and to be in their lives, so it was all on her to raise them and do it right.

This had been one of the reasons why Deb had accepted his ring. It wasn’t lost on her how hard it was for her mother to do what she did for her children. She didn’t want that for herself or her own kids.

So she took his ring and the only way that didn’t end as a massive fuckup was that they had Zadie and they both loved their girls.

“Cool,” he muttered, pouring beans into the grinder, then setting the bag aside. “Got somethin’ goin’ down but would like to see ’em tomorrow.”

“That works, High,” she replied.

He drew in breath and looked out the window over Millie’s sink that showed a view of her courtyard and his truck, all covered in snow.

It was gorgeous.

And looking at it, it struck him some of the changes in his Millie, some of the things she’d built along the way, absolutely did not suck.

And looking at it, after what had happened the last two days, what they’d lost, he knew he couldn’t dick around.

So he lowered his voice when he went on.

“Also need for us to have a conversation, private. You and me, not the girls. Nothin’ bad. Just need to talk to you about something.”

There was barely a beat of pause before she stated, “You’re with someone.”

He felt his head jerk in surprise at her jumping right to that.

Then he asked, “You talk to an old lady?”

He heard her laugh. It wasn’t filled with humor. It wasn’t bitter either. Deb was and always had been no-nonsense. Almost emotionless. Definitely passionless. She didn’t get bitter.

She loved her girls. Like any good mother, like her mother taught her, she showered love and attention (and when it was needed, discipline) on her daughters.

Other than that, there was nothing there.

“A Chaos old lady phoning me to gossip?” she asked, then continued, “I don’t think so.”

He should have known.

She was not a fan of Chaos. Therefore, Chaos were not fans of Deb.

He turned his back to the window and rested his hips against the counter. “Well, I can confirm it’s that.”

“You’re a free agent, High,” she pointed out.

Yeah.

Passionless.

She was the same kind of lay. She got the job done. But there was nothing else to it.

She did her wifely duties. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t shit, it was never close to what he had with Millie back in the day and now, but he’d never stepped out on her. No one caught his eye to push him even to considering it.

But even if it had, he wouldn’t have done that to Deb. A man was any man at all, no matter what was going down at home, he didn’t fuck over the mother of his children in any way, but especially not that way.

So he didn’t.

Another reason why they finished things. Not because she wanted to find something good. Not because she gave enough of a shit about him that she wanted him to find that for himself.

Because the longer she gave him nothing much, the more she figured she courted a betrayal that was not hers to claim—a betrayal of the heart—but as his wife it was hers to claim... legally.

“I know, Deb,” he replied to her free agent comment. “And we’ll talk more when I got you face to face.”

“You want to introduce her to the girls,” she surmised.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“Okay,” she stated. “We’ll talk. But it’s not like I didn’t know this would happen and I trust you. You wouldn’t bring just any women into the girls’ lives. And anyway, I think this would be good for Cleo. She worries about you. It might even be good for Zadie. She needs to get her head wrapped around the end of us and if you’re moving on, that might happen.”

High wasn’t surprised at her reaction to him having a woman in his life. She wasn’t about jealousy. She wasn’t about anything but her daughters. It was like she knew from what her father taught her that she’d never have that kind of love in her life, so she convinced herself early she could live without it.

And she did a bang-up job.

He didn’t try. That was never what they were about. He was hung up on Millie and that was the way it was.

He’d never shared about Millie. Even as his wife, as fucked up as it was, that wasn’t Deb’s to have, partly because she wouldn’t have wanted it.

But even if he had tried, he wouldn’t have gotten in there. She’d closed that part of her up so tight, he often wondered if it wasn’t her dad but instead was just her.

“Right, we’ll set something up,” he muttered.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“The girls up?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she told him, and he smiled.

They wouldn’t be. His girls liked their sleep. Since they shared a room, they also liked giggling into the night. Their sharing a room was something that he demanded, wanting them to have that together time to bond as sisters. It was also something he never told Deb he wanted because Millie had it with Dottie and remembered it fondly.

“I’ll call later and talk with ’em,” he said.

“That’s cool,” she replied. “Later, High.”

“Later, Deb.”

They disconnected and he put the phone down on the counter, reaching to the coffee grinder and hoping him using it couldn’t be heard through Millie’s bedroom door.

As far as he could tell, it couldn’t. He had the coffee brewing and was unearthing a waffle iron that looked like it’d never been used when his phone rang again.

He looked to the display and saw it was Tack.

He didn’t answer. If Millie wasn’t up soon, he’d be waking her up, feeding her, fucking her, then talking to her about what was next up for them.

That was important.

Whatever Tack needed could wait.

Since Millie didn’t have Bisquick, something High couldn’t fathom of the old Millie but something that he could (and it set his teeth on edge) about the new, he looked up a recipe on his phone. And since she had the ingredients for homemade, he was mixing the waffle batter when he saw a flash of motion.

He lifted his head and caught Millie entering the living room teetering to a stop sideways, pajama bottoms on, still yanking down the top, her face a mix of sleep and panic.

He felt his shoulders string taut as he went alert at her actions and expression.

His shoulders relaxed and he felt warmth steel through him when her eyes hit him and visible relief hit her frame.

She woke up alone, maybe disoriented because of jet lag, and thought he was gone, panicked, pulled on her clothes on the run, and came looking for him.

His voice sounded strange even to him, low and smooth, when he called, “Come here, Millie.”

She didn’t move for a beat, staring at him across the living room.

“Babe,” he prompted.

He lost her expression when she looked to her feet but those feet moved her toward him.

They kept doing it and he turned so she was able to collide with his front, head still down, the top of it hitting his chest, her arms immediately moving to wrap around his waist.

He slid his around her and pulled her closer—a lot closer—so she had to turn her head and press her cheek to his chest as he tucked the rest of her tight.

He didn’t get in to how she’d made her entrance. He was there. He was going to make her waffles. It was all good and he didn’t need to take her there.

Instead, he bent his neck and asked the top of her hair, “How you feelin’?”

“Normal,” she muttered.

“Good,” he replied.

“Are we having waffles?” she asked.

He grinned and answered, “Yeah.”

“Awesome,” she said softly. “I love waffles.”

She might love waffles, something he knew since she’d loved them before, but she liked it more where she was because she didn’t move.

High wanted breakfast but he preferred holding Millie in her kitchen, so he let that go on for a while, giving it to himself, to her, before he decided it was time to take care of both of them.

That was when he stated, “Not easy to make waffles for my girl with her wedged up against me.”

She tipped her head back and he lifted his to catch her eyes.

“Figure it out,” she bossed, and having moved her head, she didn’t move another inch.

He grinned again and replied, “You feel like stayin’ close, not gonna complain, but you’re also gonna hafta help.”

“I can do that,” she told him. “Though, I don’t smell bacon cooking.”

He lifted his brows. “You want bacon with your waffles?”

“Is bacon bacon?” she asked ridiculously.

He felt his grin get bigger. “It’s a lot of things, including being bacon.”

“Then, yes, I want bacon with my waffles.”

She finished what she was saying but she did it talking through the doorbell ringing.

Both of them looked to it but High suspected only he knew who it was.

All the brothers and their women had left him and Millie alone yesterday but Tack had called twice that morning. The sun was shining. The crews would have been at work on the roads, but Tack would never let snow stop him doing anything.

Especially if his woman was up in his shit about making sure High and Millie were okay.

Something that Cherry totally would be.

“Who’s out on these roads?” Millie asked.

“Don’t matter,” High answered. “Two seconds, they’re gonna be gone.” He gave her a squeeze before separating from her and then he looked down at her. “You start the bacon. I’ll deal with the door.”

She nodded.

He moved.

He saw who it was through the filmy curtain on the door and he wanted to turn right back around.

He didn’t.

He sighed, moved to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.

Two kids, one a little girl, one a little boy who was holding his mom’s hand, Millie’s sister and her man.

Before he could open his mouth, both kids started to make a dash inside but stopped dead when they saw who had opened the door.

They also both stood staring up at him, mouths wide open, eyes big.

But High was frozen.

Solid.

And he was this to fight the pain.

It wasn’t the boy. The boy was cute. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Maybe three, four years old.

It was the girl.

She had her aunt’s eyes.

She had her aunt’s hair.

She had her aunt’s mole.

All this something he wasn’t able to see fully when he took her in in the candid, but black-and-white photos Millie had around her pad.

She was the vision of what he thought he’d have when he gave a girl to Millie.

Exactly.

She was adorable, top to toe, and the beauty of her carved out his insides.

“Well, I see you weathered the storm,” Dottie stated, and he tore his gaze from the little girl to look at her mother. “So, let’s get this started,” she went on. “Katy, Freddie, this is your uncle Low. Logan, these are my kids, Katy and Freddie. I think you can figure out which is which.”

Katy.

She’d named her daughter what Millie and him were going to name theirs.

This wasn’t a surprise. It was her grandmother’s name too.

And she’d do that kind of thing, Dot would, giving that to her sister when her sister couldn’t give it to the world.

He forced his eyes back to the kids and rumbled, “Yo.”

Their eyes got even bigger and their mouths opened even wider.

That was cuter.

And more painful.

Then his world suspended completely when their attention was taken with something, they looked away from High and their faces lit with pure happiness.

They forgot their amazement that a man had opened their aunt’s door and the girl shouted, “Auntie Millie! You’re back from France!”

The boy just tore his hand from his mother’s and started running, hands up in the air waving.

High turned to look and saw Millie in the hall, beaming at her niece and nephew, her hands up in the air waving like Freddie’s before she dropped to a squat and they both hit her, dead-on, taking her right to her ass.

She didn’t care.

Fuck no.

Her laughter rang through the room, filled with joy, her face saturated with it—the first hint he had of his old Millie since he’d seen her again—as they crawled all over her and she wrapped herself in them, hugging them, holding them, tickling them.

Loving on them.

Christ.

Christ.

He thought he got it. He was sure he understood what she did to tear them apart.

He didn’t get it.

Not until then. Not until he watched that. Not until he felt the memories of a million moments just like that he’d had with his own girls.

It was only then he got it.

She’d saved him from this. She’d saved him from having to watch her never having this with their kids. She’d saved him from having to watch her only getting it when she got her hit of Dot’s kids.

And she’d given him his own.

It was all the same as what he thought he got but witnessing it made it more acute.

So yeah, now he really fucking got it.

And it killed.

“Kids! For goodness’ sake! Get off your aunt Millie! You’ve got her pinned to the floor in her pajamas!” Dottie demanded, shoving in.

“Jesus.” He heard a man mutter, and he slowly turned back to the door as Dot’s husband stood outside it, not moving, and went on critically, “Knew you were a biker but you’re rough.”

High took in the big man with dark hair clipped short, undoubtedly due to that making it zero maintenance. He was wearing a white thermal under a padded flannel shirt, faded jeans, scuffed, worn work boots, and the stubble on his face said he hadn’t used a razor in, High’s guess, at least three weeks.

High then extended his hand and replied, “Right. You’re pot. Nice ta meet you. I’m kettle.”

The man’s eyes narrowed.

Dot burst out laughing.

High dropped his hand that was ignored.

“Auntie Millie!” the little girl cried in despair. “Your boyfriend’s name is kettle?”

“Boyfriend?” the boy asked in disgust, his attention coming back to High and it was not difficult to see the kid found him lacking.

“Alan, honey, do me a big favor and shut the door on that cold,” Dottie called. “And, no, I told you. That’s your uncle Logan,” she said to her kids. Then she kept talking. “So okay, how about we take this into the house where there’s coffee?” She looked at her sister, who was pulling herself up from the floor. “Alan insisted we come, not call, to check in on you. Sorry we’re interrupting but whatever. We’re here now and I’m two cups down since it took us twice as long as it normally does to get here on those blasted roads.”

“I—” Millie started, but her attention came back to High when he had to shift back, something he did only slightly, to let in her brother-in-law.

When the man was in, High shut the door while the little girl asked her aunt, “Did you bring us presents from France?”

“Did I bring you presents from France,” Millie replied. Not a question, a scoffing astonishment. “I can barely go to the drugstore and not get you presents.”

“Yay!” the girl screeched.

All this went on while High and Dot’s husband faced off in the hall.

Dot had caved when he’d confronted her. As she would. She’d been there. She knew.

This guy, High had his work cut out for him.

Their face-off continued until the little boy announced, “You’re not Auntie Millie’s boyfriend. I am.”

High looked down at the kid whose face was now twisted with dislike and outrage and, fuck him, but he couldn’t beat back the smile.

“You’re not my boyfriend, sweetheart,” Millie said. “You’re my nephew.”

The boy looked to his aunt and snapped, “Same thing.”

If High didn’t know they were already close, what happened next would prove it.

“We’re making waffles,” Millie announced, adeptly dealing with the kid’s attitude by offering food. “Who wants waffles?”

The kid’s stomach was obviously more important than his claim on his aunt because he forgot about his issue with High and yelled, “Me!”

The girl started jumping around, also yelling, “Me too! I love waffles.”

“You guys had oatmeal at home,” Dottie said, herding her kids into the house.

“That wore off like ages ago,” the boy replied, pulling away from his mother and dashing into the living room, following his aunt, so intent on doing it that his arms were pumping in an effort to give him more speed.

They disappeared.

With that distraction gone, High turned back to Alan and was again confronted with a wall of attitude, the adult kind he didn’t like all that much.

It didn’t sit well with him because this guy didn’t get it and was making judgments that weren’t his to make.

But that didn’t matter.

It was High who was going to have to make the effort.

“It means a lot you give a shit,” he said low. “And as you can see, she’s doin’ good. And so you know, I get it may take time and I’ll put in the time but in the end, you’ll know I got this.”

“You fuckin’ better,” Alan replied, and High had to remind himself it was good Millie had people who cared in her life, as that was all the guy gave him before he prowled away.

He looked to his feet, sighed, then looked up again when he heard little Freddie shout, “Bacon! Yee ha!”

And High steeled himself against what he knew would be all good at the same time it was pure torture as he walked out of the foyer toward the living room, hearing Millie ask, “Okay, who’s going to help man the waffle iron and who’s gonna help fry the bacon?”

She got two, “Waffle irons!”

When he hit the living room, he felt slightly better seeing Dottie’s eyes come to him with a soft look of understanding and a definite communication that it was all going to be okay.

He felt a fuckuva lot better when Millie’s eyes came to him and she gave him a smile that said she was happy her house was filled with people she loved.

Then it was High who ended up frying the bacon.