Текст книги "Walk Through Fire"

Автор книги: Kristen Ashley

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Текущая страница: 32 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck that was), a dining room, family room, study, and a fucking 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 fuck he was gonna push a mower across that lawn. It’d take him two days.

It was majestic. It was classy.

It was ostentatious.

It was not where a biker lived.

No way in fuck.

His eyes went from the house to his daughters racing up the steps toward the agent, his woman following them, her ass swaying with her excited strut on her high-heeled boots.

He watched Millie make it to the terrace and shake the agent’s hand.

Then he watched Clee-Clee latch on to her on one side, Zadie grab her hand on the other, Zadie so out of it with joy, she was jumping up and down, jarring Millie as she took his woman with her.

Millie didn’t mind. She just smiled down at his baby girl so huge High could see it all the way to the street.

Oh yeah.

Fuck.

He looked back to the house.

His girls could each have their own bedroom, Millie could have a guestroom and also her junk room.

The basement was finished, so High could also have space of his own.

Further, it had a three-car garage, room for his truck, hers, all his bikes plus plenty of space to park the RV.

And the yard was so damned big the Club could party there with his entire family coming from Durango for a 4th of July bash.

Not to mention, he’d been to dinner at Dot and Alan’s. They had a four-bedroom ranch, which was far from shit.

But it wasn’t a turn-of-the-century Denver mansion.

When Alan saw this place, High wouldn’t need to make the man eat his words.

Alan would have no choice but to choke on them.

On that thought, slowly, High felt his lips curl up.

Slower still, he rounded the hood of his truck and walked up the path to the house.

No.

Not to the house.

To his girls.

The next day, they put Millie’s pad on the market.

Two months later, Logan “High” Judd moved his girls in to what Denver had to offer as a castle a mile high in the sky.

Millie

The buzz of the needle sounding, I lay curled on the reclining seat with Logan, watching the ink penetrate his skin.

Logan and I had agreed to a different placement of the tat because Logan wasn’t big on shaving and he didn’t want my ink obscured in any way.

So it wasn’t being inked into his throat.

It was being inked curled around the base of it.

The artist wasn’t all that thrilled with me being up on the seat with Low. To be able to be close to him, I’d promised him I wouldn’t move and I wasn’t.

This was partly because I wanted the tattoo to be perfect.

It was mostly because I was too overwhelmed with the feelings I was feeling, watching me tatted back into Logan’s skin.

The... only was done when Logan muttered, “Break, bud.”

Without a word, the artist wiped him down, rolled his stool away, and took off.

I watched him do this, sliding my hand from where it was resting on Logan’s bare abs up his chest. I moved my eyes to his.

“You good?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah,” he answered.

I tipped my head to the side. “Then why do you need a break, Snooks?”

“ ’Cause it’s time to do this,” he replied, his hands moving, one circling my wrist at his chest, the other one going from around me and into his jeans pocket.

When I saw what he was doing, my breath hitched and my chest started to burn.

This continued as Logan slid a heavy ring with a large solitaire diamond encased in a solid rectangle of filigreed white gold on my finger. The sides leading up from the band expanded wide at the rectangle. One was embedded with an infinity symbol inside which was an M and an L. The other side had the stem of a rose entwined with a snake.

It was specially made.

No.

It was an engagement ring especially made for the old lady of a biker.

Primarily, me.

In other words, it was perfection.

I looked from the ring to Logan and I did it not breathing.

“Best moment of my life was lyin’ beside you, watchin’ you ink me into your skin while you did the same with me,” he stated softly.

When we’d done it together, he’d felt the same as me.

But of course he did.

My whole body bucked as my breath caught and his hand closed around mine tight, the weighty ring digging into my finger.

“I fucked that up,” he whispered.

“Low,” I whispered back, shaking my head.

“So I’m fixin’ it.” He held my gaze. “Marry me, Millie.”

I stared into his eyes until I couldn’t see him anymore because he’d washed away with the unshed tears.

Then I dropped my face and buried it in his chest.

He cupped his hand on the back of my head even as he kept hold of my other one, doing this tight to his chest.

He gave it a few moments before I heard him rumble, “That mean yes?”

Was he crazy?

My head jerked up, my fingers closed around his, and I replied, “Fuck yes, that means yes.”

His body started shaking with laughter.

Mine didn’t.

I got closer, pressed deeper, and kissed him hard.

He finally let my hand go so he could wrap both his arms around me and we could make out in a tattoo chair.

We did this until the artist called, “Dude, you go at your babe much longer, I’m gonna need a different kind of break.”

This meant we broke our kiss with both of us laughing.

Yes.

Perfection.

Logan’s laughter died first as he slid his hand to cup my cheek.

“Love you, Millie,” he whispered.

I drew in a deep breath through my nose.

I let it go, replying, “Love you, too, Snook’ums.”

He grinned.

I settled back in.

He looked to the artist and jerked up his chin.

I finished watching him get inked with me alternately staring at my kickass engagement ring.

After he was done, we celebrated that tat and our engagement in the back of his SUV in the parking lot of the tattoo parlor.

Because that was the way of a biker.

And the way of his old lady.

Tyra

“Crap, High!” Boz yelled from the pool table in the Common Room, looking disgruntled. “Now I got all your girls kickin’ my butt in pool.”

Sitting at the bar with Lanie and Elvira, I heard Zadie giggle, so I looked that way.

She had a pool cue and was leaning into Millie, who was giggling with her as Cleo lined up her shot.

Cleo let fly and pocketed the six.

“Shee-it,” Boz grumbled.

That was when I heard a rough chuckle.

I looked across the bar to my husband, who was standing at the back of it with Pete and Hop. He had eyes to Boz and a smile on his handsome face.

I liked that look, had always liked that look, but I didn’t spend time taking it in. I knew I’d get it back. Frequently.

So I looked from my man across the space to one of the couches at the back of the room.

There, I saw High sitting alone, a bottle of beer held to his thigh, his other arm spread across the back of the couch, his feet up, ankles crossed, resting on the battered coffee table in front of him.

He was watching the action at the pool table, a smile playing at his lips.

He was sitting alone but he was not doing it as a loner.

He was doing it as a man watching a live action dream play out in front of his eyes.

He was doing it carefree.

He was doing it happy.

The way I’d noted he was a lot these days.

In fact, always.

I felt something and looked back to my man to see he was no longer chuckling and his eyes were on me.

I read what was in his eyes so I knew I’d never make him say the words. That wasn’t how we worked.

But he was telling me I’d been right.

I knew that already, but it still felt good to get it from him.

I gave him a small smile, slid off my stool, and wandered across the room as I heard Millie say to Zadie, “Your turn, darling. Show Boz all we Judd girls can bring it.”

“You got it,” Zadie replied.

I didn’t look their way.

I made it to High, watching him tear his eyes from the action and bring them to me.

I took a breath and sat down on the couch, close.

I barely had my ass to the seat before he curled his arm that was on the back of the couch around my shoulders.

Then, casually, like we’d done this countless times before, he lifted his beer and took a tug.

I let out my breath, slouched in beside him, lifted my feet, and rested them on the coffee table.

We watched Zadie miss.

Her face fell with disappointment.

“Boz is so totally gonna blow it,” Millie declared. “You’ll get him next shot, sweetie.”

Zadie’s face brightened as she looked up at Millie and smiled.

“Thank you,” High whispered.

I pressed my lips together.

Then I relaxed into his side, his arm curling tighter, and I whispered back, “You’re welcome.”

Boz missed.

Millie sunk her ball.

So did Cleo.

And after that, Zadie won the game for the Judd girls.

High

“Holy crap!” Kellie shouted, pushing through the door in front of them. “This place hasn’t changed a bit.”

“Shots!” Justine cried, following her.

Veronica turned eyes over her shoulder to him and she muttered, “Taxi night.”

But she already knew it was a taxi night.

This was because the ride most of them came in was not the ride they’d go home in.

High just grinned at her as he guided Millie through the door after Veronica and Justine, hearing Elvira say from behind him, “This used to be Chaos?”

“Oh my God, this place is totally seedy,” Lanie replied. “I love it! We finally have a local that’s not the Common Room even if it’s miles away.”

They all moved in, expanding into the nearly-devoid-of-bodies space.

High did it holding Millie close and the instant they were inside, his gaze went to the bar.

Reb was staring at them, eyes big but face tight.

He bent to his girl’s ear.

“Grab a table, babe,” he muttered there. “I’ll get the booze.”

She looked from Reb to him and nodded.

She disengaged, glancing at Reb again, then following her girls to the table, her Chaos sisters, Tyra, Lanie, and Elvira following her.

Tack, Hop, and Boz followed High to the bar.

Reb met them there.

“Rumor’s true,” she said bitchily to High.

“Yep,” High replied.

She looked from High to Millie and back to High.

When she got his eyes, she declared, “You are one lucky motherfucker.”

Apparently, rumor wasn’t only true, it was thorough.

“Yep,” he repeated.

She glanced among them and announced, “Inflation didn’t escape Scruff’s, assholes. So don’t think I’m a cheap date.”

“Eleven beers, bottle, whatever’s cold, eleven shot glasses, and a bottle of tequila,” Tack ordered.

“Don’t got table service,” she warned, starting to pile shot glasses on the bar. “You boys are gonna have to cart this shit to your women.”

“Just serve the drinks, Reb, without the attitude, you got that in you,” Boz shot back.

“You lose your memory?” she returned.

“You don’t got that in you,” Boz surmised on a mutter.

Reb didn’t reply. She turned to the shelves at the bar’s back and nabbed a full bottle of Patrón.

They hadn’t asked for top-shelf Patrón but none of the brothers stopped her.

“What’s takin’ so long?” Elvira called.

When she did, Reb frowned at Boz before asking, “What’s that about attitude?”

Boz decided not to engage.

It was a good call.

The men carted the shit to the table.

The women drank, babbled, and cackled.

Kellie hit the jukebox.

Roscoe showed with a biker groupie. Pete showed alone. Snapper showed, also alone. Malik showed to join his woman. And through this, Reb’s meager regulars hit the joint.

Millie had been right. She needed Chaos back. It was plain to see.

Justine took her turn at the jukebox and then women lost their minds and sang Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” at the top of their lungs while the men grinned and Elvira glared, mumbling, “One a’ you boys needs to get a sister up in this joint so I can counter Bon Jovi with some Fiddy.”

It was then, feeling it, High turned his attention back to the bar.

It was not a surprise Reb had her eyes on him.

She also had a shot in her hand.

She lifted it his way, then she threw it back.

After that, she set the glass aside and moved, frowning, toward a man at her bar.

She was happy for him. For them. That was what she was saying and that was all either of them were going to get even if it was Millie who talked High into taking Chaos back to Reb’s dying bar.

High turned his attention back to his girl. She had her arms thrown around Lanie, who had her arms thrown around her. Millie’s head was thrown back and her mouth was open, loudly shouting the words to a song whose popularity, after decades, never died.

He spent the night only getting loose while his girl got hammered.

But High didn’t need booze or anything else.

All he needed was the high of watching Millie let it all hang out in her classy sweater, her tight jeans, her high-heeled boots, all of this in a shady, run-down biker bar that was owned and operated by a bona fide bitch.

And when he’d had enough and she definitely had, he took her home.

Kind of.

Once there, he got blown but she didn’t swallow. He finished after he made her come, watching her ride his cock.

They slept tangled up.

He woke getting blown.

She didn’t swallow that time either. He fucked her on her knees, his eyes glued to his mark on her back, drawing it out as long as he could, wishing he could fuck her until his last breath, which brought the bonus of forcing two orgasms out of her while he was at it.

Then, once they cleaned up and spent some time cuddling, she sat next to him in his RV as he drove them home from Scruff’s parking lot where they’d spent the night.

*  *  *

“Gonna go up, see if it’s safe to return,” High muttered as he put his empty beer bottle on the table beside him with all the others (not on a coaster—they had them for the fancy furniture from Millie’s old pad that was in their new living room; they had them nowhere else in the house).

He got out of the recliner that was angled toward a now blaring TV to commence what he knew from practice felt like a yearlong journey to get to the kitchen, and he did this as Alan, in the other recliner, muttered back, “Don’t get lost.”

He felt his lips twitch but he didn’t say anything as he moved to the door that led to the stairs.

“Logan.”

High stopped and turned back to the man, a man who had not called him by that name since he told him not to do that shit months ago.

The instant Alan got his eyes, he lifted his bottle of beer.

“Proof,” he stated.

“Proof, what?” High asked.

Alan swung his bottle around before his gaze went to the ceiling and back to High.

“Proof you’re real.”

The words were quiet and they were few.

But they said a lot.

Enough he’d let the man get away with calling him Logan.

He didn’t reply. He just nodded and left the room.

Alan was there because the women were over. They’d showed two hours ago. When they did, he and Alan immediately absented themselves for reasons that were obvious.

But now he was hungry.

He was a fuckuva lot hungrier by the time he hit the kitchen.

Even so, once he got to the doorway, he stopped.

This was not because Freddie had shouted, “Pink stinks!” and when he did, High made a mental note to bring the boy with him and his father the next time this crew got together.

No.

It was because the huge-ass space was a mess. Plastic tiaras scattered everywhere. Feather scarves. Crumbs and spent wrappers mingled with half-eaten cupcakes. Glow sticks snapped and glowing. Wineglasses. Wine bottles. Pop cans. Opened bags of chips. Sprinklings of pink and white M&M’s.

It was like Cleo’s thirteenth birthday was happening, not like the women were planning it.

High saw Chief picking his way across the top of the kitchen table with no one grabbing him to put him down (as usual).

Poem was sitting in Veronica’s lap, being stroked, looking like she was asleep.

And Logan was taking Poem in as Katy declared, “I want a pink birthday too, Aunt Millie.”

“Aunt Millie gives you one every year, honey,” Dot returned.

“Well, I want another one,” Katy told her mother.

“You can have whatever you want, sweetheart,” Millie told her niece.

“Millie,” Zadie called, and his woman looked to his baby girl who was wearing a tiara and had a feather thing wrapped around her neck. Then again, so was Millie. “On my birthday, I wanna be queen.”

“You’re always queen,” Deb muttered, grinning at her daughter and sitting across from Millie at their huge-ass kitchen table (also wearing a tiara and a feather thing).

Zadie turned to her mother. “I wanna be more queen.”

“Do not deviate from that dream, sister,” Kellie advised, smiling at his baby girl. When Zadie looked to Kellie, she finished, “Live for it.”

“I already do,” Zadie informed her.

High swallowed a grunt of laughter.

“What Kellie’s saying is, you can have whatever you want, too, darling,” Millie told Zadie.

Zadie gave her attention back to Millie and beamed.

Millie beamed back.

Seeing that, High no longer felt like laughing.

No, looking at his daughter and his woman, he backed out of the doorway.

He retraced his steps down the hall, but this time, he did it looking at the walls.

Walls Millie had covered with the pictures she’d had in her pad in Cheesman.

Pictures that now mingled with framed photos she’d unearthed from that crate. Photos of him and his woman from years ago.

There were also photos of him and his woman now. His girls. His brothers. All of them together. Even photos from back in the day of Keely and Black.

He moved up the stairs, the walls there also covered with photos.

At the top of the stairs, he turned to his and Millie’s bedroom.

He walked straight to his side of the bed.

The very first night they moved in, he got in bed beside his woman and when he did, he saw she’d put it on his nightstand.

A blown-up eight-by-ten in a silver frame.

It was a picture of them at a Chaos cookout years before, Millie sitting on a picnic table pressed into him, High standing beside her with her in his arms.

He remembered that shot. It was the first photo she’d placed in the first album of them she’d made.

It was the first picture of them ever taken.

He looked across the bed and saw another frame, this one crystal.

In it was also another eight-by-ten.

In it was High sitting on the couch in their living room with his girls piled on him, his arms wrapped around all of them. Millie in his lap. Cleo in hers. Zadie on top. Cleo had hold of Poem. Zadie had hold of Chief.

They’d been horsing around, so none of his girls were looking in the camera. They were all too busy giggling.

High was looking into the camera.

He was not laughing.

You didn’t laugh when you held a living dream in your arms.

It was the last photo of them ever taken since Elvira had snapped that shot a week ago.

As ever, when Millie wanted something done and done right, she didn’t fuck around.

The picture was in its fancy-ass frame and sitting on her nightstand the next day.

High looked from frame to frame and as he did, he knew he’d gotten it wrong.

His Zadie had it right.

Never give up.

Never quit dreaming.

Because dreams had a way of being.

You just had to keep hold.

Millie

When the boat stopped, the girls jumped up from their seats and moved toward the exit as I called, “Hurry! It’s gonna happen any second. I don’t want you to miss it! We’ll catch up!”

They didn’t need to be told twice.

Cleo and Zadie dashed ahead.

Logan and I, his hand wrapped warm around mine, followed them slowly.

We’d already been there that day because I’d wanted the girls to see the blooms on the trees.

But, of course, we also had to get there in the night.

We sauntered off the boat, Logan and me, hand in hand, and I knew he was keeping an eye on his girls as I did the same.

We got there in time. We stopped underneath. The girls were roaming, eyes up, waiting.

Logan didn’t roam.

He pulled me into his arms.

I didn’t lift my eyes up as in up, but I did lift my eyes.

To his.

“Today’s no different,” he murmured, his voice low but also scratchy.

Responding to his tone, I pressed closer, wrapping my arms tighter around his back.

“What, Snooks?” I asked quietly.

“Today’s been fuckin’ great, love givin’ all my girls a spectacular spring break, but it’s no different.”

“Different than what?”

“Different than all the rest.”

I tilted my head to the side, confused.

“All the rest of what?”

“All the rest of days, every one, every day since I first laid eyes on you. Today’s no different. Fuck of it was, even when I didn’t have you, I felt it. Which was why I never let go. And today’s no different. No different from every day I had from the first day we met. Waking up in love with you. Day’s almost done, gonna go to sleep more in love with you.”

My breath caught.

My heart skipped a beat.

My arms convulsed.

My eyes filled with tears.

And my throat felt funny as I forced through it, “Ditto.”

He shook his head, grinning. “You are such shit at that.”

I was.

But it didn’t matter.

With his flowery biker goodness, he made up for it.

And anyway, I had other ways of telling him I loved him.

So I did that, rolling up on my toes as he dipped his head, and in between, our mouths met.

I saw sparks on the backs of my eyelids just as they did.

It wasn’t (all) Logan’s kiss.

It was the Eiffel Tower above us bursting into beauty.