“Babe—” he tried again.
“I have to get to work and you have to—”
He moved toward her but she backed quickly to the door, still talking.
“I have to get to work,” she repeated. Hand on the handle, she looked again to Jean. “Terrible way to do it but it’s, well . . . nice to meet you. Have a lovely day.”
With that, she opened the door and flew out.
Hound was pissed again.
Because he was stuck, half his head with one woman, half his head wanting to run after another.
“Motek,” Jean called and his gaze swung to her. “If you don’t chase after her, I fear that would be a very bad mistake.”
That was all he needed.
“I’ll be back,” he told her, and then he threw open the door and sprinted down the hall.
Keely was folding in her car again when he hit her driver’s side door.
She kept folding in but he put a hand to the top of the door to keep it open.
She didn’t even try to close it.
She just stared at her steering wheel.
“You need to go up and take care of Jean, Hound.”
“Look at me, Keely.”
Her eyes came right to his. “I get it.”
“Not sure you do.”
“I get it. I’ve got what you’ll let me have.”
She had what he would let her have?
“Like I said,” he growled, “not sure you get it.”
“I think maybe we should have a break for tonight. It’s been intense.”
Oh no she did not.
He leaned into the car and got in her face. “Oh no. Fuck no, Keely. You don’t get to do that shit. Your ass is here tonight at eight o’clock and if it isn’t, I’ll find it and drag it here.”
“Hound—”
“Eight,” he ground out, pulled back and slammed her door.
He walked around her hood, jogged up the walk, in the door and up the steps.
He walked right into Jean’s apartment and found her in her armchair.
She looked surprised.
And worried.
“You’re back a lot sooner than I thought you’d be,” she remarked cautiously.
“She needs time to get her head straight,” he stated, walking to the kitchen to start breakfast.
“Can I ask why you haven’t told her about me?”
“Because you’re none of her business.”
“Now can I ask why that is?”
He walked back to the side of her chair and looked down at her.
When he’d locked eyes with her, he gave it to her.
“Because you’re mine. And you’re important. Outside my brothers, and her, you’re the best thing I got. She’s keepin’ something important from me. I don’t give a fuck if it’s immature and mean, I’m keepin’ something important from her. You.”
“I’ll let that F-word slide seeing as you’re this upset,” she murmured. “And, of course, that was sweet, even if I’m thinking you understand right about now it was quite foolhardy.”
“She doesn’t get you,” Hound bit out.
“And I love you, my handsome boy,” she whispered. “But has it occurred to you that keeping her from me is keeping me from her?”
“Say what?”
“Although it says little about her upbringing that she’d pound on the door and force her way in like that, considering she thought you were seeing another woman, I must admit that it’s understandable. After she realized that she was in error, she was very considerate.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t get into a blow by blow,” he suggested.
“And maybe, sweetheart, you need to start paying closer attention, because after she was considerate it became clear she was very hurt.”
“She forces herself into a part of my life that’s my decision whether or not it’s hers to have, she doesn’t get to feel hurt.”
“You can’t tell anyone, especially a woman, how they can feel.”
“Tonight when she comes over, since the lid is off about you, Jean, you can come over and watch me.”
“I fear this would be a mistake, Shepherd.”
“This is another part of the world I live in and she lives in that you don’t that you don’t get,” he shared. “But she does.”
Her eyes got intent. “I hope that you never, ever don’t put in the effort to find it in your heart somewhere, even if it’s the tiniest place, to try to understand what those you love are feeling. I hope that deeply, Shepherd. Very, very deeply.”
He was done.
“You want breakfast?” he asked.
She studied him a beat before she nodded.
Hound prowled to her kitchen.
Jean didn’t let up on him.
“She’s very beautiful.”
“Yeah, she is,” he told the inside of her refrigerator.
“You were right those weeks ago, she knows you’re hers.”
“Yeah, she does,” Hound agreed, putting the carton of eggs on the counter.
“What I fear you’re not understanding, motek, is she’s yours too.”
She wasn’t.
She would never be.
He had her cunt and her cooking and her smiles and her time.
But if he had her, she’d be on the back of his bike faster than he could say her name.
She was not his.
She was Black’s.
And she always would be.
Around lunchtime, Hound went early back to Jean’s because that morning he’d fed her and cleaned up after but he was in a mood he didn’t want to hang around.
So he didn’t.
But now he was calmer.
Not about what Keely pulled.
About understanding where Jean was because she knew one biker her whole life, him. And right now her whole life was mostly her apartment, so she’d never get it. But she loved him, and he had to have more patience with her and not take the shit going down with Keely out on her.
He knocked on her door like he usually did to give her the heads up he was outside, then he let himself in.
She was in her chair, her chin to her neck, motionless.
The air rushed out of his lungs and it felt like someone sucker punched him in his gut, so he had to press out his, “Jean?”
She didn’t move.
She might nap and he might wake her when he opened the door.
But he woke her when he opened the door.
Cautiously, he moved toward her feeling his skin start itching all over.
“Jean!” he called sharply.
She gave a jerk and her head came up.
Hound was so relieved he fell back on a foot as he swallowed the feeling that shot up his throat.
She blinked at the TV before she turned to look at him. “Shepherd, sweetie. You’re early.”
He walked to her, bent in and kissed her forehead.
He lifted away and said, “Was ticked earlier. Took off. Didn’t get my time with Jean bug.”
“Making up for it,” she said on a smile.
“Don’t get my daily dose of Law and Order, might quit breathing.”
Her smile got bigger.
He surveyed her area and asked, “Need anything?”
“Since you’re here, can we go to the bathroom?”
“You got it,” he muttered.
They did that.
They watched Law and Order with some Judge Judy mixed in just for shits and giggles, and he made her lunch.
Hound stayed longer than he normally did.
He needed to be out on the streets.
He needed to be doing the job he did for his Club so they could breathe easy.
But he stayed with Jean.
Benito Valenzuela and Camilla Turnbull unfortunately weren’t going anywhere.
That scare earlier with her asleep in her chair . . .
He needed to take his time with Jean.
That night, it didn’t start good.
T
his was because at eight oh three, there was a knock on the door, not a text on his phone telling Hound that she was there and he needed to come down and get her.
He went to it and saw Keely outside through the peephole.
So he opened the door fast and with such force, it was a wonder it didn’t come off the hinges.
“What’d I say about—?” he started to bite out.
But she scuttled in and said, “Please, let me start.”
He was about to slam the door.
But since he left Jean snoozing, she’d hear it and it would wake her up, he closed it quiet, flipped the locks, turned to Keely, crossed his arms on his chest and then didn’t move.
“It was wrong. It was . . . was wrong,” she began.
“You bet your ass it was,” he agreed angrily.
“Please, Hound, please let me get out what I need to say.”
He clamped his mouth shut.
“I know that . . . I know that . . .” She cleared her throat. “I know that the man you are, that was out of line. Unacceptable. I know that. I know that with what . . . uh, we have, that was also out of line.”
When he opened his mouth to speak, she hurried on.
“But you always watch me drive away. Always. This morning, it was morning. Not when I usually leave. And it was just weird that you, I mean, a biker doesn’t keep a schedule. Chaos boys don’t do that kind of thing especially. They do what they do. They are where they are. So you never . . .” She stopped and started again. “After eight every night, like a schedule. It was strange. And then you didn’t . . . well, you don’t mind me going. You’ve never asked me to spend the night. It’s okay that I go and a lot of the time it’s you that reminds me it’s time I go, and I just . . . got it in my head . . .”
She shook that head, took a deep breath and then kept going.
“We agreed that there was no one else and I got it in my head you were not honoring that and I acted on it and invaded your privacy with Jean and I’m sorry, Hound. I’m really sorry. It was out of line, I was rude in Jean’s home, and just . . . please, honey, I’m really, really sorry.”
“You think I’d ever do that shit to you?”
“No,” she said softly.
“This morning you thought I was doin’ that shit to you,” he reminded her.
“I was wrong this morning,” she replied. “I just was . . . you watch me drive away, Hound. And what we have, it’s intense, and you don’t mind me leaving in the middle of the night?” She shook her head. “I just got twisted up. I didn’t know you were looking after your elderly neighbor. How could I know that?”
He had to give her that.
But he also had to underline that point.
“I would never do that to you, Keely.”
“I know,” she whispered.
He stared in her eyes.
She now knew.
So he let that go.
“How’d you know I was in that apartment? Did you sneak up after me?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “You didn’t watch me drive away so I didn’t pull out. I watched you go into the building. You started running like you were in a hurry. I did think about it, Hound. I really did. Then I . . . well, came to the wrong conclusion, turned the car off, came back in and went to your door. I was going to have it out with you here but you have a deep voice. It carries, and I heard you through the walls. I couldn’t hear what you said but I also heard Jean, just barely, but I knew it was a woman and I . . . well, I guess I flew off the handle.”
“You did that,” he agreed.
They stared at each other.
She had on her killer suede jacket with a big scarf draped around her throat that had fringe and was the pattern of a blanket. She also had in long earrings made of beads, a tee on under her jacket and scarf and he could see she had a tangle of long necklaces over that. A kickass belt in the loops of faded jeans that were frayed in different places across both thighs. And she was wearing on her feet what she wore a lot, her beat-up cowboy boots that were light brown and had a lot of stitching on them, some of it in ivory.
Her hair was in sheets down either side of her face, tangled with her scarf, her earrings and feathery over the suede.
He’d had her every night but one for two months and he’d known her for twenty years, and he’d never gotten used to her brand of beauty.
He could tell she was what she said she was. Sorry. It was written in her face, the line of her body.
She was also all he ever wanted and everything he could never have, standing in his dumpy apartment among thousands of dollars of kickass furniture that he bought but she picked.
He gentled his voice when he asked, “Do we need to end this, Keely?”
“No!” she cried, making a move like she was going to burst from her space and launch herself into his before she stopped herself.
Hound’s body locked solid as she lifted both hands and pressed them down in front of her once, dropping her eyes to the floor for a beat before she lifted them to him again.
“No,” she said quieter, calmer. “I . . . that won’t happen again, Hound. I swear.”
He loved her initial reaction. He shouldn’t, it troubled him, but he still did.
But the fuck of it was it was looking like it was going to have to be him that looked after the both of them.
Like always.
“Seems to me we’re both gettin’ in over our heads, babe,” he pointed out.
“What we have is good.”
“What we have is good cooking, good company and good sex and we can’t let it get beyond that.”
He felt his chin go into his neck as he watched the flinch hit her face at his words.
A flinch that hit him like a stone in his gut.
A big one.
“Babe?” he called.
“You’re more than that to me,” she whispered.
He liked that.
But he already knew it and it didn’t change shit.
Because it would never be enough.
“You’re more than that to me too,” he returned. “But that still doesn’t mean that isn’t all we got.”
“I want more.”
“Keely, I’m asking you to look out for you, but I’m asking you to look out for me too.”
That got him her look like he’d slapped her face.
That he did not get.
So he growled, “What’s on your mind?”
“Do you want this to be over?” she asked back.
“Fuck no.”
“Then why does it sound like you’re ending it?”
“Because I’m looking out for you,” he explained shortly, and the short part of it was that he didn’t feel it needed explaining.
“And how is it looking out for me when I don’t want it to end?” she rapped out.
“I look after Jean. I mean I look after her . . . totally. I help her hit the pisser. I help her shower. I cook for her. I get her groceries in for her. I pay her rent and for the cleaner that comes once a week, even though her house doesn’t need it but she needs the company. The trust she’s got in me built up over nine years of knowin’ her and that’s where we’re at.”
“The real reason you won’t move,” she murmured.
He nodded at her once and kept talking.
“And the only ones who know I got Jean are you, because of this morning, and Tyra and Tack, but I only told them recently. Though I should have told them before just to make sure someone knew she needed looking after.”
She nodded at that when he stopped.
So he started again.
“What I’m sayin’ is, you’re right. I got a life that I go where I go and no one’s the wiser that I come home a lot to look after Jean. What they’re gonna be the wiser about is the fact that I don’t go back to the Compound at night to throw a few back or I don’t hit the pool tables or a biker groupie when they’re hangin’ around. I haven’t been around much for two months, not because a’ Jean. Be
cause a’ you. Now, Dutch or Jag put that together with their mom gone at night, every night, what do you think is gonna happen?”
“They don’t come around at night.”
“Ever?”
She didn’t answer that.
He knew those boys.
They visited their momma.
And he knew now that she’d been putting them off.
“They come here and see me too, Keely,” he told her. “It’s luck of the draw Jag hasn’t needed money for somethin’ since he pissed away whatever he’s got, but sayin’ that, we’ve connected the last two months just because. It just happened during the day when I was able to meet up with him and not tell him to haul his ass here.”
“So you can keep putting him off,” she replied.
“They’re gonna figure it out.”
“Dutch is so caught up in Chaos, and Jagger is so caught up in charming as much skirt as he can find, they’re not gonna figure anything out.”
“You sure about that?”
She again didn’t answer.
She wasn’t sure about that.
“How you think your boys are gonna take it that ole Hound is hittin’ their momma?” he demanded to know.
“Right now I don’t care,” she whispered.
“Well I do,” he bit out.
She suddenly threw her hands out to her sides and tossed her hair.
“Can’t I have a little happy?” she asked, then lifted a hand and gave him a thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a little happy, Hound. Just some time to be me, nothing but me, and do that with you, the only one who gets me. The only one who doesn’t handle me with care. The only one who doesn’t look at me with sorrow in their eyes that Black died and I pissed my life away after he did. The only one who sees,” she slapped her hand on her chest, “me. Keely. A woman who likes to cook for her man and laugh and get fucked hard and get his soft touch after. Can’t I have just a little more of that, Hound? Just a little.”
“You can have that, baby.”
The words were out before he could stop them.
And Christ, the second they were, bright filled her eyes with her tears.
“Fuck, Keekee, get over here,” he muttered.
She flew into his arms.
They closed around her.
“I’m n-not gonna cry,” she told his chest, burrowing into it.
“Good, ’cause I hate bitches that cry,” he replied.
Wild Like the Wind Page 14