Wild Like the Wind

by Kristen Ashley

  I gave my son big eyes.

  His eyes narrowed on them.

  “Jag, you want four, like Dutch?” Hound asked the stove.

  Jagger kicked my foot under the table.

  I moved my big eyes to him.

  He gave me big eyes back.

  “Uh . . . yeah, Hound,” Jagger answered.

  I forked into my pancakes.

  “You’ll start with two, like Dutch,” Hound muttered to the skillet.

  “You . . . uh, you guys eat this big a’ breakfast every morning?” Dutch asked.

  I looked up from my plate and gave him bigger eyes.

  Hound grunted.

  My foot was hit again by Jag’s.

  “What the fuck is goin’ on?” Jagger mouthed at me.

  Dutch tapped his plate with his fork and my gaze went to him.

  “Yeah, Ma, what the fuck?” he mouthed.

  “What the fuck what?” I mouthed back.

  “Why are you being weird?” Dutch asked silently.

  Jagger kicked my foot under the table yet again and I looked at him.

  “And why is Hound cooking?” he also asked silently.

  “Just eat it when you get it,” I answered, yes, silently.

  “Jesus, hope you three don’t get yourselves in a situation where it’s actually important you gotta communicate without communicatin’,” Hound remarked, and my gaze flew to him to see his back was turned to the skillet where two fat pancakes were rising and bubbling, batter-side up, his arms crossed, the pancake turner sticking out at his side.

  “Um . . . Ma was just bein’ weird and uh . . . we’ve never had breakfast with you two and, well . . . you’re cookin’,” Jag pointed out.

  “Men cook, Jag, they wanna eat anything other than Arby’s,” Hound answered.

  “Right,” Jag mumbled.

  “I know your mother taught you how to cook,” Hound continued.

  “Yeah, she just doesn’t go weird when I’m at the stove,” Jag replied.

  Hound looked to me.

  I tried a casual shrug.

  “Jesus, we know you guys are boning. You don’t have to be weird about it,” Dutch put in at this point, sounding exasperated . . . and pained.

  My eyes got so huge I felt they might pop right out of my head.

  “Gulk, I might get sick before I eat pancakes,” Jagger gagged.

  “Okay, this we’re not talkin’ about,” I declared.

  “No, we absolutely fuckin’ are not,” Hound stated, all steely.

  “Okay, then don’t act all weird at the breakfast table when we already know you got your bang on,” Dutch returned, to me.

  Jag threw himself against the back of his seat and tipped his head to stare at the ceiling, requesting, “Somebody kill me.”

  “It’s not that,” I told my eldest.

  “We’re not four, Ma. You came down all dreamy and Hound came down lookin’ like he just ate a really good steak,” Dutch, unfortunately, carried on.

  Hound grunted again but this one sounded amused.

  After I shot him a glare, he got it together and asked, “Did you not hear us say we’re not talkin’ about this?”

  “What I’m sayin’ is, just do your thing. It isn’t weird unless you make it weird by actin’ weird,” Dutch shot back. “Christ, Jag’s fucked girls in practically every room in this house and he doesn’t act weird.”

  Slowly my eyes turned to my youngest, who I saw was scowling at his big brother.

  “Like I didn’t catch Dinah goin’ down on you, curled on the floor while you were sittin’ at this very table,” Jag clipped at Dutch.

  Dinah.

  She’d been one of the good ones.

  And there I was, sitting at a table where my son sat to get a blowjob.

  Of course, he was also sitting at a table, precisely in the spot where his momma got gratifyingly banged by his stepdad.

  I couldn’t hack it.

  “Oh my God!” I yelled. “Everybody, stop talking!”

  “We’ll stop talking when you stop being weird,” Dutch shot back.

  “I’m not being weird,” I retorted.

  “You’re bein’ weird and we’re, like, just about as glad as we are grossed out you’re gettin’ some, with Hound gettin’ some too, from you, so you can just relax,” Dutch returned.

  “I’m not being weird about having sex with your stepfather!” I shouted.

  “It’s the way of the world, Ma, get a grip,” Dutch fired back.

  “I know it’s the way of the world so I wasn’t even thinking about that until you brought it up. I’m being weird because Hound made Jean breakfast every morning and now he’s making me breakfast every morning and today he’s making all of us breakfast in the morning and I’m worried sick he’s not dealing with the loss of a woman he loved very much!” I bellowed.

  Dutch shut up and slid his eyes to Hound.

  Jag looked over his shoulder at Hound.

  I turned to glare at Hound but only because the glare was meant for Dutch, and I was too embarrassed and upset to stop glaring when I also looked at Hound.

  Hound was looking at me.

  “Babe,” he said softly.

  “Well, I am,” I snapped.

  “Jesus, Ma,” Dutch bit out, and I looked at him to see him glowering at me.

  “Yeah, Ma, Jesus,” Jagger clipped, and I saw he too was glowering at me.

  “What?” I asked, totally confused at their glowering.

  “Now I’m more ticked you’re bein’ weird ’cause however he’s gotta deal, just let him deal, yeah?” Dutch stated, sounding what he said, more ticked.

  “Yeah, a man deals how he deals, you just deal with how he needs to deal, Ma. God,” Jagger put in irately.

  “Are you two ganging up on me because I’m worried about Hound?” I asked in order to see if I had this situation straight.

  “Yeah,” Dutch answered immediately. “Just, you know, be, like . . . supportive and shit.”

  “Yeah, and not weird,” Jagger put in. “That’s not supportive. It’s just weird.”

  “I am being supportive and shit,” I returned sharply. “Hound grunts instead of saying, ‘I love you.’ When a man expresses an important emotion like that through a grunt, you gotta feel your way with supportive . . . and shit . . . when he loses someone he cares about as much as he cared about Jean.”

  Dutch looked at Hound. “You love Ma?” he asked.

  “Son,” Hound said, but that one word also said, “That’s a stupid fucking question.”

  “Hey,” Jagger put in, now all smiles. “Cool.”

  Hound just gave Jag an amused look and turned to flip pancakes.

  “Just to say,” Dutch began in an I’m-about-to-instruct-you tone of voice, his attention again on me, “men like us are not wordy. If you get that a grunt means ‘I love you,’ leave it at that.”

  “Yeah,” Jagger agreed. “Seriously.”

  “I did leave it at that,” I told them.

  “Well, keep doin’ that,” Dutch encouraged.

  I lifted my hands up and to the sides, one holding a fork, one holding a knife, both dripping maple syrup. “Am I really sitting at my own kitchen table with my two sons instructing me on how to conduct my relationship?”

  “Yeah, you really are,” Dutch answered without hesitation. “’Cause Hound’s like us, and Dad’s been gone awhile so you need a refresher.”

  “Just to say, he may grunt,” Jagger put in, “but you should tell him you love him back and use your words.”

  “I do,” I told Jagger heatedly.

  He nodded at me like he was encouraging a small child and repeated his brother’s words, “Keep doin’ that.”

  It was then, a continuous low, rolling noise coming from the stove caught my attention and I looked that way to see Hound’s shoulders shaking.

  He was laughing.

  “This is not fucking funny, cowboy,” I snapped.

  He flipped Jagger’s two pancakes on a
plate that already held four rashers of bacon and turned to me.

  “Jean would be laughin’ herself sick, listenin’ to this shit. Her face all screwed up, wrinkles all movin’ in. I’d lose her eyes but get her teeth, she’d be laughin’ so fuckin’ hard,” Hound declared. “That is, after she read you all about talkin’ about bonin’ and bangin’ at the kitchen table, or anywhere,” he amended.

  The room went silent.

  Hound kept his eyes to me as the humor slid away. “I miss her. I’ll never stop missin’ her. It’s a pain that runs deep and will never die, I’ll just get used to livin’ with it. She’s the reason I got up every day to face that day, baby. Now you’re that reason. She’d feel joy knowin’ I have you for that reason. So let me have that reason and stop worrying.”

  “Okay, honey,” I whispered.

  He gave me a long look, took in the look I was giving him and nodded.

  “And boys, listen up,” Hound kept going, his gaze moving between my sons. “Your mother doesn’t need a refresher. She knows how to take care of her man, and if you were payin’ closer attention to her than you were havin’ a mind to me that I know, ’cause I know my boys, also has to do with you bein’ worried about how I’m copin’ with losin’ Jean, you’d have seen it. But just to say, here on out, you best watch how that flows from your ma to me because that’s what you’ll be lookin’ for when you find the one you wanna make your old lady. You hearin’ me?”

  “Yeah, Hound,” Jag mumbled.

  “Totally,” Dutch said.

  “I love you,” I piped in.

  Hound looked to me and grunted.

  Then he moved to put Jag’s plate in front of him.

  He went back to the stove to pour more batter.

  I smiled at my pancakes.

  “Man, I’m totally coming back every morning,” Jag said, digging in to the butter to prepare his pancakes.

  “Come later,” Hound said. “Your mother and I get down to business in the morning. We don’t need interruptions.”

  Jag’s hand arrested in spreading butter, he started to look sick and mumbled, “I think I just lost my appetite.”

  Dutch, on the other hand, busted out laughing.

  I looked to my man.

  He was smiling at the skillet.

  His family was around him.

  He was happy.

  And I knew he was right, Jean would be happy for him.

  So I forked back into my pancakes.

  Just as happy.

  That evening, seeing as I was in the garage, staring at Black’s bike, not in my seemingly sound-proofed house, I heard Hound’s bike as it pulled in at the back and the roar of the engine cut off.

  I kept standing there, staring at Black’s bike like I was mesmerized, so my phone beeping in my hand with a text made me jump.

  I looked down at it.

  The text was from Hound and it said, You said you were home. I’m home. You’re not. Where are you?

  He was home.

  Home.

  I let a smile drift across my lips before I texted back, In the garage, babe.

  About one minute and five seconds later the back door opened, Hound prowled through but his gait slowed when he saw me standing by Black’s bike.

  He looked at me, the bike, me and asked, “You okay?”

  I nodded. “I’m trying to figure out the ceremony.”

  My expressive Hound had appeared watchful and wary as he approached me, but now he looked perplexed.

  “What ceremony?”

  “The Give Dutch Black’s Cut Give Jagger Black’s Bike Ceremony,” I told him.

  He stopped close to me and started staring at the bike.

  “You have any ideas?” I asked.

  His gaze came to me. “Hand Dutch Black’s cut and pass off the keys to Jag.”

  “That’s not a ceremony,” I pointed out.

  “Okay. Then crack open some beers after you do that.”

  I grinned at him, shuffled the foot of space I needed to get to him and then leaned against his side, putting my head on his shoulder.

  He slid an arm around my waist.

  I did the same to him.

  We both stared at Black’s bike.

  “It hasn’t been started up since Graham shut it down. I’m not sure it works,” I muttered.

  “Jag’ll get it goin’.”

  I took my head off his shoulder and looked up at him. “Will you do that? So Jag can just fire it up and ride away?”

  I didn’t even get all the words out before I felt his loose body get tight and his expressive face close down.

  Okay, apparently, that was the wrong request to make.

  “Sorry, that’s . . . sorry, obviously I shouldn’t have asked,” I whispered.

  “I got his woman, not touchin’ his bike,” Hound replied.

  Well, I wasn’t exactly Black’s woman, considering I was now Hound’s.

  But that was a conversation for later.

  I nodded, fast. “Yeah, yes, honey, I get it.”

  “I hear you wantin’ Jag just to be able to fire it up and roll on out but he’ll like lookin’ it over. He and Dutch can do that together. Won’t take much. But they do that together, that’ll be something else they’ll both have.”

  I kept nodding. “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “And I won’t be there for that,” Hound declared.

  I turned so my front was pressed to his side and wrapped my other arm around him. “I get it, when they work on it, get that bike running again, that they do it on their own. I get that, but whatever ceremony I come up with I think you should be there.”

  “I’ll be there, if you bring all the brothers in, but not just me, Keely.”

  “Just you, Hound,” I pushed. “You and Dutch and Jag and me.”

  “And Black.”

  “Baby,” I said carefully. “It’s about moving on from Black.”

  “No, Keekee, it’s about you lettin’ him go in that way and givin’ him to your boys. And I got no place in that.”

  “You do,” I pressed.

  “I don’t, babe. That’s about your family.”

  “You are our family.”

  “I hear that and I love that, babe, but this is something else.”

  “If it is, then who was at my back when I went to the morgue to identify him?” I asked.

  Hound had no response to that.

  “Who was in my living room when you all came to tell me you took care of Crank?” I went on.

  “Kee—”

  “Who stood on my back walk after he took out the man who took my husband from me, the man who took away my sons’ father?”

  “That isn’t—”

  “And I know I don’t have to get into all the other times you’ve been there for me. For the boys. For Black.”

  “Keekee,” he murmured.

  “He was ours. And he was yours. And now you’re ours,” I reminded him.

  He turned fully toward me, lifted his free hand to cup my jaw, bending his neck so his face was closer to mine, and he spoke.

  Gently.

  “All right, baby, like you share how shit is between you and Bev, I’ll share how shit is between me and my brothers, one of those brothers bein’ Black. I know you know what that cut meant to him. I know you know what this bike meant to him. I also know you know what you and Dutch and Jag meant to him. Those are his and his alone. I’ve staked my claim now that he’s gone but this thing that you’re doin’ with those things that were not his, but him, I can’t be a part of that.”

  “The boys will want you there,” I asserted.

  “The boys will get it immediately that I’m not. It’s you who has to understand why I can’t be there,” he refuted.

  I stared up at him and it sucked, but the truth of the matter was, he was right.

  I dropped my head and did a forehead plant in his chest.

  His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck.

  “You do the handovers, Keeke
e, the boys are gone and they’ve taken their pieces of their old man with them, you call me and I’ll come to you right away, yeah?” he asked quietly.

  I nodded, my forehead rolling on his chest.

  He changed the subject, thankfully.

  “Now, got Jean and my places paid for until the end of the month but I’ll tell my landlord I’m clearin’ out both. Need your help with Jean’s stuff, babe. And the boys. Most of it can go but it’s not gonna be easy, siftin’ through it so gotta ask you, all a’ you, to be there with me.”

  I tipped my head back and promised, “We’ll all be there.”

  He gave the back of my neck a squeeze then moved his arm so he could wrap it around me with the other one.

  “We’ll get rid of what you got down there and move my stuff in your basement. Then I’ll be all the way in.”

  Yet another ceremony of letting go of the material remnants of someone important and moving on, holding tight to only memories.

  But at least in the end, I’d totally have Hound and he’d be all in with me, so we’d be all set to make new memories.

  I nodded, giving him a happy squeeze, but saying, “And we need to talk to her rabbi about moving the mezuzah to my house.”

  “Say what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know the way it’s supposed to go. So we need to ask how we’re supposed to do that. Move that piece of her here to be with you because that part of her needs to be with you.”

  “Right,” he murmured, melancholy hitting his eyes so I held him tighter. He powered through it and muttered, “Seems when we said we didn’t wanna go slow, we were both all in with that.”

  I gave him a small smile.

  He bent his head and kissed it.

  He didn’t go very far when he pulled away.

  “Saw your panic last night when there came a knock on the door,” he noted.

  Oh Lord.

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for this particular change of subject.

  “Shep—” I tried.

  “We’re all in with doin’ shit fast, the brothers gotta know.”

  Shit.

  “I’m not ready for that,” I shared.

  “I dig that and you were right when you said that the brothers are gonna get it, we kept it from them in the beginning. They might not get it so much Dutch and Jag know, Bev knows, the boys got their pieces of their dad, and I’m moved in. Shy and Tab kept things on the down low and that did not go over too good, a brother startin’ shit up with his brother’s daughter and not sayin’ dick about it to anybody. What’s happenin’ here is gonna be even less popular so it might be good to get the bad shit outta the way so the brotherhood can start to heal and you don’t gotta live with that hangin’ over your head.”