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.