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.”