But we weren’t that tight.
And I’d noticed he wasn’t close to any woman attached to the Club, not even, when he’d had her (which now he did not), his own wife.
I knew he’d bleed and die for his brothers. If it came down to it, he’d even do it for the old ladies.
That didn’t mean he’d shoot the shit with us at a Chaos hog roast.
Thus he didn’t.
And I had an idea that I’d just found out why.
Because that beautiful woman with tears streaming down her face who looked like she’d just been told the man she loved with every fiber of her being had been shot dead on the street had just come from High’s RV.
A High who looked like he was off to wrestle the devil himself to take over hell and had enough fury in his belly to win.
He didn’t address Tack. He backed out and roared away.
I stood next to my husband and looked into the darkness where High had last been.
When Tack moved, I shifted quickly, turning to face him.
“Who was that woman?” I asked.
He looked down at me and said the wrong thing.
“Do not get into this, Red.”
There it was.
This was big.
This was why High was High.
So this was something that I needed to know.
“Who was that woman?” I repeated.
Tack turned fully to me, got close, and bent his neck to capture my gaze through the dark.
“Do not get into this, Tyra,” he also repeated.
“Who... was... that woman?” I demanded.
I watched my husband’s jaw grow tight as he studied me.
We’d had a decade together.
He knew me.
So it wasn’t a surprise when he stated, “You know men got dream women, just like women got dream men, you bein’ mine.”
That was a good way to start, buttering me up, because I did know that.
He was my dream man.
I was his dream woman.
We didn’t just wear each other’s rings.
That was the truth of it.
And we’d shared that with each other in a myriad of ways over the years.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Her name is Millie Cross,” he went on. “And ’bout twenty years ago, she used to be High’s woman.”
“I think I got that part,” I informed him.
“No, Red,” he said, getting closer, lifting a hand to curl it around the side of my neck. “She was his and she was his. As in, his dream woman.”
Uh-oh.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“Yep,” he agreed. “And you know how High got himself addicted to the rush of doin’ stupid shit that was also felonious in order to make a shitload of money for the Club?”
Uh-oh!
Now ancient history, the Club doing felonious shit, my man had seen to that, dragging his brothers along for the ride.
Though, truth be told, most of them were willing and invested every step of the way to the point they bled for the Club to be clean.
And one died for it.
High had been harder to convince that the Club needed a new direction.
“Yes,” I replied slowly.
“When she gutted him, gettin’ shot of his ass, tellin’ him he had no ambition and she had graduated from college and had a golden life ahead of her so, since he was tainted with Chaos so deep, she knew he’d never get a real life. This meant he had to fuck off. Which he did. And that was when he went so deep into that shit, it took what happened to you years later to pull him out.”
What happened to me was that I’d been kidnapped, and stabbed repeatedly, by an enemy that used to be an ally of Chaos. An enemy that High had wanted to reaffiliate with.
Until that enemy nearly killed me.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Tack agreed. “That bitch is not a bitch. That bitch is a biker-hating cunt and I have no clue why the fuck she’s here except to fuck with High’s head ’cause she spent three years doin’ that and got way the fuck off on it.” He looked beyond me and muttered, “Probably got herself dumped. Maybe has kids to take care of. Lookin’ for some fuckwad who’s stupid enough to take on her shit and thinkin’ wrongly with the way he fell for her that’d be High.”
I stared up at my husband, the sharpest man I knew, wondering how, at least with one thing, he could be so dumb.
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
His gaze cut back to me. “Come again?”
“The woman we just saw was the female adult equivalent of a six-year-old who just learned there’s no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, and she was adopted.”
He looked to the heavens and muttered, “Fuck.”
“Seriously,” I snapped.
He looked back to me. “Red, I’m tellin’ you,” his fingers on my neck squeezed, “do not get involved.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “As his brother, seeing him, seeing her, how could you not get involved?”
He dipped his face close to mine. “ ’Cause she was runnin’ away, which means I hope like fuck she stays away. And if she doesn’t, I’ll do everything in my power to set her away in a way she gets my goddamned message and stays... the fuck... away.”
“Tack—”
“Tyra, do not get involved,” he ground out.
“Whatever happened between them, she was devastated,” I hissed.
“Good,” he clipped. “She rained that shit on High, she deserves it and a fuckuva lot more.”