Then he moved out of the door and kept moving even when he heard her call, “High!”
He jogged down the steps, got in his truck, and turned around in the forecourt even as he saw Cherry moving down the stairs.
He then drove out of Ride and didn’t look back.
* * *
“You think she’ll let it go?” Boz asked.
High and his brother were sitting at Boz’s kitchen table, vodka bottle and glasses in front of them, no ice or mixers.
It wasn’t that kind of night.
They were talking about Cherry.
And Millie.
Fucking Millie.
She was back.
Twenty years of her as a ghost in his head, haunting his memories, plaguing him, making him wonder how the fuck he was so goddamned stupid that he read it so fucking wrong.
And she was back.
Not a ghost.
Looking for him at Bill’s.
Throwing herself at him.
Christ, when the bitch had pulled at his belt so she could get to his dick... Christ.
Shit like that, he could talk himself into forgetting.
He could talk himself into letting her have whatever the fuck she wanted... again.
Giving it all... again.
Just to have it back even if it was a lie.
Hell, he could talk himself into taking the pain, twenty more years of it, just so he could have it back.
Even if it was only for a day.
He poured more vodka in his glass, looked to Boz, and answered his question, “She’s Cherry. No tellin’ what she’ll do.”
Boz took up his own glass and threw back a slug, dropping it to the table, saying, “Tack’ll talk some sense into her.”
“Boz, brother, you been ridin’ the Tack and Tyra train with the rest of us for almost a decade. Woman does what she does. He gets off on it. It’s the way it is.”
Boz leveled his gaze on High.
“It is,” he said quietly, “in any other thing. But this is you, High. You and Tack got your history but this is you, a brother, and this is you and that cunt. He knows. He knows that bitch. Cherry does not know.” His voice lowered further. “He’ll talk some sense into her.”
High tasted sour in his mouth, listening to Boz calling Millie those names.
He’d long since stopped wondering when that reaction would leave him. The automatic need to defend her. He was used to it now, and at least he no longer wanted to shove his fist down the throat of any man who referred to her that way. And in the beginning when the brothers had been so ticked at what she’d done, that had been a serious struggle.
High didn’t reply to Boz mostly because there was nothing to say. With Cherry, especially if she and Millie had roped in Elvira and Lanie—the first crazier than the last, but not by much—there was no telling what would happen.
He just hoped none of those women pushed him too far. He liked them all. They were Chaos, even Elvira, who held no claim to a brother. Family was family and they were family, the kind that earned a thick thicker than blood.
But too far for a man like him was just too far.
He also didn’t reply because he was done for the night.
So he took up his glass, threw back the vodka, then put it to the table.
“I’m turnin’ in,” he muttered, shoving his chair back.
“Right,” Boz replied. “Later.”
“Later, brother,” High returned as he moved to the back door, out it, down the long fence at the side of Boz’s house and into the big space where Boz was letting him keep his RV.
This was where he was staying since he’d given the house to his recently made ex-wife, Deb. And this was something he’d done because he didn’t want his girls’ lives fucked any more than they already were.
Cleo, his oldest, was hanging in there. She was tough, like her dad. She was also smart. And she was his girl. She loved him completely. She loved her ma, too, but she was her dad’s girl. And no matter how hard he and Deb tried to hide it, she’d sensed they weren’t happy and now he sensed she was relieved it was over.
Which sucked.
Zadie was having problems. His baby girl had her head in the clouds in a way he could look back and see her in her crib, staring up at the mobile, not seeing that shit but seeing her tiny baby dreams. She didn’t sense anything. His baby was ten years old and she believed she was going to marry a prince in a way that scared the fuck out of High because it was a way where she wasn’t going to let go of that dream.
She never let go of any dream.
Like having a happy home with Mom and Dad together.
So she wasn’t hanging in there. She hated that they’d split.
Which also sucked.
He needed to get them settled. Get in a house so the change didn’t seem temporary. Get them their own room, a space that was theirs in a place that was his.
At twelve and ten, they needed their mom now, so he didn’t go for half custody. They needed stability. They got their dad every other weekend.
He and Deb had made a deal. They weren’t at each other’s throats. They’d just lucked out and came to the conclusion at the same time that enough was enough. They didn’t love each other, never did. He’d knocked her up and he was not the kind of man to let that responsibility slide when she said she was going to keep it and she’d needed him financially. So they got married.
But they liked each other and they both figured it would be better to end it still doing that than it turning bad, something, as both their lives slipped away in a marriage neither enjoyed, that was happening.