Walk Through Fire Read online

  When I caught his gaze, I cuddled closer and said, “Happy that you broke from the game to give me a snuggle, Low. Also happy to entertain the biker babes while you boys do your thing at the table. But I have that paper—”

  I didn’t finish because Logan’s expression turned from curious to mildly annoyed and he muttered, “Fuck, I forgot.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him hurriedly. “I’ll talk to the girls, explain things. They can entertain themselves, I’m sure, and I’ll go upstairs, get to it.”

  “Paper’s a quarter of your grade,” he told me something I’d told him. “You don’t need distractions.”

  “It’s okay, Low,” I assured him.

  “It’s not,” he returned.

  I opened my mouth to speak but before I could, he looked beyond me to the dining room and called loudly, “Millie’s got a paper she’s gotta do. Party’s over.”

  “Shit, Millie,” Black called back. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  I was moving because Logan was rising, taking me with him, putting my feet to the ground, and he did this while I talked.

  “Because I needed a break and you boys give good break,” I said on a smile.

  Black shook his head and pushed his chair back. This commenced everyone doing the same and while they did it I was reminded why I liked Logan’s family.

  They didn’t complain, give shit, ask to finish their beers or their game.

  No. I needed peace and quiet, Logan made that clear, so they gave us what we needed and didn’t mess around taking off.

  Keely and Black were the last to go, Keely giving me a kiss on the cheek, pulling back and saying, “Good luck on your paper, babe. We’ll go to Scruff’s and celebrate when you kick its ass.”

  I grinned. “You’re on.”

  “Later, Mill,” Black muttered after doing a forearm clasp with Logan.

  “Later, Black.”

  They took off.

  Logan closed and locked the door, then turned to me.

  I went back to our earlier subject.

  “Really, I could have gone upstairs while you guys communed down here.”

  “Babe, give you what you need,” he replied.

  “I need to study and I could have—”

  I stopped talking that time because he lifted a hand and ran his fingers into the side of my hair, pulling it away from my face, then curling his fingers around my skull and dipping close.

  “Give you what you need, Millie, even if you don’t know you need it and even when we’re at cross purposes, me doin’ that, you thinkin’ you’re givin’ me what I need by lettin’ my brothers stay.”

  I stared into his beautiful brown eyes, so in love with Logan Judd, I knew I couldn’t fall any deeper.

  Until he proved me wrong.

  This happened frequently.

  “Thanks, baby,” I whispered.

  And I fell.

  “Anytime, Millie,” he replied. “Every time.”

  Every time.

  We’d been together for five months and he’d proved that to be true repeatedly.

  I smiled.

  He dipped even closer to brush his mouth against mine.

  When he pulled away, his eyes went up the stairs behind me, back to me, and he ordered, “Now get to work.”

  “Right, boss,” I returned.

  His lips twitched before he went on, “You want a Coke or should I make a pot of coffee?”

  He knew me. He lived with me. He got my study habits.

  It was past nine. The paper was important. The night would be late. I needed caffeine.

  And, like everything else, he was going to give it to me.

  “I think it’s a pot of coffee night,” I told him.

  “Fuck,” he murmured, sliding his hand out of my hair and dropping it. “Am I gonna sleep alone again?”

  I shook my head but said, “Not if we don’t keep standing here talking and I get to work.”

  “Then get to work,” he repeated his order.

  I lifted my hand to my forehead and gave him a salute.

  His lips twitched again and he turned to walk into the living room that would take him to the kitchen and his errand of making me coffee.

  I put a foot to the bottom step and called his name.

  He turned back.

  “Love you, Low,” I said quietly when he caught my eyes.

  His warmed, he tipped his chin to me, and he replied, “Work, baby.”

  He loved me too.

  I grinned and skipped up the steps.

  Logan made me a pot of coffee.

  In the end, after coming in and kissing my neck, he went to bed without me.

  I didn’t like him doing that, so I didn’t mess around, got my paper done and joined him as soon as I could.

  We slept entwined and I woke up, even after only five hours of sleep, charged up to take on the day.

  I got an A on the paper and Logan and I celebrated with Black, Keely, Chew, Boz, Kellie, Justine, and half a dozen other friends at Scruff’s.

  It was awesome.

  Life was awesome.

  I was eighteen years old and it was crazy. I knew it. But I didn’t question it.

  No one in their right mind would question it, no matter what their age.

  So I didn’t.

  Because I had it all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Release Me

  High

  “THAT’S IT?” HE asked.

  Shirleen studied him closely as she replied, “That’s it.”

  High was standing with her among the shelves of Fortnum’s Used Books, a store owned by Shirleen’s boss’s wife, Indy Nightingale. Shirleen had a paper cup in her hand seeing as, at the front of the store, a lunatic named Tex made coffee.

  The man might be lunatic, but he made good coffee.

  But High wasn’t in the mood for coffee and he definitely wasn’t in the mood to put up with Tex.

  She’d given him the preliminaries of Millie’s details the day before: address, phone number, place of business.

  She’d just given the rest of it to him.

  Never been married, no kids. Successful business. From what Shirleen could find, with her limited capabilities since High had not allowed her to pull in any of Nightingale’s boys, Millie lived quiet and was married to her job.

  This shit did not jibe.

  At all.

  She’d liked to party. She’d liked to go out. She’d liked hitting bars to listen to music, going to rallies, shooting pool. She was social, friendly, vibrant. She’d wanted kids.

  Actually, she’d wanted kids in a big way.

  No, it did not fucking jibe.

  None of it.

  Like his discovery the night before of what her house was like did not jibe.

  “Lovers?” he growled, not wanting to know but needing more than this. Needing anything he could use to win, however he had to do that.

  “Boy, no clue,” she replied. “What I gave you is what I got. All I got. You want deeper intel, you gotta let me go into the field or get one of the boys on it for you,” Shirleen stated, still studying him. “Least let me set Brody on it. Get him to do some hacks.”

  Brody was Nightingale’s geek. The guy was a wizard with a computer.

  He also had a big mouth.

  High didn’t need anyone else in his business.

  Shirleen hadn’t come up with much and if she went further, he’d court that.

  It was going to be up to him.

  “No on Brody,” he told her. “I’ll get what I need.”

  She continued her study of him even as she nodded.

  “Thanks for what you got, Shirleen,” he muttered, turning to leave.

  “High?” she called.

  He turned back.

  “You know what you’re doin’?” she asked.

  He knew what he was doing.

  Getting laid, phenomenally. Angry sex that melted into hungry sex that ended explosive.

  Fuck yeah,
he knew what he was doing and he liked it a fuckuva lot. He’d found this was a game he didn’t mind playing seeing as he had no intention of losing, and the way it was going, he’d be a winner repeatedly along the way.

  Millie thought she had him and he had to admit, sitting on the end of her bed last night, watching her strut around in her classy, sexy pajamas he wanted to rip right off her, the pants clinging to her ass, the lace at the sides exposing her long legs, the material tight at her tits, he thought she had him.

  The move with her lipstick was smooth.

  But he saw it in her eyes even if she tried to hide it.

  She was scared.

  She was in too deep and she was in denial.

  It had been his win.

  So he’d take what she had to give until she went under and he’d make sure that was in a way she wouldn’t try to surface again.

  Then she’d be in his rearview.

  “Absolutely,” he answered Shirleen.

  She didn’t nod again. She pierced him with a look he knew she was using to try to read him.

  He didn’t give her much of a shot.

  He lifted his chin and took off.

  He left the store, went to his bike, got on, and rode right to Millie’s.

  He’d cased the place the day before. But he’d chosen his time to approach last night with premeditation, when she’d be close to bedding down and had nothing else on her mind, so no distractions. Then he’d gone back.

  Now it was early afternoon the next day. She’d be working in her studio at the back of her house.

  So he’d be free to do what he needed to do in her house.

  If she was there or came in while he was doing what needed to get done, he was good with that. He had two objectives that day and if she walked in on him, he’d instigate the second one.

  He did a slow drive-by at the front of her house, seeing the rear of her SUV in the courtyard at the back, again taking in the tidy attractiveness of her pad.

  Not a blade of grass out of place.

  It set his teeth on edge because, again, it did not jibe.

  He turned left at the end of the block, then left again into her alley. He rode down to the back of her house, stopped, and idled.

  There was a garage back there built a long time ago. Unlike the house, it was not in good shape. Dilapidated, some of the glass in the windows of the swing-out doors broken. He cut the ignition of his bike, swung his leg over, and walked to the garage, looking into the windows.

  Smartly, she hadn’t put anything in there worth anything. There were some paint cans on shelves. A broken broom in the corner. Other than that, nothing.

  He stepped away, eyes still to the window, and rolled his neck against the tension building there.

  He went back to his bike, got on, started up, and began to roll but halted when he caught sight of it.

  He’d stopped by the Dumpster.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the crate he’d brought back to her last night, which was sitting at the side of the Dumpster. “Fuck,” he whispered, not able to tear his eyes off it.

  She’d tossed it. Maybe it was too heavy to get up and in the Dumpster or the thing was full, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was set out to be hauled away.

  She’d dumped it.

  She’d dumped them.

  “Fuck,” he snarled, rolled off, turned out of the alley, and circled back to her house.

  He parked two doors down and walked to her place, up her drive, under the overhang, eyes to the studio.

  The door didn’t open and he couldn’t see inside any of her windows.

  He moved to the back door of her house, noting there were no other cars but her own.

  He squatted at her door, pulled out his tools, picked the lock, and let himself in.

  He closed the door behind him and took in a kitchen that looked like it was from a magazine. Even the plates, pitchers, glasses, bowls, and other shit that he could see through the glass-fronted cupboards were what she said they were last night.

  Utter perfection.

  And not Millie.

  Or not the Millie he thought he knew.

  Time had gone by, she made money now, wasn’t a student, but this was a turnabout that shook him.

  She had been into comfort and that was pretty much it. She had too much life to live to worry about decorating.

  She hadn’t shopped with the girls. She’d cackled in the Chaos common room with them, drinking beer and shooting the shit.

  She also hadn’t hounded him to paint walls or look at toss pillows like Deb had done when they started setting up house. If they were together, he and Millie were eating, cuddling in front of the TV, fucking, or tangled up in bed, whispering to each other.

  Toss pillows never entered her mind. At their place they had cheap shit, secondhand shit.

  And she didn’t care.

  High took in more of the kitchen.

  There was a bowl in the sink soaking, a spoon in the bowl.

  Other than that, nothing out of place. No mail stacked on counters. No breadcrumbs not wiped up. No wine bottle recorked to reopen that night. No dishes in a drainer drying. Fuck, there wasn’t even a drainer out to mar the flawlessness.

  Nothing.

  He moved into the living room and found the same thing. Her wineglass from last night was gone. There wasn’t even an afghan pushed aside, but instead a fluffy one was draped artfully over the corner of a big chair.

  He started to look at pictures and felt his jaw set.

  At least that hadn’t changed. Millie liked happy memories around her. Back when they were young, it wasn’t about fancy frames all over the place. Instead, she’d tacked shit she wanted to remember on cheap corkboards she’d bought or stuck them on the fridge with magnets. Hell, the fridge had had at least two layers of the stuff (something he’d teased her about). And he should have bought stock in Blu Tack, the woman went through so much of it, building collages of memories on the walls.

  Now she had money to buy frames.

  So she did.

  As he studied the pictures, he saw she was still tight with Justine. If the pictures were anything to go by, it looked like Justine was gay, which would explain a lot. It also looked like she was happy and, since he’d always liked her, he was glad she’d come to terms with what was fucking with her head, gone for it, and found what she needed.

  He also saw Dottie was married to a good-looking guy, the man kind of rough but not edgy. And clearly they’d had two kids, boy and a girl.

  Then there was Kellie, no man he could see, but it was obvious those three, Millie, Justine, and Kellie, were still tight.

  He got more of that as he moved out of the living room, into the hall.

  First door to the left, a bathroom, elegant, clean, meticulously decorated.

  Second left, a guest bedroom, same as the bath.

  First right after the foyer, he found it.

  A room with not much in it. Some weights resting on the floor, a treadmill with a towel folded precisely and draped over the bar on it, an attractive, cream media center with a small TV. Books in the shelves. CDs placed in holders that he saw when he looked were arranged in alphabetical order. Same with movie DVDs. Some yoga workout DVDs stacked by the TV.

  But it was the closet where it would be.

  He opened it and thought he hit pay dirt.

  Until he sifted through it and found not one fucking thing.

  Tax and other documents carefully organized and crated. Photos of family and friends not frame worthy but methodically packed away. Wrapping paper and other shit like that in easy reach and even that was organized, kid paper, female adult paper, male adult paper, Christmas paper, different colored bows, ribbons. There was luggage stored in that closet and empty boxes for kitchen appliances, breakables, computer equipment she was keeping for reasons unknown since she’d lived there eleven years and probably wouldn’t be moving.

  But nothing else. No mess. No keepsakes. N
ot a fucking thing.

  High moved out of that room and into her bedroom, a huge room that took the whole end of the house. It had a small sitting area right through the door with one of those fancy, cushy lounge chairs in a plush, deep pink, a table and lamp, a silver frame with a picture of Millie, Dot, and their parents on the table.

  To the left, deeper into the room, a king-sized bed he was now well acquainted with. Feminine ivory covers and sheets with hints of deep pink in its pattern, tons of pillows on the bed. Crystal-based lamps on the side. Carved, expensive-looking bureau. Wood floors with thick rugs.

  Picture perfect.

  High stood still and took it all in.

  Nothing out of place. Bed made. No clothes or shoes thrown around. Hell, even the books and the tubs and bottles on her nightstand were carefully arranged.

  Millie, the one he thought was his, was clean.

  But she was not tidy.

  She didn’t have time to be. She went to school. She worked. She heaped love and attention on him, her family, her friends, his friends.

  She walked to bed taking off clothes (if he didn’t take them off for her) in a trail and she didn’t pick that shit up for days.

  She’d use something and set it aside when she was done with it, necessitating her asking him where it was and both of them searching for it until they found it—keys, hand lotion, hair brushes, pads of paper with jotted grocery lists.

  She was what she called a “soaker,” that being she left the dishes in hot soapy water and came back to them whenever she felt like doing them, saying, “They’re easier to clean that way, wipe right up!”

  And she was two steps down from a hoarder. Anything that had the slightest use or meaning to her, she didn’t give it up. She kept it, boxed it away, put it in a basket or bowl or box to come back to it, tacked it up on the wall or put it on the fridge.

  She couldn’t live like she’d lived with High if this was how she needed to live. Living like that would drive a person insane if they needed this order and immaculateness. There was no way for three years she could live that lie.

  High had to admit, he liked the look of her place in a removed way. He had a dick, so it wasn’t his gig, but it looked good.

  It just didn’t look real. It didn’t look like anyone lived here. It looked like a showroom, not a home.

  There was no personality.