The crate was home and safe.
And that crazy man hadn’t been back.
“Four, nine, one, three,” Logan said quietly.
The security code.
He saw my panic.
And he had me covered in a variety of ways.
“Four, nine, one, three,” I replied quietly.
He shifted his arm around me so his hand cupped me under my jaw.
Then he bent in for another kiss. No lip brush but also no tongues. However, this one lasted longer than the one in the foyer.
And when he lifted his head, my panic was gone.
He let go of my jaw when a presence moved into our space.
We both looked that way and I saw Pete standing there.
I held my breath at the bright in his eyes as he looked between us.
Those eyes landed on me.
“Fuck, sweetheart, so good to have you back,” he whispered.
I made a noise as I choked back the tears and moved out of Logan’s hold toward Big Petey.
His arms closed around me tight.
Folded in the arms of Chaos.
Oh yes.
I’d come home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It’s Chaos
High
HIGH SAT IN Bonnie Brae Tavern with the remains of a huge-ass pizza on the table between him and his girls in their booth.
Cleo was on her ass, munching.
Zadie was on her knees, leaning into the table, devouring.
It was rare she didn’t sit like this, his baby girl. He figured she did it because she always had to be ready to launch herself into any adventure that came her way.
Same with how his Cleo was sitting. Life would be what it would be and she’d face it on her own terms.
As planned, he’d picked them up from school. He’d taken them home. He’d made sure they did their schoolwork and straightened up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen so their mom didn’t come home from work to face that shit. Ditto with their rooms.
Then, before Deb got home, he took them out.
He and Deb limited the amount of time they spent in each other’s presence. Not that they didn’t get along. Just that any of that kind of thing could get Zadie’s hopes up.
They didn’t make a habit of avoiding each other so the girls wouldn’t worry that things between them were deteriorating. They just didn’t spend much time together—the occasional dinner and the usual hand-off of visitation being the exceptions—so the girls would know it was cool but wouldn’t think anything beyond that.
Now, the occasional dinner would stop. Deb would be okay with that. But any time he had the girls outside his weekends? that time would be spent with Millie.
Since he picked them up, the vast majority of the conversation had been about what they’d done during the dump of snow, even though most of this was hanging in front of the television. Even if it was, Zadie could make wild stories up about anything. She could jabber in the Olympics and win gold, including doing this about lazing around and watching TV.
But the pizza was almost decimated. He needed to get them home so Deb could get them settled before bed. And he needed to get back to Millie.
Even so, these times were now rare, so when he had them, he savored them. That meant High sat back, watching his girls eating, Zadie doing it babbling, and he gave himself a moment to take them in.
And while he did, not for the first time, he noted that, apparently, his genes were dominant.
They had nothing of their mother in them.
Deb was blonde and blue-eyed. When she’d started to go gray, she shocked the shit out of him by caring and turning to a bottle. She did that in their bathroom, stinking up the place, something he didn’t like. But he didn’t say anything because it wasn’t worth it with the result since what she did made her look good.
She was pretty. She was relatively petite.
And she didn’t look anything like her girls.
She also didn’t look like Millie.
Millie was five-seven, which meant she had length to her, long shapely legs he got off on, but she was short enough she could put on heels and he’d still top her. Millie also had meat on her. A round ass. Full tits. A bit of a belly even back in the day when they were younger, something she hadn’t lost in the time in between.
He liked it. All of it. Even before Millie, the shape of Millie was what attracted him to a woman.
Deb was five-four. She was careful with what she ate. She worked out on her lunch hour and went to the gym on the weekends. She had to be at least five pounds underweight.
At her height, it looked good. Her tits grew when she had the girls and she didn’t lose them and that looked good too.
But there was not much to hold on to. Not much to dominate in bed. He’d fucking loved hauling Millie’s ass around (and still did). Getting her where he wanted her, positioning her how he wanted her.
Deb got off on that, mildly, but there was no challenge to it. Fuck, he could throw her across the room without any effort. Not that he’d do that shit. Still, nothing was worth it that didn’t take work.
If Deb wasn’t at work and even when she wasn’t at the gym, she lived in workout gear. Skintight running pants. Those spaghetti strap camisoles in breathable fabrics. Adding a jacket when it got cold. Running shoes on her feet.
He’d like to see Millie filling out any of that shit.
What he wouldn’t like, and didn’t, was that being all he got.
Neither of their girls leaned toward their mother in any way. Both of them had his hair, very dark brown, lots of body and wave. They had his dark brown eyes too. They also had his frame. Long legs, proportioned torsos. They were tall for their age, so they were going to get his height.
They were already beautiful.
When that beauty ripened, he was going to be fucked.
Worse, they were girls. They liked clothes. Hair shit. Boy bands. And Cleo was already asking to use makeup.
So that meant, when they got older, and the lure of boys got keener, he was absolutely going to be fucked, not just because they’d turn their attention to guys, but the way they looked, boys would turn their attention to his babies.