And she was a friend.

Shirleen and High had history. She’d do anything for him and he’d return the favor.

It wasn’t about markers.

It was about bond. The kind circumstances in life can make that can’t be broken.

She’d been dirty.

He had too.

But she’d been dirty when she’d had only her nephew at her back.

He’d been dirty when he’d had all his brothers at his, but the Club was broken.

He still had his brothers and she’d only had Darius.

Darius was loyal and he was smart but he was only one man, one man Shirleen felt the need to protect.

So there was a time when there was no one to protect Shirleen.

Except High.

He’d done it.

She’d never forgotten it.

And she was the kind of woman who never would.

“Need somethin’,” he told her.

“Hit me,” she invited like he knew she would.

“Anything and everything you can dig up on Millicent Anna Cross. Female. Forty-one. Lives in Denver. I’ll text you what else I got on her that’ll make it easier on you. But first, I’ll need an address.”

“You got it,” she replied.

“Boys aren’t in this, Shirleen,” he told her. “Nightingale or any of them. You keep this on the down low. Only you know. Yeah?”

“Yeah, High,” she agreed, then asked probingly, “You good?”

He didn’t hesitate to give it to her.

“In a game I don’t wanna be in but I’m in it, and this time, I intend to win.”

“Right,” she said quietly. Then, quieter, “Met you after it was over, boy, but anyone who was a player in Denver back then knew you had a girl named Millie.”

He drew in a deep breath.

Then he said, “Just get me what you can get.”

“Okay, High.”

He rested back against the cushions of the couch. “We’ll set up a game soon.”

“Just don’t bring Hound. Sure that boy’s a cheat,” she muttered.

With anyone else, that kind of slur against a brother would invite retribution.

But for High, Shirleen was family, so nothing invited retribution.

“Hound sniffs out a game, no stoppin’ him from showin’.”

“Whatever,” she muttered. “Now, we gonna shoot the shit or you gonna let me get my beauty rest?”

“Wouldn’t dream of disturbin’ your beauty rest.”

“Already did, boy.”

After delivering that, she hung up.

High took the phone from his ear and grinned at it.

Then he tossed it on the cushion beside him and saw the stack of dishes in the sink where he’d left them that morning telling himself he’d take care of them that night.

He wasn’t going to wash dishes.

He was going to hit the sack.

This he didn’t delay in doing.

The RV was a mess.

But his sheets were clean. He’d made sure of that in order to wash Millie’s scent away.

Unfortunately, in the dark, lying in the bed where he’d had her ass in his hands, his tat on her back inescapable so he’d eventually had to cover it with his hand so he could concentrate on coming instead of fucking her for as long as he could, even if he managed to do it until his last breath, he couldn’t keep his mind off her.

Cleo and Zadie.

Deb had picked his oldest girl’s name, High had picked his baby’s.

Neither of them were anywhere near the ten names he and Millie had picked out.

Five for boys. Five for girls. That way they were sure to be covered whatever happened.

Her two top picks for girls were her two grandmothers’ names.

Katherine and Ruth.

Katy and Ruthy.

He wondered if her girls were with her now or with some ex.

He clenched his teeth at that idea but that didn’t stop the thoughts, which included wondering, if she’d instead had boys, if she’d picked the top names they’d decided. Flynn and Chance.

He wouldn’t put it past her, even though giving another man’s kids his boys’ names would be beyond the pale, even for her.

But she’d been rabid about picking the right names. Three fucking years they went over it. It was like a game, one they both enjoyed, going from the bizarre to the sublime in choices, trying to make each other laugh, but also being serious, settling in on some, rearranging favorites, until they were sure.

But they never quit talking about it, running a name by the other just to see if it’d make the cut.

Until a couple months before she sent him packing.

Then she’d quit doing it and any discussion they had about it when he did was stiff and forced, like she wanted him to think she was still into it when she absolutely wasn’t.

He hadn’t really noticed at the time.

Like Zadie, he was living in a dreamworld.

Then Millie booted him out.

And now here he was, forty-four years old and he’d fucked up huge along the way. He’d had a loveless marriage that lasted for thirteen years. He’d had so many close calls of so many different varieties that could have bought him a different life, or an early death it wasn’t fucking funny.

But out of his life he still had his brothers and he had his two girls.

And he’d had three years living a dream.

A dream that was a lie.

But at least it felt like a dream before he found out it was a lie and he’d take that.

In High’s life since he’d lost Millie, he’d take it.

And be glad for it.

Twenty-three years earlier, Chaos Compound common room...

“She’s it for you, ain’t she, High?”

At Black’s words, Logan tore his eyes off Millie, who was across the room with Chew, giggling as Chew’s tarantula crawled all over her.

Chew’s tarantula and the fact he had seven of those fuckers and had always had one—by his word even since he was a little kid—being why the brother was called “Chew.”

“So light!” Millie cried. “And furry. She tickles!”

Chew grinned at her in a way Logan didn’t like but he didn’t do anything about it because he knew, even though Chew clearly had a thing for his girl, she was Logan’s girl and Chew was his brother. Not only would Millie not act on it, Chew wouldn’t either.

Millie looked to him. “Logan! We need a tarantula!”

He did not want a fucking tarantula.

But if she wanted one, he’d get it for her.

He did not say this.

He just grinned.

She turned back to the spider crawling up the arm she had lifted in front of her face.

Logan turned to Black, who was standing with him, as was Tack.

“Yep,” he answered.

“Moved in fast,” Tack muttered, eyeing him, friendly but there was concern.

Logan liked Tack but the brother freaked him because he was like a genius or something. He saw shit others did not see. And he thought not a step ahead, or two, or five, but fifty.

There was trouble brewing because of that.

A man like Tack was not a soldier.

A man like Tack was a leader.

All the men knew it.

Including their current president, Crank, who didn’t like it.

“Yep,” Logan repeated, answering Tack’s question, because he was right.

Millie and him were living together and had been for a couple of weeks. She was in school and had a part-time job. He’d been initiated into the Club officially and had a brother’s cut of Club profits.

So it was all good, by his way of thinking.

That said, her parents had been ticked they’d moved in together. They’d agreed to cover her tuition, pay for books, but because she’d moved in with him, done it quick and done it without a ring on her finger, they were giving nothing else.

This meant Logan was covering her even though she was working her ass off, both at school and at the shit job she had at a store in the mall that she took so she wouldn’t have to lean on him too much.

He didn’t give a fuck.

He went to bed beside her, he woke up beside her, she was his. She could quit and sit around watching television and eating M&M’s all day for all he cared. As long as she smiled at him like she smiled at him, like no other man breathed on the planet, he’d take care of her.