It was.
Every time.
And she’d panted for it.
Every time.
Maybe she’d hit a dry patch.
Maybe she was just bored.
He didn’t give a fuck.
Whatever it was, he had to shut it down.
Why she kept those pictures, he had no clue, except she kept everything. Concert stubs. Half-ripped movie tickets. Ribbons from gifts. Plastic cups with their names written on them from parties. Strings of Christmas lights that didn’t work that she was sure she could fix if she could find the blown bulb (then she never found the blown bulb, but the woman tried, sitting on the floor pulling out one and sticking in another for fucking hours).
And every picture taken of them together, even if it was out of focus or one of their faces was cut off or half the shot was obscured by a finger.
Those didn’t make her albums but she didn’t get rid of them.
She kept them.
All of them.
For twenty years.
And she’d found a use for them.
He lifted the crate, hauled it through the RV, set it down to open the door, and then tossed it out into the cold. He heard it land with a thud but paid it no more mind as he shut the door and locked it.
Then he went back to taking off his boots, doing it thinking again that he had no idea why she’d come back. He had no idea what she wanted from him. He didn’t even fucking care.
He just knew she was all in to get it.
And no man could fight a war and win without information.
He thought he knew Millie Cross twenty years ago, but he didn’t.
He didn’t know dick about her now.
So he reached into his back pocket, pulled out his phone, went to his contacts, and touched the screen to connect.
He put the phone to his ear.
“Tell me you’re callin’ to set up a game,” Shirleen Jackson said into his ear.
“Take your money any time you want,” he replied.
She drew out her, “Please.”
But she was all bluff. This was why she was always losing. That and the fact he could read her hand by looking at her face.
Hell, the woman used to run poker games in Denver and she was the worst player he’d known.
But now she was also the receptionist at Nightingale Investigations, the premier private investigation firm in the entire Rocky Mountain region.
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.