He clenched his teeth, feeling a muscle jump in his jaw.
“Not gonna surprise you to know, she’s scared as shit what you’re gonna do,” she informed him. “Not gonna surprise you to know, she isn’t the only one. Your women make an art of standin’ by their men. Your job is to make that effort worth it.”
God, the woman was fucking irritating when she was right.
“You done?” he gritted.
“I get in there?” she shot back.
He said nothing.
She stared at him.
Then she whispered, “I got in there.”
“I’m done,” he replied.
She said nothing.
He turned around and started to walk away.
She called after him as he did.
“When I had nothin’, I had you. I’ll never forget that, High, and you got my love until my last breath for givin’ it to me. I want everything for you. Now you got it. Just need you to do one thing. Keep hold.”
He was ticked, cold, outside Denver, which meant far away from Millie, and he had a black woman bossing him around in the dark.
He did not want to give her anything.
He couldn’t do that.
Because she had his love too.
So he did what he had to do.
He kept walking but he did it lifting an arm and flicking out his hand.
* * *
He opened the door, walked into the house, heard the beeping of the alarm but stopped dead.
The kitchen was a disaster.
And Millie was at the stove.
“Do not freak out,” she ordered, not turning to look at him. “Things are not going great and when you know what I’m doing, you’re gonna walk right out and hit a Chipotle. But I want you to bear with me because I figure when I get this going, it’s gonna be out of this world.”
He closed the door, locked it, and turned to the alarm panel just in time to punch in the code before it sent a signal to dispatch.
Then he walked through the kitchen, seeing the remains of vegetables, bowls filled with a bunch of shit, all of it looking healthy, packaging and wrappers everywhere, what looked like wet, torn paper tossed aside and a glass of wine that had seen spillage so there were stains on the counter.
He stopped behind Millie and saw three pots bubbling, the stove splattered and smeared, and she was bent over a skillet with boiling water in it, a piece of paper also in it that she was poking with some tongs.
She must have felt him because she said, like she was concentrating on something else, not speaking to him, “I just gotta get one of these fuckers in the water and out of it in one piece so we can stuff it and maybe eventually have dinner.”
“What the fuck is it?” he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, then back at the skillet.
“It’s rice paper.”
“What?”
“Rice paper,” she repeated in exasperation, grabbed an edge carefully, started to draw it from the water, reached out her other hand to take hold with her fingertips, and the thing tore down the middle. “Motherfucker!” she yelled, lifting the paper in her tongs and snapping it toward the counter where it splatted against several others of its kind and there it remained.
She reached immediately to a package and pulled out a round, thin, white thing, which she carefully slid into the water.
“Babe,” he called over her shoulder.
“What?” she asked, poking at the new piece with her tongs.
“What is dinner?” he asked.
“Homemade spring rolls,” she told the water.
He stared at her profile.
It was set and determined.
He took a slow step away.
Just as slowly, he turned his head and looked around the kitchen.
She was not working.
She was cooking.
The kitchen was not tidy.
It was a total, goddamned mess.
He looked to her.
She was not in high heels, a tight sweater, and a tighter skirt—sexy, but all class.
She was in loose-fitting pants that hugged her ass, girl slippers, and she had a thin sweater on.
Her hair was piled high on her head. It was not carefully arranged. It was slipshod and cute, curls escaping to brush her neck and cheeks.
“Babe,” he called.
“Hang on,” she said.
“Millie.”
“Hang on,” she repeated, and he saw her making another attempt to extricate the paper out of the skillet.
“Hallelujah!” she cried, whirling his way, intact paper dripping water to the floor between tongs and fingers.
The minute she stopped, it ripped down the middle.
She glared at it and shouted, “Goddamn it!”
High burst out laughing.
“This is not funny, Low. That’s like my seventh try! We’re never gonna eat at this rate.”
He kept laughing even as he declared, “I’m never gonna lose you.”
Her head jerked and he kept laughing since she was still holding the broken paper in her hand, looking adorable, her sweater from the front cut low, a vision he liked, as she asked, “What?”
“Never, baby, not ever. Never gonna lose you. Never gonna do shit to take away what I got back. Never gonna do shit to make it not worth it, all you gave to me. I’m not gonna go back there. That path didn’t feel right from the start. You at my side, it’s all kinds of wrong.”
“Low,” she whispered.
Top to toe he saw it written all over her.
She got him.
So, still chuckling, he got close to her and swept her (and her paper) in his arms.
It was wet against his chest.
He didn’t give a fuck.
“Stop worrying,” he ordered.
She stared up at him.