Zeppelin (Satan's Angels MC, Book 9), page 7
A few cords run from the side window out to a small lopsided shed twenty feet away. There’s a lock on the door, and I imagine she has a generator in there for now.
The shingles are patchy, the yard is more weeds than grass, close cropped with some kind of brush cutting beast because a regular mower probably wouldn’t be able to power through it.
The trees surrounding the yard have grown in on it. They could use a trimming and half of them have ominous dead branches hanging at odd angles.
I can handle the cellar that Ginny shows me, even the cold hole thing in the ground, the ancient fridge that is going to be generator powered when she moves here for good, until she can get solar and appliances to match. I can even get behind the wood cookstove that heats the house and was used for all the cooking. But what the hell is that thing sticking out of the wall right by the white farmhouse sink?
Electricity and running water are usually considered standard when moving into a new place, and I suppose it’s better than having to go to a damn river, but I point to the red metal contraption by the sink. ”What the fuck is that?”
“It’s a hand pump,” she explains. “Because there’s no running water.”
“Propane,” I blurt.
“What?”
“You could get a big tank. Get it filled. Get a gas stove. Heat the house with a high-efficiency furnace. Run the lights off solar.”
She has her hair in a messy bun on top of her head. She pulls the elastic and runs her fingers through the thick, lush strands after they’ve tumbled down, sighing like she’s been waiting to do that all day long.
“That’s a wonderful end goal,” she muses, careful not to be dismissive. “I have a set budget, and getting running water, a power pole, or doing the whole house in propane isn’t in it right now. Aside from the markets, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to teach online. Maybe. It would be hard with a baby, but my mom could help out with childcare.”
I want to tell her that if she wants to teach online having reliable electricity is probably a given. And the thought of raising a kid here might be romantic but why make things harder for herself? But I bite my tongue, why should I shit all over her dreams, or tell her that she doesn’t have this?
Fuck that. I’ve got to say something.
“I could get you a perfectly good house in Hart.”
She takes that in the spirit it was intended. Not condescending or mean, but just me trying to help. “I appreciate that thought, but I want to be near my family. My parents. Anything I need, I can just drive there.” She folds her hands over her chest. Her face is glowing and her smile is a sacred, private, incredible thing. I’m fucking hypnotized standing here watching her. “This is my heritage. It’s important to me to be here. It’s important to my family, even if they’re still sort of against the idea. I’ll be over at theirs most of the time anyway. This is more just a place for me and my baby to sleep.”
“I’m just…” I blow out a frustrated breath. It’s the kind of thing that screams I’m worried, even if I have no right to be, and I wish I could change your mind even if it’s not my place, and yours is very clearly set.
Ginny takes a step closer. For just a second, I think she’s going to pick up my hand, and my heart rockets straight into my ribs like a line drive coming back at the pitcher. “This place is sturdy and safe. There are no health hazards here. Complete sanitation and modernity is only ten minutes down the road. People survived like this and lived like this for generations.”
“They did, but out of necessity only.”
“I appreciate that you’re worried about me. If I find it’s not working out, I’ll go back to my parents’ house. I’m not so stubborn that I would risk my child’s health or my own health for a single second. I can admit defeat, and I can see sense. But right now, I’d like to try.”
How can I argue with that?
I’m not here to talk her out of this. I’m here because I promised that I’d start on the new porch. Her dad and brother brought over all the materials a few days ago. She sent me a photo of the pile out back. The new windows will be arriving in a week or so, and I’ll install those for her too.
Do I know anything about building a porch or construction in general? Not really, but I did help renovate Atlas and Willa’s antique store, and I’ve moved furniture around in more than a few houses over the years for my club brothers and their old ladies.
“You said you had some drawings for the porch you wanted to show me?” It’s admitting defeat. I know that. But the smile that starts out so slow and spreads across Ginny’s face makes defeat feel like I’ve just come in first place in a marathon I’ve been training years for.
What the fuck is happening to me?
Not that I want to keep playing whatever role I’d fallen into before. It wasn’t me. It limited me in every way. I was fine with that before, but I’m not anymore. I don’t want to be one dimensional. I don’t want to act like I’m an idiot when I know I’m not. I want to make changes that will benefit my life and everyone around me. Not just for Ginny or for the baby, but for me too. I used to think there was no best version of me, but I’m not subscribing to that shit anymore.
No excuses. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
“I have some designs that I printed out. I’m not sure how it works, but I tried to make it to scale and find something that works with the house in the first place. I didn’t go all extravagant. I knew that wasn’t practical. Should I get them?”
She’s suddenly shy. It’s absolutely adorable.
I have to look away before I’m flying at half-mast here.
“Sure. We can take a look. Hopefully I can do it justice, but I make no promises. There’s a reason I’m a mechanic and not a carpenter.”
She scoffs. “Christ, Zep. I think you could do anything, really.”
That hangs in the kitchen between us. Her easy confidence and clear affection in her words. The shortened version of my name, spoken with ease and familiarity and something that feels a whole lot more than just friendship.
I cough, the sound clearly fake and half embarrassed. “I’m not going to start up with rocket science anytime soon, but it’s not that bad, learning new shit.”
“Okay. Hold on. I have the drawings upstairs in my room.” She turns away from the kitchen, walking back through the small living room. The stairs are wood, and her footsteps echo up them and then scrape overhead.
I expect a brief reprieve from the heat filling me to the point of drowning, but it never comes. My dick isn’t behaving. My chest isn’t behaving. My brain is muddled from Ginny’s closeness, from her scent, from all her softness and beauty and the way she relaxes around me and lets down her guard as though I’ve somehow earned the right to her trust.
That makes me fully hard in an instant. It’s not just what Ginny looks like. Not her soft curves, her ready smile, her sun bronzed skin, her gorgeous eyes, all that long ashy hair, her almost ethereal beauty. It’s that she’s a good person and earning a spot in her life shouldn’t be easy. A person’s trust is a sacred thing. I don’t feel like I’ve earned it. She hasn’t made me feel as though I need to.
She’s walking back into the kitchen, tugging me from my thoughts. I quickly strip off my leather jacket. It’s too hot for it anyway.
I shove it quickly over my waist hiding the trouser situation while pretending that I’m casual, leaning against a cupboard that looks like it’s from another century. It’s tall and yellow, the paint rubbed away from the wood all over it. That’s probably what Ginny liked best about it. The imperfections made it perfect to her.
I can practically hear Jack laughing at me for trying to act like a gentleman.
When Ginny spreads the drawings out over the round quarter sawn oak table and bends over, her floral skirt tightening around her perfectly round ass, Jack’s tone shifts in my head to a low warning growl.
I want to flip him off, but in reality, I never would have done that. If Ginny was his in any way, she never would have been mine. But Jack isn’t here. That changes something, even if it’s not everything.
She finds the drawing she wants and holds it up. The porch juts off the house in the picture, a straight line with a sturdy roof, a neat set of stairs, and a tidy railing on either side. “I thought something like this would be great. It’s practical.”
She sounds disappointed in her choice, though her face gives nothing away.
“Can I see the others?”
She points to the table. “Sure. They’re all there.”
I have to move closer. Move into her orbit. It sounds stupid, but my skin prickles with awareness. It’s more than my dick being harder than a lead pipe. I press it into the edge of the table, so hard that my breath punches out and my stomach churns.
As soon as Ginny moves in, pressing her shoulder up against mine, I know I need the distraction.
I need to pick a design and get outside, out into the open air that doesn’t smell like flowers and fruit. Away from the soft temptation that is scrambling my brain today.
Not just today.
I’ve missed Ginny. She’s been on my mind, in a haunting sort of way. I couldn’t shut my brain off, and now being so close to her is a new form of torture that I didn’t see coming. I thought I could handle myself. Control myself. That the lines I’d mentally drawn would hold up just fine and we could remain on either side of them.
I was wrong.
“I really like this design,” Ginny reaches for a smaller sheet of paper with an image of a wraparound porch that extends to either side of the house. It’s still basic, still all straight lines and nothing fancy. “But it’s so much more detailed than this one.” She sets the page down and crosses her arms. “It’s really up to you. You’re the one building this. My dad and brother would love to do it for me, but they just don’t have the time. I told them you would be happy to do it. Normally, my dad and Gabe are hard to win over, but they like you. They’re happy there’s one more person in my life who cares about me and this baby. I…” she glances away, her eyes roving the kitchen. There’s almost nothing that she hasn’t been brave enough to say to my face, so I find myself bracing. “I don’t think they would have done that with Jack. Or that he would have wanted it.”
That echoes between us for a minute. I can feel her uncertainty in it. She doesn’t want to hurt me. “Probably not,” I admit. “Jack had all the family he wanted in me and the club. He wasn’t ready for anything else.” I’m not sure that either of us knew what that even looked like. Some part of us, deep down, might have wanted more, but when you can’t even imagine it, it’s almost a frightening concept. I pick up the drawing of the porch she wants. “I can figure this out. It’s not that much bigger than the other. The roof’s just a bit different and the railing.”
I want to give her what she wants. I want to make something with my own two hands for her. This will take longer to put together, which means I’ll be out here more. I’m not just doing it for that reason, but if I’m honest, I want that too.
I want more of Ginny’s presence. Her words. Her laughter. Her wisdom. Her sweetness.
How the fuck did I not know life could be missing anything until the night I saw her puking outside? I knew right then, in that very moment, that everything was going to be different.
Ginny’s eyes take on a soft glow that makes the green gold specks in the brown depths glow. They’re not dark like mine. Hers are an artist’s mix. “Thank you. I’m going to put something together for dinner in a little bit. I have some cleaning to do until then, and some organizing, but if you need help, let me know—I’m good with the small stuff.”
Nothing she does is small.
Or at least, all the small stuff is monumental to me.
I have no idea if she knows it, or if she has any idea how much I appreciate it. I don’t even fully know. No one likes change. People want to feel safe in who they are, but it’s becoming clearer to me that the person I was before wasn’t safe. I thought I was home, but being entrenched in something, in the middle of it, doesn’t make a place home. It doesn’t make people truly yours if you don’t know yourself and you’re not giving anything back.
Loneliness doesn’t have to come from being alone.
I thought that after Jack died, my life was over in just about every way. I thought I’d be a shell of nothingness. Jack leaving my life was a new beginning. I didn’t want it. I still wish he was here beside me with every fiber of my being. I don’t want to undo how much I’ve changed or the new way I’ve started to think and to see the world.
The only problem is that I’m starting to want something I can never have.
I can’t let family, trust, friendship, and affection turn into anything more.
I roll up the drawing, then arrange my vest carefully over the back of a chair, stroking the leather with reverence. “Sure. I can let you know if I need anything at all.”
As I walk out of the kitchen to give myself space, to march my ass outside to cool the hell down physically and mentally, I know that’s not true. It can’t be anything at all, and I have to make peace with that.
Chapter 7
Ginny
I don’t know how it happened, but one minute I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes, making bread, prepping a salted ham, and struggling to get the stove to the right temperature without smoking myself out of the house in the process, and the next I stepped outside to check on Zeppelin because I realized that it had been over an hour and I hadn’t heard a single sound out there, only to step straight out into a wall of humidity and mounting dark clouds that signal we’re in for a banger of a storm.
Tornadoes might be uncommon in Washington State, but they’re not unheard of. Large hail, crazy downpours, and lightning strikes aren’t anything to trifle with, even if the clouds don’t decide they want to drop a funnel cloud from hell down on top of us.
I fly over the decrepit porch, leaping over two boards that I know for sure are dicey.
“Zeppelin?” The thick humidity crawls down my throat as I call out his name. It’s eerily still. No wind. Just moist, hot air, perfect for a summer storm. “Zeppelin!” I don’t mean to sound frantic, but my voice breaks at the end.
He appears, racing around the house like he expects a whole band of marauders to have just landed in my front yard.
I come to a full stop. My hands fly to my hair. I make a production of smoothing the frizz, like that was the whole issue. “Hey. Sorry. It looks wicked out here. Like something could drop out of the sky at any time. I don’t want you working outside if it’s hailing or if there’s lightning. That’s dangerous.”
“I was just measuring all the boards, working out what I’m going to need and marking everything. I thought it would make cutting easier when I do it. I noticed your dad left the shed stocked with tools.”
“Oh my god. I’m sorry. I should have told you that. Yes, he did. The saw and the drills and everything. When I told him you wanted to help me out with the porch and windows, he made sure that I was all set up and ready to go. The tools are mostly all spares. He has full sets for full sets and replacements for those too. Living out in the farm, it’s a long run to the city, so you’re either over-prepared or making the drive.”
I’m rambling. Zeppelin stands there and listens like he’s fascinated.
“Do you have any of the tools out right now?”
“Not yet.” He points to his leather belt where the tape measure sits hooked on the side. My eyes slowly drift from there to the big metal buckle on the front in the shape of an eagle. It’s worn in and shiny in spots. I haven’t seen him wear it before, but it’s clear that he has.
A massive clap of thunder booms out of nowhere. It’s almost literally ear-splitting
Zeppelin closes the distance, he puts his hands on my shoulders and spins me around, looming over me like he plans to shield me from the wrath of nature with just his body alone.
Suddenly, it smells like rain. A gust of wind blows past us, picking up out of nowhere. It’s all sure signs that we’re going to get hit with a storm, though it will probably be brief as it passes through.
For just an instant, I’m surrounded by a wall of muscle. The scent of leather and gas, spearmint chewing gum, sharp cloves and manly cologne. A sharp, almost feral hunger claws at my belly, striking my breath right out of my lungs.
I don’t have time to process any of that. Zeppelin wraps his arm around my waist and hurries me through the yard. He takes care with the porch, stepping in front of me to test the boards so that if they break, he’s the one who falls through. Satisfied with his path, he reaches back for me. I slot my hand in his, lightning and heat exploding in my stomach as soon as our fingertips make contact.
I step back into the house after him, closing the door and sliding the new deadbolt lock my dad installed into place, like that’s going to keep us safe above anything else.
I keep my back turned for a second, doing what I guess could be called collecting myself. It would make sense, given that I lost my mind back there for a few seconds. I’ve found it again, and now that my brain is properly processing, I know I have two choices. Live in denial, or admit to myself that I’m dealing with a physical attraction that’s impossible to ignore. It’s not fleeting. Appropriate or not, it’s real.
I might be able to admit it to myself, but knowing what to do about is something else. I shove it to the back of my mind for now and lunge for my phone. I’m greeted by a red warning banner across the top of my weather app as soon as I open it. I quickly shut it off and stuff the phone back into my pocket.
The cookstove has made it ridiculously hot. It’s not like I can just shut it off, but I do grab oven mitts and hot pads and move all the pots over to the table. Everything was pretty much done, including the ham.
I make quick work of getting it ready, watching the sky the whole time.
Zeppelin picks up on my nervous energy, but he sinks down at the table like there’s nothing wrong.
