Page 1 of Zeppelin (Satan’s Angels MC #9)

Ginny

V omiting at a funeral is a bad look.

How bad? Well, at least it’s a celebration of life at Satan’s Angels clubhouse, and it’s more of a come and go thing.

It’s exactly the kind of sendoff that Grave would have wanted.

Loud and rowdy, drunk and smoke-filled, with a heaping side of debauchery in all the dark and not so dark corners.

It’s only natural that people want to feel alive when they’re most reminded of their own mortality.

Grave would have filled up everyone’s shot glasses and offered a toast to hard and fast living, pleasure, and life .

Honestly, I doubt I’m the only one who is going to have an upchucking incident tonight, but if it was an option not to, I’d way rather go with that.

I came to the conclusion three minutes ago that the churning in my stomach was more than shock and grief and I needed to get somewhere private, fast .

I doubted that I’d make the bathrooms at the back of the clubhouse, and the kitchen was packed with people, so getting my ass out the front door seemed like the best option.

I race past the statue my almost brother-in-law, Dominic, carved, and wheel wildly over to a set of shrubs near the side of the building.

I retch up the toast I forced down this morning, and the little bit of water I’ve sipped throughout the day. That was the best I could do after the first round of puking left me sweaty and wrung out before I even left the house.

Not coming today wasn’t an option.

Grave and I weren’t really a thing, but we weren’t not a thing either. It might not have been love for us, but there was friendship there.

I forced myself to get ready and drive all the way to Hart even though I was nauseous as hell, because it was the right thing to do. It’s the last thing I’ll ever do for a man who left the world far too soon and far too young. Twenty-nine is just getting started.

I have no doubt that my mascara is probably running due to the copious amounts of water leaking from my eyes. It’s a nice spring night, trending almost to cold, but I’m covered in sweat, shaking and shivering while my insides twist and spin violently.

While I’m trying to get myself under control, the front door bangs open and closed.

I lift my head between waves of nausea, hoping that it’s my sister who saw me dash out of the clubhouse and followed me out, or Dominic, but nope.

It can’t be the club’s Prez, Tyrant, coming to make sure everything is okay.

It’s not Dom’s friend, Dravin, or Wizard, because they checked the security footage and got a whole load of what the fuck out here.

It’s not Raiden, or any of the other less obnoxious guys from the club.

Of course I’m not lucky enough that it can’t be one of their women either.

I squint hard past the eye leakage, blinking to clear my vision, but sadly it doesn’t change the fact that the person standing fifteen feet away, watching me with a raised brow like a detective on a terrible crime show, is Decay. Twin brother to the man being celebrated and sent off, biker style.

He struts down the sidewalk, heavy boots echoing in the dark like it’s my day of reckoning.

He crosses his muscular arms as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and then wipe my hand on my long black dress.

It’s all quite unceremonious. I feel worse just looking at him, staring into his rugged, masculine beauty.

His long hair is so black that the streetlight glints off the crow-dark strands.

He wears it in an aggressive cut, long in front, short on the sides and in the back, like a mullet and an uppercut had a baby.

Every time I’ve seen him, he’s had the strands swept back and oiled in place.

His beard, usually long and somewhat scraggly, has been trimmed.

I’d almost call it manicured. It appears thicker now that it’s shorter.

Like his brother, he’s built like a monster.

Well over six feet, he’s a wall of muscle.

It’s amazing how just hair and a beard can change a person’s face shape.

Grave looked so different from his twin.

He wore his hair long and loose, usually wild and untamed, and preferred just a shadow of facial hair, which he’d shave often.

They both have the same dark eyes, strong brow, angular jawline, and massive, hulking stance.

His presence isn’t just unwanted out here.

When he crosses his arms harder in his black leather vest, he sends a wave of menacing energy pulsing through the quiet night. It’s loud inside the clubhouse, but the old factory turned biker home might as well be a bomb shelter for the way it locks in the noise.

I brace, breathing heavily through my nose only, trying to get my racing heart and rioting stomach back under control.

Most people would ask if someone is okay if they found them puking their guts up. Not Decay. He’s studying me, frowning, not the least bit sympathetic.

I can’t stop looking at him. I can put on a front all I want, but the fact is, I can’t stop seeing all the ways he does look like his brother. A shiver of awareness traces down my spine, which makes my stomach want to go another round with the upchuck fest.

Decay’s eyes narrow. He zones in on me like a total creep. “Are you fucking pregnant?” he spits the words, shattering my world with a single sentence. He’s his brother’s twin for sure. Sensitivity wasn’t Grave’s strong suit either.

“What?” I pant, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand a second time, to collect the spittle I can still feel there. It’s possibly the classiest move of my life. “I’m sick. I woke up sick yesterday and knew I wouldn’t be better for today, but there was no way I was missing this.”

“That’s bullshit, Ginny.”

I manage not to wince as he spits the words and somehow softens my name, a wave breaking on rocks, but flattening into a soft swell near shore. “It’s not bullshit. Ask my sister. Ask Dominic.”

“You’re pregnant. It’s my brother’s baby.”

I can be stubborn. I can be bossy. Most times, I’d be confident enough to stand my ground.

Right now? It’s nearly impossible to look this man in the eye and lie to him.

He just lost his brother. Not just his brother, but his twin .

His other half. His soul tether. I don’t believe in being false. I hate lying.

I’ve never been in a position like this, and it undoes me.

I swallow the vile taste in my mouth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Decay’s face darkens. It’s not just a trick of the streetlight or a passing shadow.

It actually happens. “Jack would have wanted me to take care of you. It would have been one of his last wishes, if he’d had time to make them.

What my brother wanted in life I would have done anything to give him.

He would have done the same for me. he did .

Time and again.” He swallows and it seems as loud as a gunshot in the silence out here.

“So, you’re going to tell me, or I’ll stalk you like your worst nightmare until I know the truth. ”

“Fucking hell,” I hiss, uncharacteristically crass. I’m so shocked by that blunt, creepy as hell pronouncement, that I have zero filter. “What are you going to do, force me to take a piss so you can test it?”

His hard, chiseled face breaks into a grim smile like he’d enjoy doing it.

God. He has to be joking.

Has to be.

He’s wasted, for one. Pretty much everyone at a biker celebration of life is bound to get ripping drunk.

Jack didn’t bring me to any of the club’s parties, and when we got together, it wasn’t here, but Bronte has been to a few.

Even just a regular Friday night can get pretty rowdy around here.

Not like at some clubs, but there’s still no shortage of drinking, weed, cigarettes, loud music, and the club women who aren’t wives or girlfriends.

I can smell the whiskey from where I’m standing, but as that smile goes on for a beat too long, I wonder how drunk Decay really is. He has every reason to want to forget why he’s here, or to let go and celebrate his brother as a send-off, but maybe he only had a few drinks.

Another beat of silence, and I know he’s not joking about any of this.

Grave and I might not have been in a relationship, and he could be an overgrown man-child who did stupid things like put firecrackers in my niece’s birthday cake, but he had his sweet moments too.

I’ll cherish those times forever. I do miss him, even if I didn’t love him.

We were friends, I guess. Sort of. I did have some feelings for sure.

I absolutely wish that three days ago, the club’s Prez, Tyrant, didn’t have to call me and tell me that Grave rolled his truck just outside of Hart.

His stupid, dumb, jacked-up truck that he loved to the point of being obnoxious about it.

He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, which is pretty much just classic Grave right there, and he was ejected out the windshield and was killed instantly.

I still haven’t recovered. My emotions are all over the place. My hormones are a wreck, and my brain is even worse, trying to sort all this out.

The only way to get Decay to drop this and leave me alone is to be awful . I don’t have it in me to hurt him or stab daggers into him, especially right now, but if that’s what it’s going to take, then that’s what I’ll do.

I tap my foot like I have better places to be. I mean, I do. I’d like to be back inside, with my sister and Dominic, but at the same time, I don’t want to hide behind them. Bronte’s my older sister, but she doesn’t need to fight my battles for me.

“Is this like a thing because I was with your brother? You want me just because he had me?”

Decay has the same bronzed complexion his brother did. Grave liked to joke about it being a welding tan, but I know it was all the time he spent outdoors, even when he wasn’t on his bike. All the color drains out, the golden hue melting into a sickly gray. “That’s disgusting and vile.”