Page 31 of Zeppelin (Satan’s Angels MC #9)

She gets it. I don’t mean to jump all over the place and confuse her about all of this when it’s already so hard to sort out, but I’m having one of these days where I just can’t seem to shut up and it all tumbles out.

“I don’t know if he was just having a bad day because he’s still hurting and grieving, but it didn’t feel that way.

Not when we were texting for days before I got to the clubhouse.

It was playful. It was vibrant. It was alive .

If I didn’t get to the clubhouse immediately, I was going to explode .

I- this is too much information.” I’m not someone who gets embarrassed easily, but lines.

I’m crossing all of them here too. “Literally. I felt like I could vaporize. At the same time, it was beyond sex.” Wow.

I need to shut up. Or do I? The more I voice my thoughts, the less muddled they feel in my head.

I’d like them to be out here, not banging around in my brain.

“You sound like you’re a little bit overwhelmed. You’ve got a lot going on. I remember what it was like when I found out I was pregnant with Ellie. What with everything…” she pauses, clearly not wanting to bring up Jack’s death. “Well… it’s a lot for you.”

My eyes well with tears again. I flick them up to the ceiling quickly, hoping the moisture won’t spill over.

“I love you, Bronte. I’m so sorry that I had to tell you about the pregnancy over the phone.

It didn’t matter what I was doing. I should have just driven here to tell you. It’s not that far.”

“You’ve been busy, and you haven’t been feeling well.

You’re trying to keep up with my share of a family business, and I can understand how tired you’re feeling.

It’s like getting sucked into a bad riptide and fighting with all your strength.

Telling me over the phone was fine, sweetheart. I get it.”

A small part of me was worried that Bronte was hurt and maybe even angry that I told the family in person, but not her.

I can let go of that, but I do still miss her.

I wish she was closer. I wish I was closer.

I’d never wish her and Dom apart or for a different life for them because they’re so happy in Hart, but I miss being a whole family unit.

It’s wild to think like that when I moved out too. I have my own house now. I’m going to have my own child soon.

A wild flutter twists my stomach. Excitement and nerves choke me.

“As overwhelmed as you are, maybe it’s been a lot for D- Zeppelin too,” Bronte points out.

She leans forward to slip her empty mug back on the table.

Mine is still half full. I sip it, even though it’s cold.

“Maybe that’s all tonight was about. He might have a lot going on in his head and it just got too much.

He thought he could do something, but something else got in the way. ”

I don’t want to discount what she’s saying, but it’s just so weird to think about how it was like a switch was flipped. He was so into it. I can’t explain that to Bronte without giving details, and there’s no way I’m going to do that.

She stays leaning forward, resting her chin in her hands, studying me. “Can you tell me exactly what you said to him?”

“Oh my god. I can’t. It’s- we were about to have sex and something I said seemed to trigger him. We’re sisters, but there’s only so much we should share. If you told me something private about you and Dom like that, I’d never be able to unhear it.”

Bronte’s like me. It takes a lot to make her embarrassed, but she does flush a little. “Can you think back on it then? Go over it in your head.”

I start right from the first racy texts and go over the way he got down on his knees and fucking shaved me.

I truly let that happen. I’d let it happen again, if I was honest. It wasn’t just the act itself.

It was the surrender . Zeppelin was one hundred percent into it.

He didn’t seem like he had anything on his mind.

He even lied to Tyrant and Raiden and put on a show of being his regular asshole self to the rest of the guys before we even got into his room.

He did that for me, so that I could spend time with him at the clubhouse.

Sure, he misses Jack. He’s probably still struggling with it, but he wasn’t in that moment.

Not when we were together. There was this tangible thread of expectation and anticipation between us.

Nothing could have stopped us from having each other.

Until it did.

Until I said… “Oh my god!” I gasp. Bronte startles beside me. “Oh. My. God.”

“What? Did you figure it out?” She waves her hands excitedly, like a poor chicken trying to take flight.

“I told him he should be careful. That what he said sounded dangerously close to attachment.” That sounds so bad.

Why didn’t I get it right then? Why did it take me this long ?

Because, like the dirty talk, I didn’t mean it that way.

“I was being playful. When you’ve come for a uh…

casual interlude with someone after working each other up over text and you do something a little bit wild and it’s all very hot and epic, we were talking dirty because it was fun.

I didn’t mean- I- didn’t think that he’d ever want…

attachment . I thought that was firmly off the table for us. ”

“Maybe he never thought he’d want it either, but things change.

People change. Situations change. Lots of situationships have turned into relationships, sometimes before people even realize that it’s happening.

” Bronte always chooses her words with care, but she’s borderline guarded.

“It sounds like the time you’ve shared brought you both together very quickly. ”

“As friends.”

“Ginny.”

“What? You know that that’s what I do. I refuse to be ashamed of it.”

“I’m not talking about shame.” She plants her hand on my knee and squeezes.

Right. She’s the last person in the world who would ever shame anyone, let alone me.

“Just because you’re used to that sort of arrangement, doesn’t mean that Zeppelin is.

Or that you are anymore . What you did in the past isn’t always a good indicator of what you’re going to want in the present or in the future.

You grow up. You change. Your wants and needs change. ”

“He knows I’m not going to just shove him out of my life.

” Is that why he shut down? Because he thought I just saw him as some casual fun and then I’d close ranks when that fun reached its expiry date?

“He’s this baby’s uncle. He misses Jack so much and this baby is his.

That ties us together. It’s important to both of us. ”

“Uncle? It doesn’t sound like he wants to play an uncle role to me.”

“We had boundaries and lines, and we destroyed them. It’s confused. We haven’t even put a label on it. I didn’t think either of us wanted that enough to be hurt over it to the point of complete shutdown.”

“Does he know you’re not going to push him out? Decide against him being in your life once you’re finished with him?”

“I would never do that. Ever .”

“ I know that, but does he? Just because he’s a man it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have feelings.

People say guys just say what they think and feel and that might be true, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have complicated emotions that they don’t even know how to voice.

It seems he might have been voicing his hurt pretty clearly, even in silence. ”

“I apologized for hurting him.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know what you were apologizing for and maybe he didn’t know how to tell you without breaking down in some way. It’s hard for men to be seen as weak and vulnerable.”

We’ve done so much of that with each other already. In the angry moments, and in the quiet ones. In those painful moments where I found him in the garden, and in the wretched ones where he pulled me up from the floor and held me in his lap.

It sounds like the time you’ve shared together has brought you two together very quickly.

Bronte’s words are already haunting me.

“About apologizing,” Bronte ventures, dropping her voice as a warning that something is coming that I might not want to hear. “You can’t be honest with someone else until you’re honest with yourself.”

That’s a hard one to digest. “How can I be honest when I don’t even know what I want?

” What if it’s just hormones going crazy?

Do I want Zeppelin as a friend and as a lover?

I guess so. Right now I do. Do I want it to be more?

I don’t know. He doesn’t know. Neither of us know.

That’s why it’s such a mess. It was never supposed to happen, and then it did, and it can’t unhappen.

It’s not wrong, but it’s not right. I can’t get lulled into believing something based on emotions that can and will change at any time.

Feelings aren’t facts. If there’s one great truth in life, it’s that.

“You can both not know and still care,” Bronte says.

“What if he said something flippant to you that really dug deep? Maybe into something you’re insecure about, or afraid of, or just something super inconsiderate and you just shut right down?

Even if you were just friends , you could still have deep emotions. ”

“Zeppelin isn’t—”

“What? Like that? Capable of that? Maybe not. But maybe. Maybe he didn’t even know he was.”

“Or maybe he’s just insulted that I made it seem like he was somehow beneath me or that I didn’t want part of him or that he was dirty or something silly.”

“Is that likely? Honestly?”

I grasp my mug harder, wrapping both hands around it and staring into the pale green surface.

“He’s said some harsh things about himself.

He’s used to making himself a joke of sorts.

Saying he’s illiterate and stuff because he didn’t graduate.

I don’t like when he does that. He’s not stupid.

I think he knew that I’d never imply that. ”