Page 33 of Zeppelin (Satan’s Angels MC #9)

Zeppelin

T his part of the country is pretty. I suppose any part is beautiful enough when it’s just the ground beneath a man and the open sky, stars glistening overhead, a massive campfire roaring, plenty of tents dotting the background in a cluster, and the roar of good conversation had between men who have sworn an oath of brotherhood to one another.

Tyrant and Raiden thought ahead and rented out campgrounds along the way.

After a day of hard riding, the last thing that we were going to do was pull into some motel or even a hotel.

All those bikes gathered in one spot are like a siren’s call when it comes to trouble.

We’re not the kind of club that needs that kind of attention.

This trip is about riding just because we love it. It’s about our bikes, the wind in our hair, the freedom of the open road, the sky endless above, behind, and ahead of us. It’s not about starting outlaw shit and getting into bar fights or picking up chicks along the way.

At this point, I think that we’re more of a boys’ club than a biker club as far as what most people think of when they think of one percenters, but that’s okay. That’s more than fucking okay by me.

I like this camping out, kumbaya shit.

It’s not like we’re doing s’mores, so we’re not too far gone yet.

Before we make a stop for the evening, there’s always a run into whatever grocery store is along the way.

Beans, corn, steaks, potatoes—we usually feast like kings.

We’ve stopped a few times, at small food stands if there are any, but if not, we cook for ourselves.

We have more than enough room on the bikes between us for a few pots and pans to do the dinner making.

Our tents are mostly single person, and we have travel pillows and sleeping bags, maybe a small pad for the ground if we need it, but most of us are content with sleeping rough.

Having a bike between your legs during the day and the solidity of the hard ground at night—that’s a religion I could get behind.

“You’re unnaturally quiet.” Carver drops down beside me.

I’m sitting on a stump that I found over in the firewood pile. It either escaped splitting or someone just pitched it there, but it was perfectly round and more than enough of a perching place for my ass to sit for a few hours in front of the campfire.

The other guys are gathered around, talking and laughing, regaling each other with all the previous rides, even though most of them were there.

Odin likes to tell the story of how he lost his eye.

The barfight recounting never gets old. A few of the older guys have some wild stories.

After that dies down, it’s generally talk about our families and the club, Hart, the cabin in the mountains that the club owns, how our real estate purchases are doing that Tyrant invested into after the club’s lawyer and Bullet’s woman, Lynette, wanted to purchase in a bid to have the club’s business go from an illegal shitshow to a legal shitshow.

Not that I’d know.

That isn’t my area of expertise.

I’m not an officer. I’m not involved in decision making and I don’t get updates on all of the investments and all that shit the way Tyrant, Raiden, and the other officers do.

It’s not that I feel I don’t belong. I’m not sitting on the edge of the circle and not joining in because I’m purposely butt hurt about anything.

I’ve just been feeling… I don’t even know. Lost?

Fucking hell, that’s ridiculous. Some real self-help, therapist style shit. Not that if you need that it’s wrong. It’s just that the last place I’d turn to for help would be some shrink in a suit spitting out new age, trained garbage. I’d never take advice from some book.

Although, the Dickens that I’ve been reading isn’t half bad.

And isn’t that just pure fuckery in itself.

I don’t feel ungrounded and uprooted just because Jack isn’t on this ride with me.

It’s more than having my other half missing.

It’s painful because this is just another first of many things that I’ll do without him.

It dredges up all the lasts we had without ever knowing it.

It’s not just that life is never going to look the same or be okay again.

It’s that I’m pretty much torn in two. I could have talked to Ginny before I left, but she didn’t reach out.

I could have called or texted her. It wasn’t that I was worried about being the first to break.

I just didn’t know what to say. I half wanted to apologize to her, and I’m still half gutted.

Illogically. It doesn’t make any sense to be mad at her when she never made any promises and we had an understanding trending in the other direction.

It’s me who got confused. It’s me who had to pull away to stop myself from wanting more.

It wasn’t her fault , but the way she joked about not getting attached is still salt in a wound that shouldn’t exist. My head knows what I have to do to fix this and get the fuck back in line, but my heart and fucking soul are torn in a completely different direction.

How could I allow myself to get close to a woman who was only going to pull away? I thought I could enjoy the sweetness while it lasted and deal with the bitter torture when it inevitably came.

Imagine my surprise when I wigged the fuck out on the inside and couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t keep getting close, giving her my body and taking hers, pleasuring hers, coming right alongside her, holding her and being held, opening myself up in ways I didn’t even realize I could and didn’t even know was happening until it was right in the thick of the minute.

I couldn’t sleep beside her, wanting her, growing into the one thing she so clearly will never want.

Attachment .

She’s not my family.

These men around me? They’re my family.

Including the annoying motherfucker who I’m currently trying to ignore.

Carver, AKA Dominic, AKA Ginny’s almost brother-in-law, doesn’t take the hint. He’s made it his mission to stick close to me for the entire six days we’ve been on the road so far. Maine is no joke. Crossing the country isn’t for the faint of heart.

It’s another hard hitting blow that lands in a soft spot I thought was long healed.

Me and Jack? We only joined the club because we had plans on doing our own big road trip.

Not just across one country, but many. We wanted to see Latin America.

Maybe even go down there and start a new life.

Instead, we ended up not so far from home, living a different life completely. We never went down south.

We never will.

It makes me feel itchy and restless in my skin. Prickly.

I have no one to talk about it with.

The one person I can imagine texting or calling in a private moment, probably doesn’t want to hear from me, seeing as I pretty much threw her out of my room.

And now Carver knows that there’s some shit going on between us.

He’s not watching me like I need to be warned away from Ginny or studied to decide if I’m good enough to be around.

He’s protective of her and that’s fair enough.

I like that for her. It’s more that he wants to try and be closer to me as though she asked him to keep an eye out for me and be there because I need someone right now even if I can’t admit to it.

That’s absurd, because I know she’d never do that.

Would she?

Just because she doesn’t want to be in a damn conventional relationship—the R word from hell that I never thought I wanted either—doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care.

I think.

Damn, when the fuck did I even start thinking ? Not just regular shit, but all the deep shit? It sucks. I wish I could undo it. I wish it would stop. Self-awareness or whatever the shit it is, really sucks.

“Zeppelin?”

It took a while, but the guys have stopped calling me Decay. There might be the occasional slip up, but everyone understood why I wanted to get rid of that name.

“Carver?” I parrot back sarcastically.

“Just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”

“You want to make sure or you’re asking for a friend?” On the outside, I’m a sarcastic fucker, but on the inside, I’m one of those soft, squishy marshmallows that we’re not toasting.

The silence would be strained if Carver got weird, but he ignores my goading and gives me a tight smile. He rubs his left hand with his right, flexing the palm and continuing the tight circles he’s rubbing all the way up into the forearm and elbow.

“You good?” I can’t be an asshole about this.

A massive piece of stone fell on the guy years ago and it’s been a rough road to recovery, both physically and mentally for him. We’d done a bunch of riding, and even though he’s on a trike, with two wheels in the back that is plenty sturdy, it’s concerning seeing him in pain.

Carver turns his eyes my way. The flames from the massive bonfire that we lit over an hour ago are reflected in those bottomless depths.

“Yeah. It’s just sore. I still have use of it.” He lifts his arm to prove it. Before, he could only tuck it in against his side, but now he gets it up almost to shoulder height.

“You’re ever not good, you tell Tyrant, yeah?”

He shrugs his other shoulder. “Sure.”

“Seriously. We take care of people out here. You need anything, you speak up.”

He grunts. “Like you have?”

The urge to leap off this log and throttle him is strong. Not really, because that would only make me into a huge piece of hot garbage to pummel a guy who really only has one good arm to hit back with, plus there are club rules about fighting.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t let it drop, and he doesn’t let me pretend that I’m not a liar. “It hasn’t been long enough for you to be okay, but you tell everyone you are. We all know you’re not, but no one’s going to force you to say anything different until you’re ready.”