Page 5 of Zeppelin
“I just want to know that you’re going to be okay. For Jack’s sake,” I mumble. I shouldn’t have confronted her like I did. No wonder she’s defensive.
I don’t know that I’ve been right the way most people are, but I’m definitely not right at the moment. My head is a wreck, just like Jack’s twisted, smashed truck, and my chest is worse.
Ginny’s eyes narrow, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on with me. Good luck with that beyond the obvious. She’s watched me cycle from outright asshole to quiet, withdrawn, and anxious in the span of a few minutes.
“I’ll be okay.” She bites the corner of her mouth from the inside, and the way her eyes widen gives her the illusion that she’s about to cry.
She’s no regular beauty, but she is pretty.No, more than that. Her features are soft, but not plain. She’s not striking, but she isarresting. She’d never be featured in a magazine, unless it was an alternative lifestyle one, or maybe one of those bohemian cover shoots that have women in long dresses with fancy braids, no makeup, a smattering of freckles, standing in the middle of a field. It would make sense, given where she lives.
“My family’s got me.”
“Ginny.” I drop my voice, trying to be gentle. I put my hands up, giving her my calloused, grease stained palms. Honest hands. Hands that can take anything and get it running again. Hands that have worked miracles, at least as far as vehicles go.
Before I can get anything else out, her face twists with panic. She whirls, bending in half at the waist, grabbing her long hair with one hand to keep it out of the way. I would have thought, given how she bathed that poor shrub the first go round, that her stomach was empty.
I was a jerk the first time, coming out here, but I thought the element of surprise might offer me the truth. I was runningon pure shock and… something that felt a little bit likehope. Hope that Jack left something behind.Someone. I was almost frantic with it and there’s not a bit of me that’s settled out.
I don’t have the right to touch her, but the longer she keeps gagging, her stomach heaving up dry spasms after the worst has passed, the less that matters.
I stalk over to her and set one hand on her arm while I gather up her hair for her. She finally spits one last time and straightens, wiping her running eyes with the back of her hand. She digs in the pocket of her dress and finds a used tissue, which she dabs her forehead, her cheeks, and her mouth with before balling it up into a fist.
My hand slips from her shoulder without me telling it to move. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m rubbing small circles on her back.
No one has ever done that for me. When me and Jack got sick growing up, we just got on with it. We didn’t have anyone looking out for us, or offering us comfort in any way. We might have cleaned up after each other, but there was no kind, loving caresses.
Love.
Other than the bond I had with Jack—a force that was stronger than any energy I’ve ever known- I have no idea what love feels like.
I’ve seen men from the clubfallin love. I’ve seen themgrowin love. I’ve witnessed a thousand gentle touches shared between Tyrant and Lark, Raiden and Ella, Gunner and Diletta, Atlas and Willa, Lynette and Bullet, Crow and Tarynn, and a few of the other guys who have old ladies or wives.
It used to be that just a few of us were tied down like that, but now more guys in the club have old ladies or wives than don’t.
I guess watching them all fall in love had more of an impact on me than I thought.
I angle Ginny around so that I can look her in the face. I keep rubbing her back, and her hand snakes out and lands near my waist. It would almost be intimate, if she wasn’t sweating through her clothes and shaking like she just fell into frigid water in the middle of winter.
“Hey.” I don’t know what the hell voice is that? I’ve never heard that tone from myself before. It’s soft. Coaxing. So gentle.
“Are you really sick, Ginny, or what’s going on?”
She hangs her head, swallowing convulsively and then she sniffles. She’s sweating furiously. Her skin throws off furious heat through her dress. Her hand flexes at my hip, but she hangs on, still needing to be steadied. I want to brush back the sticky strands of hair from her forehead, but that would be far too intimate, so I don’t.
I would never get close to another person like this. I’ve fucked plenty of women, but there’s fucking and then there’s everything else, and it’s everything else that I don’t do. The club women—what some clubs call biker bitches or hang-arounds—know what they want. They want pleasure and they want to give pleasure. They don’t need cuddling or platitudes after or even during.
“God.” Ginny digs her fingers into her eyes. “I don’t know what I want. I- I just found out about this. Right before…ithappened.” She hangs her head.
She just told me what I wanted to know, and even though a strange electric thrill shoots through me at knowing that thereissomething of my brother still left on this earth, seeing Ginny’s obvious miseryhurtsin ways I don’t understand.
It’s a punch to my gut, a reminder of all those childhood days where I’d be hungry for a dinner that we never got to eat, how my belly seemed to fold in on itself at night, making sleep nearly impossible.
I want to swear out loud, on my life, that this child will never go hungry. They’ll never know the pain of being forgotten. They’ll never be scared or uncertain orunloved. I choke that back and stay quiet. Filling the silence, like I usually do, with idiotic words and gestures that I don’t even mean, like I do with the guys, isn’t an option here. I don’t trust myself to say the sensitive, heartbreaking things that I’m thinking.
“My familydoeshave me,” Ginny reiterates in a small, lost whimper. “Although, this is the second time around they’ll have to look after a pregnant daughter. I- it’s different for me. I was never with Jack.”
“Did Jack know?” I know he didn’t, but I have toknowhe didn’t.
She shakes her head. “I was still trying to figure out how to tell him. Iwasgoing to tell him, though.” I can’t read anything from her face, even now that she’s lowered her hand. There are far too many emotions there. I guess that she still looks miserable above everything else. Uncertain. Sick.Sad. “Even though we weren’t in a relationship, he deserved to be given the chance to be a dad if he wanted to be. We could have been some kind of coparents.” She heaves in a shuddering breath and letsit out slowly before flicking her eyes to my face, pinning me in place. “I’m not looking for a step-in baby daddy.”
