Page 30 of Zeke

He nods. “In the flesh.”

“Good to see you. What can I get for you? Your usual, Zeke?” She gives me a big smile and leans over the counter, giving me a perfect view of her cleavage.

Fuck. It’s hard enough to not think about her nonstop without her giving me more things to think about when I’m alone.

And I have been alone a lot lately. I usually vent my stress by fucking someone. I have more empathy than almost everyone else in the club combined, which leaves me feeling overloaded most of the time, since I bear everyone else’s emotional burdens. But there’s something about sex with absolutely no feelings involved that clears me out and lets me reset before I dive back into the sludge of everyone else’s trauma.

Now that I’ve fallen for Kira—fallen hard—I haven’t been with anyone else. It’s left me feeling almost short-circuited. I spend a lot of time in my room with only my hand for company, several times a day, and she’s all I think about. It doesn’t have the same releasing effect, though, so I’m doing it more than I have since I was a teenager and discovered jerking off.

“Yeah,” I say in response to her question, confirming that I’d like a coconut cream donut. “That sounds great. Also let me get one of those cheesy rollup things.”

“You got it. And for you?” She turns to Justice, who’s checking out the pastry case.

“I’ll have a chocolate frosted donut.”

“Sprinkles or no sprinkles?” she asks.

Justice laughs a little. “Know what? Let me have the sprinkles. I can’t remember the last time I had one of those.”

Kira beams at him and gathers our order.

“You look a little tense,” she says to me, her smile faltering a little. “Everything okay? Julia said things are kind of rough at the house.”

“Kind of,” I say, taking my cheesy roll from her and biting into it. “But we’ve got it under control.”

She looks relieved, but I feel Justice’s and Julia’s eyes on me. They know I’m lying. We don’t know what we’re dealing with, let alone having it under control. It could be nothing, but we won’t know until we figure it out.

As Justice and I sit and eat while Kira and Julia help other customers, I feel a small wave of relief, having set eyes on them. Regardless of whatever issues she has with us or us with her, Julia’s one of ours, and we look out for our own no matter what.

And as far as Kira…

She’s not part of the club, but I don’t want to see her get caught up in something bad. I’d do anything to keep her out of trouble, but there’s a good chance I’d do something stupid to save her if I needed to. I’d rather not need to if I can help it.

The very idea of something happening to her makes it feel like my heart is being squeezed in someone’s fist. Outside of my family, I’ve never felt so protective of anyone. What I feel for Kira is entirely new. Eli may not believe me, but I really am falling hard for this girl. I’ve never felt this way about anyone, and I wonder how Kira would react if she knew she was the first girl to ever affect me like this. The first girl I ever…

No. Way too soon for that. Right?

Either way, I wasn’t letting an unknown threat harm her. I’d be here, watching over her as often as I could.

We say goodbye and head outside just in time to see Country go by. He pulls his bike around and parks it on the curb in front of us.

“Hey,” he says, pulling off his helmet. “Everything seem okay?”

“So far,” I say, looking over my shoulder and seeing Julia pretend to not notice that Country showed up. “Might not hurt for you to take a second sweep, though.”

He looks a little embarrassed, but he runs a hand through his hair and says, “Yeah. Couldn’t hurt.”

He rides his bike over to the lot to park it by ours and we stand there for a few minutes. Justice and I tell him about the bikes at the motel, and he says he’ll keep an eye out for those bikes in case they end up anywhere odd.

“Thanks, man,” I say. “See you at home.”

Justice and I head back out of town and down the empty road that leads to the farmhouse. Most of the bikes are there, and I shake my head. We haven’t had a big run in a while, and we’ll need to soon or we’ll run out of money.

But I knew why Eden wasn’t pushing for that. As long as we had faceless enemies looking to hurt us, she wasn’t willing to risk a single person.

And neither was I.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

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