Page 43 of Zeke

“Fine,” he says with a shrug. “I’ll be in my room. You can come get me when—”

“No, you fucking won’t,” I say. “You’re gonna stay here and wait with me.”

“What, did he storm off?”

“Yeah.” The worry about where he might have gone creeps back in. “After he knocked out Wizard.”

“Wizard?” Eli says with almost a laugh.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“We’ve been afraid of a guy named Wizard?”

I don’t blame him for laughing. Biker names can be over the top sometimes, but Wizard is one of the more amusing ones I’ve heard. He seems to forget a detail I shared with him.

“I mean, he got into the clubhouse and got a gun to our brother’s head without anyone catching him, so maybe he is fucking magic,” I say.

Eli looks uncomfortable but says nothing. Well, at least that’s something. Maybe he does care if Zeke dies.

“Fine,” he says after a long moment. “May as well make myself useful. Could be a while before Zeke gets back, especially if he’s off doing his usual.”

He goes outside and approaches Savage and Pony, and they all start talking. Eli’s words hit me weird. I realize it’s because he has never had an issue with what Zeke did when he stormed off. Now, he seems to take it as a personal attack. Like if Zeke went out and got into a fight and fucked someone, it would affect Eli.

Must be that damn bakery girl.

I watch from the window, then turn around and look at the blood spots on the floor.

May as do something while I wait like an anxious mother hen.

I didn’t use to be like this. I use to be unflappable. I could be wild and reckless, sure, but I was also in control of myself and my surroundings at all times. Lately, things hit me a lot harder, which sucks. Now that I’m Prez, I need things to roll off my back even more than before.

I don’t know what caused the change in me. A lot of people seem to think it’s Savage—that his presence makes me soft, but I don’t know if that’s true. I think it plays a part. I killed his brother, after all, which left me with a lot of guilt I didn’t know I could feel. Then there was Torque and Attila getting ahold of Eli and torturing the shit out of him, nearly killing him. I thought he was already dead, and it nearly broke me into pieces. The only one who understood was Zeke. Zeke, who Eli can’t stand the sight of.

I growl in frustration and reach under the kitchen sink for some cleaning supplies, then get down on my hands and knees and begin to clean. Normally, I’d assign this task to one of the boys since I hate the idea of “women’s work” and I refuse to let myself or any of the girls in the club take care of these things. I’d rather send them on a dangerous run than have a single one of them wield a toilet brush.

Today, I want to feel the stain coming clean under my hands. I want to feel the arm-aching effort of scrubbing it away.

I want to feel something besides this urge to scream because everything is wrong and I can’t fix it.

I finish putting the cleaning supplies away after completing my task. Then I hear the click of Tardy’s nails before I see him come bounding into the room, followed by Zeke, who still looks disgruntled.

“Zeke!” I say, scrambling to my feet and rushing to throw my arms around him in a tight hug. I pull back for a moment, running my hands up his arms and over his face, looking for any sign of a fight, not coming up with not a single cut or bruise. Well, one. A tiny spot on his lip that’s split open, but it doesn’t look like he was hit.

Maybe he did fuck someone. He wasn’t gone for that long, though, so it would have had to have been a quickie. I don’t know much about my brother’s sex life, but that doesn’t seem like his style.

“You didn’t get into a fight?” I ask.

“No,” he says, but he doesn’t seem to want to share more. Which is fine. As long as he’s safe, I don’t care what or who he did.

“I need to talk to you and Eli,” I say.

His face takes on the same expression Eli’s had. “Can you tell me what it is now?” he asks.

“No.” I cross my arms. “Like I told him, I’m not repeating myself to my VPs every time I have to tell them something because they won’t stand in the same room. I’m tired of it. Be dicks to each other on your own time. Not mine.”

He at least has the decency to look slightly ashamed, but it doesn’t last long as Eli, Savage, and Pony all walk inside.

Savage hands me Wizard’s gun as well as a second piece he had strapped to his hip.

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