Chapter 12 – Zeb
Chapter Twelve
Zeb
Three Days Later
It’s been torture to sleep in hotel rooms, feed this woman, watch her leave the bathroom fully dressed with her hair up, and not desperately crave more from her.
This is the last day of riding for us, and we’ve picked up a bit of a routine between the two of us.
Janelle might not have forgotten everything that happened in Boston, but I enjoy watching her loosen up and getting a bit of that girl I met at the bar.
There are many mysteries about Janelle yet to unlock, but the further away I take her from Boston, the worse I feel about touching her and making her life more confusing than it has to be.
Most women don’t want to fall for a man in my position, end up with a tattoo on their ass and a lifetime of babies and nonstop danger to make up for it.
Janelle has a promising future, I’m sure.
She doesn’t need a fucked up veteran gun runner to make her life a living hell by constantly disappearing on his bike.
What if I never come home? What if she leaves?
Relationships have never been anything more than threatening to my sense of independence, and I’m not much of a good guy myself.
The jealousy I feel alone could burn down an entire city.
I would smother this woman if I let myself get more attached to her than I already am.
When I think about what it means to ruin her and ruin myself in the process, I find it easy to keep my hands to myself.
There’s nothing that could justify dragging Janelle into my life.
Once the coast is clear in Boston, I’ll have to be intentional about severing the ties between us but…
I can’t keep her.
She hates the Midwest, which we both have in common.
I don’t bother telling her when we pass the exit that leads to my small town in Missouri, and I definitely don’t share anything about my mom, my siblings, or the fucked up series of life events that led to me enlisting as soon as I was old enough to join.
I tried impersonating Gideon when I was fifteen the first time I tried to enlist. Just to show you how stupid and desperate I was to get away from our tiny patch of nowhere.
Her mood doesn’t improve when we get into Oklahoma, which is even more Midwestern than Missouri in a lot of ways – flatter, longer stretches of highway with nothing but gas stations and little Route 66 themed gift shops, then the kitschy little motels we get to stay at now that we’re properly out of the East Coast.
The first place we stop miraculously has vacancies.
It’s the off-season and I’m fairly certain Vickie Shaw bought out three of the motels in Oklahoma.
Our club connections don't get us a discount, but the girl working behind the counter doesn’t look twice at me or Janelle.
She’s tired by the time we get to Barbarian’s Lodge, a not-so-subtly named motel identifying the place as ours.
Vickie has it in her mind that success is all about ‘branding’, but Janelle doesn’t care a lick for any branding.
She’s cranky – pretty damn pissed at me, honestly.
I can feel her energy towards me shift and wonder what the hell I did to push her away already.
I just want to respect her, even if it gets harder the longer I spend night after night in bed with her soft, supple body.
“While you shower, I’ll go out and look for something to eat,” Janelle says. I look over at her to see if she’s messing around considering how little I’ve wanted her to be away from me the past few days.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“There’s a little taco stand across the road. I’ll be fine.”
Finally, I make eye contact with Janelle. Her efforts to test me and get under my skin are more effective than I want to admit. She can tell that I don’t want to let her out of my sight, even if it’s just across the street.
“I won’t run away,” Janelle says in an effort to convince me to let her go.
“If you’re not back by the time I’m out of the shower, I’ll come and find you.”
“So I can leave?”
“I have to trust you at some point, don’t I?” I mutter. “Take a couple twenties out of my wallet.”
Janelle takes initiative and reaches for my wallet, moving fast enough that she must be worried that I’m going to change my mind about letting her leave.
I watch her exit the hotel room and strip my clothes off, uneasy from the minute I can’t see her anymore.
I feel like there’s something wrong with me.
I’ve never had this anxious drive to keep track of a woman before.
There’s always been a deep struggle for me to feel attached to anyone or anything.
I spent most of my childhood on my own and was mostly a loner until I joined the army.
It took a while for me to learn to be around people and I wouldn’t have had the same experience if most of my family hadn’t enlisted before me and prepared me for what I would have to do.
Bikers don’t need to make a huge fuss about each other. So it’s not like I never cared about the club or the family that comes with it, but I’ve never felt the strange mixture of things I feel for Janelle.
I have to force myself to take showers that last longer than three minutes and today I lack the motivation to enforce that kind of slowness.
I just need to make sure Janelle doesn’t get into trouble on her way to the taco stand.
Any number of evils might befall a woman alone, doesn’t matter how free the country seems, there are bad elements lurking everywhere.
By three and a half minutes, I’m clean and dry enough to slip on a pair of briefs, sweatpants, and a large grey Route 66 themed hoodie that I bought at the last gas station we stopped at together.
After five minutes, I start to get antsy without Janelle. I stick my keys and wallet in my pocket before throwing on my cut to meet her across the street. By the time I leave the motel I can spot her dark brown skin and puffy halo of black hair across the street standing in line.
She’s about to order, so I know that I don’t have to go across and meet her, but my body moves towards Janelle’s like there’s a magnetic force drawing me to her. She looks over her shoulder when I’m close, sensing my presence.
“I can handle a taco order on my own,” she says, handing over a twenty dollar bill to the guy inside the taco truck. He smiles at her and counts her change. I’m not sure if he speaks English or not – doesn’t bother me either way aside from my desire to converse with Janelle in private.
She steps to the side with her buzzer and points to a bench where we can wait for our taco order.
“What’d you get me for our first date?” I tease her as we sit on the bench next to each other, thighs pressed so closely that I feel nervous from the closeness to her.
“This is not a date,” Janelle says awkwardly, looking down.
“I was just teasing.”
“It’s not funny, Zeb.”
“Fine,” I mutter. “I won’t offend your sensibilities again.”
She looks over at me seriously. “We can’t date when I don’t even know if I’m going to go to prison yet.”
“This again?”
Janelle won’t stop worrying about that. If only she knew how many men I’ve killed without worrying about prison. Cops aren’t very smart and they have bigger problems than the type of low-life thug who would try to rob Janelle.
Still, she’s stubborn. “Yes. This again”
Then again, maybe she won’t feel better if I tell her how many men I’ve killed. I try a warm, comforting look instead.
“Don’t lose sleep over it. I promise.”
She only looks more terrified. I’m terrible at this.
“What? Have you done this before or something?”
Janelle’s face registers genuine worry. I haven’t hid my military service from her, but there isn’t much about it that strikes me as an appropriate conversation to have with a woman.
She doesn’t want to know about how badly your ass itches in the desert from chafing and heat.
Janelle also doesn’t want to know what it’s like to watch your friends die.
I’m lucky that it’s only happened to me a few times. Some lose everything.
“I was in the army.”
Of course I’ve killed. But I also killed when I wasn’t deployed.
I grew up hunting, and field dressing a buck when you’re seven years old will give you a stronger stomach than you can imagine when you get to be my age.
It’s not enough of an answer for Janelle.
Her eyes expose me completely. There’s that flutter in my chest again.
The strange feeling that seems to only exist when she’s in my presence.
“What does that mean?” Janelle presses. “I’m starting to wonder if it was such a good idea for me to hop on the back of a stranger’s bike when as far as I know, you could be gaining my trust to sell me off or something.”
“I wouldn’t get much for selling you.”
“That’s comforting.”
Her buzzer goes off and I leap to attention to grab the tacos.
“Sit,” I command her and although this appears to stun Janelle, she obediently sits and awaits my oil-stained brown paper bag with our to-go order of tacos. The bench where we sat had a little bit of shade, but it’s still hot enough to make you sweat, so I ask Janelle where she would prefer to eat.
“Here is fine,” she says. “I’m starving.”
Why the hell is it that everything she does seems attractive to me?
The second I find out she’s going to rip into those tacos in front of me, I want to watch her eat more than anything.
There’s something sensual about her lips and teeth ripping into a soft taco shell and I can’t help but crave wiping – or licking – the sauces off her face.
Maybe I’m hungry too.
Janelle liberates her order from the bag and hands me my serving of beef and fish tacos – she got me double what she got herself, which suits me just fine. I put an entire taco in my mouth at once and Janelle gasps.
“How did you open your mouth that wide?”
“Talent.”
She laughs. “I didn’t realize men with no body fat ate like that.”
“Can’t build muscle without fuel.”
I eat another taco and watch Janelle take her second polite bite out of her delicious looking chicken taco.
The chili scent wafts through the air and as the sun burns a little pink on my nose, I realize that this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.
And maybe I joked about this being a date because it’s exactly what I want…
And what she doesn’t want at all.
Janelle’s next bite drips sauce down the sides of her cheek and I take a napkin to wipe the juices away. She looks up at me with smiling brown eyes.
“Thanks.”
It feels good to take care of her.
I don’t want to stop.
But what if she’s not happy with me? This experience has scared the crap out of Janelle enough. If she sees more of me and more of my world… I just know this isn’t what she wants. She’s too good for me. Sexy. Kind. Easy to get along with…
But she’s not a biker thug. She’s a New England woman with a job, with ambitions, with a whole life outside of mine. What would I do with Janelle in my world aside from ruin her?