by J. C. Allen
“Was he even worth it?” he said.
After a tense silence, Zeke made a face that made me laugh and made me feel like we were more than just sex partners. It was a face that was really sweet. It was the face of comedic relief, but not inappropriate comedic relief; it was like he knew he was starting to ask the heavy questions and he was giving me a chance to have an out of sorts.
“He wants to be the president someday, so maybe he would have been. Although, depending on what my politics are when he’s president, maybe I’ll think it absolutely, one hundred percent wasn’t worth it. But now? It wasn’t worth it anymore to wait and find out.”
I half smiled. He rubbed up my thigh and stopped near the shirt hem. Keep it present here, come on. I almost slipped out a sweet line about how “this is worth it, though,” but considering how I needed to be more, not less, cautious about keeping things casual and not serious, I bit my tongue before I could say anything more.
“You’re worth it—the sex, I mean,” he said, making me laugh and playfully hit him. “But seriously, you’re a great girl Allison. I’m sorry you went through all that. But, see, that’s why I don’t do the relationship thing.”
I took a breath and looked in his eyes. You don’t do the relationship thing because you’re scared. You’re scared of getting hurt like I got hurt. And yeah, it sucked getting hurt. But it was still worth it in the end.
“The right ones are worth it,” I said softly.
He swallowed and lost that permanent smirk he had, replacing it with a look of caution. I almost wished I hadn’t said anything at all when his hand squeezed my thigh and then withdrew. I had let the subconscious truth come out—I really liked this guy. And it wasn’t just the sex.
But…
“We’re not gonna be the right ones, Allison,” Zeke said with a sigh. “That’s not why I asked you all that. I’m not an asshole, I’m just being honest when I tell you not to get your hopes up.”
I nodded slowly, ignoring the feeling of defeat—or trying to, at least. If anything else, Zeke was honest and consistent. And I had just let my hopes get up, however quick of a moment, that something might change.
Stupid. You were literally just thinking you needed to be stricter about not getting serious. You…
You can’t lie to yourself, Allison.
“I know,” I said. “My hopes aren’t up at all.”
But if I was being honest, that was a lie. Logically, I knew that wasn’t going to work out. Even if we professed our love for each other right here, I was leaving at the end of the summer. We weren’t in our thirties, we were in the early third of our twenties. Zeke liked me, that much was apparent, but even the most flirtatious and the most casual of men like Zeke invariably liked one girl more than others. That didn’t mean that they liked someone enough to go exclusive.
Although, granted, while leaving at the end of the summer had always been the plan, it was by no means destiny. I was a professional photographer who found jobs on the side to support herself; there was no rule stating that I couldn’t be in this part of the United States. Zeke was a great photography subject, and I could have always opened my own studio. Thanks to the internet, I could always just put stuff up online and reach a massive audience.
But… I was just grasping at straws. I was trying to make something work that, even in conscious thought, I kept trying to say I didn’t want. Maybe if I were a little older, I wouldn’t bullshit myself so hard, but right now, it seemed like all I could do was bullshit myself. This won’t work out, so all you really want is casual. Sometimes, in moments of weakness, you’ll slip into believing otherwise. But… you know it’s all you really want.
“Good,” he said, that smirk slowly coming back. “You want some ice cream? Then I can take you home.”
I’m glad it’s good for you, Zeke. Because right now, I’m not sure what is and what isn’t.
But I will take that ice cream.
15
Zeke
I took Allison home after ice cream, but it felt like I was missing something on the way back.
It wasn’t her body pressed against mine or her scent around me. I didn’t feel bad for telling her the truth.
No, I think it was more that, maybe, I wish it weren’t the truth. In a perfect world, she could have been the one that changed me. I supposed that was entirely possible. In fact, I supposed that the very fact that I was contemplating it showed that it was more possible than perhaps I had realized.
But I didn’t want that to be; I didn’t want her to be someone that changed me and whom I blamed down the line for whatever reason. Maybe this was just me looking for an excuse to end things, an excuse to avoid a tough conversation that I knew was coming.
But one thing was for sure already, no matter how I spun it—she was starting to change me already.
As promised, I called her once I got home and settled in. Despite my feelings of reservation, almost out of habit, we talked for about an hour before she literally fell asleep over the phone with me. I suppose it was symbolic, somehow, in that she was comfortable enough to fall asleep to my voice while I had trouble sleeping.
But mostly, I just wondered if what we had was coming to an end sooner rather than later.
The thing was, I had nothing to compare this to. It wasn’t like once before, I’d fallen for a girl at the club and had to aggressively pull back to avoid the feelings. In fact, I had to strain really hard to think about just one girl over the past five years whom I had seen more than once. Those girls existed, yes, but they were typically more a function of not having new women show up to the bar than me liking them or anything.
I could definitely say that no one else had ever gotten me to admit that they had changed me already. That was a dramatic departure, and that was something that shook me. What was happening to me? Was I really… was I really about to join my brothers on the path to love?
No matter how much I audibly laughed out loud in an attempt to make myself believe that such an idea was a fallacy and that there was no truth to it, I couldn’t bring myself around to justify it. I liked Allison.
I knew that if I wanted to stay single and if I wanted to keep us casual, I would have to go against my own desires. It would be like the fat kid resisting pizza; he’d just have to go against his instincts for his better good. That, or I would need something from the outside to prevent me from digging in deeper.
Unfortunately, I had no idea how much I would get exactly that.
The next morning, I had to set an alarm for ten in the morning so that I could get over for our club-wide meeting. I was expected to not look like I had slept with a girl the night before; I was expected to look aware, awake, and present for the meeting. There was a joke to be made about how they wouldn’t get the real Zeke if that was the case, but this meeting didn’t seem like the kind of thing to do such a thing at.
When I woke up, though, I knew I had to do something different about Allison. It was a real bad sign that the first thing I checked when I woke up wasn’t an update from the club, but a potential update from Allison. She hadn’t texted me that morning, which was fine; we had ended the night by talking on the phone for an hour. It wasn’t like there was something that had been left unsaid. Well, our feelings. But that’s not something either of us are going to express, because there’s no real reason to. What are we going to say, confess we like each other to be boyfriend girlfriend and then have her leave at the end of the summer?
No. You have to choose to end this now. This is affecting you and making you less of a Zeke Kinsmen than you really are. You’re becoming weak, Zeke. The club will pick up on it, no matter how much your brothers find your sexual conquests obnoxious.
I held up the phone and had my fingers on the keypad. I knew that it was time to send “that text” off to her, the one that would tell her I appreciated all of the good times but had no interest in seeing her any further. It hurt just to think about, but it was a necessity.
And yet, I c
ouldn’t bring myself to do it.
I went so far as to type out the entire message on my phone, leaving me with only the requirement of pushing the blue button that would send the message out. I even edited the message a few times to make sure that it was absolutely clear on what I wanted to say. My finger must have hovered over that damn button for minutes on end.
But…
I couldn’t.
So, I took the coward’s move out. I just didn’t say anything. I was pretty sure that I had warned her earlier, on our very first night, in fact, that I was going to ghost her after we had gotten our pleasure. I just didn’t clarify or expect that our pleasure would extend well past one night and even extend past the physical aspect of things.
Even at twenty-three, I knew that not saying anything was a dick move. Some people thought it was fine, and I thought it was fine after just one encounter, but for something like this… Allison deserved better. So let it be a sign that I am not the person you need to be seeing right now, Allison. Let it signal to you that I am not the person you need to be hanging out with.
“Fucking hell,” I said as I dropped my phone to my side.
I checked the time, realizing I’d spent a dozen minutes going over this “will I, won’t I” dance with my phone. I kicked the covers off, dressed up, and got my cut on. I headed to my bike, still in something of a morning fog, and kicked it on. The bike was always good for clearing my mind; maybe something similar would happen here.
The good news was that I was right on that count. When I felt the wind against my face, the freedom of riding the bike, and the roar of the engine, my mind drifted from Allison and instead to the lifestyle I had. The Cavaros threatened that very life, and I didn’t even mean the ability to slam a punch of pussy. I just meant the freedom I had as a club member, the lack of an overly rigid schedule, and just about anything else that most people didn’t have. I didn’t have a ton of money in comparison to some truly wealthy people, but I did have something they never had—time.
The bad news was that all vanished as soon as I pulled up to the club.
And then I walked into the clubhouse and I had no choice but to forget it all, but it wasn’t because all of my thoughts were replaced about positive images about the freedom the motorcycle gave me.
Instead, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long, long time.
A nervous atmosphere.
The club members and prospects were milling about in the open space of the bar, the tables having been moved to the side, while my brothers and the officers stood at the front, near where the bar was. Jaxson had his arms folded and was chewing gum, but he didn’t look the least bit happy about being there. Matthew had his hands in his pocket, a semi-nervous expression on his face. Out of everyone, Simon looked the most angry, which made sense—his wife was the one probably most at risk of suffering some sort of an attack from the Cavaros since she was one.
If I had hoped for something to distract me from Allison, for an excuse to pop up that would justify my inability to be anything more than a hookup with her, well, shit, it sure looked like I was getting it now.
I walked up and stood next to Matthew, not saying anything at first. I then opened my mouth to make a crack about how the only way we could get the club to shut up like this was if there were a bunch of topless girls who walked in, but then Jaxson whistled, and the entire place went quiet, as if preparing for a funeral.
“Oh boy,” I muttered under my breath.
Jaxson shot me a glare, but I just looked down. The last thing I needed to start this meeting was a public rebuke from Jaxson; I had not woken up this goddamn early just to get berated before the entire club.
“I’ll get right to it,” Jaxson said, turning his attention back to the club. “The Cavaros are coming.”
No one reacted outwardly. That was a credit, in my mind, to Jaxson. He could be obnoxious as an older brother at times, to the point that I just found him downright punchable, but in moments like these, I was glad I wasn’t the president. His gruff exterior was something the rest of the club adopted with ease.
“We’ve received credible threats from the Cavaros that they intend to attack the Kinsmen, likely this base even, in the coming days.”
In that case, definitely not going to bring Allison here. Not—
Stay focused, Zeke. This is not the time to be thinking about what Allison is going to do. Just… forget that name.
“All of you need to have your guns on you at all times. I don’t care if you’re taking your mother to church or your father to breakfast, you keep that weapon locked and loaded on you, you hear me?”
Everyone nodded or said “yes sir.”
“In the meantime, Beast and a few of us are going to look deeper into this threat. It’s coming from somewhere, and we’re going to deal with it properly. But this is a dangerous time, men. I’m not going to bullshit you. If you have loved ones, keep them away from the club. At some point, we may do the opposite and bring everyone here for safe-keeping. But right now? Keep them away from the club and, really, yourselves if you’re able to.”
Though I understood the intent behind Jaxson’s words, as soon as I heard that, it was the justification I needed not to reach out to Allison. Yeah, it was a dick move using this as the excuse for not calling her… but it was now a legitimate excuse.
Well, as much as an excuse could be legitimate right now. It probably wasn’t really, but what else was I going to use to convince myself?
Jaxson ended by reminding everyone at the club to stay alert, contact him if anything was seen, and to go do what they needed to have a gun on them or keep their loved ones safe. Unlike most meetings, which ended with a fist pump or a roar or something that indicated excitement, this one was ended with the general shuffling of feet, some murmurs, and some groans.
As for me, I just leaned back against the bar, my smirk gone. I had told myself that this was the excuse I needed to push Allison away, but was this really what I wanted my life and my own dignity to come to? Did I really want to be the guy who used the attacks by some criminal organizations to break up with a girl? Hell, was it even a break up? You really put yourself in a hell of a spot here, Zeke. Good job, ya dummy.
Nothing, right now, seemed like it was going right.
16
Allison
“I’m not upset, this is casual. We both agreed.”
It was two days later, and for some reason, Zeke had not said a word to me in those two days.
We had gone one night from talking on the phone to just zero contact at all. The thing was, if he had just left me after ice cream and we hadn’t had a call, I think things would be much better. I would have a clear understanding things were over; I had made my attempt to make this more than it really was, and having failed, I could move forward with my life. I could spend time with Jenna and Marissa, maybe even find a new man, and call it a summer.
Instead, that hour long talk on the phone… it hadn’t been anything out of the blue. We didn’t have the energy for phone sex, though some serious flirting did occur. Instead, it just felt natural, like we were two people who could talk on the phone for an hour and not have it be weird.
And it wasn’t like he ended by saying that he wasn’t going to see me again or that he needed to take some time off. He had mentioned that “club business” was getting a little rough, but he didn’t elaborate, and he certainly didn’t make it sound like the kind of thing where something dangerous was about to happen. There was no part of the conversation that left me thinking that, on this evening, just a hair under forty-eight hours would have passed without communication.
And as much as I could say I wasn’t bummed about it…
No, you’re fine. You’re fine, Allison. You don’t need him. You don’t need him. Listen to yourself. You both agreed it would be casual and nothing more. Leave it at that.
If only it were that easy. If only it were as simple as just snapping your fingers and moving on.
If o
nly.
“Whatever,” Jenna said in the most dismissive tone possible. “You’ve been moping around. Marissa noticed it too.”
Marissa was currently in the kitchen trying to make us cookies. It was a late night, after going to the mall and shopping all day, plus stopping for mimosas, and the fatigue, instead of making it easier to forget about him, had just made it so I didn’t have the energy to not think about it. How fucked up was that? I was so tired that I couldn’t fight the very thing I had spent so much time thinking about.
Clearly, I needed to reach an even lower level of fatigue in order to not think about it.
“She has not,” I snapped. “Plus, it’s because I was overloaded with sex and am now in withdrawal.”
I actually genuinely believed that part. The affect he had on me was unbelievable. Being around him was nice and easy. Unlike my exes, I didn’t have to pretend around him. And I was definitely surprised when I so easily told him about my ex. That was something that I had trouble talking to Marissa and Jenna about, let alone a man I had met only within the last few weeks.
Then all that talk about us staying casual happened, and I realized I was leaning into him too much.
I supposed it was good I had had these days apart from him, to think on my own, because I definitely was getting a bit too attached. But now, I had been set straight and was ready to see him again—for one purpose only.
You’re cute when you lie to yourself like this. Don’t know why you pretend to do this when you’re aware of how much you’re lying like that.
“Sex withdrawal is a thing, I can believe that,” Jenna said. “But do you like him that way? I mean, what will you do when you leave?”
I was sitting here scrolling the photos I took of him on my camera as I spoke to Jenna, and the last question about what I would do when I left was especially painful. I had realized I needed to delete all of the photos I had of him and was trying to do that.
