CHAPTER2
ZEKE
I still thinkof her when I jerk off sometimes, and the second I’m done, guilt floods through me, replacing the high of orgasm. Breath pours through my nose, and I slump against the bathroom wall, tipping my chin to my chest as I do up my jeans.
Get over it, you pussy,I think.
A girl is sitting on the couch in the other room, my girlfriend. A kind and sweet girl who also has decided she’s waiting until marriage tomake love—as she calls it. I’m totally cool with it. There’s no pressure other than the pressure that builds up in my dick every time we make out, and then she puts a hand on my torso to stop. We always stop the exact moment I can tell she’s as turned on as I am, her cheeks flushed with arousal and shyness. I admire her willpower because I often have to excuse myself and punch one out before thinking straight again.
Jess is sexy in an innocent way. TheI wanna be the guy who turns her mind dirtykind of way. But tonight, like many other nights, my thoughts turn to Nova. A different kind of sexy. A girl whose mind is already dirty, she only needed a place to act it out. I was lucky enough to be that place.
“Zeke?” Jess’s voice barely carries through the solid door of my brother’s cabin. I’m staying here to feed his stupid horse after he called me out of nowhere and demanded I stay here till he got home. Typical Jethro, though. He’s not nearly as much of a controlling prick as my oldest brother, Alexander, but a close second.
“Yeah?” I answer Jess, washing my hands and shaking the sensations from the spots where thoughts of Nova still linger.
“You okay in there?” She asks, and I swing open the door to her standing right at the threshold. It startles me, and I curse under my breath.
She casts her gaze down, which is something she does that I hate. She never meets my eye when she asks me questions, and it reminds me of my mother talking to my father—the timid need to tiptoe around people. I’m not sure where Jess gets it, but I’m aware of where Mom does, so instinctively, it pisses me off. Anything that reminds me of my asshole, deadbeat father instinctively pisses me off.
I pull her thin frame into my body, wrapping her in a hug, and this is something about Jess I do like. The casual comfort she offers in this proximity. She gives great hugs.
“I’m fine,” I kiss her hair, and she hugs me tighter, and I think she’s shaking, but I’m not sure. “Are you okay?”
She makes a slight noise, and I can’t tell if it’s a yes or no, so I separate us and tip her chin up to force her eyes to mine.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I frown.
“For what?”
Her cheeks blaze red, and she doesn’t want to say it. She never wants to say the words. That she got me horny. Or turned on. She finds very clever ways around saying it.
“I respect your choice, Jess. Don’t be sorry.” It’s a bit gruffer than I mean it to be because while I respect her choice—I still have my biology to contend with. “It’s just sometimes the boner goes away, and sometimes it does not. It’s all good. I swear.”
Her soft bottom lip lowers like she might say something, so I press a soft kiss to her mouth. I’m much more relaxed about this odd relationship I’ve found myself in once I no longer have a raging hard-on.
“Don’t worry about it. No pressure.” I state more firmly with hands on her shoulders.
I guide her to the couch, and she settles against my chest as I prepare to do tonight what I did last night and the night before: watch a god-awful movie, then sleep next to a woman I can’t fuck. Even in my thoughts, I sound like such an asshole. But according to basically everyone in my life, that’s precisely what I am.
I have no clue why Jess is the only one who doesn’t think so.
The sun blazes through the cabin window, and I sip coffee while staring at my brother’s horse. The thing just stands at the fence and stares toward the road like she’s waiting for something. Her freedom, maybe? Maybe she’s wondering what life on the other side is like, or if she could jump the fence and run, she could find something more than rooting around for food and pacing.
Jess is in the bathroom, and I hear tires on the driveway, but I’m not facing the right direction to see who it is. Probably Jet home from Alberta, thank fucking God. He said he’d be back today or tomorrow, so maybe he left early.
A knock at the door startles me because Jet wouldn’t knock. He’d barge in here like a tank, just like he does into every room and situation he gets himself into.
I move across the room, my gut sinking lower and lower with each step, this unknown terror gripping me. I have no idea why dread saturates me at a simple knock at the door. Sure, I’m in the middle of nowhere, but there are still auction items to be picked up from Jet’s sale the other week; the vet maybe is coming to check out the horse again. There could be a hundred reasons someone is here, and none of them warrant sweaty palms and a thudding chest.
But the moment I pull open the door, it all comes crashing down on me.
It’s her.
Nova stands on the threshold, her blue eyes wide and posture rigid. Strands of blonde shadow half her face. She’s as breathtakingly beautiful as the first time she barged into my life.
“Zeke?” She says, like maybe it isn’t me. Perhaps I’m just some dude who vaguely resembles the guy she screwed on the desk of a mechanics shop a few months ago.
“What are you doing here?” I respond like an idiot, and I suddenly have no idea what to do with my hands. After some fumbling, they end up clasped behind my neck.