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“Hey, what’s up?” the voice says, and I clutch the doorframe to keep me upright.
“Hey, Jet. How’s Cade?” Zeke asks.
A woman’s voice rings out in the background. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m standing in your apartment right now.” Zeke drums his fingers on the counter.
“Uh, okay.” Jet pauses. “Why?”
“You remember that girl I hooked up with a few months ago?” Zeke says, and my face flares. I glare at Zeke like he’s nuts.
“The girl who ghosted you and rewired your brain?” Jet asks, and Zeke doesn’t even flinch. My heart stutters at the fact that my presence was so disrupting to him, and more so that his entire family knows about it.
Zeke’s eyes flicker in my direction for half a second. “That’d be the one. Well, she’s back in town. She’s here with me right now, actually.”
There’s a long silence on the phone, but Zeke seems completely chill about it. Like he’s used to the silence. For me, the air gets thicker and hotter with every passing second.
“That’s unexpected.” Jet’s voice doesn’t change at all, like the unexpected is to be expected around here.
“I told her she could live in your place.” Zeke cups the back of his neck and tilts his head to stretch.
“What’s going on? Why does she need to live in my place?” Jet’s voice dips even lower, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ground rumbled at his register.
“Because she’s kinda having my baby and has nowhere else to go.” Zeke draws the words out, each one taking up space in the room and filling with the unease we’re both feeling. The woman gasps, loud enough to kick-start my muscles, and I startle.
“What?” she shrieks, and Zeke moves the phone further from his face.
Another long silence, and then a low growl. “For fuck’s sake, Ezekiel.”
Zeke’s gaze catches mine when his brother says his full name. He’s waiting for something—a reaction, maybe. It’s an odd name, for sure. Biblical. So is Tabitha, actually. And Jethro. My eyebrows lower as I make the connections. Six kids, biblical names. Growing up in the South, this God connection is not a foreign concept, but Zeke seems to expect judgment of some kind from me.
“So, can you stay at the cabin for a bit?” Zeke finally asks, shifting away from me to look down the long hall.
“Of course, I can. Yes. I’ll stay at the cabin. Is she okay?” The flutter in my stomach grows at the sudden soft kindness in his low timbre. “Does she need anything else?”
“To be saved from Del and Tabby when they find out?” Zeke laughs, which gets a chuckle from the other end of the line.
“They are going to be a handful. What about Jess? How’s she taking it?”
My shame forces all the air from my body, and I hunch my shoulders to try to keep it out. Zeke clears his throat.
“I haven’t told her yet. I’m going to, though. Today.”
“She deserves to know,” Cade says. I snap my gaze up, and Zeke’s looking at me, his gaze so clouded and torn, it breaks my heart. I fight the urge to walk right back to my van and disappear again. I’m consumed by the risks—not just bringing my bullshit to his life, but the fact that he might lose things and people in his own life simply because I’m here.
“Am I on speaker?” Jet asks, and Zeke says yes. There’s another long silence, and the energy flowing through me pulses with each second. I’m not sure what I expect, but Zeke’s brother’s soft sigh is like a soothing wave before he speaks. “Hey, girl who changed my brother. Make yourself at home, okay? And hide from our sisters. They’re going to turn themselves inside out over this.”
Regret stirs up my need to run again, and I fight to keep hold of the calm I managed to grip. I met one of his sisters. She was kind. Not like what I’m used to.
Zeke can sense my fear, and he starts laughing. “She’s never going to be able to hide from them here, dumbass. Gotta go.”
“Do the right thing, Zeke,” Jet says, and Zeke hangs up.
“Your family is…” I start, but I’m not sure where to go with that. They seem to be highly in tune with each other, knowing one another deeply. No levels of communication seem off-limits between them.
“My family is a fucking nightmare, but they are the most loyal bunch of assholes you’ll ever meet.” He grips the edge of the counter and shrugs. “My sister Pris will be a bitch to you because she’s a bitch to everyone. Tabby and Del will wait on you hand and foot, which will be obnoxious. Xan will psychoanalyze you, and Jet will protect you from anything, even yourself sometimes, and especially when you never asked him to.”
“And you?” I ask. “What do you do?”
