The North Star | COMPLETED ✔️

Chapter 14 ~ Karma

^^ Bard above

Chapter 14

Zeke fed me like it was my last meal, then set me to work with a belly almost too full to function. All day I kept myself busy. Cleaning stations, grabbing materials, helping consult any clients that came in looking for work. I loved it. The busy work occupied my mind from every and anything. The only thing that could have made it better would have been actually tattooing. But with a botched hand and no license, that still wouldn't happen for a while.

It was a dream job for more reasons than I'd anticipated. The environment. The clients, Scarlet and Boe, Charlene and of course Zeke. They were a family, and not once had I felt out of place. They included me in all of it. It was easy. Too easy. Something was going to happen. I knew it like I knew the ink on my skin. It was too perfect. At any moment Karma would reign her ugly head and throw a pile of shit to darken it.

Zeke walked up to me just as I was finishing up cleaning Scarlet's area. "I was thinking about giving you a proper welcome."

I grinned. "I don't know what more you could possibly do. I can assure you, I've never felt more welcome in my life." My thoughts drifted to the club, and how it'd been in the beginning, but I quickly shook them away. That hadn't been real.

Maybe this isn't either.

Zeke clasped my shoulder. "Tomorrow's Sunday. Shop's closed. What do you say we have a get together tonight? Grill up the rest of those steaks and have some drinks." He smiled, brows lifted. "You up for it?"

"Sure." It wasn't even a question. He'd done so much for me, more than anyone ever had in my life, and I barely knew the man. If he'd asked me to stand on my head and sing the national anthem, I'd have god blessed America until my nose bled.

His smile widened. "You hear that?" he bellowed out to everyone in the room. "Party night! I expect you all to hang out and show Jessie here how we unwind."

"Oh, I've been waiting for this," Boe said, tone a tad too smooth for my liking.

I narrowed my eyes at him, then looked away as Scarlet punched the air in a move more sarcastic than excited.

"Oh, good. I've been wanting to introduce you to my kids," Charlene added. She heaved a sigh, smiled her warm, motherly smile, and I couldn't help but feel that same warmth fill my chest. "They don't come around as much anymore. They've gone feral."

"They got older, sniffles," Zeke said.

I bit back a smile as Charlene's face warmed to a shade of pink, and she tried and failed to glare at him.

Zeke's grin back at her was wolfish.

"About your living situation..." He turned back to me, tone more cautious. "I've been thinking on it all day, and the best solution is to put you out in the RV. There's a set of bunks out there that no one is using..."

"With Sasquatch?"

Zeke's mouth clamped shut, lips thinned, and he immediately cast an accusing gaze over his shoulder at Scarlet.

She didn't seem to notice, not with her sudden keen interest in the floor.

He shook his head. "My nephew lives in it. He likes to keep to himself. You most likely won't even notice him there."

I thought over the proposition. It was better than the bridge, and if what Zeke said was true, then I had no doubt I'd manage. Sharing a space with one person felt like nothing compared to the mass of strangers I'd been sleeping mere feet from for weeks. Hell, I'd managed prison, and when you got shacked up in a cell block with three other women, privacy was a thing of the past. I tilted my head and shrugged. "As long as he doesn't mind. I mean, I don't want to piss nobody off." I remembered what Scarlet had said, about him roaring whoever dared enter his little fortress right out of it.