Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

“Who gives two fucks about the fat black chick?” Bucket said around a mouthful of smoke. “We need this fuckin’ deal to go down easy. We got too much cash ridin’ on this shit and if anyone, the Feds, the ATF, anyone gets wind of what’s about to go down here, we are fuckin’ through. We can all kiss this club good-fuckin’-bye. Let’s cut our fuckin’ losses and just give ’im the bitch.”

Dirty didn’t think, he just reacted, and he wasn’t even too sure as to what he’d actually done. One minute he was listening to Bucket run his mouth, and the next everyone was shouting and he was hauled off Bucket, his fists still swinging. Bucket jumped to his feet and Dirty tried to lunge for him again.

Deuce slammed him backward into the wall and held him there.

“What the fuck, brother!” Bucket yelled. “What the fuck I do to you?”

“First off,” Deuce yelled, pointing at Bucket. “Watch your fuckin’ mouth. Been knowin’ Ellie her whole damn life. She’s Danny’s friend and no one’s givin’ her to Mooresville if I can help it!”

Then Deuce turned back to him. “Second,” he yelled. “You keep whatever bullshit you got goin’ on inside that bald fuckin’ head of yours REELED THE FUCK IN! We’re discussin’ business, you dumb motherfucker. You wanna knock heads, you do it after the fuckin’ meetin’. You fuckin’ feel me?”

He nodded.

Deuce leaned in. “You got somethin’ you need to tell me? Somethin’ like why the fuck you ain’t got no hair and don’t smell like my fuckin’ toilet after Cage comes to visit?”

Dirty didn’t respond and the moment Deuce figured out he wasn’t going to, the man nodded once and released him.

“Everyone sit the fuck down!” he shouted and everyone sat right the fuck down.

Glaring at everyone in the room, Deuce shook his head in disgust. “Don’t see how,” he muttered. “I’m always the voice of fuckin’ reason in this circus.”

• • •

“Ellie?” Danny asked, pausing in rummaging through her clubroom closet. “I didn’t want to ask in front of everyone, but how did you get those bruises? Are you the reason we’re on lockdown?”

Ellie nodded, but was unsure of what she should or shouldn’t tell Danny. She didn’t know the ins and outs of the MC, and honestly did not want to make any more waves than she already had.

Danny pursed her lips together. “Okay,” she said softly. “I get it. I’ll get the scoop from Ripper, but I’m here if you need to talk, okay?”

Ellie stared at her old friend who, unfairly enough, didn’t look a day over twenty-two. If there wasn’t an adorable little blonde girl sitting on the bed right next to her, who looked like yet another drop-dead gorgeous direct descendant of Deuce, Ellie would have never guessed Danny had been pregnant.

“You look great,” Ellie said. “And your daughter is beautiful.”

Danny’s eyes found her daughter and her lips split into a smile. “Thank you,” she said.

Ellie suddenly felt very uncomfortable, like she was intruding on a private moment, one she couldn’t even relate to. She had experienced moments like this with her own parents, catching her mother or father watching her, a small smile on their face, lost in thought.

But she’d never witnessed it as an outsider, a third party, watching a mother gaze at her daughter, the look in Danny’s eyes telling Ellie that this little girl was Danny’s whole world.

She felt inexplicably lonely too. She missed her parents, yes, but watching this, it felt like more than that. Thirty wasn’t right around the corner but it was close enough, and what did she have to show for it? No husband, no child, not even a boyfriend. She had a career that wasn’t going anywhere and a crazy chief of police after her, and now she was locked up inside a criminal motorcycle gang’s clubhouse for God only knew how long.

And this was her life?

Shame enveloped her for ridiculing Danny when she’d heard of her marriage to Ripper, of her pregnancy, of never leaving Miles City, for settling.

But Danny hadn’t settled at all. Danny was happy and whereas she’d thought she’d been, Ellie now knew that she was not.

“Speaking of beautiful,” Danny murmured, looking away from Harley. “Dirty is…just…oh my God.”

Ellie nodded. “I know,” she said. “I never knew he was so…” She trailed off, looking for the right word.

“Beautiful?” Danny suggested, raising an eyebrow.

Yes. Beautiful just about covered it. Dirty was, for lack of a better description, symmetrically flawless. Not only that, he was the very definition of masculine beauty. His forehead was broad, his cheekbones defined, his brow and chin both prominent, and his jaw chiseled to perfection.

Yet, at the same time there was this…almost innocent aspect to him. Something that seemed untouchable despite his age. The combination of the two, the masculine beauty and that innocence, were what made the man breathtaking.

The shower and shave hadn’t hurt either.

The sound of screaming had Ellie jumping off the bed in a panic. “What’s happening?” she cried, looking toward the closed door.

Danny let out a long-suffering sigh and shook her head.

“That’s Tegen!” Harley exclaimed from her seat on the bed. “She yells alllllll the time!”

Ellie glanced over at Danny, who shrugged in response. “She’s right. Tegen yells all the time and right now she’s extremely mad at my father and my brother…whatever…they are all crazy.”

Danny turned back to the closet, then suddenly spun back around. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I almost forgot! Apparently ZZ and Tegen have been living together in San Francisco! We’re like one big happy family!”

It took Ellie a minute to figure out Danny wasn’t actually happy or excited about this information but instead was overdoing it on the sarcasm.

“Are you actually upset about it?” Ellie asked. “Because you chose Ripper, right?”

Sighing, Danny sat down on the bed and dropped her hands into her lap. “This is going to sound weird, but it’s not that I’m upset. I mean, I was worried about him for a long time and all this time my dad knew where he was and with Tegen? Ugh. Seriously, it’s just gross. I mean, I slept with Ripper, then ZZ, and Cage slept with Tegen and then Tegen slept with ZZ, and it’s sort of like we all slept together.” Danny wrinkled up her nose and shuddered. “It’s just skeezy, you know?”

Ellie started laughing. “I think you’re seriously overthinking this.”

“I know,” Danny said, sighing. “But he left because of me…and now he’s living with Tegen? I mean, he must be miserable.”

Ellie laughed even harder. She didn’t know Tegen particularly well; the girl had been two grades below her, but the few encounters she’d had with her, she had to agree, the girl was very volatile.

“So, her and Cage now, huh?” she asked. “Well, that’s…interesting.”

Danny rolled her eyes. “Oh God, who knows. They are a hot mess together. He screwed her over a long time ago, then she comes back from California after D got shot, looking like a dirty hippie, and suddenly Cage is all, ‘Oh, she’s hot, blah, blah, blah,’ but Tegen’s all, ‘Don’t touch me or I’ll kill you,’ and ever since then every time they are in the same room together, all hell breaks loose.”

Ellie wrinkled up her nose. “Sounds fun.”

“Yeah. Tons. Personally, I think they’re both in love with the other. I mean, Cage has never had a serious girlfriend, ever. He doesn’t have any interest in any female other than for…” Danny trailed off and glanced at her daughter. “Other than you-know-what,” she said in a whisper.

“And I wish they would just beat the crap out of each other, kiss and make up, and be done with it, but whatever.”

Danny shrugged again and got to her feet. “Welcome to the insane asylum,” she said, and went back to rifling through her closet.

That motherfucker.

That stupid motherfucker.

Looks like you turned out just like your fuckin’ mom after all.

I was livid. Fucking furious. I was past the point of angry, past the point of anything resembling sanity. What was wrong with me? First I’d come home and did what I’d promised myself FOR YEARS to never do again. Then I’d stupidly come to the club and DID IT AGAIN, then I’d actually agreed to go on a FUCKING DATE with that asshole, and THEN I came back to the club with him.

“What is wrong with me?” I screamed at my reflection in the mirror hanging over Cage’s dresser, where behind me I could see his bed. His stupid, fucking, god-awful bed. The bed he’d destroyed me in.

Wait. What the…?

I squinted at the mirror and my eyes went wide. Whipping around, screaming at the top of my lungs, I lunged for the unmade bed, for the red lacy thong lying dead center. Grabbing it, I clutched it with both hands and pulled as hard as I could. The chintzy lace gave and I sent the two pieces of fabric flying across the room.

Breathing heavily, my heart pounding through my chest, I surveyed the room.

Posters of huge-breasted, mostly naked women straddling motorcycles lined the walls, a box of condoms sat atop the nightstand, and condom wrappers littered the floor beside his bed.

How many had come before me? How many fucking whores had he fucked in that bed before he’d taken away the only thing that I’d had to give him and he hadn’t even cared?

And how many women had come after me?

How many more women were still to come?

“Stupid!” I screamed. “You stupid, stupid, stupid bitch!”

I snatched the box of condoms off the table and whipped them across the room. Then I grabbed for the bedcovers and the pillows and I did the same. After that, I couldn’t stop; everything I came into contact with was instantly torn apart, shredded, or smashed. I ripped posters off the wall, yanked drawers out of the dresser, sent clothing flying in all directions, and then when there was nothing left to destroy, I grabbed a gun from Cage’s sock drawer, was about to send it flying into the rectangular mirror on the wall, when the door burst open.