Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

Lust.

Adoration.

Maybe even some disbelief.

And even though Cage couldn’t see anything past his father’s tattooed chest, it was obvious what was happening. Eva had snapped a picture of his old man while he’d been in the middle of fucking her. No, not just fucking. That sorry old bastard had been in love.

Even way back then.

Jealousy swamped him. Not jealousy over Eva, even though she was one fine-ass female, but jealousy of his own father.

How many times had that asshole fucked up? How many people had he hurt along the way? And as punishment, God goes and gives him one of the most perfect women Cage had ever known? Beautiful, eighteen motherfucking years younger than him, with a heart so big, everyone around her could feel that love just pouring out.

Fair. Real fucking fair.

His asshole of a father had everything, and he had…

A whole lot of nothing.

Cursing, he jammed the photos back into the envelope, then inside his cut. After setting the photo back to rights on its place on the wall, and giving Frankie one last long look, he headed for the bathroom, suddenly acutely aware that Frankie had once walked these very same steps, had headed for the very same bathroom, pissed in this very same toilet, showered in the very shower behind him, slept in that bed…beside Eva…with Eva.

Fucker had been damned obsessed with her. Worse, even. He’d raped his own wife, forcing Eva to kill him, her own husband.

Flushing, Cage headed back into the bedroom and went straight for the door. No way was he sleeping in a room full of creepy memories and a ghost who may or may not have haunting capabilities, which may or may not include gouging eyes out and slashing skin and making dudes eat their own dick.

Yeah, he liked his intestines exactly where they were, thank you very much.

He’d sleep beside Tiny. Hell, he’d sleep on top of Tiny before he slept in here.

“You didn’t deserve her either, Frankie,” he muttered, closing the door, gladly leaving behind him his stepmother’s painful past and all the garbage that had followed in its wake, locked up tight inside that shrine Preacher was passing off as a room.

“And now you can rot in motherfuckin’ hell. All alone.”

Eleanor “Ellie” Tate was SO over the entire world. Over it. Done. Finished.

With her purse clutched tightly to her stomach, she marched down the steps of the very same high school she’d graduated from with honors, feeling utterly rejected.

So much for racism not being as obvious or prevalent in modern day society. How could she have never noticed it until now? She’d been born and raised in Miles City, population nonexistent, a predominately white community with the exception of the surrounding Native American reservations. The whites had stuck together, the Native Americans kept to themselves, and then there was her family. Her mother was white, her father was black, and she was a mutt.

Something she’d never thought twice about until right now. Until she’d left Miles City college bound, spent four years at MSU, another two interning while she worked on her master’s degree, only to return home hoping for a teaching job and getting shut out.

By her own principal, Mrs. Adele Lancaster.

She’d known for a fact there had been several positions open. It was the reason she’d come home. Her mom was sick, stage four breast cancer, and her dad was a wreck. She’d wanted to help out where she could and at the same time get a jump start on her career. Not wanting to waste time getting a connecting flight to Miles City, she’d gotten off the plane in Billings, rented a car, and drove straight to her job interview. She’d planned on surprising her parents, directly afterward, with good news.

So much for that.

I’m very sorry, Ms. Tate, but you’re just not what we have in mind at the moment.

So much for coming home again.

She’d gotten out of there before she’d let that bitter old bitch see how upset she was. But now that she was alone, marching aimlessly down Main Street, past her parked car with no destination, her tears began to fall.

She should have never come back.

Pausing on the sidewalk to wipe at her wet cheeks, she glanced up. Hank’s. The only bar in Miles City and also the only establishment in town she’d never been inside of. Other than one horrible incident in college where she’d ended up with her face in a toilet bowl, she didn’t drink.

She’d never been much fun, something her old friends Anabeth and Danny had loved reminding her of only every other second. Both were blonde, skinny, fun-loving, and perky, everything Ellie wasn’t.

Aside from her blue eyes, Ellie was the dark to their light. Her skin was the color of caramel, her long black curls were tight and unruly. And she was curvy, well aware that she was carrying around a few extra pounds, that her stomach wasn’t exactly flat, her breasts were annoyingly large, her hips more pronounced than she would like them to be.

But it wasn’t just in looks that she’d differed from her two closest friends.

Danny had never left Miles City. She’d ended up in community college, then got married and saddled with a kid, all before she turned twenty-five.

And if that weren’t bad enough, she’d married a probable homicidal maniac fourteen years older than her. Ripper, a biker in her father’s criminal motorcycle club whose face and body were so badly scarred, he was terrifying to look at.

After Ellie had found out about Danny’s disturbing marriage, she’d cut off all contact with Danny but continued to receive periodic unwanted updates every time Anabeth had come back to school after her summer visits to Miles City.

Speaking of Anabeth…

Despite Ellie and Anabeth rooming together at MSU, it hadn’t taken all that long for their friendship to become strained and then eventually nonexistent. Anabeth had taken to the college party scene, pledging for a sorority and becoming the top-notch bitch Ellie had always known she’d been deep down inside.

Now Anabeth was living in Westchester, New York, in a double-gated community, married to the son of a wealthy real estate developer and pregnant with her first child.

But Ellie didn’t regret her decisions to put her education and career first or to cut people like Danny and Anabeth out of her life, women with no aspirations except to marry men who would take care of them.

Whether it be on the back of a notorious criminal’s bike, or in the back of a wealthy, spoiled man’s limousine, they’d both sold out, given up their freedom to a pair of assholes and were doing nothing with their lives except birthing more asshole children.

They both were actively shitting on every single woman who’d worked tirelessly for years to give the female sex an equal shot in life, to obtain the vote and work side by side with men, to earn equal wages and be treated with the respect they deserved.

That would never be Ellie. She would never give up her dreams for a man, and she would never, ever end up with a man who wanted to control her life, who expected her to get on her back whenever he had a hard-on or pop out children whenever he ordered her to do so.

The loud and familiar rumbling of motorcycles snapped her out of her thoughts. Speaking of Danny…

Six men, all riding Harleys and wearing their leather Hell’s Horsemen vests, pulled up to one of the town’s few red lights and came to a stop.

She immediately recognized Deuce, Danny’s father, leading the party with a little blonde girl on the back of his bike, her arms wrapped around him. Ivy, Ellie mused, had grown quite a bit since she’d last seen her. How old was she now? Eight? Nine? Deuce must have just picked her up from school. Ellie thought back to her younger years, remembering Danny on the back of Deuce’s bike, holding tight to her father, waving happily at Ellie and Anabeth as he dropped her off at school. Anabeth had been awestruck by the motorcycles, but not Ellie. She’d been terrified and to this day had only once been on the back of a bike.

Looking over the remaining five men, Ellie realized she recognized them all: Mick, Bucket, Tap, Jase, and Dirty.

No Cage. Ellie thanked God for small favors. Cage West had been one of her three high school mistakes, occurring the summer after junior year when she’d let her hormones get the better of her.

All six of them glanced her way. Bucket’s lips split into a greasy smile and Deuce’s eyebrows shot up. Well, obviously they would recognize the only mixed-race female who’d ever lived in Miles City.

Then the light turned green, their engines revved, Deuce gave her a two-finger salute and a genuine, dimpled smile, and like a well-oiled machine, each of them in sync with the other, all six of them shot off down the street not once straying from formation.

She stared after them, disgusted, wondering why the mayor allowed a gang of bikers to run this town, had never lifted a finger to close their operations down, get them arrested, blown up their clubhouse, anything.

Greed. It all came down to greed.

This town represented everything she hated. If her parents hadn’t needed her, never again would she set foot in Miles City.

“Ellie?”

She glanced to her right, at the man walking toward her, and her jaw dropped.

“Daniel?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, making sure it was really Daniel Mooresville, a once-upon-a-time scrawny teenager with glasses and horrible acne.

That wasn’t the case anymore. Daniel had done plenty of growing up while Ellie had been away. The good kind. Clear skin, rim-free sky-blue eyes, short sandy-blond hair, and an ungodly amount of muscles stopped in front of her and gave her a wide smile.