Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

It was the first time he’d seen a man die at the hands of another. He’d lived on the city streets long enough to have seen people die. Homeless people succumbing to the weather, gunshot victims, drug users OD’ing.

But this was the first time he’d seen a man kill another man…using his own two hands. Deuce first beat the asshole half to death, then snapped his neck.

If Dirty could have, he would have run from Deuce. Compared to him, tall but scrawny, Deuce was the size of a fucking superhero. But after Deuce had pulled the guy off him, all he’d been able to manage was a halfhearted slump to the ground. Where he stayed until Deuce had walked over to him, yanked his pants up, lifted him up and over his shoulder, and headed back down the alleyway during which Dirty passed out from either blood loss or fear, or quite possibly both.

The rest was fucking history. Barely. If one could call his life “history.” The first half of it was more like a series of unlucky events all piled on top of one another, and the second half was just a struggle.

Every day he struggled. He struggled with remembering, he struggled with forgetting, he struggled with all the fucked-up, perverted bullshit that went round and round his head, knowing that he shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts, knowing those thoughts weren’t his own but instead the thoughts of the motherfuckers who’d made him this way, but also helpless to turn them off…helpless to stop…to stop what he did to make the images, the whispers, the ugly, depraved urges that caused him to do ugly, depraved things…JUST FUCKING STOP.

Once again in town, Dirty pulled off to the side of the road and cut his engine. Toeing his kickstand down, he swung his leg over his bike and stood up straight. While looking around the dark and quiet street he lived on, he reached into his cut and pulled out his smokes.

Miles City had been perfect. The polar opposite of New York City and all the nightmares that place held inside of it. He could breathe here most of the time, and ride for hours, just him and the road.

A shrill, terror-filled scream followed by the distinctive thump/slap of fist meeting flesh broke the small-town silence, tearing through the empty streets, emptying into the surrounding mountains, and Dirty felt his skin pebble with goose bumps.

Another scream, this one garbled, more choked than the first, then another pounding of flesh, and then…silence.

Dirty had a well-practiced poker face. Aside from Deuce, no one, not one motherfucker out there, could see through his bullshit. He could throw down with the best of his brothers, beat a motherfucker senseless, kill him without a second thought, his stare as coldhearted as the rest. He’d done deplorable things to a shit ton of people, men and women alike, and never once did he so much as bat a fucking eyelash at his actions.

Until he was alone. Because when he was alone he could shake, he could tremble, he could scream and yell, he could punch the walls, he could punch himself.

Alone, he could cry. Alone, he could let the fear out and, Jesus fuck, there was so much fear. He lived and breathed fear…every day, every night, all the motherfucking time.

It was fear ruling him that had made him what he’d become. That had turned him into the sort of monster he’d most hated. And it was all that fear inside of him, coursing through his veins, pounding in his heart, making him sweat even more fear.

It was fear that had him tossing his cigarette aside, fear that had him running down the desolate sidewalk, fear that had him turning down a dimly lit alleyway. It was fear that had him skidding to a stop, taking in the scene in front of him.

And it was fear that had him pulling his piece and, with shaking hands, trying to blow a hole straight through someone else’s nightmare, a nightmare that was a fuck of a lot similar to one of his own.

The bullet cracked through the air. Missing his target, Dirty tried again, only this time the asshole had been alerted to his presence and was on his feet, pulling up his pants as he ran in the opposite direction, hooked a quick right, and was gone before the second bullet had left the chamber.

Dirty lowered his shaking hand, his entire body trembling, his mind a mess of all-consuming scrambled adaptations of both the past and present.

That wasn’t him lying on the street, that wasn’t him with his pants around his ankles, bleeding, crying, begging.

He tried to breathe. In and out, slowly, faster, slow again. NOTHING WAS WORKING.

That wasn’t fucking him, it wasn’t, it wasn’t—

“D-dirt-ty…?”

The raspy, garbled, distinctly feminine-sounding mutation of his name caused his head to swivel left and his eyes landed on the bloodied heap of quivering flesh that lay no more than fifteen feet from him.

Dirty blinked. He blinked and he breathed and his eyes refocused.

Shit.

Shit, he knew her. Sort of. She was…Emma? Erin? Ella?

Ellie. Ellie the mulatto hottie. Friends with Danny from way back when.

“P-p-please…” she continued and her arm moved, her fingers extended. She reached for him.

He could do this. He just couldn’t think about what he was doing while he was doing it. But he could do it. He had to do it.

Danny was the closest thing to a friend he’d ever had, the only woman who willingly hung around him, and this was her friend. What the fuck would he do if it were Danny lying half-naked on the street, badly beaten?

He moved forward, jogging quickly toward her, bent down beside her, and froze just before his hands could come in contact with her body.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely, trying to keep himself calm. “Anything broken?”

She blinked up at him through swollen eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Just…m-my head…hurts.”

“Fuck,” he muttered as he retracted his hands, reached inside his cut, and pulled out his cell phone. “I got you covered, I’m calling the cavalry.”

“No!” she cried as her arm shot out and her hand gripped his wrist. The feel of her, her tight grip on him, her skin on his skin, caused a nauseating ripple effect throughout his body, ending with a violent shiver.

“No police,” she whispered, her grip loosening as the last of her strength faded. “Please…no one…nobody…can know.”

Dirty pressed his lips together. He hadn’t been talking about the boys in blue, he didn’t roll that way. But Ellie had said it first. No police, huh? He understood “no cops,” it was a way of life for him and his brothers, the unspoken code that anything that needed handling, they would take care of it themselves.

But a good girl like Ellie? Why the fuck not?

Still not wanting to touch her, he contemplated calling Deuce for help until Ellie’s eyelids began to flutter closed. He let loose a large breath of relief. She was out. He could handle her unconscious. Gently, he rolled her onto her back and tried as best he could to pull up her pants. Then, with the trepidation of a grown man handling a baby for the very first time, he lifted her up into his arms, cradled her against his chest, and headed out of the alleyway.

Unblinking, I stared at the desktop monitor in front of me, at the e-mail attachment I’d just opened, and skimmed over the title:

“Animal Rights Activists Protest the Excessive Use of Leather at Biker Rally in Los Angeles.”

Shaking my head, I snorted softly. You could take the girl out of the motorcycle club, but she’ll never outrun those damn Harley pipes. It wasn’t just ZZ that was a constant reminder, it was the loud yet sexy rumble of every passing motorcycle. My world always seemed to stop as the beautiful machine whooshed through my life, no matter what I was doing—eating, talking, immersed in my smart phone—I always paused to watch as it flew by, and stared as it disappeared. But unlike everybody else, who might give a quick glance and then immediately go back to what they’d been doing, unaware that they’d just witnessed the ultimate freedom, a way to fly without wings, I would stare long after the bike had vanished, remembering what it felt like to be on the back of a bike, holding tight to a man.

Wishing, aching, wanting to be somewhere else, someone else. And yet, at the same time, hating myself because I knew, deep down, I’d never truly belonged in that life.

Sighing, I slumped down in my desk chair, closed my eyes, and tried to remind myself that I’d dodged a bullet. That if I hadn’t had my heart broken at such a young age, who knows how I would have ended up. In all likelihood, I’d be a Hell’s Horsemen club whore just like my mother had been. As it was, I was already the next best thing.

True, ZZ no longer wore his cut. He always ditched his bike before he got back in town, something that made me infinitely curious about what he was doing when he was away, why he needed to stay so inconspicuous, and he didn’t talk about the club other than short, clipped statements regarding Deuce. But he was still ZZ. A face, a name, a man I associated with my childhood, with my mother and all her pain.

“Jeez, Teg, you look like you just swallowed a dick.”

My eyes flew open and met with the denim-clad curvy backside that had propped itself on the corner of my desk.

“’Sup girl.”

Hayley was the closest thing I had to a best friend. We met my junior year in college during a rally protesting cosmetic testing on animals, and had become inseparable. We didn’t hang out as much as we used to anymore, mostly because she’d gotten married recently, but we still managed to get together at least once a week.