Madeline Sheehan - Unbeautifully

Being so young and new to the club and the life, moving up in the ranks so quickly was virtually unheard of. But Ripper was special and everyone knew it. He always had a smile on his face, a joke on the tip of his tongue. He was good with people, could talk nearly anyone into anything just by flashing a grin.

“Hey there, Ripper!” Apple said happily. “Danny was just tellin’ us that she talked to Hannah last week. Tell us what else she said, Danny girl.”

I stopped retreating and turned slowly back around. Ripper’s deep blue gaze found mine.

He had his glass eye in today, a very realistic copy of the one that had been painfully taken from him, along with his fun-loving personality, by the same man who’d almost ruined my father’s relationship with Eva. Frankie.

But Ripper didn’t care about how he looked, unless…

I glanced back at Anabeth.

Unless he was trying to impress someone.

I pushed my sunglasses up over my head. “Ripper,” I greeted him evenly.

We stared at each other.

Whore, I thought bitterly.

His expression went cold. Don’t start, Danny, his face said.

My fists clenched. I hated our silent conversations, but since neither of us could be civil to each other, silent was the only form of communication we had. And even silent we couldn’t keep our emotions from unraveling.

“Ripper’s going to take me for a ride tonight!” Anabeth said excitedly.

I glared at him. I just bet you are.

He glared back. What’s wrong, baby? ZZ not givin’ you the kinda ride you need?

Shut. Up.

He raised an eyebrow. Hittin’ a nerve, huh?

Not. Anabeth, I begged him with my eyes. Please. Not. My. Friends.

Ripper’s scar-slashed mouth twisted into a mocking smirk. Oh, so now there are rules? You can fuck my friends but I can’t fuck yours? Don’t exactly seem fair, baby.

Ripper kept his gaze on me while he slid his arm around Anabeth’s shoulders and began tracing her collarbone with the tip of his finger.

“’Bout that ride, beautiful girl, where you wanna go?”

Anabeth, hearing the words “beautiful girl” in reference to her, beamed up at him.

Me, hearing the words “beautiful girl” come out of Ripper’s mouth directed at anyone who wasn’t me, had my insides roiling. Seeing this, Ripper looked triumphant.

What’s wrong, Danny? You look upset. Was it somethin’ I said?

I covered my mouth with my hand and tried to stay calm. Looking anywhere but at Ripper, I caught eyes with Kajika, a young Native American woman from a nearby Indian reservation who Cox and Kami had employed as their nanny.

She was beautiful, with long black hair and unforgettable, exaggerated features. Her eyes, nearly black and framed with thick, lush lashes, were all too knowing for my comfort.

Smiling kindly at me, she only made my already combative emotions that much worse. She could see right through me, everything I tried to hide. I hated being around her. She made me doubt every decision I’d made during the past three years. With just one damn look.

“’Scuse me,” ZZ said, sidling up next to me and taking my hand in his. “I need my girl.”

As Ripper stiffened, his arm falling away from Anabeth, I glimpsed the pain he hid beneath the anger.

Swallowing hard, I turned away from the group and let ZZ lead me out into the center of the lawn, where he pulled me into a bear hug.

“Don’t hate me,” he whispered. I glanced up at him, confused.

“What? Why would I hate you?”

He grinned, then dropped to his knees.

Correction. He dropped down on one knee. Heart pounding, not breathing, I stared down at ZZ, watching as he pulled a small black box out of his leathers. He looked up at me.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he said softly. “The sweetest and the kindest, too. You make me so fuckin’ happy, baby, you make life so fuckin’ good. So I’m askin’ you if you’ll marry me and let me spend the rest of my life tryin’ to do the same for you.”

He flipped the box open and revealed the biggest diamond ring I had ever seen.

“Oh…my…god,” I whispered hoarsely, putting a shaking, sweating hand over my heart. I realized then that the yard had gone silent. Someone had shut the music off and all conversation had ceased.

I took a quick look around the yard. Everyone was grinning, smiling, and staring right at me.

This was bad. Very, very bad.

“Baby girl!” My head jerked at the sound of my father’s voice.

“You say the fuckin’ word and I will throw that asshole into next fuckin’ week! Fact, whether you say yes or no, I’m still gonna beat the fuckin’ shit outta him!”

Eva, who’d joined him, planted her palms in his stomach and playfully shoved at him. He captured her around her neck and pulled her up against him, all the while smiling at me.

ZZ must have already asked him. There was no way my father would have appreciated this being sprung on him. My father was the sort of man who had to mentally prepare himself for things like his daughter being proposed to.

Which meant…my father was A-OK with me marrying ZZ.

In fact, looking around at all the happy faces, everyone was A-OK with me marrying ZZ.

More than okay. Elated, really.

Everyone except one.

I zeroed in on Ripper, whose sun-kissed skin had gone an interesting shade of green.

Our gazes locked.

And for a moment…I thought I saw the man I loved.

• • •

Ripper stared at Danny. Stared at ZZ kneeling on the grass in front of her, asking her to marry him.

He was going to flip his shit.

These assholes all around him didn’t realize it, but they were about to get sprayed with blood, bone, and brain when his head decided to explode, which was in about five motherfucking seconds.

Five…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One…

Fuck him.

Married.

ZZ was asking Danny to marry him.

Ah, fuck. What was happening to him? Everything inside of him suddenly felt all fucked-up and wrong. His heart started beating faster and his skin began to tingle irritably. The air around him grew thick, stuffy, making it hard to breathe. He felt lightheaded, his nose stung, and his stomach clenched painfully.

Before he began shredding his own body to pieces, just to make all these damn uncomfortable and unwanted feelings go away, he grabbed Anabeth and yanked her up against him. She responded immediately and curled seductively around his body.

Feeling like ten times an asshole, he kept his gaze on Danny as he groped Anabeth’s ass.

Danny’s beautiful blue eyes filled with pain and her gaze dropped back to ZZ.

He stopped breathing. She was going to say yes.

Say something, his brain screamed. STOP HER!

FUCKING STOP HER!

But he didn’t.

He never did.

Because he was a useless pussy, who would never fucking deserve her.

So he just stood there like an asshole, manhandling her friend, and watching in horrified fascination as her lips parted and—

FUCK THIS SHIT.

Fuck the club and the code, and fuck brotherhood.

He would give it all up for her. For his woman. Because she sure as shit was his, and he’d go to hell and back ten times over before he lost her forever.

He shoved Anabeth aside, his right foot moved, and…

“DANNY!” he bellowed. “BABY!”

Three years earlier…

Prom night. The culmination of thirteen years of school was ending with prom night.

All my preparing and primping, driving four towns over with Kami just to find the perfect pink dress and matching shoes, two hours at the salon getting my hair, nails, and makeup done and…

It all seemed so…anticlimactic.

But maybe that’s because I was on the outside looking in.

Because I could no longer relate to the laughing, dancing, happy people inside the gymnasium.

Whereas everything inside this building, my high school, had once seemed so important, my grades, my friends, homecoming, dance committees, cheerleading, and prom…had once been my entire world, they weren’t anymore. Hadn’t been since…

“He made me watch him rape her!” my father roared. “Do you fuckin’ get that? I was chained to a fuckin’ radiator, watchin’ my woman gettin’ slammed by a fuckin’ psychopath, and I couldn’t do shit about it!”

I squeezed my eyes shut, gritting my teeth through the ugly memory.

“How’d they take him down?” Tap asked.

“They didn’t,” the FBI agent said. “The woman did. Nearly severed his head clean off with a dagger. She came walking out of the room holding it, half naked and covered in blood.”

“She’s okay, Prez,” Mick said. “She’s alive.”

“She’s alive,” my father replied. “But I can tell you right fuckin’ now, she sure as shit ain’t okay.”

My father had been right; his woman wasn’t okay. Eva had seemed okay at first, she was quieter, she cried a lot, then they’d left for New York to bury Frankie. After that, she stopped talking altogether, stopped eating, showering. She spent most of her time in bed, catatonic, staring at nothing. My father wasn’t any better. Most days, he would sit on the floor next to the bed, his head in his hands, not talking, not doing much of anything aside from occasionally pacing the room, during which he did a lot of redecorating the walls with his fists.