Unattainable (32 page)

“
Not Cage!” he shouted,
shaking me. “Where the fuck is ZZ?”

My eyes filled. “I don’t know,” I
whispered. “He just left…he shot him and left.”

“
Deuce,” Eva said quietly,
appearing beside us. “Let her go.”

Deuce ignored her and continued to
glare down at me. “This is your fuckin’ fault, you stupid fuckin’
bitch, and if my kid dies in there, you’re fuckin’ next, you feel
me?”

My stomach seized and my tears spilled
over.

“
Let her go!” my mother
cried.

“
Dammit!” Eva yelled,
trying to pry Deuce off of me. “You’re hurting her! Let her
go!”

“
Is there a problem here?”
Both detectives had joined the fray and were both frowning heavily
at Deuce.

“
You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?”
he barked in their direction. “My kid is who the fuck knows where
with holes in him and you pantsuit-wearin’ motherfucks are askin’
me if there’s a motherfuckin’ problem?”

Again, the two detectives glanced at
each other.

“
Cole West,” the male
said, his voice flat, his expression clearly repulsed.

“
Yeah,” he snarled. “You
wanna fuckin’ autograph?”

“
Either you release Ms.
Matthews,” the female warned, “or I will arrest you for
assault.”

“
Baby,” Eva said softly,
running her hand up his arm and gripping his bicep. “This isn’t
Tegen’s fault and even if it was, this isn’t helping Cage at
all.”

Nostrils flaring, glaring down at me,
Deuce yanked me roughly forward and up onto my tiptoes.

“
Get the fuck outta this
hospital,” he gritted out. “Stay the fuck away from my boy and my
fuckin’ club. I see you, Tegen, I fuckin’ so much as smell you, I
will crack your fuckin’ skull wide open.”

With a hard shove, he sent me stumbling
sideways into my mother.

“
Let’s go,” she whispered
loudly, gripping tightly to my middle. “Right now,
baby.”

“
Don’t leave town, Ms.
Matthews,” the male detective called out.

Shaking, I turned my body into my
mother and let her guide me toward the elevators.

“
I mean it, D,” Deuce
bellowed from behind us. “I see her anywhere near—”

My mother skidded to a stop and whirled
around. “You’ll never see her again!” she spat angrily. “You’ll
never see me or my kids again!

“
And if this is anyone’s
fault,” she continued. “It’s mine for bringing an innocent little
girl around a criminal motorcycle club full of self-important
assholes who think with their dicks and their guns instead of their
brains!”

On our way to the elevators, we passed
by Danny, Ripper, Cox, and Jase, and I turned back toward my
mother, refusing to meet their eyes.

“
D!” Jase called
out.

My mother picked up her
pace.

“
D, what the
fuck!”

Stopping again, she spun around to face
Jase as he quickly approached us, and pointed her index finger at
him. “Don’t say a fucking word,” she hissed. “I’m not married to
you, I don’t share a child with you, I have absolutely nothing in
this world tying me to you.”

Jase’s eyes widened. “But you said we
could talk.”

“
I said that before my
daughter was forced to experience yet another violent result of
your club, and then publicly humiliated and shunned by the only
family she’s ever had because of it!”

“
D,” he whispered, raising
his arm and holding out his hand. “Don’t do this.”

Setting me aside, my mother stepped
forward and slapped Jase’s hand away.

“
Come near me again,” she
spat, her features twisting with disgust and hatred. “And I will
kill you.”

Find what you love and let it kill
you.

—
Charles Bukowski

One year later…

Time passes differently when you’re
stuck in emotional limbo. It’s slower. Hours go by at a snail’s
pace, your feet drag through the days, the weeks; years take
forever to come and go. You don’t see things as they are but
instead you see them as the way you feel. Things are dark, heavy,
even the air feels weighted down. People aren’t smiling at you,
they’re whispering about you, they’re laughing.

Not even the sunniest day can overcome
the shield of gray skies you’ve built around yourself.

I spent nearly all my life stuck inside
an emotional limbo of my own making, constantly waiting for my life
to begin, yet completely unaware that with each passing year, I’d
remained cemented in the same frame of mind, unable to break free
from my own binds.

But once you’ve broken free, the world
speeds back up, the days fly by too fast and the nights even
faster. You see things differently, in color as opposed to
Technicolor. The sun begins to peek out from behind the clouds and
suddenly you can see again; you notice people, places, and things
you’ve never noticed before. Even the stupid stuff, unimportant in
the bigger scheme yet utterly important in that one single,
solitary moment, but only because you noticed it and it affected
you in a way that made you
feel
something.

You see a smile for what it really
is.

You see people for who they really
are.

You know love for the first
time.

But most importantly, you can see
yourself through the eyes of an unbiased mind and you realized that
all that self-loathing, that wishing and wanting, the years spent
trying to become someone, anyone else than who you were, was never
necessary because there had been nothing wrong with you in the
first place. All you’d ended up doing by running and hiding was
hurting yourself and everyone else around you.

“
Why are you lookin’ at me
like that, Tegen?” Christopher asked.

My smile grew. “I’m so proud of you,” I
told him as I rolled over on our picnic blanket and reached out to
tickle his belly.

Giggling, he swatted my hand away.
“Mommy’s proud of me too,” he said.

“
Everyone is proud of
you,” I teased. “Mister, I started kindergarten this
week.”

“
I miss being home with
Mommy.”

“
Aww,” I cooed, lifting my
hand to ruffle through his long red hair. “I miss being home with
her too. I was little once too, you know.”

“
You lived inside her
tummy, too?”

I nodded. “I did.”

Christopher wrinkled up his little
button nose. “But you’re so big!”

I burst out laughing. “Watch it,” I
said. “Girls don’t like it when boys say stuff like
that.”

I wasn’t big, not at all, but I had put
on quite a bit of weight in the last year, thanks to my mother’s
round-the-clock cooking.

Christopher went back to playing with
his Legos and, knowing I’d been dismissed, with a sigh I rolled
back over and squinted up at the sunny California sky.

This was how life should have been from
the get-go for my mother and me. Not that I would trade my brother
for all the time travel in the world, but even at my age, living
with my mother again, I knew peace for what it truly
was.

We had a small apartment in downtown
San Francisco with only two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a
kitchenette. We were living off only my salary and my mother’s
disability checks, but we made it work.

And it did.

In fact, the first few months aside,
the past year had been one of the most peaceful ones I’d ever had.
The three of us did everything together; my mother and Christopher
even walked with me to work most days. We always had something to
do—trips to the farmer’s market, walks around the city, movies at
night, picnics in the park.

And once a month Hawk would ride into
town to see Christopher. He’d sleep on the living room couch, spend
a week, sometimes less, and then just as quickly was gone. He never
spoke of the club, of Deuce or Cage, and neither of us ever asked.
Things were quiet and, after everything that had happened, I wanted
to keep it that way.

The first few days after Cage had
gotten shot were a painful blur to me. My apartment was a crime
scene; I was questioned repeatedly by police detectives, and then
later by the FBI and the ATF. Everyone wanted to get in on the
action; apparently when one brick fell within the confines of a
criminal organization, it was expected that all four walls would
eventually crumble.

But the Hell’s Horsemen’s walls stood
strong, despite it all. Mouths stayed shut, secrets stayed hidden,
and the club stayed as strong as ever.

Even so, the entire disaster had made
national news, and slowly but surely Hell’s Horsemen and Silver
Demons from all over the country began invading San Francisco. The
city was crawling with bikers, small riots broke out, and many
arrests were made.

They’d come from all corners to show
their support for Deuce’s son, a fellow brother. They sat vigils
outside the hospital, they revved their engines in unison, a chrome
and leather prayer for one of their own.

Cage made it through surgery, but not
yet able to breathe on his own, was immediately placed on a
ventilator. For a few weeks it was touch and go, and no one knew if
he were going to live or die.

And he did die. Twice, actually. Both
times doctors were able to restart his heart, and both times Deuce
was arrested for assault on hospital staff.

I knew very little of this firsthand as
I hadn’t done much but sleep and try to eat for those first few
weeks, wishing I could go to the hospital to see Cage, just to
touch him, to tell him I loved him…to tell him how sorry I
was.

To just be by his side.

It never happened.

When he was well enough to be flown
home, that was the last I knew of Cage. My mother eventually asked
Eva to stop calling, and Eva respected her wishes.

As far as I knew, ZZ had never been
found. Every so often I would get a phone call from the government
asking if he’d made contact with me. I’d say no, they’d give me a
number to call in case he ever did, and that was that.

Was I happy? No, not really. But I was
at peace.

I could honestly say that despite the
guilt, the regret, and the space of emptiness inside me that would
always be reserved for Cage, I was at peace. I was with my mother
again. She’d come clean to me, informing me that most of her
memories had been restored, and I had a happy, healthy, beautiful
little brother. Life, for the first time ever, was
simple.

I’d even started writing again in my
free time, something I hadn’t done since I was a
teenager.

“
Hayley!” Christopher
shouted and I used my hand to shade my eyes from the sun. Hayley
and Joe stood above us, smiling.

“
Damn, Hayley,” I said
smiling. “Your boobs are enormous. Imagine what they’re going to
look like after you pop that kid out.”

With a groan and a helping hand from
Joe, she lowered herself beside me and scowled. “You got jokes,
huh? Well, you’re no Kate Moss anymore, so shut it,
Teg.”

“
Hey,” I scoffed. “I like
that I actually have a butt! I don’t have to be jealous of all you
lucky bitches with body fat anymore!”

Hayley snorted. “You do realize how
utterly ridiculous you just sounded, right? And how many women
would beat your small but now existent ass for saying
that?”

“
If I keep eating like
this, I might be a C-cup someday,” I said hopefully, peering down
the top of my T-shirt.

“
Don’t push your
luck.”

“
Shut up.”

“
Ladies,” Joe said as he
took a seat beside Christopher. “Don’t subject the little dude to
your absurd female issues.

“
And by the way, Teg,” he
continued. “I’m digging the hair.”

“
Me too,” Hayley said,
reaching out to run her fingers through my short locks. “It’s
really growing fast too.”

Nine months ago I’d cut off my dreads,
took out most of my piercings, and threw out every last one of my
toe rings. Whoever that girl looking back at me in the mirror had
been, she wasn’t me. She was the mask I’d been hiding behind and I
was done hiding.

My hair hit my chin now. I’d recently
had it cut into a pixie style, short in the back, longer in the
front. I hardly wore my contacts anymore and found I actually
preferred wearing my glasses. It was sort of like reuniting with an
old friend, only this time an old friend who was infinitely more
fashionable than before.

“
Where’s your mom?” Hayley
asked. “Are we eating without her today?”

Yawning, I stretched out my arms and
legs before scooting up some and placing my head in Hayley’s lap.
“She’ll be here,” I said. “She’s just running late. Said she wanted
fresh cold cuts or something. But really, I think she has a crush
on Rich.”

“
Rich?” Joe asked. “The
butcher on Stockton?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they flirt all the
time and it makes me ill.”