Unattainable (5 page)

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.

“
Hey, gorgeous,” he
drawled. “Long time, no see.”

“
Daniel,” she repeated,
dumbfounded. “Wow, you look…different.”

She ran her eyes up and down his body
once more, pausing on his waistline where a police badge was
clipped to his belt.

“
You’re a cop?” she asked,
glancing back up at his face.

He grinned. “Chief,” he said
proudly.

Ellie’s eyes widened. Daniel
Mooresville, the biggest dork that ever was, was not only drop-dead
gorgeous but the Miles City chief of police?

“
Congratulations,” she
murmured, smiling up at him, although still shocked.

“
Same to you,” he said. “I
heard you’re teaching now?”

Ellie grimaced.

“
Sort of,” she muttered.
“It’s a long story.”

Daniel gestured toward Hank’s. “I just
so happen to have great listening skills,” he said. “I could lend
an ear, maybe buy you a drink?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Aren’t you on
the clock?”

Daniel’s grin only grew. “Ellie, I’m
the chief.”

What did that mean?

Ellie shook her head. “I don’t want to
tie you up,” she said. “I’m sure you have more important things to
be doing.”

Laughing, Daniel opened the door to the
bar and made a sweeping motion with his free hand. “Ellie Tate,
I’ve had a crush on you since fifth grade and I’d be honored if I
could buy you a drink.”

Wow. Gorgeous and polite. And the chief
of police. Had she hit the lottery?

Shaking her head and smiling, she
walked past Daniel and into the bar. As the door slammed shut
behind them, Hank looked up from behind the bar. He looked exactly
as she remembered him—old, bald, and fat.

“
Why, if it isn’t Ellie
Tate!” he said, grinning. “Girl, how long’s it been since I’ve seen
that pretty face of yours?” He pointed to the barstool directly in
front of him. “Sit down right there and let me fix you something,
sweetheart!”

As Daniel pulled out the barstool for
her, she thought that maybe coming back home wasn’t the worst
decision she’d ever made.

• • •

Feeling uncomfortable, anxious, and
more than ready to get out of the big, swanky house he was
currently in, Dirty began tapping his feet on the plush beige
carpet beneath his booted feet.

His dirty, booted feet. On the very,
very clean carpet.

Feeling his stomach start to churn, he
shifted on the equally clean, equally plush, very, very white sofa
he was seated on.

Dirty hated rich motherfuckers. He
hated their big houses filled with rooms too pristine to feel at
home in. He hated their fancy clothes, useless elaborate trappings
that made him feel like stripping his own self naked. But most of
all, he hated their disapproving eyes.

Yeah, he knew what they saw. He was
tall, lanky, firm but not overly muscled; he didn’t eat nearly
enough to pack on any extra weight, and considering all the
workouts he put himself through, the only shit left inside of him
to burn was booze and muscle.

His dark brown hair was long and
greasy, so greasy at times it clumped together. His face was
heavily bearded by the same dark brown hair that had grown in so
thick, his actual features weren’t easily distinguishable. He liked
it that way. No one could see him, what he really looked like, and
who he used to be.

A tiny shudder rippled through him. He
couldn’t be in this house, and he couldn’t be around people like
these people. He couldn’t, not without unwanted memories flooding
him, making him feel disgusting, used, and…dirty.