Unattainable (41 page)

“
Okay?” he
asked.

“
Okay,” I said, pulling
him back to me. “But I don’t want a big stupid ring like
Danny’s.”

“
Shut up,” he
muttered.

“
No, I’m serious, Cage. I
don’t—”

Cage’s mouth crashed down again on mine
and I didn’t have much of a choice.

I shut right the fuck up.

“
Family dinners give me a
headache,” I complained.

Ignoring me, Cage held his hand out.
With an exasperated sigh, I handed him my helmet and he placed it
on the seat of his bike.

“
Don’t ignore me,” I
warned. “I hate it and I’ll punch you in the balls if you keep it
up, you know I will.”

Grinning, Cage grabbed my hand and
threaded his fingers through mine. “I’m not ignorin’ you, Teacup,”
he said as he pulled me up the driveway. “I’m just choosin’ not to
fight today.”

The front door swung open just as Cage
reached for it and Cox stood in the entranceway grinning at
us.

“
What are you so fuckin’
happy about?” Cage asked, shoving him out of our way and yanking me
inside.

“
Fuckin’ blow jobs,
brother,” Cox said, still grinning like a jackass. “Kami just blew
my damn brains out in the hall closet.”

I rolled my eyes even as Cage burst out
laughing. “Explains why you’re so fuckin’ stupid,” Cage said.
“Don’t got much brains to begin with.”

“
No fuckin’ way,” Cox
called out from behind us. “You ain’t gonna ruin my good
mood.”

“
Coming
through!”

Cage and I quickly stepped out of Ivy’s
way as she came barreling through the foyer, pushing her little
brother on his toddler riding toy. Damon, with his chubby arms in
the air and a dimpled smile on his face, squealed as they blasted
past us.

“
Ivy Olivia!” Eva yelled,
storming after them. “Are you trying to kill your
brother?”

“
Yes!” Ivy yelled
back.

Inside the kitchen, Cage let go of me
and gave me a gentle shove toward the refrigerator. “Beer, babe,”
he said, slapping my ass before he headed in Ripper and Deuce’s
direction.

Scowling, I stomped off across the
linoleum. If I didn’t love him so much, I might actually kill him
one of these days. Ours wasn’t a sugar-coated relationship. We
fought more than we didn’t, the majority of our sex life consisted
of half-out-of-our-mind, angry make-up sex, and we still could
never agree on anything. Nothing. Zilch.

Except for one thing.

That we drove each other crazy. Yeah,
and that we loved each other. There was that.

He was overbearing, bossy, and
demonstrative. He liked to order me around, literally push me
around all the while acting like he didn’t see why I got so upset
about it.

But at the same time, he also had to
put up with my vicious temper, my manic mood swings, and my
tendency to both speak and act before thinking.

I decided early on I should look into
anger management before I even thought of having children. As it
was, half the crap in our house was broken because I’d either
thrown it at Cage or kicked the living shit out of it.

But for some reason, unknown to me and
more than likely anyone who came within a mile of Cage and me, it
worked.

Or, at least, it had been working for
the past seven months. The future remained unknown. I could always
head back to my mother’s place in San Francisco. Which I would.
Especially if Cage kept demanding I be his beer wench.

Married or not, Cage did not own
me.

I don’t care if the four letters,
C-A-G-E, which had been tattooed around my left ring finger the
night he married me, suggested otherwise.

“
It is not the same
fuckin’ thing!” Deuce yelled as I crossed the kitchen, holding
Cage’s bottle of beer like a baseball I was about to whip at
him.

Cage gaped at his father. “Are you
fuckin’ kiddin’ me, you motherfuckin’ hypocrite?”

“
Now what?” I asked Ripper
who stood a few feet from father and son, smirking.

“
They started goin’ at it
’bout an upcomin’ job and I made the mistake of tellin’ ’em how
alike they fuckin’ sounded. Started up a new round of
bullshit.”

Cage’s head whipped left and he glared
at Ripper. “I am nothin’ like him.”

Deuce’s beer slammed down on the
counter. “No fuckin’ shit!” he yelled. “If you were, you wouldn’t
be havin’ so much fuckin’ trouble out in Oakland!”

Cage’s nostrils began to flare. “Who
the fuck said I was havin’ trouble?” he demanded. “Just ’cause I
ain’t doin’ shit your way doesn’t mean I’m doin’ it
wrong!”

Deuce’s nostrils began flaring as well.
“Get your damn head outta your ass, boy. You keep this stupid shit
up, I’m gonna promise you right the fuck now, I ain’t ever gonna
die. I’m gonna live for-fuckin’-ever just to make sure you don’t
run my damn club into the ground.”

Cage glared at his father, and
unsurprisingly, Deuce glared right back at him.

Ripper burst out laughing and both Cage
and Deuce turned their glares on him. Clutching his abdomen, Ripper
doubled over, laughing harder.

“
You should see your
faces,” he gasped between laughs. “You two fuckers look exactly the
same. Fuckin’…priceless.”

“
Shut up,” Deuce growled
at the same time as Cage muttered, “Asshole.”

They turned their glares back on each
other.

Exasperated, I shoved Cage’s beer at
his chest, gave him a mock curtsy while flipping him off, before
whirling around and quickly exiting the kitchen. Three morons in
one room was just too much moron for me to handle.

“
Give it back!
Moooooooooooooommmmm! Devin won’t give it back!”

My back hit the stair railing as Devin
came running by me, laughing hysterically, closely followed by his
little brother. When they’d disappeared into the living room, the
coat closet door opened and Kami peeked her head out.

“
Was that one of mine?”
she whispered, looking around the foyer.

“
Kami, get out of the damn
closet!” Eva snapped. “And put some clothes on!” Holding a
red-faced and crying Damon in her arms, she paused in front of me.
“Hey, Tegen,” she said. “When did you get here?”

The door to the coat closet opened
wider and Cox poked his head out from behind Kami, who, from what I
could tell, was half-naked. “About five minutes ago,” he
said.

“
Excuse me,” Kami said.
“But I look better
without
clothes on.”

“
Mom!” Diesel screamed.
Cursing, Cox pulled Kami back inside the closet and slammed the
door closed.

Reaching up, I pinched the bridge of my
nose. Only five minutes in the West home and I already had a
migraine from hell.

Sidestepping children, I hurried
through the living room, then the family room where Harley was
sound asleep on the couch, before bursting outside the back door
and nearly collapsing onto the deck.

“
Having fun?”

Danny, pretty in pukey-pink, sat on the
top of the railing, a joint pressed between her lips. Taking it
between her index and middle finger, she pulled it from her mouth
and offered it to me.

“
It helps,” she said,
smiling. “With the family-induced headache.”

“
Hell fucking yes,” I
breathed.

Taking the joint from her, I took a
long, throat-burning drag and held it for as long as I could before
blowing it out in a coughing burst.

“
How’s it going with the
book?” she asked.

I took another drag before
answering.

“
Three more rejection
letters,” I said, shrugging. “Apparently, no one wants to read
about the mismanaged priorities of American society.”

Danny grinned as she gestured for the
joint. I handed it back to her, then hefted myself up on the
railing beside her.

“
It’s cool,” I said. “I
started something else, a lot tamer, more mainstream. Romance
fiction. Boring, actually. You’d probably love it.”

Danny cut her eyes at me. “Don’t start
with me, little sister.”

“
Why not?” I asked,
grinning. “It’s so much fun.”

“
Have I ever told you,”
she said, glaring at me, “how perfect you and my brother are for
each other?”

“
Have I ever told you,” I
shot back, “how insanely bright your clothing is? I mean, shit,
Danny, where do you find this crap? Did Skittles come out with a
clothing line?”

Danny opened her mouth just as the back
door slammed open, causing both of us to jump.

“
Dinner,” Deuce growled.
“Get your dope-smokin’ asses in-fuckin’-side.”

Jumping off the railing, Danny shoved
her joint at me.

“
It was Tegen’s idea,” she
said, slipping past her father and disappearing inside. “She
peer-pressured me!”

“
Liar!” I yelled, jumping
down. Tossing the joint over the railing, I made to follow her
inside but Deuce stepped in front of me, blocking the
door.

“
Great,” I muttered. “What
the fuck did I do now?”

To my surprise, Deuce grinned and I
could do nothing but stare at the nearly identical but older
version of the man I loved. Deuce and Cage might not be pretty-boy
beautiful, but they were no less breathtaking.

But…none of that beauty made up for
their shitty, sexist piggishness.

“
You gotta minute?” he
asked.

“
Do I have a choice? I
can’t exactly walk through you.”

More grinning. Jeez. Was he
drunk?

“
Wanted you to know I
still ain’t heard jack shit about ZZ,” he said. “Not since one of
Hawk’s contacts saw him out in Vegas. I’m guessin’ he went off the
grid.”

I nodded. A few months ago a nomad that
Hawk would occasionally run into while on the road spotted ZZ in
Las Vegas at an underground fight club. He wasn’t taking bets or
running security. He was fighting. Without protective gear,
bare-knuckled.

And the guy he fought, he killed. In
fact, according to the nomad, ZZ continued to beat on him long
after the man was dead.

No one had seen him since and I doubted
anyone was ever going to hear from ZZ again. He’d been a Horseman;
he knew the punishment for trying to kill a brother. And Deuce was
looking for him, Deuce wasn’t going to stop either. If I were ZZ, I
would have gone off the grid too. Fuck, I would have gone to
Mars.

“
And I got somethin’ for
you,” he said as he reached into his back pocket.

I took the worn and cracked photograph
from Deuce and stared down at the very young girl. I could see the
family resemblance, the dimples it seemed Deuce had gotten from his
mother.

“
I can’t take this,” I
told him, knowing that Deuce never knew her, that this photo was
all he’d ever had of her.

“
Yeah, you fuckin’ can,”
he said gruffly. “It’s all I can fuckin’ give her now. She deserved
somethin’ good, deserved to be my old man’s old lady, treated with
respect, and she never fuckin’ got it. But Eva’s got it and you’re
gonna have it too.

“
He don’t know it yet,” he
continued. “But Cage is gonna need you more than he thinks. Sooner
than he thinks too. I’m steppin’ down soon, Tegen, gonna be passin’
him the gavel and you being his old lady, you needed to know first.
This job ain’t easy, but havin’ a good woman who’s got your back at
the club when you’re on the road—havin’ her to come home to—that
shit makes it a fuck of a lot easier to keep fuckin’
goin’.

“
The two of you, Tegen,
are gonna be the only ones keepin’ this club above ground. Holdin’
those boys together, their women and their families. Shit gets
hard, they’re gonna come to you, they’re gonna be expectin’ you to
fix it. I ain’t gonna lie and tell you it’s gonna be easy ’cause
more often than not it’s gonna straight-up fuckin’ suck. You’re
gonna fight, you’re gonna wanna run, but I say it to all my boys’
old ladies, and I mean it every damn time, only when I say it to
you, I ain’t just gonna be sayin’ it for the sake of sayin’ it.
You’re different, you’re gonna be the prez’s old lady, you’re gonna
have to eat, sleep, and fuckin’ breathe the life, Tegen.

“
You love the man,” he
said. “You—”

“
Love the life,” I
finished for him. “I know.”

Deuce paused and stared down at
me.

“
Do you?” he asked
quietly. “Tegen, I know we talked this shit over before but this
here is the real fuckin’ deal and I can’t be havin’ my boy as prez
of my club with a woman by his side who can’t hold her own. It’s
gonna be your job to make sure he’s stayin’ level-headed, to keep
the boys’ women and kids happy in their absence, to keep their
fuckin’ secrets too.”

“
I can’t always love what
goes on in the club,” I told him truthfully.

Deuce’s hard gaze never wavered. “You
don’t have to love what goes on. You only have to love the club and
I know you love the club, Tegen. I know you love those boys. I know
you wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.”