Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

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.

Dirty. He was dirty. He was filthy, both inside and out. He was a hollowed-out, rotted piece of shit who should have quit breathing a long time ago yet, for some stupid fucking reason, Deuce wouldn’t let him.

“I believe the price is acceptable,” Pamela Mooresville said, her tone every bit as hoity as everything else about her. Turning slightly in her armchair, she turned from Deuce to her husband, Mayor Norman Mooresville. “Don’t you agree, dear?”

Mooresville couldn’t have been that much older than him, Dirty guessed. He’d just turned thirty-eight and this asshole had to be in his midforties. But from the looks of it, the good life hadn’t been all that good to Mr. Mayor, with his gut trying to pop through his dress shirt, his chin not doubled but tripled, and his receding hairline that was unfortunately also graying.

All that Grey Poupon and caviar, Dirty surmised, that and a whole lot of being waited on his entire life.

“Price?” Mick laughed, stroking his long black-and-gray beard. “You fuckers gotta pretty everything up, don’t ya? Why not just call it what it fuckin’ is? A goddamn payoff.”