Unbeautifully Read online

Cringing, I spun around ready to hurry in the opposite direction but wasn’t fast enough. My longtime friend Anabeth snatched my bicep and yanked me sideways. I stumbled to a stop and faced her. Like me, Anabeth was blonde, blue-eyed, and pretty. We were both in shape but whereas Anabeth was thin, I was more muscular. Ten years of gymnastics and four years of cheerleading will do that to you. I kept my hair long, highlighted, and styled, and Anabeth had hers short, cut into a smooth bob with razor-straight bangs. Currently she was wearing a deep blue mini dress and chunky blue espadrilles. In her ears were giant blue hoops, much like the fifty-plus she had on each of her arms. A few years ago I would have complimented her outfit, would have been wearing something similar myself, most likely pink. But that wasn’t the case anymore. Anabeth and I were worlds apart. Actually, everyone and I were worlds apart…

  I’d lost something inside of me, something important, something special that had made me who I’d been, and slowly the color had seeped out of my world.

  Anabeth gave my dark-washed jeans and black V-neck tee a once-over. Her gaze landed on my feet and she narrowed her eyes. “Are you wearing green…Converse sneakers?”

  Sighing, I looked down at my feet. I was. Chucks were all Eva wore aside from a few pairs of flip-flops, so in turn, Chucks were all Ivy and I got when Eva went shoe shopping. Combined, I would say the three of us had about a hundred pairs in a wide variety of colors.

  “I kinda like them,” I said and shrugged.

  “I dig ’em,” Freebird said. Freebird was an old biker who’d left his brain back in nineteen sixty-five. He had his old lady with him today, Apple Dumplin’, who, like him, had long gray hair and more wrinkles then a crinkled-up piece of paper.

  “Wat up, Danny girl?” Tap said, holding out his fist. I fist-bumped him and smiled.

  Tap was in his late forties, not overly tall but made up for what he lacked in height in muscle. Built like a boxer, his muscles along with his long black hair and goatee were intimidating unless you knew him. He was one of the Horsemen’s most even-tempered boys.

  “Hannah says her hellos. She’s hopin’ you’re comin’ to visit Atlanta again soon.”

  Hannah was Tap’s daughter. When Tap’s wife, Tara, had left him, she’d taken Hannah and moved to Atlanta. Hannah was older than me, but we were both the daughters of Horsemen and had always known each other.

  “I called her last week,” I said, smiling. “She told me the good news.”

  He grinned. “Can’t believe my baby’s havin’ a baby.”

  “Here ya go, babe,” Ripper said, shoving in between Tap and Apple, offering a bottle of beer to Anabeth.

  “Thanks,” Anabeth said, smiling up at him.

  Ripper stared down at Anabeth, his lips curving into a grin, his expression smug, knowing.

  My stomach lurched and I quickly turned away, wanting to make a hasty exit before he noticed I was standing there. Ripper and I were… There just weren’t words for what Ripper and I were.

  I was three years old when my father met Erik “Ripper” Jacobs at a bike rally while on a run through San Antonio. Ripper was only seventeen at the time, having just lost both his parents to a drunk driving accident back home in Los Angeles. He had skipped town two days after the funeral on a stolen motorcycle, just three weeks before his high school graduation.

  The boys liked him immediately, and when the Hell’s Horsemen returned to Montana, he was with them.

  After only three months of doing grunt work around the club, he was unanimously voted and patched in as a brother. A year later, my father promoted him to sergeant at arms and coined him “Ripper” after “Jack the Ripper,” for being as talented with a blade as he was.

  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!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  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.

  Cage and I tried to keep the house running on our own, for Ivy’s sake. Not yet two years old, she didn’t understand what was happening, why Mommy wouldn’t get out of bed, why Daddy wasn’t playing with her.

  And it only got worse.

  Cage couldn’t do everything all of the time. My brother had jobs to do, runs to make, and there were times when he had to be at the club, if only to make sure things were running smoothly in our father’s absence. I was forced to drop out of all my extracurricular activities; my gymnastics instructor, after weeks of missing practice, took me off the roster. By spring, I’d missed so much school that my grades were suffering, which led to me getting kicked off the cheerleading team. I was lucky to be graduating, and ended up resenting my innocent little sister because of it.

  I hadn’t even had the advantage of leaning on my real mother. When I was eight, she’d left us, moved to Forsyth, a forty-minute drive from Miles City, but where Cage and I were concerned, she might as well have been in another country. She worked ten-hour shifts waitressing at a diner, after which she spent her nights drinking with whatever skeezy boyfriend she had at the time. She called infrequently and rarely kept dates to see us.

  And now…

  Eva was out of bed. She was eating, showering, once again taking care of herself and her daughter.

  My father was back on his bike, back at the club, doing what needed to be done.

  But things weren’t the same. When they were home together or at the club, their relationship seemed strained. They never did anything together anymore, they rarely spoke to each other unless it concerned Ivy, and eventually my father reverted to his old behavior. Not coming home for days at a time, and even when he did, he was still sleeping almost every night at the club. And Eva, she didn’t seem to care what he did. She spent most of her time with Kami and Devin, and her trips home to her family in New York City became more and more frequent.

  Cage had easily reverted to his old idiotic self—joking, drinking, and womanizing. He was always either at the club or out on a run. And me…

  Because of my grades, Montana State University was no longer an option for me, not until I completed two years at Miles Community College. Which outright sucked.

  My two closest friends, Anabeth and Ellie, were going to MSU. The three of us had planned for years to go off to college together, to room together since we always did everything together. Until my family fell apart and I’d been forced to take on responsibilities that took me away from my life.

  A life I didn’t have anymore.

  I scanned the gymnasium, deco
rated to the theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The floor was littered with giant, multicolored, papier-mâché trees covered in tinsel; silver stars and moons hung from a ceiling covered corner to corner with pastel-colored balloons. It was beautiful; it was everything I’d wanted it to be when I’d still been on the planning committee. And instead of enjoying it, I was standing in the hallway watching my date bump and grind the school slut to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby’s Got Back.”

  Even worse, I didn’t care.

  “Danny?”

  Finally. I’d called the club over an hour ago asking for a ride.

  I glanced back over my shoulder and found Ripper, as usual, in head-to-toe leather. Leather pants, leather boots, a tight Metallica T-shirt, and his leather Horsemen cut. His long blond hair was pulled back in a man bun, he had a toothpick between his teeth, and a pair of aviator sunglasses hid his missing eye.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ out here instead of in there with all your…” He trailed off as he surveyed the gym. “…with all those stupid-looking fucks,” he finished, making a disgusted face. “Never mind. I know exactly why you don’t wanna be here.”

  “You didn’t go to your prom?” I asked.

  “Naw. Split Cali at seventeen. Didn’t even finish high school.”

  I nodded. “Okay.” I sighed, turning my back on what was supposed to be my last happy memory of high school. “Let’s go.”

  “Danny girl,” Ripper said quietly, not having moved an inch. “Girl’s gotta dance at her prom. And you lookin’ the way you’re lookin’, at least one dance, baby.” He held out his hand. “End of an era, ya know.”

  I looked up at his beautiful, ruined face, wondering how he did it. How he managed to keep going after what Frankie had done to him. Frankie hadn’t done anything to me, not outright anyway. I’d gotten the backlash of Frankie; his actions had caused a domino effect in which I’d been the last to fall down, with everyone else piled on top of me. I wasn’t so sure I’d gotten back up yet.

  I wasn’t so sure any of us had.

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging. “But I don’t really see the point.”

  Ripper walked me out on the dance floor during the beginning of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.”