Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(3)
When she was nearly nine months pregnant with Christopher, my mother had been shot in the head by her boyfriend’s wife. Not Hawk’s wife; Hawk wasn’t married. But Jason “Jase” Brady, also a member of the Hell’s Horsemen, was.
Actually, my mother had still been married to my father when she’d met Jase.
My mom, Dorothy Kelley, had gotten pregnant at fifteen, given birth at sixteen, and was forced by my grandparents to marry my father. My father, a truck driver, was rarely home and when he was, was more interested in television and beer than my mother and me. When I was four, my mother met Jase.
She fell in love with Jase almost instantly, unconcerned at first that he was married with three small children, because she thought he’d eventually leave his wife.
It didn’t happen. But my mother stuck it out. She worked at the Hell’s Horsemen clubhouse, cleaning up after the boys, cooking for them and doing their laundry, enabling her to carry on her affair with Jase as discreetly as possible.
Eventually my mother left my father, who’d subsequently hopped in his truck, left Miles City, and never returned. She cut ties with my grandparents and Jase moved both my mother and me into an apartment in town, a nice four-unit condo where we had a front door, a driveway, and a backyard, and everything continued much the same as before.
I hated it. I hated watching her throw her entire life away for a man who would never truly be hers, a man who would always go home at night to his wife and children and leave my mother alone, usually crying for him. Knowing that no matter how much she loved Jase, if he never left his wife she would always be considered a club whore, nothing more, and yet she still stayed.
That’s how I grew up.
The fatherless kid of a club whore, I watched my mother cater to a man who, in my opinion, didn’t really love her, watched her work her ass off for a club full of criminal bikers who lied, cheated, and more than likely killed their way through life.
And that was it. I had no one else, no other family to turn to.
I left Miles City, desperate to get away from the club life and all it entailed, the day after my high school graduation. With a full scholarship to San Francisco University and an internship already in place at a small newspaper, I had no plans to ever return.
After leaving, I’d been more than ready to get rid of “the look” that had defined me all my life, that look consisting of braces, glasses, secondhand clothing two sizes too big for me, and wiry red curls that took a day and a half just to tame in any sort of way.
One of my first friends in college, Grace, a true hippie raised on a commune in Northern California, had taken me under her wing and “crazied me up a bit,” as she liked to call it. So now I was free of both glasses and braces, my crazy hair had no choice but to remain in dreadlocks, and my body was a work of f*cking art. Every single one of my tattoos I loved—colorful, large, and intricate, taking up both my arms, my back, chest, stomach, and both thighs. And my piercings…eh, I was fickle. Aside from getting my ear holes stretched a little more every so often, I’d alternate which ones I wore because I liked to change it up a bit every now and then.
In San Francisco, nobody gave me a second glance. And I loved it. There was no reason to ever return to Montana.
Except, that wasn’t in the cards for me. No matter how hard I tried to cut all ties with Miles City and its merry band of chrome and leather criminals, they just wouldn’t let me go.
After my mother was shot, Jase’s wife was tried, convicted, and shipped off to prison. My mother survived, obviously, but the damage had been devastating. Her memory had suffered, and at first she didn’t remember anyone or anything. Then, slowly, her memory began to return.
She remembered her childhood, her parents, and old friends; she even remembered my father and eventually me.
Then the progression came to a screeching halt. Her last memory of me was as a toddler.
My entire childhood, my teenage years, her meeting Jase and leaving my father, the many years of service she’d devoted to the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club…all of it was gone. Forever, it seemed.
Where did Hawk fit into any of this?
Well, as it turned out, my mother, in the midst of her already f*cked-up love triangle, turned to Hawk for the comfort she couldn’t find with Jase.
No one had known.
After my mother had been shot, Hawk appeared at the hospital in a fury. He beat the crap out of Jase, during which he spilled the beans about him and my mother, crudely bringing to light Christopher’s true paternity.
And now…
My mother still didn’t remember either of them. To her, Jase was just some pathetic, broken man who refused to leave her alone, and the husband of the crazy woman who’d shot her. And Hawk was the father of the child she didn’t remember conceiving or carrying.
As for me, it was hard. There was a lot of explaining on my part, rehashing year after year in hopes she’d remember something past my toddler years. A lot of tears were shed, but eventually she came to accept the fact that she forgot two decades of her life, and that I wasn’t her baby anymore but a full-grown woman.
As for Christopher, she loved him instantly. Because she didn’t remember him, he was presented to her as a newborn. The familiar red hair, green eyes, and pale skin hadn’t hurt much either.
Which was great, super. Wonderful, even. But she didn’t remember me and I couldn’t accept it.