Unattainable (Undeniable, #3)(34)

“She still looks pretty damn good,” Cage said and Deuce’s eyes shot to him and narrowed.

“That’s not what I was talkin’ about,” he growled. “I was talkin’ about how f*ckin’ stupid I was. I had that.” Deuce held up the photo he was looking at.

Eva, grinning, wearing a baggy cropped tee and saggy jeans, sandwiched in between Kami and Dorothy, was giving Dorothy rabbit ears while her other hand made the sign of the devil over Kami’s shoulder.

“I had that,” Deuce repeated. “And I f*cked it all up.”

Cage didn’t say anything, unable to believe his father was done f*cking up, and Deuce went back to looking through the pictures.

Jumping to his feet, his father glared at him. “Did you look at all these?”

Father and son stared at each other.

“Little f*ckin’ *,” Deuce growled. “Get the f*ck out.”

“I’ll be around if you need me,” he said tonelessly, already turning on his boot heel.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he heard Deuce mutter.

He wasn’t going to.

When it came to his old man, he’d stopped holding his breath a long f*cking time ago.

CHAPTER TEN


“Stupid,” I muttered as I yanked a frying pan out from underneath a stack of pots and pans, wincing as the following loud clatter echoed throughout the kitchen. My mom didn’t get a lot of sleep; when she did sleep she dreamt of the memories she couldn’t quite access and usually woke up in a cold sweat, shaking and crying. Between that and Christopher, she needed her rest.

After placing the pan on top of the stove, I headed for the refrigerator.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I said under my breath as I surveyed the chilled contents. A carton of eggs, a package of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a tub of butter later I was sitting down with a cheese omelet and a side of toast, not eating.

I felt too sick to eat.

I was a first-class f*cking idiot. And not just because I’d f*cked Cage. Again. I mean, yeah, that was seriously idiotic, but worse, I’d f*cked him not once, but three times, and not once did we use a condom. Not once did I even remember to use a condom. Why oh why did I always lose my head around that man?

Goddammit, I probably had AIDS now or at the least some sort of wonky biker venereal disease. Or even worse, I was going to end up like motherf*cking Danny and pregnant with a little biker baby that, knowing my luck, would be a boy who’d look just like his father, become a biker just like his father, and break a million hearts…just like his father.

It was official. I was my mother’s daughter. I could bed the man but never wed him. I could suck his cock, make him dinner, do his laundry, and have his children, but I could never actually have him.

Jesus, I’d actually prefer to have explosive diarrhea while wearing a miniskirt, performing a jig onstage in front of half a million people.

My one saving grace was that I had absolutely no reason to see Cage for the rest of the weekend. I closed my eyes and let out an irritated sigh. Why did I absolutely hate the sound of that?

My eyes flew open and I stared down at my omelet. “FUCK!” I yelled. “You look really yummy and I don’t even want to eat you!”

“Tegen?”

Glancing up from my breakfast, I found my mother hovering near the kitchen entrance, dressed in only a knee-length black robe and fuzzy slippers.

“Shit,” I said, immediately pushing my chair back and getting to my feet. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She gave me a small smile. “Is it okay to come in? Or am I going to get an omelet to the face?”

My shoulders sagged. My mother had never been a shy woman and she’d never skirted around sensitive subjects. Unless it had something to do with her relationship with Jase, she’d never had a problem speaking her mind. I took after her in that way, although I was infinitely more vulgar than she would ever be.

Other than that, we were polar opposites. Our hair wasn’t even the same shade of red.

Even at forty-one she was still beautiful; at forty I was pretty sure I was going to look like skin sagging off a stick. But not my mother. She was several inches shorter than I was, petite but not without curves, her breasts were full and her stomach flat.

Her deep red hair hung halfway down her back in soft waves, her pretty green eyes still sparkled with a youthful vitality, and her skin, although freckled, was a shimmering sort of pale, not the sickly sort. Like me.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I said quietly.

“No, baby, I was already up and about to get in the shower when I heard you yell. Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “I’m fine.”

She took a step inside the kitchen and folded her arms under her breasts. “Tegen, I may not remember everything, but I still know when my own daughter is lying to me. I already knew something was up when it was Eva and Kami bringing me back my car last night. And then I get a phone call from you from Cage’s phone telling me you’re at Cage’s house and you need to get picked up. Not only that, I am well aware of what a woman looks like after she’s had sex, which is exactly how you looked when I picked you up from Cage’s house. Now, you have one of two choices; you can tell me what’s wrong or you can keep lying to your mother.”

Oh. Well. Now that sounded exactly like my mother. My mother who, memory problems or not, I absolutely did not want to discuss my sex life with. Hell to the no.