Unbeloved by Madeline Sheehan Page A

. . . uh . . .” He stumbled over his words, trying to form an answer that didn’t include telling her he’d just announced how much he didn’t care whether Hawk lived or died, seeing as she so obviously did care.
    “ No vote yet,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m just taking a piss break.”
    Nodding, Dorothy ’s lips pressed tightly together and her eyes perceptibly widened. He knew that look, had seen it hundreds of times before. It was the face she made when she was desperately trying not to cry. Seeing that, something rattled painfully inside Jase’s chest, and his insides clenched uncomfortably. He hated that face, he fucking loathed it . . . mostly because he’d always been the cause of it.
    “ Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “We’ll bring him home.”
    “ Okay,” she whispered, nodding more to herself than to him. “I’ll just be . . . I’ll just be in the kitchen.”
    He watched her disappear around the corner, listened as the swinging doors to the kitchen creaked back and forth as she passed through them, and shortly after that came the banging of pots and pans.
    Something warm burst forth within his gut, easing the uncomfortable tightening that had taken root. She was back, not only in Miles City but inside the clubhouse, and back inside the kitchen no less .
    It was so fucking familiar and , goddamn him, so incredibly comforting. After so many years of feeling nothing but the cold shoulder from both her and his family, feeling this semblance of his past, a place where he’d been happy and content, was more than welcome.
    And he didn ’t want to lose it.
    Turning around, he burst back into Deuce ’s office. Ignoring the stares of everyone in the room, he marched forward, shoved Anger out of the chair he’d been occupying before he’d left the room, and reclaimed his seat.
    W hen it came time for him to cast his vote, he looked directly into Deuce’s narrowed eyes, raised two fingers in the air, and answered, “Yay. Bring him home.”
    What bringing Hawk home would accomplish, other than putting Deuce and Preacher at the mercy of the Russian cartel, Jase didn’t know. All he knew was that it would keep Dorothy around, if only for a little while longer . . . as well as keep her from crying.
    At the very least, he owed her that much.

Chapter Seven
    The more things change, the more they stay the same.
    — Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
    “ Weird, isn’t it?”
    Tearing my gaze away from my daughter and the group of young woman who were surrounding her, I glanced to where Eva was seated beside me on a long leather couch. Seated beside Eva was Kami, and to my left was Kajika, a Native American woman from a nearby Indian reservation who Cox and Kami had employed as their nanny, but now held my former position around the clubhouse, cooking and cleaning up after the boys. Something I had only just found out after being scolded for disrupting her highly organized cupboard system. Who knew plates had to be stacked according to size and shape?
    “ What’s weird?” I asked.
    Pushing her headphones off her ears, Eva smirked. “Them,” she said, gesturing to Tegen and the other women. “And us. We used to be them, young and hot, the center of attention inside the club, and now we’re not. We’ve become the actual old ladies.
    “ Strangely enough,” she continued, shrugging, “I don’t mind. I feel like it’s the natural progression of things, and we’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be.”
    Knowing exactly what she was up to, attempting to distract me while we all waited for Preacher to arrive from New York City, I decided to play along instead of d welling on the agony of wondering what was going to happen next, or worse, if Hawk would survive it.
    Or . . . who Hawk truly was, something that I couldn’t exactly bring myself to think on quite yet. I’d sat inside Deuce’s office and quietly listened, absorbing the wild story he’d told me about the son of a mob boss