Beard With Me

by Penny Reid

  Beard With Me

  Winston Brothers #6

  Penny Reid

  www.pennyreid.ninja/newsletter/

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, rants, facts, contrivances, and incidents are either the product of the author’s questionable imagination or are used factitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead, events, locales is entirely coincidental if not somewhat disturbing/concerning.

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  Copyright © 2019 by Penny Reid; All rights reserved.

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  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, photographed, instagrammed, tweeted, twittered, twatted, tumbled, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without explicit written permission from the author.

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  Made in the United States of America

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  eBook Edition

  Contents

  I. November 2003

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Sneak Peek: Beard Necessities, Winston Brothers Book #7

  Other books by Penny Reid

  Part I

  November 2003

  Dear Reiders,

  This is a book I never expected to write. I believe I had a mental block against writing it. The story is just . . . heartbreaking. Then again, it has a Cletus, so it's also funny in places. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  As an author, you build your world, you assign motivations to characters and flesh them out, make them real. As I’ve built this world, I’ve added details to my characters’ backstories which I had no desire to visit or describe on the page. Well, fortunately or unfortunately, for those of you who’ve asked that Billy and Scarlet/Claire receive an origin story, I had to write those details in this book.

  Simply stated: this book is not a romance, it is a tragic love story.

  As I mentioned, it is the origin story, but not just for Billy and Scarlet/Claire. It is the foundation on which the rest of the Green Valley world is built. It can be read as a standalone, and you do not have to read it to enjoy (or not enjoy) any of the other books in the series.

  If you’ve read the Winston Brothers series, then you know. You know the characters; the unfolding of the events shouldn’t be a surprise (the good and the bad and the sad). If you don’t want to read the tragic details, skip this book. You can still read what has come before and what is yet to come.

  But if you haven’t read the Winston Brothers and this is your first book in the series, then let this serve as a warning. If you have a trigger—any trigger at all—chances are this book is going to trigger you. Just assume it has all the triggers, put it down, and move on to the next book in your TBR.

  -Penny Reid

  Chapter One

  *Scarlet*

  “Not only had my brother disappeared, but… a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from then on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be spoken but not shared.”

  John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

  Caution tape barred the way to the chorus room. Gulping a hard bubble of air, my attention moved from the yellow tape to the hallway beyond it, to a white poster board next to the door. The sign had been set on an easel and it read, WET PAINT – DO NOT ENTER.

  “No. No, no, no!” My eyes darted again to the yellow tape.

  I gripped the paper sack holding my free school lunch. A sound of despair tumbled from my mouth. Heart galloping, pits sweating, my tongue tasting sour with dread, I had a moment.

  And by a moment I mean I freaked out.

  Officially, I wasn’t allowed to eat in the chorus room. No one was. But early on in my freshman year, I’d snuck in and hid myself between two rows of chairs, careful to dash inside before Mrs. McClure arrived for her lesson planning hour. I’d become quite skilled at leaving unnoticed after the bell rang for fourth period, when her students wandered in.

  This had worked for the last (almost) year and a half, but it obviously wouldn’t work today. Making matters worse, this was the last month of school before winter break. There was no sneaky way to find a place to sit in the lunchroom when I’d spent the majority of the year not eating in the lunchroom.

  Tugging on the recently repaired strap of my very, very old backpack—some might even consider it an antique—I stuffed the food inside, harsh movements made clumsy by swelling frustration. But then I paused, taking a slow, deep breath, and telling my shaking hands and thundering heart to cool it.

  “How does the ocean say hello to the beach?” I asked myself, quietly supplying the answer, “Gives it a little wave.”

  The stupid joke helped ease the tangle in my stomach and I cracked a smile, laughing lightly.

  Don’t be stupid. This is no big deal. Whatever.

  The first fourteen and a half years of life had taught me many valuable lessons. One of the most important was that the magnitude of disappointment was directly proportional to the magnitude of expectations. I’d known this for a while, but the concept had finally solidified in my mind this year during physics class when we’d learned about Newton’s third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It applied to life and hopes and dreams and expectations too.

  Now I had a math equation to estimate my level of disappointment based on my level of expectation. Isn’t that nice?

  My first mistake was coming to rely upon the chorus room. Second mistake was allowing myself to look forward to this moment. Today was Friday. Eating lunch in a quiet, heated place was a luxury. Free of people, free of bugs, free of people who behaved like bugs. Now I had nowhere to eat my lunch that wasn’t free of bug people.

  “Come on now, Scarlet. You know better,” I murmured, rolling my eyes and angling my chin. “It could be worse. It could be the first month of school.”

  My crack of a smile widened, and I sighed as I turned to the tricky zipper of my bag. I needed to be careful. If it was unzipped past a certain point, it wouldn’t re-zip and I’d go the rest of the day with my books and papers falling all over the place.

  Plus, I’d have to find a new zipper to sew inside and that would be difficult. Blythe Tanner, who was usually my source for clothes and such items in return for help with can and glass recycling, wasn’t speaking to me ever since my dad threatened to disembowel her dad two months ago. Her father owned the junkyard and my father wanted to store stolen cars in his junkyard. Mr. Tanner—not being a criminal—refused.

  A shiver raced down my spine and I promptly submerged it—and thoughts of my father—using a trick I’d picked up at ten years old: rephrase a situation as a scripted comedy TV show. Good old dad, always threatening disembowelments. What a character!

  Yeah. I talked to myself a lot. I told myself a lot of jokes. I even had inside jokes . . . with myself. I guess folks needed to talk to someone, and it was mostly just me around for conversation. But that was just fine. I was an awesome conversationalist.

  Closing my eyes, I knelt on the ground and placed the backpack carefully on the floor so I could gently tuck my food inside on top of my jacket. The back of my hand brushed against my prized possession, a Walkman CD playe
r, and I was careful not to knock it around. With my eyes shut, sounds that were usually background noise sharpened and increased in volume. The rumble of students talking and eating became a roar, trays being set on tables, soda cans opening, laughter.

  My stomach sunk, but only for half a second. Squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, I immediately demanded that my stomach turn itself around and return to my middle. I did not have time for sinking stomachs, not over something so silly.

  Lunch would be over in forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes is no big deal. I’ll figure it out. Pretending to fiddle with the front pocket of my bag, just in case a teacher happened by, I debated my options.

  The lunchroom was not a possibility. Two choices awaited me within: Try to sit with the other Iron Wraiths kids, or try to sit with anyone else, because there would be no empty tables. Green Valley was bursting at the seams, too many students and too few seats.

  I couldn’t sit with the Iron Wraiths kids. They’d most likely let me, seeing as how my father was the club president, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Prince King would probably try something horrible to get my attention or make me angry, and then Carla Creavers would do something to get Cletus’s attention—who never seemed to sit at the same table twice—maybe flirt with Prince King. Prince King looked like Jared Leto, but he was a complete jerk.

  Anyway, Prince King would then get overaggressive with Carla, and then Cletus would intervene—even though it wouldn’t be about Carla, it would be about Prince being “ungentlemanly”—and then there would be a fight and we’d all get detention.

  But I couldn’t sit with anyone else. No one wanted to be my partner for class projects—ever—and I honestly didn’t blame them. Who would want their kids hanging out with one of the Wraiths kids? And the president’s daughter? No. Plus, I was under no delusions about the state of my clothes and appearance. Clothes and appearance in high school are everything, and my nickname since seventh grade had vacillated between Smelly Scarlet or Sweaty Scarlet.

  “But, you know, their loss,” I mumbled, shrugging.

  Another option was the hallway just off the cafeteria, but I quickly dismissed this possibility. Principal Sylvester had forbidden students from the corridor during lunch since last month, after Cletus Winston and Prince King had gotten into a fistfight. Now it was off-limits and heavily patrolled.

  A noise snagged my attention, the sound of a toilet flushing, and I turned my head toward it. A few seconds later, two girls exited the bathroom, deep in conversation. I lowered my eyes to my backpack and redoubled my pretend fiddling while they walked past, paying me no mind. As soon as their voices faded, I returned my attention to the girls’ bathroom door and EUREKA!

  Of course!

  With my lunch tucked safely in my backpack—and the tricky zipper closed—I brought the bag to my shoulder and stood; my decision made easy by the obvious choice.

  “What did one toilet say to the other?” I muttered to myself, walking toward the bathroom and answering in my head, You look flushed.

  My lips curved at the joke, and I chuckled. “You look flushed. That’s funny. Or maybe it could be, you look pooped. Or how about, why are you so pissed?” The last punchline had me laughing and shaking my head at myself again, muttering, “Good one, Scarlet. You should write that—”

  I was so lost in my self-congratulations for the superior punchline, I almost collided with the boys’ bathroom door as it unexpectedly opened, missing a door handle to the groin by jumping backward and to the side. But my quick thinking meant that my shoulder and chest collided with the boy who was exiting the bathroom, which meant that I fell backward on my ass.

  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As previously noted, this law applies to life, hopes, dreams, expectations, and masses traveling at varying velocities, especially when one of those masses is a huge boy and the other mass is me.

  “Are you—” the boy started, taking a hasty step in my direction that made his sneakers squeak on the linoleum, but then he stopped speaking and moving just as suddenly.

  I froze, a colossal spike of renewed dismay chasing the air from my lungs. I fought to keep the grimace from my face, and not just because my tailbone was going to be sore for several days as a result of my graceless fall. I didn’t need to look up to know this boy who’d accidentally knocked me down was none other than high school junior, current star quarterback of the Green Valley football team, every girl’s fantasy boyfriend, and my childhood nemesis, Billy Winston.

  Nowadays, I avoided him and he ignored me. Actually, in the scheme of things, it was probably more accurate to say I was beneath his notice. So . . .

  “Scarlet,” he said, like the word was a dirty one, and then released a quiet, drawn-out, annoyed huff. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded wordlessly. He didn’t move.

  When we were kids, I would’ve thrown some insult at him. I would’ve felt anger and irritation at being knocked down by Billy, even if it was an accident. I had a kind of fearless confidence when I was a kid, like I really mattered. All that changed in middle school; not because of any one big event or wound; more like thousands of tiny cuts (literally and figuratively). I’d grown tired of fighting the world because the world always won.

  ANYWAY.

  Presently, my eyes on his feet, I kept my mouth shut, waiting for him to leave.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, like he was about to leave. But he didn’t.

  “Here.” His tone laced with impatience, he reached out a hand. “Let me help you up.”

  Instinct had me flinching back and tucking my chin to my chest.

  “What the hell, Scarlet? It’s not like I’m going to hit you,” he grumbled, sounding even more exasperated.

  I sat frozen, heat climbing up my neck and cheeks. Just leave, I wanted to holler. Just freaking go! Little kid Scarlet would have.

  A moment passed and his hand dropped. Another moment passed and I heard him exhale a sigh, louder this time. Without another word, he walked around me. I listened as his footsteps carried him away, until the sound was swallowed by the maniacally cheerful cafeteria chatter.

  Then and only then did I allow myself to breathe. But I would not allow myself to think about what had just happened.

  “No. Nothing happened,” I said. “Nothing happened. I tripped and I fell. He was never here. Nothing happened.”

  “Uh, I’m pretty sure something happened.”

  My head snapped up and I found Ben McClure standing not more than fifteen feet away, his hands stuffed in his jeans pockets, his attention on the other end of the corridor where the cafeteria was, and where Billy Winston had just disappeared.

  "Hey, Scarlet,” he said, sounding distracted.

  "Oh. Hey, Ben,” I croaked. My cheeks probably matched the color of my hair by now.

  If Billy Winston was Green Valley’s picture of the perfect high school boyfriend, Ben McClure was their image of an ideal man, full stop. Ben was about two years older than Billy, but they were both tall and big and square-jawed and deep-voiced. Until last year, when he graduated, Ben had been the starting quarterback of the football team. Billy had taken his place.

  But that’s about where the resemblances ended.

  Where Billy’s hair was dark brown, almost black, Ben’s was golden blond. Billy had icy blue eyes that felt sharp and piercing, like needles and knives every time he looked at you. Honestly, Billy’s looks were off-putting. He was just too handsome, movie-star handsome, looking at him directly hurt just a little. But Ben’s blues were warm and pretty, like bluebells in the summer. His handsomeness was softer, more approachable, boyish.

  Both considered good mannered, but Billy’s idea of polite was coldly formal, whereas Ben treated everyone like his best friend.

  Also, Billy never smiled. Even when he was a kid, he never smiled. Ben’s smile was near constant, just varying in size and intention based on the occasion. He had his smile of greeting, his sm
ile of encouragement, his shy smile, his amused smile, his mischievous smile, his—

  Ahhhh. Stop it, Scarlet. Stop torturing yourself.

  In case you hadn’t guessed by my gushing, I had a bit of a crush on Ben McClure. But in my defense, I think everyone in town did too. Men, women, children, dogs. He was so darn friendly and good. He was the best at everything.

  “Whatcha doing?” I felt his gaze come to rest on me where I still sat grimacing on the ground.

  Swallowing around the unidentified oral object—an UOO, if you will—making my throat tight, I forced a chuckle. “Uh, well. That’s a valid question. When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

  I snuck a peek at him as I found my feet, certain my grin was goofy rather than charming. But that didn’t matter. First off, we were friends . . . of a sort. Ben was nice to me and went out of his way to engage me in conversation whenever we happened upon each other. That didn’t make me special. Ben was friends or friendly with most everyone in town.

  Regardless, it still meant something to me. One of my favorite things about Ben McClure was that he didn’t care about who anyone’s parents were, or where they were from, or how old their clothes were, or how old they were. He might’ve cared about how I smelled on summer days when showers were hard to come by, but he never said anything about it.