Beard Up

by Lani Lynn Vale

  And then they widened as realization dawned.

  “Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

  ***

  “You can’t go back,” the man said to me. “If you go back, I won’t be able to protect you or them anymore. I’ve got eyes on your family. You have to stay out of sight.”

  I swallowed thickly.

  “Just tell me where to go,” I hesitated. “And you promise me that you’ll keep me updated. Once a month, you and I meet, and I’ll keep myself scarce. You miss one of those meets, and I’m going to assume that I need to move in.”

  “You’ll go to the Rejects. Stone will take care of you.”

  And that was how I’d become a member of a motorcycle club for the second time in my life—only, this time, as a Ghost.

  “I didn’t get that promise,” I hesitated at the entrance.

  He looked over at me.

  “No, you didn’t,” he agreed. “But that won’t stop you from getting the fuck out of here…now, will it?”

  I walked away, knowing that he’d do everything he could to take care of my family, even if he had to put his own life on the line to do it.

  Chapter 1

  I need a good fucking from something other than life.

  -Ghost’s secret thoughts

  Ghost

  One month later

  I stopped under the shade of a magnolia tree, paused, and stared at my old life.

  I did this once a month, and each time, I made myself sick with wanting. Once a month, I would stop by on my way home from the monthly meetings to discuss their health and happiness, and once a month I would torture myself by stopping by to see what I’d left behind.

  But it was the only way. The only way to protect her from a life that she wasn’t meant to live in. Protect her from my father and mother who would like nothing else but to ruin it and everything in it—including my wife and child.

  I watched as she broke. Watched as she railed. Watched as she dropped to the floor in the middle of our kitchen—a kitchen we had danced and sang in once upon a time—and broke down completely.

  I bent forward and threw up the entire contents of my stomach.

  This would be the last time I’d see her this close. The last time I’d do this to myself.

  But I was lying. Both to myself and to her.

  The only difference was that she didn’t know it.

  The cat, the bane of my existence, and the one thing that my wife held at night as she cried herself to sleep, hissed at me from the tree.

  “Fuck you.”

  Then I walked away, and only looked back twice.

  This vicious cycle would continue, year after year, for five more years. Five years of seeing, but not touching.

  Until, one day when I arrived after that monthly meeting to find a man in my house. A man standing next to my wife, pinning her against the counter, and everything changed.

  Chapter 2

  Needy AF.

  -T-shirt

  Mina

  Six years ago

  “I need a med check, please,” I told the charge nurse. “Will you…”

  “Mina?”

  I looked up, startled to see Loki and Silas standing there, both of them staring at me with various shades of sorrow shadowing their features.

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. “Did he get hurt again?”

  Tunnel was always getting hurt. It never failed, he’d hurt himself at least every three months. It was getting on that time again, and I just hoped it wasn’t worse than it was the last time—the last time he needed thirteen stitches on his forearm from a suspect pulling a knife on him.

  Silas’ face shut down, but it was Loki’s expression that was making me feel terrified. Very, very scared. Chills broke out all over my body, and the meds that were in my hands fell to the white tiled floor.

  I heard the glass shatter, saw the liquid spread out all over the floor, and I swallowed thickly.

  “Silas…Loki?”

  Silas held his arms open, and my throat started to swell.

  “Tell me,” my voice quivered, but my spine was straight and stiff.

  I needed to hear the words. I needed him to tell me exactly what was going on, and I needed it now.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Silas said. “But he got really hurt this afternoon…he didn’t make it.”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I was in midst of dying inside. Literally dying. If there was a way that one could feel their own death while still being alive, this was it. This was definitely it.

  Silas’ hand touched my shoulder, but I pulled away.

  Tunnel would never touch my shoulder again. He’d never give me soft kisses on my nose. He’d never give me a hug or rub his beard along the sensitive skin of my neck just because he could. He’d never wake me up on Saturday mornings—his only day off—by placing wet kisses on every inch of my face. He’d never tell me anything. Not ever again.

  Because he was dead.

  I closed my eyes, dropped to my knees, and I cried.

  ***

  There was a knock at the door, and I looked at it warily.

  I didn’t want to answer it.

  Answering it meant having to put on my happy face, and putting on my happy face wasn’t something I wanted to do at that moment in time.

  But I knew they wouldn’t go away.

  I’d, of course, tried ignoring them before. They didn’t go away. In fact, they found their own way inside when I did.

  Which was why I walked to the door with heavy feet, shuffling my socks on the carpeted floor as I went.

  I’m sure I looked like a two-year-old child who was just told to clean up her toys.

  I wanted to see the people on the other side of the door about as much as I wanted a root canal.

  I knew after it was done it would feel better, but the pain in the interim didn’t always seem worth it.

  But I opened the damn door and was rushed by no less than twenty people—all there to make sure that I wasn’t spending the day alone with only my dark and morose thoughts to keep me company.

  “Mina!” Rue cried. “You look so different!”

  I guess I kind of did. I had lost weight since this all started, weight I couldn’t really afford to lose. I looked like a shadow of the woman I used to be. Though, if I had to make an assumption, I was assuming she meant that I looked different due to my new haircut and style.

  I imagined that my husband was probably rolling over in his grave. My hair was not as long as he liked it when he was alive, but this was easier on me.

  He loved my hair. Loved the length. Loved when he wrapped it around his fists while he…I shut down those thoughts.

  I couldn’t deal with those kinds of emotions anymore. I didn’t have anyone to work those feelings out with, and I wasn’t willing to work them out on my own. It would only ever be Tunnel for me, and that was that.

  “Yeah,” I smiled, even though it didn’t reach my eyes. “I cut it. Braided the length of it into a bracelet kind of thing and put it on Tunnel’s grave. I hope this one doesn’t get taken like the last present I gave him, though.”

  “I looked into that,” Loki said cryptically. “Apparently, it’s the graveyard staff. They clean up the graves every so often so that stuff doesn’t collect. Like dead flowers, for example.”

  I could see that. I would hate for the graveyard where my husband’s remains lay, to be anything but perfect, I had to admit. The graveyard was one of the best in the city, and the grounds were absolutely stunning.

  The first time I’d seen that graveyard had been the day I’d laid my husband to rest.

  I’d picked it offhandedly, almost as if on autopilot, but the day I’d seen it in person—the day that we said goodbye—I’d been speechless.

  And I knew that Tunnel would love it. He had a thing for nature, and the beauty of that place was nothing less than spectacular.

  I remembered the funeral. Remembered that t
errible day like it was just yesterday.

  ***

  “You aren’t expected to say a word here, Mina,” came Cleo’s rasped reply. “You could literally sit there and not say a word, and nobody would blame you.”

  I gave him a look that clearly said ‘not happening’ and walked up to the podium.

  My eyes caught on a large picture of Tunnel that I’d taken off of our wall at home. It was of him the day that he became a police officer. He was dressed to the nines in his Benton, Louisiana Police Department’s finest. He was even wearing the hat that I rarely, if ever, got to see him in, and the smile on his face lit up the room. He was so handsome. So beautiful.

  Oh, God, I missed him.

  I walked up to the podium, glancing over my shoulder at Sienna, who was being held by the president of the MC himself, and steeled myself.

  I could do this. I would do this. It would be okay. I’d let every single person know what kind of man this world had lost.

  The moment my clammy hands met the cool wooden podium, a sense of calm and peace overtook me.

  Sienna’s laughter had me glancing in her direction once more, and the words just started to pour out.

  “He was such a good daddy. I remember the first time he met our girl, Sienna,” I wiped my eyes that I hadn’t realized were leaking as I remembered that day with such clarity that I couldn’t stop the smile from lighting my face. “He held her up to his face, and breathed in her scent. And what did he say? She doesn’t smell like a baby is supposed to.”

  I laughed, sniffling slightly.

  “I had to tell him that she probably would once they managed to wipe the blood off of her,” I smiled wistfully, momentarily forgetting why I was standing at this podium in the first place. “That was one of the best days of my life, second only to the day that I married him.”

  Sometimes, if I didn’t think too hard, I could pretend that Tunnel was just at work or attending a party with The Dixie Wardens.

  But it didn’t take long for the horrifying memories to return.

  “It was comical, really, watching us bring this little girl up.” I bit my lip. “Neither one of us knew what we were doing, but Tunnel…” I shook my head. “He was a natural. If Sienna was crying just to hear herself cry, then Tunnel would scoop her up, curl her into his muscular chest, and walk around, talking to her like she was a wise-ass fifteen-year-old instead of a fussy fifteen-day-old.”

  Sienna’s beautiful hair, so much like her father’s, caught the light just right, and I saw the hints of red that Tunnel had, too. Had.

  Jesus, she was the only thing I had left of him now.

  “Through colic, teething, and her illnesses, she always, always wanted her daddy.” My throat welled. “And now her daddy is gone.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Tunnel was over the moon four times in his life. The first time, when we got married. The second time, when our daughter, Sienna was born. The third, when he joined the Benton PD. The final time was when he was patched in with the Dixie Wardens MC.” I looked at each man in the Dixie Wardens MC—Benton Chapter, hoping they felt the emotion I was trying to convey.

  They’d saved my husband. They’d brought him into the fold. They’d been there for him when he needed it the most.

  “Tunnel loved the Dixie Wardens. He loved the police department. He loved his life.” I paused. “It wasn’t always that way. We had a tough couple of years, but he made me a promise when we found out I was expecting. And that was that he’d give our girl a life that we would be proud of. And he succeeded by leaps and bounds,” I said as a lone tear fell down my cheek.

  I couldn’t speak anymore. Couldn’t tell them that they were his best friends.

  “Thank you all for coming,” I said as I looked over the crowd. “He would’ve been so happy.”

  Chapter 3

  How’s adulting going? Well, I turned on the wrong burner and I’ve been cooking nothing for the last thirty minutes.

  -Being an adult sucks

  Mina

  Present Day

  “Sienna, did you get your homework done?” I yelled across the house.

  Sienna, my eight-year-old daughter, poked her head out of her room.

  “Yes, I did it with the tutor,” she explained. “Why?”

  I resisted the urge to snap at her.

  I was in a bad mood. I’d had a bad day at work, and I was literally trying to hold my anger inside until after she was in bed, and I could drown my problems in a bottle of wine.

  My phone rang, and my heart jumped into my throat.

  That was normal, though.

  Six years ago, I’d received a visit that no wife of a police officer wanted to receive. One that rocked my perfect little world and left my life, as I knew it, in ashes.

  My husband, Tunnel Morrison, had been killed doing what he loved. Like the hero that he was, he’d gone into a burning building to help someone and had died from smoke inhalation. However, that wasn’t his only injury—not that I’d been able to look at his body for confirmation.

  Although my husband had been a police officer, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that something could happen to him. I refused to admit that it was a possibility.

  Sure, he routinely went into dangerous situations. Sure, he’d been involved in something that had to do with his sister, Audrey. Sure, in the back of my mind, I knew it was possible that he could get hurt —but death? That had been a shocker. I hadn’t even acknowledged to myself that it might happen.

  We’d talked about it, yes, but talking about it and it actually happening were two different things.

  I let myself drift back in remembrance of that night, feeling him hug me as he told me all those wonderful, lovely things, things I had needed to hear. Things that had left with me one last beautiful memory of him.

  ***

  “Baby, we need to talk about this,” Tunnel said.

  I whirled on him. “We don’t need to talk about anything!” I yelled. “Because I’m leaving you! I can’t do this if you’re going to die.”

  He reached out and pulled me to him so fast that I didn’t even have time to blink.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he snapped. “Now sit down, let’s go over this, just in case, and shut up.”

  I bared my teeth at him, and his lips twitched.

  “You’re just turning me on here, darlin’,” he admitted. “I know you don’t want to sign a will. I know you don’t want to even think about a will because you think that if we make this decision, that it might happen, but you have to put those feelings aside. And this isn’t just about me passing away. Just think if something were to happen to both of us,” he paused, letting that reality sink in. “If we’re both in the car, Sienna’s with Silas or one of the other brothers, and we got into a wreck and both died. Who would you want Sienna to go to?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Not my mom,” I finally admitted.

  My mother hadn’t been a very good mother. Sure, she’d provided for me, but that was about all she did. She hated my guts, hated that I was the reason she had to work. Hated that because of me, she was forced to get a job when what she really wanted to do was live a life of leisure and do something that the rest of society did when they had enough money.

  So she took it out on me, repeatedly telling me how I had ruined her life. Slapped me whenever she felt like it. Though, my dad hadn’t been aware that she was doing all that. But then again, he wasn’t much better. He had a drinking problem, and he knocked my mother around when she didn’t get dinner on the table fast enough. She then took her frustrations out on me. I hated every single day of my life with them.

  “No, not your mother,” he agreed. “How about my mother?”

  I shivered. “Damn.”

  That was something that neither one of us wanted to happen. However, if we had no wills, the next of kin was usually chosen, which just hammered the point home that we really nee
ded to get our wills done.

  Son of a bitch.

  He was right. If we didn’t do this, and something happened to both of us at the same time, then Sienna would go to her maternal or paternal grandparents. Neither of which were who we wanted her to go to.

  “Fine. Fine. Fine,” I growled and took a seat at the dining room table.

  Tunnel didn’t like that much, and he picked me up before sitting down himself. He then placed me on his lap and pulled the document titled Last Will and Testament closer.

  “It’ll be okay, baby. This is only a precaution.”

  I tilted my head to rest against his neck. “It better be.”

  ***

  “Mom!” Sienna yelled.

  I snapped back to the present, dashed my fingers across my eyes and sniffled as I tried to compose myself.

  “What, baby?” I turned around and stared at my girl.

  My girl who looked so much like her daddy that it was hard to look at her sometimes.

  “Your phone is ringing.” She handed it to me. “Do you want me to answer it?”

  I shook my head. “No, baby. It’s only our neighbor.”

  A neighbor who’d asked me out no less than six times in the last week alone.

  “Well answer him!” she ordered, pointing at the phone.

  Luckily at that point the phone had stopped ringing, making it a moot point.

  “Sorry, honey. Are you hungry?” I questioned.

  She pursed her lips. “It depends. What are you cooking?”

  My usual fanfare was out. I didn’t have time to make much more than hot dogs and macaroni, and I told her as much a few seconds later.

  “I’ll take the hot dog. I don’t want any macaroni.” She made a gagging face.

  My brows rose.

  “What’s wrong with macaroni?” I asked.

  She bared her teeth in a grossed-out gag. “I heard that the stuff you make isn’t made out of real cheeses,” she said. “At least that’s what Mrs. Temperance said when I was over at her house yesterday.”