Beard Up

by Lani Lynn Vale

  He then sat down in the chair and took off his boots while he waited for me to answer.

  “About two hours ago,” I admitted. “I was reading before bed and lost track of time.”

  His lips twitched. “That seems to be a new habit,” he growled. “What did you read this time? Anything good?”

  Oh, yeah, it was good.

  It was about a Highlander. How could it not be good?

  “Yes,” I said matter of factly. “It was excellent. I think you’ll like it, too.”

  He grinned and tossed his boots to the floor, then stood up and shucked his pants, followed shortly by his uniform shirt.

  “I’m not so much excited about the book itself, but more what the book did to you,” he growled as he crawled across the bed to me.

  I smiled into the darkness and held my hands out wide.

  He accepted the invitation and dropped down fully on top of me.

  I buried my face into his neck and moaned when I felt his heavy erection pressing into me.

  “I’ll be very happy to show you.”

  ***

  I looked at the empty space where Tunnel used to lay his head, and barely resisted the urge to cry.

  My cat wasn’t here to keep me company, so there would be no crying jag today.

  Tomorrow, maybe. But tonight, I needed to go to bed.

  So, that was why I reached out and downed the two sleeping pills.

  They didn’t do too much for me—not anymore. But I needed them to get a few hours of sleep.

  If I didn’t have them, then sleep would elude me tonight, just like it did almost every night since the night Tunnel left me.

  After swallowing the pills dry, I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes.

  The bed didn’t even smell like him anymore. Nothing did. For the first month after Tunnel’s death, I didn’t change them. But I’d been forced to wash our sheets one night after Sienna had slept in our bed and promptly had a diaper leak all over them.

  That’d been the most emotional load of laundry that I’d ever done. I’d bawled like a baby, and even Sienna, who didn’t even understand why I was crying, had joined me.

  My eyes flicked over to my closet where all of his clothes were still hanging.

  The clothes didn’t smell like him anymore, either, not even his dress uniform, which was also still hanging up in the closet.

  Then there was his cut. That still smelled like smoke. It was unfair, it was sad, and I still had it hanging up where he placed it every night, ready and waiting for him to come back and use it…although he never would.

  I hadn’t smelled him since his scent had dissipated from the clothing I kept…until tonight.

  The man who had saved me from a ball-smack to the face had smelled like my Tun. He smelled exactly like him, right down to the deodorant and the faint hint of motor oil and gas that came with a man who rode a motorcycle and worked on them.

  The moment I caught a whiff of that smell, memory upon memory came rushing back. It had been like a tidal wave of emotion washing over me, and I’d had to excuse myself from Josh’s side—a man who wouldn’t be happy that I was thinking about my dead husband who has been gone for six years—before I cried. And I did cry. In the line for the bathroom that was about sixty women deep.

  I cried until a lovely woman—the woman who had been with the man who smelled like mine—came up and spoke with me. She’d been sweet and had me laughing about her kiddos, one who was seventeen and another who was just shy of six months, in a matter of moments.

  The man had been standing there, waiting for his woman to come out, once we were done. He’d then handed me my phone that I hadn’t even realized I’d dropped.

  The same scent wafted off of him just as it had earlier, and I was still sad.

  Very, very sad. So sad, in fact, that if I could sleep forever, I would.

  However, I had my baby girl to worry about, Tunnel’s baby girl.

  I would never leave her, but sometimes… well, sometimes I just felt like it would be easier.

  I could just go to sleep and never wake up again. Only then would I see my Tunnel again.

  Chapter 11

  If you can’t handle me at my worst, I don’t blame you. I’m a fucking hot mess.

  -Ghost’s secret thoughts

  Ghost

  I thought I could do it, allow her to be the bait, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  And I was about to do something bad. Very, very, very bad.

  This was either going to blow up in my face or it was going to work out.

  It didn’t matter what happened beyond this point. I would protect them—with my life if needed. I’d sacrifice anything and everything that I had to in order to do it, too. There would be no uncertainties on my end.

  None.

  I made a phone call and told Silas what I wanted, and he promised he would make it happen.

  Then I went across the street and spoke with Lynn.

  “I can’t do this back and forth business anymore,” I told him. “I can’t sit here and watch her be unhappy. We’re going to have to find another way.”

  He grinned. “I got a week out of you, though. That was four more days than Silas thought I’d get.”

  I grunted in reply, then walked out without another word.

  Chapter 12

  Damn right I’m good in bed. I can stay there all day.

  -Mina’s secret thoughts

  Mina

  “Silas, I can’t just up and leave again. I just got my job back…” I hesitated.

  I really, really wanted to leave, though. I’d leave right this minute if I could. If I had won the lottery, and it allowed me to pack up and get the hell out of here, I’d do it in a freakin’ heartbeat.

  “You’re being harassed by a man,” the phone went off on the counter again, and I ignored it. Silas didn’t however. He picked it up and placed it to his ear without even pausing to see if it was okay.

  “Yeah?” he snapped.

  My lips twitched.

  I loved Silas. He’d taken such good care of Sienna and I. Even Tunnel when he’d been alive.

  Now he was like a grandfather to my daughter, and I didn’t want to leave this place. But I also didn’t want to deal with Josh’s freaky self, either.

  Ever since the ballgame, things had gone from bad to worse between Josh and me.

  It’d gone from scary, to downright terrifying, and I was beyond relieved that Silas knew about it. Though, I expected that had a lot to do with the fact that his son and wife were on our porch the night that Josh had dropped me off.

  When I’d refused to give Josh a kiss, Sebastian had not only seen it, but he’d also stepped in to stop it when I tried to pull away after Josh hadn’t taken no for an answer.

  Josh had pulled out in a huff, and Sebastian had given me a long, meaningful look, which told me everything he thought about Josh but had left without giving me the lecture.

  But then Silas had shown up the next day, demanding answers, and now he was telling me that I was moving all the way to Mooresville, Alabama where another chapter of the Dixie Wardens were located.

  I’d heard of them, of course.

  The president of that chapter had died because he’d been shot by a gang banger.

  It’d been big news everywhere because he was a law enforcement officer, but in our small town—where the majority of people were either members of the Dixie Wardens MC, married to a club member or were family members of a club member, it’d been huge news.

  The Dixie Wardens were a tight-knit group of bikers, and it didn’t matter that this man had been the president of another Dixie Wardens’ chapter. If you were wearing the Dixie Wardens patch, then you were family regardless of where you called home.

  And if something happened to family, then all of the Dixie Wardens were there trying to help out in any way that they could.

  The six days tha
t our club—no, Tunnel’s club— had been in Mooresville, Alabama for the funeral had left Benton, Louisiana feeling like a ghost town.

  I’d been asked if I wanted to go, of course, but since I was working, I had Sienna and everyone else was leaving, it didn’t make sense for me to leave. I wasn’t a really part of the club…not anymore.

  My husband had been, but I was just someone that they watched over at this point.

  Like now.

  Silas was speaking quietly on the phone, his voice a low rumble of sounds that sent shivers down my back. He was protecting me, just like he’d been doing since the day that Tunnel left this Earth.

  “No,” Silas barked. “This is the end of the line for you. You either leave now, or you get ready to receive the ass-whoopin’ of a lifetime. I will personally dish that punishment out if you don’t leave her alone.”

  My eyes closed.

  That wouldn’t work. Josh was relentless. I knew that now, better than anyone, after the last week of his constant calls, unannounced visits and insistence that I do whatever he wanted.

  The one thing I could say was that at least he hadn’t forced me to have sex with him.

  I’d thought it was going to happen last night, but something had happened outside and Josh had left instead. I locked the door and then huddled in my house the rest of the night, scared to death that he would be coming back to finish what he’d started.

  But he hadn’t. And now Silas was telling me that I was leaving.

  With a startling realization, I knew that I wanted to go.

  Maybe getting away from this place—permanently—would be enough.

  He hadn’t followed me to Uncertain like I thought he would. Maybe that was the trick. Get far enough away that the thought of pursuing me would be too much of a bother.

  Silas hung up the phone and handed it back to me.

  “You’ll get that changed once you get there,” he ordered me. “There’s a house set up for you. The old ladies of that chapter have banded together and have already set up everything that Sienna will ever need in one of the bedrooms. You’ll only need to bring your clothes. There’s a job waiting for you at the hospital there, as well as the clinic in case you would rather work there instead.”

  My brows rose.

  “How did you manage that?” I asked him, stunned.

  “One of the members there is a doctor. He’s involved with the hiring process at the hospital, and the clinic is also his. So, either way, whatever you choose, you’ll have a job waiting for you.”

  I sat there, still stunned, after he left. Was this my life?

  Would it be okay to leave?

  Then, after biting my lip, I realized that it would be.

  There was nothing holding us here anymore. Nothing but memories and a grave that never really felt like my man was inside of it resting eternally.

  “I’ll be back in an hour with the rest of the ladies. We’re going to get you packed up and out of here within the day, that way you’ll have no excuse not to go tonight.”

  He was right, of course. If I did it all myself, it could take me weeks, and by then Josh would catch on to what I was doing, and it wouldn’t be so much of a surprise anymore.

  “Okay, Silas,” I said softly. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Nine hours later, I was parking my loaded-down Tahoe under the carport of what looked to be a brand-new house. It wasn’t a grand house or anything, but you could tell it was new. There were still stickers on the window denoting the manufacturer. The grass was still in squares where they had taken the sod off of a pallet and rolled them over the dirt of the yard to grow.

  Then there was the dumpster that was still on the street. A dumpster that was filled with so much crap that it likely needed to be emptied long before now.

  “Mom, why can I see all the way inside that house?” Sienna asked worriedly.

  My lips twitched. She was so much like her daddy that it was uncanny.

  I saw Tunnel in her every single day, and the more she grew up, the more I saw it.

  If I were being honest, it was sad sometimes. It made my heart break to see her do the same things as her daddy.

  “Because it doesn’t look like there are any curtains up, yet,” I supplied the answer. “It was likely a very new house, and they just acquired it for us. It’s pretty, isn’t it?

  “Yeah, I guess. You could plant some flowers in that flower bed right there,” she pointed to the front walk where there was a flower bed, sans flowers.

  “I could,” I agreed, happy that she was semi-on board for this new venture.

  Though she hadn’t said as much. She was still upset about leaving her house, where her daddy had made her a bed and painted her room, to be overly excited about this new one.

  My stomach clenched at the memory of that bed.

  I’d helped with the bed, of course, but only enough as to offer Tunnel help where he needed it.

  He’d made her an exact replica of a princess bed.

  It had huge columns that represented turrets, and a peak on top of the built-in bookcase that resembled a roof. Then there was the paint—that was a masterpiece in and of itself.

  It was painted gray, and Tunnel had painstakingly painted darker gray blocks on the entire expanse of the wood walls of the bed, making it look exactly like a castle would look if you were staring at the exterior.

  And the icing on the castle-bed cake was the tiny flagpoles at the top of each bookshelf with pink streamers flying from them that blew in the breeze of the room’s ceiling fan.

  “Well, let’s go inside already,” Sienna grumbled under her breath, another thing she did like her father.

  “Okay, honey,” I agreed, fishing the keys out of my pocket.

  My eyes lit on a tiny dot of pink on the top of the key, and my heart skipped a beat.

  That had also been something that Tunnel had done for me.

  I had a ton of keys. One to my house. One to my car. One to Tunnel’s truck. One to the storage shed. One to the trailer lock. One to the trailer. And so the list went on.

  After about the fortieth time that I’d had to go through all the keys on my key ring—and yes, I was more than aware that they were all different looking—Tunnel had put dots on all of my keys, color coding them to coordinate with the locks.

  I still had the colors on my key rings, though I had to refresh them every couple of years since Tunnel had done it.

  That had been a heartbreaking moment, and surprisingly, one that had sent me into a tailspin of depression that took a while to climb out of.

  If it wasn’t for my daughter, Tunnel’s daughter, I’d be doing a lot worse than I was doing right now.

  I heaved myself out of the car and walked up to where Sienna was waiting impatiently by the carport door, looking at me like her father used to: with bemused impatience.

  “Sorry, baby,” I apologized, slipping the key into the lock.

  It turned easily, and I pushed the door open.

  The alarm by the door immediately started to beep, and I typed in a code to turn it off.

  “How did you know the code?” Sienna asked as she pushed past me.

  “Silas gave that to me along with the keys,” I answered, not willing to admit that the code was another number that was heart stoppingly familiar.

  The anniversary of when Tunnel and I met. It was just four numbers, but those four numbers, 0804, would be forever etched in my brain.

  Though it was a coincidence, I didn’t wish to examine it any further because it made my heart hurt, so I walked into the living space and stared.

  “This house is tiny,” Sienna murmured.

  I looked around at the sparse house. It wasn’t bad. She was right, though. It was sort of small. But since it was only her and me, it would be just fine. Especially since it had three bedrooms.

  Sienna walked down the hall to explore, and I walked over to the countertops.
r />   They are lovely, I thought, as I ran my hand over them.

  A memory assaulted me, too fast for me to brace for it.

  “Babe,” Tunnel said, standing in the middle of the cabinet department at Home Depot. “This is your domain, not mine. If you want black fuckin’ countertops, we’ll get you black fuckin’ countertops.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Tunnel Angelo Morrison! You did not just say that to me.”

  My man grinned, and acted like he hadn’t just committed the biggest faux pas any man could commit.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Minnie. I was just telling you to get what you want, that’s all.” He held up his hands.

  I continued to glare, even though I really wanted to laugh instead.

  This man of mine, he didn’t care if what he said was considered ‘politically correct.’ All he cared about was getting his point across.

  And I cared that Tunnel was my man. I didn’t care that he could be crass and so bluntly honest sometimes that he often came off as an asshole. This man of mine just didn’t sugar-coat things, and frankly, I was glad that he didn’t.

  It was important to me that one always be truthful, even if it would hurt less to lie.

  Such as right now.

  “Tunnel, you’re so freakin’ annoying,” I told him. “Sometimes, I just want to take you to the back of the store and knock some sense into you with my fists.”

  He looked at said fists.

  “Minnie, you can’t even kill a fly with a fuckin’ fly swatter,” he told me. “How the fuck do you think you’re going to knock around a man who is twice your size and knows how to take a punch?”

  I wouldn’t let my mind hang on to the fact that he knew how to take a punch. He was a police officer. He was, indeed, trained to take a punch, but that wasn’t where he learned to take one.

  No, he learned to take one from his old man who took delight in beating the shit out of him. When it came down to it, Tunnel would willingly submit to a beating as long as his sister wasn’t touched.

  “Can I help you both with anything?”