The Beard Made Me Do It (The Dixie Warden Rejects Book 5)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  That didn’t mean that she didn’t constantly write letters to the kids. Letters that I promptly intercepted and then destroyed as soon as they hit our mailbox.

  Lydia didn’t know that she wasn’t our blood child, but one day she would—though that day wasn’t today.

  It was still something that Ellen and I bickered about—telling her. I didn’t think that Lydia needed to know at all. Ellen thought it was something she needed to hear from us rather than finding out herself later on.

  We’d tell her in time, I supposed, but right now wasn’t that time.

  Hence the reason Big Papa and Aaron likely didn’t want to talk in front of our children.

  It wasn’t a surprise when Linc followed us out, though.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  Aaron spoke first.

  “Margot was shot to death outside of a halfway house when she tried to rob a woman. The woman, who had a license to carry concealed, feared for the safety of her children and herself. She pulled out her gun, and shot her dead center in the chest.”

  I blew out a breath.

  “Shit.”

  I can’t say that I was upset about her death, but I could say I definitely felt some relief at the news. It was freeing, in a way, to know that that chapter of our lives was over.

  No longer having to worry about that woman and what she’d do next was an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders. It was enough to make me want to yell out in relief.

  “That sucks,” Linc grumbled under his breath. “Guess we won’t have to renew the restraining orders after all.”

  I slapped my hand down on my son’s back.

  “I’d offer to go for a ride with you, but I don’t want your coach to kill me if you fall off and break a nail before Sunday’s game.”

  My kid flipped me the finger. “Fuck off.”

  I snorted.

  “Language!”

  We all looked at the closed door.

  “How the hell does she do that?” Linc asked.

  “You’ll eventually find out, son, that women have eyes in the backs of their heads.”

  “And, apparently, ears like a goddamn wolf’s.”

  ***

  Ellen

  I walked tiredly up the stairs that would lead us to the box seats that Linc had reserved for us to use for the game today.

  I stared at the stairs and wondered idly what the hell I was doing.

  I had no clue why I’d taken the stairs, but when I took a seat beside the man that was sitting at the top waiting for me, I realized that I wasn’t the only one nervous.

  “Have they kicked off yet?” I asked hopefully, taking a seat beside my man.

  Jessie looked up at me.

  “No,” he sighed. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

  I couldn’t help it. I threw myself into Jessie’s arms and buried my face into his neck.

  His beard tickled my skin, but I didn’t pull back from the death grip I had on him.

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah?” I challenged him. “Then why the heck are you in here instead of the box thingy?”

  Jessie pushed me back so he could look at me.

  “Because this is where you are.”

  “Mom!” our two heathens hollered, as they burst through the door at the same time.

  “What?” I looked over Jessie’s shoulder at my two girls, my eyes lingering longer on Lydia as I studied her features.

  Unless you knew about it, you couldn’t tell that eight years ago she’d been born prematurely with a drug addiction. Now she was a normal, healthy eight-year-old who played soccer and ran so fast sometimes that I was scared she’d hurt herself.

  “Laura threw her hotdog down into the bleachers, and she ate mine while I was using the bathroom.”

  I dropped my forehead down onto Jessie’s shoulder.

  “They’re your kids,” I said. “You deal with it. I’m going to sit right here and try not to freak the hell out.”

  He started a rumbling chuckle, and then I found myself moving through the air despite my desire to stay exactly where I was.

  “I don’t want to go,” I moaned.

  Jessie ignored me.

  “You’d be devastated if you didn’t get to watch Linc win his first ever Super Bowl,” Jessie countered.

  I sighed.

  “You’re right.”

  And I would’ve been.

  Approximately four hours later, I was staring at Linc’s face on the Jumbotron as he accepted the Vince Lombardi Trophy with a wide smile on his face.

  “Who do you want to thank for all of your success, Linc?”

  Linc looked up at the box. Though he couldn’t see us, he knew we were there.

  “My dad for catching hundreds and hundreds of passes so I could hone my skills…and my step-mom for pushing me to always be a better person, even when I didn’t want to be. I don’t know if I’d be here right now if they didn’t believe in me.”

  A sob caught in my throat.

  “Well, fuck me in the ass,” Big Papa said from behind us. “But that boy sure does know how to tug on the heartstrings.”

  That’s about when I started to sniffle and snort as tears of happiness started to roll down my cheeks.

  “Does she sound like Miss Piggy to you or is that just me?”

  I flipped my brother off, then buried my face into my husband’s shoulder and cried while the rest of our friends laughed.

  Then I sent him a text message.

  Ellen (6:24 PM): I love you.

  He replied back within seconds.

  Jessie (6:24 PM): I love you, more.

  What’s next?

  Beard Up

  (Yes, Ghost’s Book!!)

  7-27-17

  Prologue

  Women are like bacon. They look good, smell good, and taste even better. Unfortunately, each piece will slowly kill you.

  -Face of Life

  Ghost

  “Fucker’s deader than a doornail,” a man said, sounding almost amused.

  Someone snarled, and I tried to turn in the direction of the sound, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.

  “If you have nothing to add to this, you may leave,” a cool, calm voice practically purred. “Doctor?”

  “I have a pulse back, but I have had a pulse three times and he’s coded in the back of the ambulance twice. He was pronounced clinically dead on scene, and then resuscitated himself on the way to the morgue. It’s very likely that his lungs are fried, and nothing will help him. The respirator is breathing for him, and keeping the blood circulating through his system via the machine. If I take him off, though, it’s highly likely that he will succumb to the injuries he’s sustained,” the voice, whom I assume was the doctor, said.

  “Keep him on it. Find him some lungs,” someone, the man who’d sounded deceptively calm earlier, ordered.

  “Sir,” the doctor interjected. “It’s not as simple as just finding him some lungs. Someone has to die before he can have his lungs.”

  “So make someone die,” the calm man said, sounding so very practical that it was hard to listen to him.

  “But sir,” the doctor objected.

  “I don’t care what you have to do, but if you want to continue breathing yourself, you’ll do it. You’ll make it happen, because I need him. I need him, or the whole operation that I’ve spent the last decade planning will be for not. Do it, or die. Simple as that,” the man ordered flatly.

  Silence proceeded that statement, and I realized that whomever that man had been had left the room, and me.

  “This guy needs to die,” the man that had been reprimanded earlier, said. “It’d be a favor to him if he did. His life will be terrible. No woman will ever want him again. Not when those scars heal.”

  “His life is already terrible, Kershaw,” the doctor said softly. “The boss guy won’t let him go, just like he won’t let the rest of u
s go. Plus, he’ll get reconstructive surgery, and the majority of these scars will be taken care of.”

  “No fucking shit. You should pull the plug. Give him a way out of this,” Kershaw said, disgusted.

  “You know I can’t. He’s got my family on his radar, just like he has yours. And this guy’s,” the doctor said gruffly, gesturing towards me, the injured patient. “He’d have them, too, if they weren’t so protected.”

  Family? Did I have a family somewhere?

  “His mind. I think it’s going to be fucked up. When I got him out of the morgue, he’d gone fucking cold. There’s seriously no way that he’s going to come back as anything but a vegetable,” Kershaw said.

  The doctor grunted in reply.

  “At this point, at least, he wouldn’t be able to remember how much he’s missing. Seems kinder than having to see your wife and kids every day. Watching them go on with their lives without you,” the doctor’s voice sounded choked.

  “Sorry man. Didn’t mean to bring it up,” Kershaw replied. “Fucking A, I hate this job. Fucking Hill. Fucking Government project bullshit. I never signed up for this.”

  “Nobody did,” the doctor explained. “Don’t you know that by now?

  “I know that, one day, Hill’s going to get what’s coming to him, and when that day comes, I’m going to have a front row seat in a recliner with a bag of popcorn on my lap and a beer in my hand.”

  “When that day comes, Kershaw, we’ll all likely be dead,” the doctor countered.

  There was silence for so long that I thought they were gone, but then Kershaw said two more words, and those words would haunt me for the next two years.

  “Or free.”