Beard Mode (The Dixie Warden Rejects MC Book 1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  That was Mei’s soft voice. “He went to the hearse.”

  My eyes traveled that way, and Tank was sitting at the back of the hearse, his front paws planted on the bumper of the black vehicle, as his eyes peered into the back glass.

  I could see the coffin—covered completely with a stunning American flag—through the back window.

  “That’s just sad,” someone murmured.

  I agreed wholeheartedly.

  I’d seen the photo in the paper this morning.

  It’d been heartbreaking to see.

  All you could see were the feet of Stone’s lifeless body. What the focus of the photograph was, though, was Stone’s K-9 officer, Tank.

  Tank had been laying across Stone’s feet, head hung.

  Grief was written all over the dog’s body.

  If you said to me that dogs didn’t feel the way people felt, I’d have shown you that photo and called you a liar.

  Dogs felt emotions, and with that picture you could feel all kinds of them pouring through that dog.

  Some bagpipes started to play, and I realized that it was time for me to go.

  But when I tried to pull away, I was sucked into the crowd that started to move forward.

  Aaron’s arm went around my waist while someone else boxed me in.

  Downy and Memphis walked in front of me, and Mei walked in front of them.

  Bikers were also at my back and sides.

  Everyone followed the matriarch of The Dixie Wardens Alabama Chapter, making sure she got safely ensconced in her seat.

  The front seat of the hearse. Even though she’d been offered a ride in a limo that the rest of the family was riding in.

  “No,” she said. “I ride with him. I’ll ride with him until he’s brought to his final resting place. Always and forever. He needs me one more time.”

  Her eyes looked absolutely haunted. Ravished. Crushed.

  There weren’t enough sad words in the English language to explain the way she looked at that moment.

  Devastation rushed through me, and I had to turn my head away to keep my emotions in check.

  My eyes were drawn to how someone else opened the back door, allowing Tank to jump up inside of the back with the coffin, and I nearly lost it right then and there.

  Tank lay down on the side, his head resting on his paws, as he protected his master one last time on his final ride home.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I whispered brokenly. “I need to go. Do you mind?”

  Aaron didn’t answer.

  Instead he curled his fingers around my hip tighter, letting me know without words that I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Shit!

  I bit my lip, my heart racing.

  I couldn’t do this.

  I really couldn’t do this.

  Doing this, around these people, was not a good idea.

  I didn’t know any of them.

  And I was an ugly crier.

  That’d been why I didn’t go in the first place.

  I didn’t have to know the man that died.

  All it took for me to cry was a thought, a whisper of something sad, and I was in full blown hysterics.

  Aaron didn’t let me go, though.

  He kept me pulled tight to his body, despite both of us sweating in the hundred-degree afternoon sun.

  My face was pressed against his leather vest, sweat slickening both my face and his vest.

  Just when I’d started to push away, he let me go, but only long enough to allow us to move apart.

  It was like some silent signal had been given.

  Police started to march toward the sea of cars. Bikers mounted bikes.

  And almost as one, every single motor in the entire football parking lot started up, surrounding us with a deafening roar.

  Then the emergency lights started up, blinding in their intensity.

  “Come on,” Aaron urged me toward his bike.

  He mounted it and held his hand out for me to hop on, and I did, all the while tears were pouring down my face.

  The men surrounding us were the last to mount, but I realized moments later that it didn’t matter. We were going to take the lead.

  Every time I looked behind us on the way to the cemetery where Stone was being buried, my breath would clog in my throat.

  There was a line of cars, and when I say line, I really meant a line.

  The line was so long, that I wasn’t sure I could see the end of it.

  Then there were the people on the overpasses.

  We only passed three, but there were so many people, some with flags, others with signs, that I was sure they had to be blocking traffic.

  The thing was that nobody cared.

  Every single one of the cars we passed pulled over.

  And they waited. And waited. And waited some more.

  They likely waited for over fifty minutes, if I had to guess.

  It took us over an hour to go fifteen miles.

  And by the time we pulled up in the parking lot of the cemetery, I was a freakin’ mess.

  I hadn’t enjoyed the ride—my first ride ever on a motorcycle—because my mind was too focused on what was directly behind me.

  Sadly, that was only the beginning.

  By the time the funeral was over, I was a frazzled mess.

  The good thing, though, was that I wasn’t the only frazzled mess.

  Everyone was.

  Everyone cried.

  Police. Firefighters. Bikers.

  Men, women and children of all ages. It made no difference.

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the entire area.

  And when the first scoop of dirt hit the top of the coffin, my heart officially broke.

  Mei fell to her knees.

  Tank began to whimper loudly.

  Memphis broke down.

  And I realized two things.

  One, no one ever thought much about the lives of the people behind the badge.

  Sure, they felt bad that the officer had lost his life, but did they mourn with the family who lost that officer? Did they realize that he was a dad who kissed his children’s skinned knees or that he had a wife who teased him for having to always have his back to the wall to face all threats?

  No. Nobody thought about that.

  The other thing I realized was that I wanted to change my life. I wanted to live life to my fullest potential. I wanted to have a partner in life, kids, my own family. I wanted the house with the white picket fence. I wanted all of that, the whole shebang.

  I wanted to have what Stone had.

  I wanted someone to cry over me if I were to die.

  Sure, my mom and siblings would.

  But seeing Stone’s family—bikers and police friends included—lose their battles with their emotions, I realized that I wasn’t loved like that.

  Not yet.

  But I would make a difference in this life, and hopefully when I was done living my life, I’d be remembered and missed by my people like Stone was by his.

  With so much love and devotion that it filled an entire football stadium.

  Chapter 9

  Throw me to the wolves, and I’ll return leading the whole goddamned pack.

  -Fact of Life

  Aaron

  “Thanks for taking care of him,” I told her. “I’m kind of scared to go look at my place.”

  Imogen grinned and pushed me lightly on the arm, urging me toward the door.

  Before I could unlock it, though, Imogen’s sister came out from across the hall looking frazzled.

  “Does this look okay for my date with Dennie?”

  I blinked in surprise.

  “Don’t you have a husband?” I asked Imogen’s sister, Sunny.

  Sunny’s smile widened.

  “I do.”

  “Then…why are you going out with another guy?”

  Imogen started to snicker, then turned back to her s
ister.

  At Imogen’s nod, Sunny fist pumped and started walking away.

  Without answering my question.

  Imogen followed her inside their apartment, and I followed Imogen after quickly letting Tank into my place, closing the door lightly behind me.

  It wasn’t seconds later, and there was a knock on the door.

  “Later, Sun,” Imogen called. “I’ll make sure to leave the door open for you.”

  “Don’t bother. I won’t be home,” Sunny smiled as she opened the door and pushed the man that was about to knock again out further into the hallway.

  “I’m so confused,” I told her. “What the hell was that?”

  “How much do you know about Sunny and Raymond’s relationship?” Imogen asked from her perch on the kitchen counter.

  “I know that they were getting married the last time I came home, before my accident, about two years ago. My mom was making her a wedding cake,” I told her.

  Imogen’s lips twitched.

  “That’s right,” she confirmed. “Have you ever heard of an open relationship?”

  I blinked.

  “You’re telling me that Raymond lets his wife sleep with other people?” I confirmed.

  She nodded. “And she lets him do the same,” she shrugged. “I can’t say that I totally agree with what they’re doing. Hell, they don’t even live with each other half the time. The only time they stay together is when they’re playing husband and wife again.”

  My grin widened.

  “That’s kind of fucked up.”

  She nodded her head.

  “They don’t share bank accounts. They don’t live together. They don’t even see each other all that much. Yes, I can agree that it definitely is weird.” She paused. “Though Raymond does work in the oilfield. He’s actually living in, I think, South Dakota right now. It’s different when he’s home.”

  “Seems like it shouldn’t make a difference whether he lives here or not. Being married means there were promises made.”

  She nodded.

  “When he’s home, they don’t have an open relationship,” she continued explaining. “They still don’t live with each other, but they spend a whole lot more time together.”

  “Hmm,” I hummed. “I think we’ll just have to quit discussing it. It weirds me out.”

  She gave me an agreeing smile.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “I decided a long time ago not to analyze what they have going on. Though I didn’t live with her at the time.”

  “You don’t always live with her?”

  She shook her head and headed back out to the hallway, and I followed her.

  I got to my door and wondered if I really wanted to see the mess that Imogen had described to me.

  I blew out a breath, and then twisted the knob.

  My gut clenching at what I saw inside.

  She patted me on the shoulder as she started to gather up large pieces of trash that’d been shredded. Papers that’d been on my side table being most of them.

  “Do you have a big black trash bag I could use?”

  I walked to the kitchen sink and pulled the cabinet underneath of it open.

  Reaching down, I dragged a bag out of the box that was holding them and opened it, the bag making a loud snapping sound as I unfurled it.

  She jumped, then started to laugh.

  “Gets me every time,” she told me as she held out some trash.

  We worked like that for a few minutes before she answered my earlier question.

  “I used to live in my own apartment,” she informed me. “It was over the laundromat, actually.”

  “The one that burned down?”

  She nodded.

  “Though I wasn’t responsible for it burning down. That happened after I left,” she promised. “Rod went to prison the week before Clarabelle was set to deploy. So my mom, Sunny, and I all moved into Clarabelle’s place. A, because it had the most bedrooms, and B, because between the three of us we would always have someone home with Davis.”

  “Oh,” I muttered. “That makes a hell of a lot of sense now.”

  She grinned.

  “When Clarabelle gets home, I’ll be looking for somewhere else to stay,” I promised. “Clarabelle’s not re-enlisting with the Marines, but she does have to stay a little longer since they extended her tour. I love my nephew, but I like walking around with no pants on. Something that I can’t do with my nine-year-old nephew in the same house.”

  I snorted.

  “Pants aren’t that uncomfortable.”

  Then she went and surprised me again.

  By unbuttoning her pants.

  “Look at this,” she said, ripping the buttons open with a pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. “Tell me this doesn’t look like it’s uncomfortable.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

  Literally, she was exposing half her belly, as well as the top of her underwear to me.

  Her bright pink underwear.

  With a small white bow.

  What she was showing me, however, were the indentations in her skin where the tight denim had dug into her.

  My eyes kept trailing up to her belly button.

  A barbell pierced through the skin, a small white ball on each end.

  Her belly surprisingly wasn’t flat, either. It was slightly rounded, giving her small frame a tiny little Buddha look to it.

  Not that I would ever admit that to her.

  She was adorably cute and I wanted her to stay. Not freak out that I’d called her names.

  “What am I looking at?” I asked carefully, not wanting to say the wrong thing.

  “You’re looking at why I don’t like wearing pants.” She pointed to the indented skin again. “See?”

  I nodded my head. “Maybe you should try the next size up in pants.”

  She started to laugh at my suggestion.

  “Yeah,” she noted. “Or maybe I’ll just continue not to wear pants when I don’t want to!”

  I laughed under my breath as I picked up a couch cushion and shoved it into the bag. She followed it up with a pillow.

  Before we could reach the last one, though, Tank walked over to it, curled up, and closed his eyes.

  “Guess you can keep that one for him,” she grinned.

  Rolling my eyes, I walked to the last thing that was on the ground, which happened to be the test results for my physical from the fire department.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The paper telling me I’m clean and free of any illnesses, and allowed to start my job at the fire department.”

  “No,” she started to laugh. “I’m talking about that?”

  I flipped the paper over, and cringed. “That would be a hundred-dollar bill…missing most of Ben Franklin’s face.”

  She started to giggle, and I peeled the hundred dollar bill off the back.

  It came off in pieces.

  “Why would you just have a hundred-dollar bill laying around?” she asked.

  “Cleaning lady.”

  “Cleaning lady?”

  “Tawny.”

  “Tawny’s your cleaning lady?”

  I sighed.

  “She offered, and I said yes,” I confirmed.

  “Why not find someone that’s actually a cleaning lady, and not someone that just wants to be able to have free reign of your home?” she challenged.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing would come out.

  She did have a point.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” I finally settled on. “When I caught her going through my drawers, I told her that she couldn’t come back. When I told her to take the money, she flipped me off and stormed out, upset that I would tell her she wasn't allowed to clean anymore for me.”

  “Maybe she was putting away your clothes,” Imogen suggested.

  I shook my head. “Negative. I told her to stay the hell out of my r
oom.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Imogen cocked her hips, making the pants that were still hanging open gape. “She didn’t clean your room. You paid her a hundred dollars to only clean the bathroom, kitchen, and living room?”

  I nodded. “That bad?”

  She gave me a look that clearly said, ‘fuck yeah.’

  I held my hands up in surrender.

  “I could find you a cleaning lady that only charges you fifty to do it. Tawny is a fucking fifth grade teacher. Why would she clean your apartment when she has school-like things to do?”

  “It’s the summer,” I pointed out, trying to keep the smile out of my voice at hearing how defensive and territorial she was sounding.

  Over me!

  The freak who had half his face melted off.

  Which would change the minute she saw the rest of me.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for the wake?”

  I grinned at her.

  “Trying to change the subject?” I asked.

  “Trying not to vomit that you won’t see Tawny for who she really is,” she amended.

  “A woman looking for extra cash?” I tried.

  “A woman looking to get her pussy tickled,” she offered.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Dear God,” I murmured. “You amuse the fuck out of me. But Tawny is a moot point now. She won’t be back.”

  With that I turned to my bedroom, stripping my shirt off as I went.

  Her hiss of breath as she inhaled had me turning.

  “What?”

  I knew what I was doing.

  I wanted to see her reaction to me. See what she thought of all the scars, and my chest was one of the worst places on my body.

  But she surprised me yet again not by seeing the scars, but by seeing the tattoo.

  One that was special to me. One that was meant to remind me that I’d been screwed once upon a time, and it would never happen again.

  My grim reaper tattoo. The one thing that straightened me out and forced me to think without a whole bunch of emotion controlling me.

  One to remind me what that bitch had done to me, even when I didn’t want to see it.

  “What’s the rest of it look like?” she asked curiously.

  I turned completely to my side, allowing her to see the bad part of my belly.

  “That’s a big damn tattoo,” she said. “Did it hurt to get that over your scar tissues?”

  “Like a fucking bitch,” I confirmed. “They recommend you not do anything to it for at least two years, but I couldn’t wait that long. I got it done when I joined the club.”