Text copyright ©2017 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To my youngest baby. I sure do hate when you’re sick, but the love you give me when you are makes me cherish each and every cuddle.
Acknowledgements
Photographer: FuriousFotog
Model: Quinn Biddle
Editors: Ink It Out Editing, Ellie McLove, Danielle P.
Betas: Barbara, Leah, Mindy, Kathy, Amanda, Diane, and Laura.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Prologue II
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
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Furious George (Spring 2018)
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care (4-5-18)
Maybe Don’t Wanna (5-4-18)
Johnny & June (6-7-18)
Mary Persephone Hail
Mary—well-wished-for child.
Persephone—destruction.
Hail—well that speaks for itself.
Her name is painful to think about. Mary, his newfound daughter, isn’t a wished-for child. Persephone, though? Yeah, destruction is a fitting description. And Hail? Yeah, that’s just the final f-you.
The moment that her mother drops her off on his doorstep, Dante’s hell becomes complete.
Or so he thinks.
What can make life worse after losing one’s wife and kids, you ask? Here’s what: being given a baby that depends on him for her survival. Finding out that the baby’s mother is dying of brain cancer, and has a husband that he never knew about. A husband that Dante knows in the marrow of his bones is trying to kill her just as surely as the cancer eating her brain.
Dante’s a bad person. He’s done some not so nice things, and now he’s being punished for his misdeeds. Karma is finally catching up to him.
This child that he’s been stuck with is of his flesh and bone. This child is his salvation. This child is the final nail in the coffin of his wife and daughters’ too short lives.
He doesn’t want this child.
But this child will save him whether he wants her to or not.
With the help of a friend—yes, a woman friend—Dante finds his way back to life. But what he finds when he gets back isn’t the same life that he left behind. Turns out, he has to start living a new one. One where he's suddenly having feelings for a friend that helped him get through some tough times, and loving a daughter that won’t let him quit.
Prologue
I miss you like an idiot misses the point.
-Dante’s not-so-secret thoughts
Dante
Dante, honey. You need to just relax. Nothing will ever happen to us.
I woke with a start and bile creeping up the back of my throat.
I screamed.
The tiny cabin was empty except for my bed, so my anguished cries echoed off the empty walls.
This cabin… Lily and I had bought it as our retreat. Our home away from home. The place we would go when we needed time alone, away from the daily grind. Time to be together, just the two of us, with no interruptions, not even phone calls.
Dante, this place is perfect. Let’s get it.
I made a noise akin to a wounded animal in the back of my throat and gritted my teeth.
I will not cry today. I will not cry today.
I’m a grown man! Grown men don’t cry!
Everything, and I do mean everything, hurt.
I’d drunk myself into oblivion the night before, and I was feeling the after effects now.
I moaned as I rolled out of bed and walked stiffly to the bathroom.
My foot hit the corner of the door, and I cursed.
Dante, don’t cuss in front of the girls. What are you going to do when they get in trouble at school for swearing when they fall down?
I ran to the toilet and threw up.
Today wasn’t going to be a good day.
And, as if God, the life giver and the life taker, was listening, I felt a piece of hair tickling my chest.
I reached into my shirt and pinched what I thought was the hair, and pulled.
The hair…it was long. So long that I knew without a shadow of a doubt whose it would be.
The moment that it was exposed to the harsh, bright light of the bathroom, I bent over the toilet and threw up the last of the whiskey that I’d drank a few hours before.
I moaned and let my head rest against the lid of the toilet seat, turning it so that I could examine the strand of ha
ir.
Even after all this time…after she’d been dead for so long…I still found her hair in my clothes.
Everywhere.
In my shirts, on my jackets. On my pillowcases.
God, she hadn’t even stayed the night at this place, and her hair was on my sheets.
Sheets that I hadn’t washed once since the last time she’d put them on the bed in anticipation of having a little alone time at our cabin.
I reached up blindly and flushed the toilet with the hand that wasn’t clutching my dead wife’s strand of hair, then sat back until I was on my butt.
Obviously, today wasn’t going to be the day that I got my act together.
Hell, that day might never come.
I love you, Dante.
Prologue II
A million men can tell a woman that she’s beautiful, but the only time she will listen is when it comes from the man she loves.
-Fact of Life
Marianne
“Dante!”
“Don’t talk, just feel me,” he growled as he slid his shaft into me in long, full strokes.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t do anything but feel.
I don’t know why he was telling me to just feel. Just feeling was all I could do whether I wanted to or not.
“I love you, Lily,” Dante growled. “God, you’ve never felt so good.”
I froze and then immediately started to shake as tears rolled down my face. “I-I’m not Lily. I’m Marianne, remember?”
The look of shock in his eyes as they met mine proved to me that he didn’t.
Goddammit.
Chapter 1
I can walk the walk, but please don’t ask me to jog the jog or run the run.
-Meme sent to Dante from Baylor
Marianne
The only time a goodbye is painful is when you know, for certain, that it’s the last one.
I’d read those words in a magazine when I’d been nine months pregnant with my baby.
I had no idea that, within weeks of having her, I’d be saying goodbye. And I knew in my heart I’d never say hello again. It hurt.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
It was, by far, the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.
I looked back at the little girl in the car seat, my reason for still being alive.
Oh God, did it hurt.
It hurt so bad that I wasn’t sure if I could draw my next breath.
A sound had me turning to the man that was standing on his doorstep.
I’d only just found out where he lived. It’d taken me four precious days to find him. Four days that I didn’t have to give.
Why couldn’t he be where he was supposed to be? Instead, he was living here, in this Godforsaken place.
Though, I did have to admit that when we’d been intimate, we’d done so at my old place. I hadn’t exactly known that he wasn’t living at the place across the street.
I got out of the car, walked around to the back door, and opened it.
He watched me the entire time, arms straining his shirt as he held them crossed over his chest.
His eyes felt like invasions of my privacy, and it physically hurt to have him this close to me and not touch that beautiful skin.
We’d spent one single, beautiful night together before he’d flipped out. One single, beautiful night that would forever be the best memory that I ever had.
Chapter 2
I don’t need you, I have memes.
-Meme
Marianne
“Come on, baby,” I whispered, pulling her out of the car seat and placing her on the bench seat next to it.
The next thing I did was unstrap the car seat itself from the car and set it on the grass.
He’d need all of it.
From what I’d been able to deduct over the last couple of days from my various sources, Dante lived minimally. He didn’t have much of anything when it came to himself, why would he have anything when it came to a child?
So, I made sure to bring everything that I had.
I placed everything on the front lawn.
Diapers, bottles, a Pack ‘n Play, her portable swing that I’d yet to get her to enjoy. It all went by the curb, making my tiny SUV that I’d stolen the night before look barren.
Once it was all out, I walked back to where my baby girl was sitting quietly in the seat and pulled her into my arms.
Through all of this, he only watched.
The moment my eyes met his, I felt his confusion.
It was almost palpable.
Why was I here? What was I doing?
I’d known that he’d been trying to find me.
Someone had tipped him off that I was pregnant. Someone had told him that we’d had a child together.
It was his brother who had found out, a man named Tobias, and it was his other brothers who continued to look into me.
However, them prodding into my life hadn’t been what broke the camel’s back. That had been something else. Another time, and another life.
God, how I’d hoped that it was all behind me forever. This was supposed to have been my second chance.
Yet here I was.
The moment I got to the bottom of the steps that Dante was standing on, I looked up at him.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even look down at the baby I had in my arms.
“I have her medical information in a packet in her bag.” I pulled in a deep, calming breath that didn’t calm me in the least. “She needs you, Dante. I realize that you’re broken, but she’s not. Watch over her. You’re my last hope. My only hope.”
“Why now? What’s going on?”
Dante’s words felt like caresses on my overheated skin.
I sat my baby girl down on the swing next to where he was standing.
“Look up my name. You’ll see.”
With those cryptic words, I started to walk away.
“I don’t know your name.”
Those words hurt. In fact, it felt like that final, killing blow. The one that would leave me forever broken, never to be put back together again.
Nevertheless, I told him my name.
“Marianne Genevieve Garwood.”
Chapter 3
I’m actually weirder than you think.
-Text from Baylor to Dante
Dante
I looked at the kid that was mine.
How did I know she was mine?
She looked exactly like my other children had.
All the way down to the bright blue eyes, the shock of white blonde hair, and the heart-shaped birthmark on her neck.
Looking down at this child was one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life.
The moment that her eyes met mine, I realized the truth.
I, Dante Hail, was a coward.
Lily, my wife, was dead, and Jade and Toni, my two baby girls, had went with her.
Amy, my sister who was responsible for the accident that caused the death of my family, killed herself.
All of that was on me.
I would not be responsible for killing another living being.
I. Would. Not.
Pulling my computer out from where Lily had last left it—underneath the coffee table of all places—I opened it up and placed it on my lap.
Just the act of doing something I used to do when they were alive nearly sent me into a tailspin.
There was nothing to check on anymore. Not a goddamn thing.
Or, at least, there hadn’t been last night.
Tonight would be different.
I looked over at the little girl, who was now sleeping, and pressed the power button.
It took a few seconds for the screen to blink on, and once it had booted up, what I saw caused my throat to tighten.
Now I remembered why I hadn’t picked this computer up for two years.
A picture was on the scree
n.
One of my family.
I was in the middle while all three girls—my wife and children—kissed me.
It’d been our Christmas card the last Christmas we’d had together. The Christmas right before they’d died.
I was laughing my ass off as Jade, our youngest, gave me more than just kisses in the form of snot and slobber.
She was absolutely adorable.
A moan left my throat as I typed in the password: 1loveJadeToniLily.
Fuck.
As I waited for the laptop to boot up, all I could do was stare at that picture, remembering how happy I’d been.
By the time the main menu was up, I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
A whimper had my head turning, and I blinked as I saw the little girl staring at me with tears in her eyes.
“I… fuck.”
Fuck.
I couldn’t say fuck in front of a little girl!
Lily would’ve kicked my ass had I done that with her around!
I reached forward and picked the little girl up. Old muscle memory took over, and I cradled the little girl—my little girl—to my chest and looked down at her.
“Are you hungry?”
She blinked away her tears, and I studied her.
She really was adorable.
She had that fine, wispy baby hair that looked like it was spun from silk. Her curls were fuckin’ everywhere, and she looked exactly like me and nothing like her mother.
Her mother had long brown hair, dark brown eyes, and an angular face.
This girl was all me.
The computer beeped, making me look away from the little girl, and to the screen.
I frowned, and my eyes took in the reminder on the computer: Change the air filter, lazy bones.
I grinned at my wife’s reminder.
She wasn’t even here anymore, and she was still taking care of me.
Goddammit.
I clicked the X on the corner of the reminder and went to the Chrome app, smiling when I heard Lily in my head say that she would never cheat on Internet Explorer.
Rolling my eyes at that funny memory—funny, but it still fucking hurt, even the happy memories—I typed in the woman’s name into the Google search engine.
“Marianne Genevieve Garwood,” I muttered as I typed.
The search instantly picked up hundreds of hits.
Hail Mary Page 1
