For the Love of Beard

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I grinned. “I’ve done that, too.”

  He shook his head.

  The elevator light blinked on, and the doors dinged as they whisked open.

  Once everyone and their brother got off the elevator, Tobias and I stepped inside along with another couple.

  I shuffled in, taking a spot closer to the front to allow Tobias enough room behind me to have his back to the wall.

  The couple that got on with us did much the same, and I stared, a smile starting to form on my mouth.

  “Are y’all here for the law enforcement officers’ cruise?” I questioned.

  The man’s eyes tipped down to mine, and his lips twitched. He was Hispanic with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. His tattoos were numerous, and I wanted to look at them closer to study the intricate swirls.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “What gave it away?”

  My lips twitched. “The having your back to the wall thing, and the way you cataloged everyone who was in the elevator before the doors even closed,” I answered honestly.

  The woman at his side, a beautiful brunette, started to laugh.

  “She got you, Nico.”

  The man shrugged as if he didn’t care at all.

  “He did it, too,” I told her, pointing to the man at my side who still hadn’t said anything.

  Tobias snorted.

  “So where are y’all from?” I asked.

  The woman answered.

  “Kilgore, Texas. How about y’all?”

  “Mooresville, Alabama. Did y’all drive or fly?”

  “Fly. We can’t handle being in a car that long,” she grinned. “We don’t handle car trips so well anymore. After the last family vacation with our kids and the rest of our family, we decided that we would only drive long distances if we absolutely had to from now on.”

  I started to laugh. “There was this one time on a road trip, just my brother and me, that we got a flat tire. He replaced it, then another hundred miles later, he got another flat tire. Once we fixed that one at a tire shop, my brother went ahead and changed them all, purchasing brand new.” I started to laugh. “Then, not even a hundred miles later, another tire blows. After replacing that with the spare, we got to our destination. Only when we went to come back, the car’s battery was dead, and we found out the alternator needed to be replaced.”

  The man snorted. “The last time we went on a road trip, both of our twin sons shit all the way up their backs and soaked their car seats with it. We had to pull over at a rest stop and wash them and the seats off in the fucking sinks. Once we got them back into our car and on our way, they started to puke. It was fucking miserable.”

  “We’d love to have dinner with y’all if y’all aren’t doing anything later,” the woman said, surprising me. “All I’ve seen on this ship are bachelors or old people who are talking about their last cruises and what’s different. So we’d like some company. But right now, we have to go call the principal of our son’s school. Apparently, our son was sent to the office today because he didn’t like what some kid was saying to his sibling. So now we have to call them back and figure out what the hell is going on, seeing as our five-year-old was suspended.”

  My brows rose.

  “How the hell does a five-year-old get suspended?” Tobias asked, real confusion clouding his voice.

  “I told my wife that if he wasn’t suspended for choking a kid, shoving his balls back up into his body with his foot or cursing a teacher out, then I was about raining down the wrath of God on those motherfuckers,” Nico grumbled. “Georgia, here, thinks I’m being too overprotective, but whatever happened to letting kids work things out themselves and only going to the principal when there was something seriously wrong? You can’t tell me that my kids did anything that incredibly bad, because they’re good kids. They know what’s right from wrong. But, they also know that if they come home and I hear they’ve been bad at school, I’ll wear out their hides with my hand.”

  Tobias grinned. “Your kids might be good like that, but most kids nowadays are raised to be little pussies. Every fucking thing offends them, and their stupid parents are raising their kids to be entitled little assholes.”

  I just shook my head.

  “We’re going to be at the buffet tomorrow around seven or so, and then they’re showing a new movie a little after that, which should give us enough time to eat and go find a chair. You’re more than welcome to join us,” I said as the elevator doors dinged again, signaling our floor.

  “Thank you,” Georgia grinned. “That sounds like fun!”

  “What movie?” Nico asked.

  I exited the elevator, and Tobias did too. But at the man’s question, Tobias stopped and turned, a grin a mile wide on his face. “Apparently they’re showing Deadpool.”

  Obvious relief shone in Nico’s eyes. “Thank Christ.”

  Then the doors closed, leaving us in the quiet stillness of the hallway.

  “I don’t want kids,” I told him. “They sound like they’re too hard.”

  Tobias chuckled. “They’re okay from the little I’ve been able to experience through my nieces and nephews.”

  I looked at him.

  “How many do you have?” I questioned.

  “Well, Leida, is the first. My other brother…” he halted, then cleared his throat. “My other brother, Dante, had two children. But about a year ago, his wife and children died in that car accident.” I could tell he surprised himself. He hadn’t forgotten, per se, but he’d at least been able to think about other things, allowing him the reprieve for a few short days. “My other brother, Travis, recently had a baby, too. A boy, whom I haven’t met yet. He also has a girl with his ex-wife.”

  I looked at his jaw when he bent down to place the key card into the door without removing it from the lanyard around his neck.

  “Why do I sense another touchy subject there?” I questioned.

  He sighed. “All of us brothers…we’re fucked up. We’ve had two sisters die, one by way of a home invasion six years ago, and you know how my other sister died.” He walked straight to the sliding glass door and opened it, walking out onto the balcony.

  I followed him, snatching up my jacket from the bed where I’d forgotten it earlier.

  He cleared his throat. “Dante was the glue that held us all together. When that happened to him, he kind of went off the deep end. With nobody else to keep us all in line, the rest of us kind of went a little wild. Though, that’s not to say we’re all wild and weren’t before. It was just that Dante was able to keep us in hand if we stepped too far out of line.”

  I frowned.

  “You seem like you’re doing all right,” I pointed out.

  Tobias started to laugh, and it wasn’t an amused one.

  “I have PTSD that kicks in when I least expect it,” he expounded. “I was in the Navy for damn near ten years. Got out, got my peace officer’s license. Then my sister decided to kill herself, and I was the one who…you know.” He cleared his throat. “Did you know that twenty two veterans die each day from suicide?”

  My stomach knotted.

  “No,” I murmured, shocked that the number was so high.

  “I had three friends from the Navy commit suicide right after my sister,” he said. “And two who did it before her.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned forward until I could thread my fingers around his belly.

  Placing my head on his back, between his shoulder blades, I closed my eyes and just held him.

  “Saw some scary shit over there,” he said. “But the stuff I saw when I got home was worse.”

  My stomach and heart hurt for him.

  “I’m sorry, Tobias.”

  He sighed.

  “I joined the Dixie Wardens because they grounded me,” he said. “They gave me a place to retreat. Something to look forward to, and a shoulder to lean on when things got too tough.”

  I smiled. “My brother says the
same thing.”

  “Your brother’s right,” he said. “Though, you should probably not tell him I said that. He’ll get a big head.”

  I started to laugh.

  “My brother is… well, he is what he is,” I chuckled against his back, as I let my hands move up and down the ripples of his six-pack. “You ready to go back up there?”

  He turned in my arms, and then shook his head.

  “My brother, Reed, used to be with Krisney. He still loves her, and when I say love, I mean he’s infatuated.” He paused. “But he’s denying it because he thinks that’s what this family needs to get over the fact that our sister isn’t here anymore.”

  I walked up to the railing he was still leaning against, and then looked out over the water.

  “Okay,” I said. “What else?”

  He sighed.

  “You already know about Finley. Leida is his,” he continued. “He isn’t really that fucked up…more like fucked over. He was married to that lovely lady, Leida’s mother, who called the cops on me after she’d let me into her house.”

  I moaned. “I still feel sorry for that man. It sucks.”

  He hummed in agreement.

  “Hmm,” I hummed. “What about the others?”

  “Reed is in the military. He’s an OB/GYN. Baylor used to be in the military, but while on leave he was hit by a drunk driver and he was medically discharged. He now works with Travis and Dante…well, Dante doesn’t work there anymore. He gave it up and is holed up in his house with no desire to come back out,” he said. “They’re less fucked up than the rest of us, but they still have their moments.”

  “Your brother, Dante, doesn’t work at his own business anymore?”

  Wow, that was terrible.

  “He and his wife built Hail Auto Recovery from the ground up together right along with Travis. The place reminds him of her, and he wants nothing to do with it anymore. Travis is now the man in charge, at least until we can get Dante to see the light.”

  That poor man.

  I knew what it felt like to lose a loved one. I knew that it felt like someone was stabbing you straight through the heart, and that it didn’t matter that what you were supposed to be doing was living your life. Instead, you were holed up in your apartment, staring at the wall, wishing your life away in exchange for one more chance to see him again.

  “Tobias,” I hesitated.

  “Yeah?”

  “You know I’m fucked up, too, right?”

  I was going to tell him. I was going to tell him everything.

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  He turned to look at me, no longer staring out over the horizon anymore like I was doing.

  “I know.”

  I didn’t have the courage to look at him.

  “Do you know why?”

  Please say yes. Please say yes.

  “Yes,” he said. “Your brother told me a little when I came to get you.”

  I didn’t look at him, but he had to know the details.

  “I was about a semester and a half away from graduating nursing school,” I swallowed.

  He didn’t touch me, but I could tell he wanted to by the way his hands tightened so tightly on the railing as I looked at him out of my peripheral vision.

  “I’d just walked out after my shift in the ER. I was a tech,” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t do anything special. Just made sure I was there to offer assistance if anyone needed it.”

  I closed my eyes as the images started to assault me.

  “The way our parking lot was set up, the front lot was for patients and visitors. Then you had to walk down the street, past a cemetery down to the overflow lot where all the employees like me, the nurses and registration, parked. Doctors got to use in the parking lot at the front.”

  He grunted. “Nice.”

  “Anyway, I was on my way to the car, about halfway between the lot and the hospital, when something hit me from behind.”

  As I retold the story of my rape, my breath hitched and tears pooled in my eyes. But I didn’t stop. Not until every single detail was out in the open between us.

  “He told me that it was because of something one of my friends had done.” I rasped. “But really it was one of my mother and father’s men ‘teaching me a lesson.’”

  He growled.

  My parents were bad people. I hadn’t had any idea how bad until my brother, who I had thought was dead, came back into my life hell bent on vengeance.

  Tobias had been sent to pick me up because my parents were blackmailing me to get me to work for them.

  To save me, Ghost – who was actually my brother, Tunnel—had sent Tobias to bring me to him, and in the process, had thwarted my parents’ plans for me to give them and others in their employ medical attention if the need ever arose.

  Now my father, as well as my rapist, were in jail.

  They were doing life sentences.

  Josh, my attacker and rapist, was serving time for embezzlement and the murder of two of his wives. The rest? My rape? Everyone thought it’d be best that we not put me into the position that I’d have to testify and relive the event.

  I’d agreed that it was for the best.

  Josh would already be serving two life sentences. If there wasn’t a reason for me to subject myself to that, I knew that I shouldn’t.

  Honestly, it burned that he wasn’t serving time for everything he’d done, but he would be in jail for a very long time and would be almost ninety-three when he got out—if he lived that long.

  Though my brother had wanted to kill him, I’d made him promise that he wouldn’t.

  Josh deserved every single minute of that time he had to serve and then some.

  I took pride in the fact that I played an integral part in the prosecution’s case against him. It was immensely satisfying that my testimony was one of the reasons he would be serving nearly the rest of his life in prison, even if it was just telling the judge and jury what I’d heard when I’d been his captive.

  Josh had helped my mother and father kidnap not just me, but Tunnel and Mina as well.

  If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of my brother, then they might very well have had Tunnel’s daughter and Tobias, as well.

  “I want to walk into that prison and rip his arms off his body and beat him to death with them.”

  Tobias’ quiet, angry words were enough for me to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “So yes, you’re fucked up. But I’m just as fucked up, Tobias,” I told him. “It’s taken me a very long time to get to where I’m at right now, and it’s not looking like I’ll be fixed anytime soon, if ever.” I hesitated to say the next part. “If you stay with me, there’s bound to come a time when I will completely lose it, and you can’t hold it against me, okay?”

  That’s when his arms wrapped securely around my shoulders, and my head pillowed on his defined chest.

  “I replay shit in my head,” he muttered.

  I wondered where he was going with this.

  “I see my sister get raped by my best friend over and over in my nightmares.”

  I moaned.

  “God, Tobias,” I breathed. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for that.”

  He laughed humorlessly.

  “I shouldn’t?” He questioned. “I invited him over to our house constantly. It was my fault that he was even there in the first place. I felt bad for Jay the first time I met him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jay was sitting by himself at lunch.”

  “Okay…”

  “And everyone kept throwing fucking food at him when he wasn’t looking…and even when he was.” He paused. “I felt sorry for him, and I invited him over to my house to play some soccer and watch a movie the next weekend.”

  I smoothed my hand over his chest.

  “Inviting a loner to your house doesn’t make you a bad person, Tobias. It makes you compassionate. I
t’s not like he had ‘I’m a rapist’ tattooed on his forehead to warn you of the kind of person that he was.”

  He grunted something I couldn’t hear, but replied with, “Just because that’s true, doesn’t make my heart hurt any less.”

  “He took advantage of your kindness,” I told him bluntly. “If he were still alive, I’d kill him myself for making you hurt.”

  He started to chuckle.

  “As much as it makes me happy that you’re willing to do that for me, Jay is long dead, and even his parents don’t bother me all that much anymore.”

  “What?”

  The fury lacing my tone was barely contained, but I didn’t think that Tobias realized the danger as he began to speak.

  “Jay’s parents still hate me, to this day, for killing their son.”

  “Do they know what their son did?” I asked carefully.

  “Yes,” he answered. “When it all went down, they learned the whole truth of what he was doing. Even after they found out all that he did, they still tried to take me to court and sue me for emotional damage or some shit.”

  I was utterly aghast that someone would even think that that was okay to do.

  “They got the part where you walked in on their son raping your little sister…right?”

  He nodded.

  “It gets better. After that night, the police thoroughly investigated him to corroborate my allegations.” He dropped his chin on top of my head. “Jay was seventeen. Not old enough to buy a shotgun, let alone own a shotgun. When they went to his house, they found over a half dozen guns, a shit load of ammo, and stuff on his computer about school shootings.”

  I closed my eyes as horror washed over me. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t really want to go watch that movie anymore.”

  I didn’t really feel like it either.

  “How about sitting our asses right here and ordering room service?” I replied hopefully.

  He hummed. “I saw chocolate cake on the menu.”

  I smiled and then pulled away from him. “Chocolate cake it is…do you want milk?”

  “Am I a man?”

  I rolled my eyes at his non-answer, then went to the cabin’s phone and placed an order for two slices of chocolate cake, two glasses of milk, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.