Down to my Bones (Reapers MC: Ellsberg Chapter Book 1)

by Bijou Hunter

  “It’s rather cutesy.”

  “Quaid really likes Pumpkin.”

  “Not with the ‘P’ names again,” Mom sighs, and I know I’ve got her truly worried.

  I go through my “Moonbeam” phase that leaves Mom nearly blind from all her eye rolling. Then I move onto my “Woodstock” phase.

  “For a girl?” Pop nearly yells when I suggest the name for his first granddaughter.

  “Woody would be a cute nickname.”

  With them on the ropes a month from my due date, I zero in on the name Granola.

  “No,” Pop says immediately. “No food names.”

  “It’s not your choice.”

  “We could call her Nola,” Mom offers.

  Startled by Mom’s ability to find something positive out of a weird name, I stammer, “No, I want her to use her full name until she’s old enough to decide. First or second grade, at least. Until then, she’s Granola.”

  My parents fucking hate the name. They shudder in horror when I rub my belly and call their girl grandbaby by her crunchy moniker. I have them right where I want them.

  Then our baby is born.

  First, my parents are so relieved I don’t go with a “family room” birth with all my loved ones watching the baby emerge from my vagina. Second, Mom and Pop are glad I don’t choose the “shoot my baby out in the bathtub and let her float in her goo” birth. Third, they’re relieved the baby and I survive delivery based on the amount of screaming I do.

  “Quaid didn’t properly stretch out my vagina,” I explain later when a worried Lily mentions my yelling.

  My husband stops grinning at his red-faced daughter long enough to shrug and apologize for his lack of dick girth.

  “So did you settle on a name?” Pop asks, ignoring the dick/vagina thing.

  “Quaid and I hereby introduce our baby, Thisbe Kirklyn Reynolds.”

  “What?” Pop asks.

  Mom looks around the room as if searching for her “MJ to English” dictionary. “I didn’t get the first name.”

  “Wait, did you like Granola better?” I ask.

  At this point, my father can’t hear the word without nearly shitting his pants in rage. I try not to laugh at the expression he gives me when I ask my question.

  “I’m still unclear about the first name,” Mom mumbles, leaning closer as if hard of hearing. Her old-lady routine is getting a little too full time for my taste.

  “Thisbe.”

  “What?” Pop asks.

  “Thisbe. Thizzzz… beeee….” I say, emphasizing the phonics. “Rhymes with frisbee. She’s the Greek Juliet.”

  “That’s not a name,” Pop says, still holding onto the idea that he’ll have two normal-named grandchildren when that fantasy just isn’t going to happen. He dodged a bullet with Audrey, but I’m shooting him square in the balls with my choice.

  “Yes, it is. Look Thisbe up online. It’s from Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses.’”

  “You read a book!” Mom cries as if shocked I’m literate.

  Everyone laughs—even Pop—but then it’s back to the name game.

  “Thisbe is a name,” Lily says, showing them her phone. Colton leans closer to the screen until his nose nearly touches it, and I wonder if the vain butthead needs glasses.

  “What was the middle name?” Pop asks, changing the subject since he’s afraid I’ll fall back into my “Granola” phase.

  “Kirklyn.”

  Despite Gram flashing me the amazing smile she gives whenever I’m her favorite, Pop shakes his head and sighs, “That’s not a good girl’s name.”

  “Well, I couldn’t go with Pop-Poplyn,” I growl. “That’d just be dumb.”

  Shaking his head, Pop tries not to laugh. Then he remembers how he can blame everything on Quaid, thereby absolving me of his disdain. “And you agreed to these names?”

  “I wanted Granola,” Quaid says without missing a beat. I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more than when he simultaneously cradles our baby while jabbing at my father’s ego.

  Smiling at my husband and baby, I add the final touch to our eight-month-long psychological warfare plan. “You can call her ‘Bee,’ if you want.”

  And that right there was how I got my parents to warm up to a name they were bound to hate.

  Despite my big win, I’m very concerned about Thisbe’s lack of hair. I admittedly don’t notice her baldness right off. First, she appears to have hair when I see her directly after she exits my now properly-stretched vagina. Then she wears a cap and Quaid pretty much hogs her. I’d whine about him needing to share except the man never got much in life while I was blessed with a fantastic family and childhood. If he wants to monopolize our baby, how can I say no?

  Still, I’m concerned about her funky head when I get to change her clothes for our trip home. Mom stands next to me, smiling at my efforts to corral my squirming ball of newness into a green layette gown.

  “She’s wearing herself out,” Mom says softly. “You’ll get her in it soon.”

  I know she wants to take over and do it since I’m taking forever. She doesn’t rush me, though. Mom’s a great teacher and knows sometimes people need to suck at something for them to eventually get good at it.

  “Where did her hair go?” I ask Mom while my daughter makes aiming her fist through a hole literally impossible.

  “She didn’t have hair. That was afterbirth.”

  “Gross,” I say, rubbing my baby’s bumpy bald head. I notice she also has super light eyebrows, so that’s a plus. “She will get hair one day, right?”

  “Yes. Audrey was nearly bald at birth, and she has plenty of hair now.”

  Smiling at my mom’s beaming face; I really hope she’s right because a bald woman won’t have an easy life.

  I eventually defeat Thisbe in the Battle of the Layette, and even hold her while the nurse wheels me to the front door of the same hospital I stayed in nearly ten months ago. Pop parks the family’s SUV at the front doors, and Quaid helps me strap our bald beauty into the oddly tricky car seat.

  “Why is everything so complicated?” I grumble.

  My smirking Pop glances at Mom now sitting in the front passenger seat. “I’ve always thought the devil made most child products.”

  Much like with the layette, I overcome my early shitty parenting skills. Thisbe sleeps the entire ride home while I tell Quaid how she looks like him and he claims she looks like me. I’m fairly fucking sure he knows he’s wrong.

  Quaid might be lying about Thisbe’s looks, but he’s telling the absolute truth that night when he says, “I never thought I could feel this way.”

  Holding our daughter while sitting next to me in our yurt, Quaid is a man reborn. He remained blind to how lost and broken he was until the moment he found something to heal him. Love, family, acceptance—he now enjoys what he never realized he needed.

  When I witness his pure joy, I know my life’s purpose is to make Quaid happy. I remember how he smiled at the Grand Canyon on his first road trip. He was less like a grown man enjoying a beautiful view and more like a kid basking at a big fucking hole in the ground.

  I notice the comfort he shows around Colton and Pop now. Even with Jim-Bean in the mix, Quaid belongs more with the Ellsberg Reapers than he allowed himself back in Shasta. The sense of family and belonging is all new, but Quaid takes to it like a fish to water. I never doubt our future. Nothing fancy or complicated, we’re just two people and a bald baby enjoying each day to its fullest.

  THE OUTSIDER’S FAREWELL

  Thisbe owns three tuffs of thick blonde hair by the time I’m able to end the life of a motherfucker named Gary Lee Roy. My baby girl’s on her tummy, threatening to push herself up on the day Cooper tells me that Jim-Bean and his old lady are driving to Florida for vacation. Gary Lee will be alone and likely drunk. He’s prime for the taking, and our wait is over.

  I leave MJ and Thisbe back at the yurt where they enjoy a cool summer morning. Their sweet faces are in stark contrast to what
I want to see on Gary Lee’s. My ladies smile easily, confident in their places in the world. They love life, and they love me. Even little Thisbe, who hasn’t started speaking yet, will certainly adore her daddy so much that she’ll say my name before MJ’s. Nothing against my sexy wife’s parenting talents, but there’s no denying or changing the fact that our daughter is a huge daddy’s girl. When her big dark eyes see me, her little face lights up. That reaction is all I need to get through the day, but I also enjoy a similar one from MJ.

  Their love is on my mind while I walk through the woods behind Jim-Bean’s ranch-style house where Gary Lee sleeps in a shed turned apartment. At first, after the shooting, the fucker remained close to his parents. He wasn’t seen anywhere without one of them at his side. Oh, and I caught his grandma playing babysitter too. Then people heard how the shooter was ID’d as an idiot from Tennessee who thought MJ was Audrey and wanted her dead in retaliation for the Hayes family’s badassery. Believing he was safe, Gary Lee acted as if nothing ever happened. He’d gotten away with trying to kill top dog Cooper Johansson’s daughter. I bet he was pretty damn proud of himself.

  In fact, the night before we come for him, the asshole partied hard with his buddies. He tried to bang a few women who knew better than to lower themselves to his tiny dick. Drunk, he returned to his shed-apartment singing “Livin' La Vida Loca.” Colton witnesses this last display before calling Cooper to say Gary Lee is primed for killing.

  “I want to gut him,” Colton says when we start our walk through the woods.

  “Son, shut the fuck up.”

  I frown at them and shake my head. “We’ll all gut him. Do a Julius Caesar.”

  “What?” Colton says stopping in the shade of the thick brush.

  Sighing, I sometimes wonder about this man. “Seriously, your mother is a teacher.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “We all stab him like the Roman senators took turns stabbing Julius Caesar,” Cooper explains and then shrugs when I smirk. “I went to college. What's your excuse?”

  “I had a lot of free time, and reading took my mind off my sore feet. Now can we do this?”

  Cooper’s nod gets us moving again. Soon, Colton and I peel off, wanting to ensure Gary Lee is boxed in. The day gets very quiet as I approach the shed-apartment. Just like when I was on assignment to hit a particular location or grab an important target, I ignore the part of my brain telling me how I’m too loud or being watched. I shut down everything in my mind—the good and the bad, the noise of thirty-five years of living—until all I see is the man I came to kill.

  Gary Lee doesn’t even lock his fucking door. He believes he’s safe in the same way MJ once did. Like my woman, this asshole is about to have a rude wake-up call.

  I wrap a bag over the sleeping fucker’s head before dragging him from the shed. Cooper and Colton wait in the woods, knowing I plan to pat down the shithead before sending him loose in their direction. Today, we’ll have ourselves a little hunting expedition.

  Unarmed, scared, and hung-over, Gary Lee soon runs in the woods behind his family’s home. He tries to head for the road, only for Colton to appear from behind a tree and slam the asshole in the jaw. Changing directions, Gary Lee hopes to return to his parents’ house. He yells for help, but no one can hear him out here. Cooper said Jim-Bean wanted privacy, and that decision means his son can scream until his throat is raw.

  When he makes a beeline for his parents’ backyard, I corral the asshole back into the woods. A shot to the knee slows him down, but he retains the adrenaline-fueled energy of a man still hoping to survive.

  I don’t see Cooper’s fist crack the asshole’s jaw, but the sound echoes in the woods. By the time I reach where he stands over a sobbing Gary Lee, I can tell he’s struggling with the job we’re here to complete.

  Cooper Johansson knows Gary Lee needs to die. There’s no changing that fact. Still, he watched this fucker grow up. Those panicked tears awaken the father in him, and I know he can’t mess with Gary Lee any longer.

  Colton and I have no such hang-ups, though. The younger Johansson lifts Gary Lee to his feet and makes him stand.

  “You did this,” he says and punches him in the stomach. “No one else put that gun in your hand. It was all you. When you mama cries over you, that’s on you too, fucker.”

  Cooper stands back and lets his son pound on Gary Lee. Admittedly, the little fucker gets in one decent shot, and I bet Colton will be nursing his ribcage for a few days. Nonetheless, everyone knows we’re only biding our time until the kill move.

  “I’m so sorry,” Gary Lee weeps. “I’ll go away and never come back to Ellsberg.”

  “Not good enough,” Colton says and punches him in the throat.

  Gary Lee chokes, fighting for air, and I expect Colton to use the blade in his hand to start the end game.

  The hesitation on his face makes me realize he’s never killed a man before. Taking a life isn’t nearly as easy as handing out a beating. Cooper knows this fact, and he hesitates when Gary Lee stares at him with tear-filled eyes.

  “No,” I say, hearing MJ in my head as I pull out my blade and drive it into the asshole’s gut.

  His shocked gaze turns to me, and I suspect he never even considered that I’d be the one to end him. Cooper is the big dog. Colton is the hothead. They were the ones he needed to convince, and a little part of them was convinced. Not enough to let him live, but enough to have me do the dirty work.

  And I’m fucking happier than a butcher’s dog to be the one to watch Gary Lee take his last breath. He stares into my eyes, dismayed to find his life ending. Somehow, he figured he’d weasel out of his punishment, but I am a man accustomed to killing. I’ve taken lives based on no more than an order from a man in an office somewhere. To steal Gary Lee’s life in retribution for what he did to my woman is a reward I’ve spent my entire life working toward.

  I stare into his eyes—a dark blue—as the blade enters and exits his flesh. Each stab finds less resistance. My hand grows warm and wet from his blood. I think I step back enough to keep his mess from getting on my boots, but I never look down to be sure. Instead, I stare into his eyes and let him see MJ through me. I don’t want him to think of his parents who love him or what he’ll miss in life. His only thought should be of the woman he wanted to murder in the woods, not unlike the ones we stand in now.

  Gary Lee dies with a shocked look on his face, and I memorize the way he drools at the end. One day, MJ might want to know every single detail of his last breath, and I don’t want to forget anything.

  Cooper and Colton dig a grave not far from where I end Gary Lee. His body goes in facedown, one last insult for a man they once viewed as family. Colton dumps lye over the corpse while I wash my hands and knife.

  Watching me, Cooper wears an expression I can’t read immediately. Does he finally understand what I’m capable of and fear me in his family’s life? If so, he’s out of luck. I’m the man his daughter chose, and MJ is the most stubborn woman either of us has ever met.

  Finally, Cooper gives me a little head nod, and I realize the look in his dark eyes is something akin to pride. I’d done good in his eyes, and he was glad I’d shown up a year ago to seduce his oddball daughter.

  We return home where I burn my boots just in case. I don’t want any of Gary Lee stinking up my life.

  MJ watches me burn my boots but doesn’t ask questions. I don’t know if she understands or if she’s just too happy to care about the details. Sitting on her mother’s hip, Thisbe bounces with glee at the sight of me. MJ instantly laughs at her reaction. With them both smiling at me, I’m overwhelmed by a love I never knew possible. The kind of raw, fearless love a man feels down deep to his bones.

  A FINAL WORD FROM THE ODDBALL

  Gary Lee’s disappearance is the talk of the town for a day and a half. Then Peggy Lynn Myles announces she’s pregnant with triplets and the babies’ father could be her husband, ex-husband, or both! A missing deadbeat just can�
�t compete with such salacious gossip.

  Avoiding the details, I don’t know what efforts the Reapers put into finding Gary Lee. I’m sure Pop has to go through the motions to a certain point to keep Jim-Bean happy. I also know Mom brings the same casserole to Ingrid Roy as Jim-Bean’s wife brought us after I was shot. I can’t be sure about my mother’s intentions. Is the same casserole a silent jab Gary Lee’s mom who likely knew about her son’s activities? Or did Mom just figure the grieving woman would enjoy the same kind of food she offered others? My mom plays the sweet elementary school teacher so well that I sometimes forget how low she can also go.

  If Jim-Bean and Ingrid ever suspect the club in Gary Lee’s disappearance, they don’t make an issue of it. Quaid claims they always knew he had to die, but they required the ability to lie to themselves. By waiting nearly a year and killing him quietly, we allow his parents to believe he is alive somewhere in the world. The lie keeps them sane and lets Jim-Bean remain a good club brother.

  For my part, I don’t really care about Gary Lee by the time he’s gone. I have bigger issues to think about. Like a teething Thisbe turning me into her chew toy. Or Quaid researching bathroom designs for our yurt. My life is lovely and busy enough for me to ignore how I prefer not to drive into town alone. I’ve gotten used to bumming rides with Mom or Dad into Ellsberg for shopping. Plus, nearly every week, Lily drives Thisbe and me down to Tennessee to visit Audrey and Keith. Best of all, Quaid buys a used Tahoe and offers to chauffeur me around town whenever he isn’t working. I’m so active with my new life that I don’t realize what I’m no longer able to do on my own.

  So Gary Lee dies, and I live. That’s how the story played out. Though I always assumed the end would play out this way, I remain scared for a long time.

  First, Quaid keeps me sane, helping me leave the RV more and more until I can venture out on my own. I start walking in the woods every day with the dogs. While enjoying one of a winter walk from Mom and Pop’s house to Gram’s, I finally decide on a biker name for Quaid. So simple and obvious, I’m embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it sooner.