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

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “She’s pregnant, Dad. What do you want me to do? I can’t fucking deal with that when she holds a goddamn knife to her stomach and threatens to kill a baby!”

  I looked at my son, really looked at him, and finally saw what he was trying to hide.

  “You think she’s going to do it.”

  His head fell forward.

  “I would’ve gone with her to stop her from doing that.”

  “She did that to me, too, when she was pregnant with you. Used me up and nearly hung me out to dry. I was only a good lawyer’s final trick away from prison, and the only thing that saved me was the fact that she wanted to save her ass more than she wanted to punish mine,” I informed him. “Called her bluff finally. I’ll never forgive myself for that, but I wasn’t sure what else to do anymore. Nobody would fucking help me. I was a dumbass kid who wasn’t well liked. Nobody at my side to do anything about it but me.”

  Linc looked up at me.

  “But you don’t have that problem,” I said fiercely. “You’ll always have me.”

  Linc nodded, and then, without another word, he turned around and walked away.

  He didn’t even greet Ellen when he passed her as he made his way inside.

  “What happened?”

  The concern in Ellen’s voice had my anger dissipating. Not all the way, but enough that I could think clearly once again.

  “Margot decided to try to force Linc to go with her after school. When he wouldn’t, she held a knife to her stomach and threatened to kill the baby she’s carrying. He went to get in the car, and two of his coaches saw him. They stopped him, then called me,” I growled. “I got there, they explained the situation. I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore.”

  “You may not, but I do.”

  I flinched, not expecting to hear Ghost’s voice coming from inside my house.

  “What do you have?”

  He handed me a paper.

  “A court ordered psych evaluation,” Ghost said. “That’s probably why she got desperate enough to try to get your kid in her car after the warning you scared her with.”

  I bit my lip, and Ellen’s head turned toward me slowly.

  “Warning?” she asked carefully.

  “Warning,” I confirmed.

  She sighed and looked back toward Ghost.

  “I don’t even want to know.”

  Ghost’s lips twitched.

  “That’s good, darlin’,” he said. “Because I’m sure he wouldn’t tell you.”

  I barely contained the urge to pinch the bridge of my nose.

  “There are some things, Ghost, that you shouldn’t tell a woman.” I laughed under my breath. “How about we go inside and have a beer. You can tell me what in the hell you did, and I can offer my thanks.”

  Forty-five minutes later, I was finished reading the paperwork that Ghost had handed me, and I stared at him.

  “These practically say that she’s going into this with eyes wide open. She’s openly admitting to trying to kill herself, multiple times, and she’s also admitted to taking drugs to try to quiet the voices that she hears in her head,” I said, dumbfounded.

  Ghost nodded.

  “And she’s going to turn them in. I made sure of it.”

  “How?” Ellen asked.

  “By giving her no other choice,” he said. “I’m fucking tired of it. We all got problems of our own, and you don’t need her adding to your shit.”

  “What did you say to her to get her to agree to this?”

  His grin was evil.

  “Better you don’t know that.” He stood up. “She’s got until tomorrow to do it, or I fuck up her life worse than she’s ever done on her own.”

  With that he left, not waiting another minute for us to argue.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Ellen whispered. “I feel hope, but I also feel, I don’t know, maybe a weird sort of pity that I can’t quite make go away.”

  I stood up and walked over to the back door, whistling for Achilles so he could go outside.

  He came barreling down the hall, and I assumed that he’d been outside Linc’s door, which was where he stayed if Linc was in the house.

  “Don’t feel pity for her,” I said softly. “This is the best place for her, or at least, the best place that doesn’t actually involve a grave.”

  Her brows rose.

  “Not to mention that it’ll give that kid of hers a chance to be born healthy if she’s actually getting proper care to ensure that.” I paused. “And my kid’s safe, you’re safe, I’m safe. We’re getting a break from dealing with her and her shit. I can’t find a single fucking thing wrong with whatever he had to do to get her into that place.”

  With that I walked outside and didn’t come back in until I was sure that Ellen had gone to bed.

  That night, as I laid beside her, I went through a riot of emotions.

  One thing I wasn’t feeling, though, was pity or compassion for the woman whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to wreak as much havoc on mine as she could.

  It hit me then. What I was feeling so intensely was free. I was free, and the relief that came with that realization would have brought me to my knees had I not already been lying down.

  For the first time in sixteen years, I was free to live my life without looking over my shoulder for her to ruin whatever good that I’d managed to make or find for myself.

  And in feeling it for the first time as an adult, I realized that I would be willing to do just about anything to ensure that I continued to have this feeling for the rest of my life. Even if I had to go to hell to accomplish it.

  Chapter 21

  I’m a lady in the streets, and asleep in the sheets.

  -Meme

  Jessie

  Life went pretty much back to normal once Margot was admitted, with Ghost’s help, for psychiatric treatment. Of course, the doctors and nurses didn’t know that she wasn’t there of her own free will, but I didn’t care.

  After all that she’d done to us, I was fine with it and thought it was a perfect time for her to go away and not come back. I just wished that she didn’t have a kid on the way—my son’s half sibling—that I was constantly worrying about.

  But since there was nothing I could do about that until the baby was born, I went about living my life.

  And I enjoyed the hell out of it. For six days.

  Life wasn’t all roses and rainbows, but I was really hoping for a longer reprieve before the next problem came up.

  “You’re what?” I repeated.

  “I’m at Linc’s school. I need you to come down here,” Ellen repeated for a third time.

  “Why?” I asked again.

  I’d asked ‘why’ and ‘you’re what’ three times now, and her answer had been the same each time. If it had been something serious, they would have called me, right?

  I pulled the phone away from my face and flipped through the call log, quickly realizing with horror that they had called me. Five times, in fact.

  When they weren’t able to get me, they must’ve called Ellen, who’d been Linc’s emergency contact.

  A blissful time where nothing had happened. No near kidnappings. No problems of any fucking kind.

  Nada.

  Until this.

  “Just come,” Ellen growled out of the speaker. “And try to do some meditation on your way.”

  With that cryptic comment, she hung up, and I was left staring at my phone.

  “Feisty,” Big Papa said. “I like it.”

  I let my eyes trail over to him.

  “Apparently, I need one of those fancy Bluetooth helmets because I can’t be missing calls like that,” I grumbled.

  Big Papa grinned. “I’ll ride with you. I gotta split off when we get to the road for the school, though.”

  My brows rose as I shoved the phone into my pocket.

  “The woman again?” I asked.

  He shrugge
d. “She passes the time.”

  I snorted.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” I laughed.

  His grin was hard.

  “It is whatever I say,” he snapped.

  I held my hands up and was about to say one thing more when a loud roar passed us.

  My eyes automatically went to where the biker had passed us, and my stomach started to do somersaults.

  “Ghost,” I murmured.

  Ghost was going so fast that I couldn’t make out his license plate, and when he passed a cop, the cop did nothing more but let him pass because there was no way in hell he would catch him.

  “Shit,” Big Papa growled. “The thought of going to see the girl was lovely while it lasted.”

  I rolled my eyes at Big Papa’s use of the word ‘lovely.’

  “Let me know if you need anything,” I told him as I started up my bike.

  In response, he gave me a half-assed salute and started his own bike.

  I rode away before he did, headed straight for the school and the inevitable anger that I knew I’d be feeling shortly.

  Ellen wouldn’t tell me to check my anger if I wasn’t going to be feeling it.

  ***

  I watched the video of my son getting slapped, punched, kicked and beaten by a fucking girl, and then looked up at the principal.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said carefully. “You want to suspend my son for fighting, which will result in him forfeiting his chance to play in any spring scrimmages, when he was the one who was assaulted and he didn’t lift a single finger in his own defense against this girl.”

  The principal shifted in his seat.

  “We have a zero-tolerance policy…” he started to say.

  I held my hand up, stopping him before he could repeat the same thing he’d said over and over again for the last fifteen minutes.

  “Do you know what school district we live in?” I asked him carefully.

  The principal look startled.

  “No.”

  I grinned.

  “Collerville, the next town over actually,” I said. “We pay this district over fifteen grand a year so he can come here,” I told the principal. “The reason for that is so he can graduate with an associates degree in science. He wants a leg up when he starts his college career. He doesn’t need to come here, though, like other kids do.”

  I felt Ellen slip her hand into mine.

  Linc and I had chosen this school when we’d first moved back here because of the school’s excellent graduation rates and the college credits they offered. Not to mention that Linc was very interested in science and technology, and this place offered advanced classes in both subjects.

  “That has very little to do with what is going on here,” he said. “This fight was instigated in front of the entire football team, cheerleading squad, as well as some parents. I have no other choice but to…”

  I held up my hand again.

  “He did nothing wrong. You can see the entire video there.” I pointed to the cell phone. “Had my son fought back, she would be a fuckin’ pancake on the ground. But he didn’t. He let that girl hit him. Let her slap, spit, and punch. He moved away, she followed. He restrained her when she cut his face.” I stood up, placing both of my hands on the principal’s desk, and leaned over it. “You called me away from work, a job that doesn’t give me paid time off to deal with bullshit like this, and then you have the fucking nerve to tell me you’re going to suspend my kid?”

  The principal’s jaw hardened.

  “I have no control over…there’s a zero-tolerance policy!”

  I finally smiled, letting him see the top row of my teeth. Clearly, it wasn’t a smile that anyone wanted to see aimed toward them.

  “Would you like to explain to your school sponsors next semester why the state’s fucking star quarterback, my son, is at a different school?” I asked. “Because if you suspend him for something that was not his fault, then I’ll move him out of this shithole that I pay way too much for so fast that you won’t even see me coming.”

  “Mr. James…” The principal, the little weasel-eyed fuckwad, started to stand.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m taking my kid home, and tomorrow when I return him to school, if he’s not welcome to walk through those doors, then I’ll be getting his transcripts and enrolling him in Collerville before the sun finishes cresting in the sky. Do you understand that?”

  I could tell that the principal didn’t believe me, but with my words said, I gestured to my son, who still had a bleeding scratch on his face, and walked out the door.

  I was met with the coaches out in the parking lot.

  “What’s going on?” they asked.

  “What’s going on is that they’re suspending him, and that the principal doesn’t believe me when I say I’ll enroll him in Collerville tomorrow if he does,” I snapped.

  The coach’s eyes widened.

  “I’ll have a talk with him,” Coach King promised.

  I nodded my head.

  “Make him understand,” I grunted.

  Ellen caught up with me as I stalked across the parking lot to the guard shack that housed the old geezer of a guard who wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing if any of these kids wanted to leave. “Yo.”

  The old man looked up.

  “I need the gates opened so my son can leave,” I gestured to where my kid was getting into his car.

  The student parking lot was blocked off so they couldn’t leave during the school day, but it was likely that it would only hold them in as long as they wanted to be there. My kid wasn’t leaving the wrong way, though, which would be to hop the curb and drive through the grass. I didn’t want to give this fucking school another reason to keep him from attending classes tomorrow.

  “Do you have a pass?”

  I just stared. “No.”

  He shrugged, then hit a button on his desk that opened the automatic gates without another word.

  I grunted in thanks and turned around, only to come to a sudden halt when I saw Ellen standing behind me.

  “Are you going to work?” she asked, head tilting.

  I nodded.

  “You want to grab some lunch first?” she asked.

  She sounded so hopeful that it was hard to tell her no, but since I’d already been off work for half the morning due to a toy drive the club was holding, I couldn’t be any later than I was.

  “I can’t.” I reached forward and caught her hip with my hand, pulling her in tight. “But tonight, after I have a talk with my son about what went down today, we can…”

  She shook her head.

  “Club party, remember?”

  I grimaced.

  “Yeah, now I do.”

  She chuckled and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me down to her lips.

  I went willingly, and kissed her just like she wanted, much to the delight of the school kids around us who’d just run by during some sort of cross country practice.

  “Gotta go, baby,” I said against her lips. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  She let me go, reluctantly I saw, and walked away, giving her hips an extra sway to show me what I was missing.

  “You shouldn’t tease, you know,” I called behind her as I backed away in the direction of my bike that was in the next parking lot over.

  She looked at me over her shoulder on her way to the visitor’s parking lot near the front door of the school.

  “Teasing is what I do best.”

  ***

  The party was in full swing by the time I was finally finished with work.

  The toy drive we’d held earlier had been for a family in our community who’d been displaced due to a fire, and the party was in celebration of nothing specific.

  Every once in a while, the club decided to let their hair down and party, though this one would be tamer than most due to the children in attendance.

  Though,
considering it was a Thursday night, not much would be happening besides light drinking since the majority of the club members and their wives had to go to work tomorrow.

  The moment I stepped through the door, all eyes turned to me.

  I paused, waiting for it, and shook my head when it did.

  “Look who finally decided to play hooky!” Sean crowed from his spot on the couch.

  His wife, Naomi, was sitting on the arm of the couch. His large arm was wrapped around her waist, and he was holding her there, not that she would leave even if he hadn’t had a hold of her.

  I gave him a chin lift.

  “Not everyone has a cushy job like you that gives them off every other day,” I shot back.

  Sean’s job wasn’t really cushy. He was a paramedic, and he worked hard while he was at work. He deserved the entire forty-eight hours off after some of the nights he had.

  Sean chuckled and I started to scan the room for Linc and Ellen. I found them in the corner of the kitchen. They were both talking and laughing over something. When Ellen pointed, I followed her finger to find the wolf dog on the floor eating a bone that looked like it was the size of its entire body.

  Shaking my head, I walked toward them. Ellen brought that wolf everywhere. Literally everywhere.

  She treated it like it was a fucking toy poodle despite the fact that we now knew it was a wolf. A week ago, Ellen had finally broken down and taken the dog to a vet. Not wanting to miss the news that the dog was, in fact, a wolf, I had gone with her.

  There they’d taken one look at the animal and had said they couldn’t treat a wild animal. When Ellen had said that she’d gotten the ‘wolf’ from a ‘breeder’, they’d relented. Though, she straight up lied when she said that the dog was only half wolf.

  I’d given her shit about that when we’d left, but apparently, she’d known it was going to happen.

  After I’d pointed out that it was a wolf, she’d done some research and had found out that in the city of Mooresville, you weren’t allowed to have wild animals as pets.

  Since she wasn’t keen on giving up the wolf, she’d looked up breeders from out of state and had started blatantly lying to everyone who asked about him.

  “Your old lady has a wolf in my house.”

  I looked up at Aaron, trying to ignore the way thinking about Ellen as an ‘old lady’ made me feel.