“Raleigh, call the cops.”
Raleigh replied with a shaky, “Already did, baby.”
***
“I swear to God, Ezra,” Raleigh said in exasperation. “It’s only a freakin’ nose bleed.”
“A nose bleed caused by a six-foot-two person punching you in the face,” I said, sounding just as angry as I felt. “Please, humor me.”
She sighed and took my hand, wincing slightly when her palm came into contact with mine.
“Hurt?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I think I might have jammed a couple of fingers. Who knew that punching someone in the face would hurt that bad?”
My temper was already stretched to its limit, so I chose not to answer or reply at all as I waited for the doctor to arrive to check Raleigh over.
Lucky for us we had a personal physician that was used to our late-night wake-up calls.
“Do you think they’ll give him bond?” Raleigh asked, leaning her head against my shoulder.
I shook my head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to go out. Honestly, I think he’s exactly where he wants to be since that’s where Jacklyn Casper is.” I paused. “In a sick sort of way, he knew exactly how to get there to be with her.”
“But they don’t put men and women prisoners together,” she pointed out.
“No,” I agreed. “But I don’t think Mackie was thinking all that clearly.”
Coach Casper had done a fine job on fucking Mackie up, that was for sure.
“Did you hear that he confessed to hitting Morgan?” she whispered. “He said he couldn’t drive his truck anymore because it was ‘fucked up from hitting that cripple.’ That it didn’t ‘drive’ right after they got it fixed so fast. He said that when I got there to pick him up.”
That was news to me.
Then again, a lot had gone on from the moment that I’d arrived.
The cops had arrived within two minutes of Raleigh calling 9-1-1, and Mackie had been spouting off a bunch of bullshit while we’d had him pinned to the ground.
A lot of which centered around me ruining his life.
Which, in some ways, I suppose I had.
At least the one he thought he had with Coach Casper.
But that relationship was fucked-up at its finest. I had zero guilt for turning her into the authorities for taking advantage of a student like that. For Mackie to be that fucked, she’d had to have done a doozy of a number on him.
“You were right,” I admitted. “There was something wrong with Coach Casper.”
She started to laugh, but that laugh quickly turned to a moan.
Then she was running in the direction of the bathroom.
“Maybe you should get the doctor to run a flu test on you as well?” I suggested, watching her heave.
Raleigh moaned into the toilet bowl just as the doctor came into the room. “Please tell me you did not pull me out of bed at four o’clock on a Saturday morning to confirm a pregnancy test.”
I froze as pieces of the puzzle finally started clicking into place.
Raleigh threw up again for good measure.
“Actually,” I paused. “Raleigh was punched in the face, and she punched someone else in the face in retaliation. We need to get her checked over to make sure she doesn’t have a broken face…or possibly a broken hand. The pregnancy thing, though…”
Raleigh threw up again.
“We probably don’t need that confirmed until tomorrow.”
The doctor chuckled. “Oh, Raleigh dear. You always do keep my life exciting.”
I looked over at Raleigh, who was leaning her head against her arm. “She keeps my life exciting, too, that’s for sure.”
Epilogue
No matter how bad it gets, I’m always rich at the Dollar Store.
-Bumper Sticker
Raleigh
“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, baby,” Ezra said in my ear.
It was two in the morning, and Ezra and the team had a long drive ahead of them to where they were playing their next game.
I made a non-committal sound that was somewhere near an ‘okay’ and a ‘narrrhg.’
He laughed quietly and pushed away. “I’ll give you a call when we get there.”
I gave him a thumb up, and went back to sleep until something woke me up a few hours later.
I listened, ears perked, for the sound that had woken me.
Not the baby.
Otherwise she would’ve cried out again by now.
I opened my eyes and tried to see the time on the clock but couldn’t get my eyes to quite focus long enough to read the letters.
Then a movement of some sort caught my eye, and my eyes moved from the clock on the nightstand to the bed. There was a blob…something glowing in the dark…on the foot of the bed.
I frowned, the haze of sleep making thinking cognitively difficult.
Again, I tried to get my eyes to focus, but I was just so freakin’ tired that I was finding it hard to do much of anything besides close them again. Then, whatever it was—the blobby mass that glowed in the dark—moved.
It. Moved.
Logically, I knew that this wasn’t a good thing. There shouldn’t be anything glowing in the dark and blob-like in my bed.
Unless it was a toy…
I reached out and poked it, my finger going into something extremely squishy and warm.
I pulled back, and tried to produce what might possibly be squishy, warm, blob-like, and glow in the dark.
And couldn’t figure out what that would be.
At this point, I decided that maybe whatever it was just might be a figment of my imagination, and I could just ignore it.
So, I did what any sane, rational person would do at that point.
I kicked it off the bed, then rolled over and closed my eyes.
That’s about when the piercing screams started.
***
Ezra
I pulled into the parking lot of the ER and found the closest parking spot.
Once the car was in park, I got out and shut the door, beeping the locks with my key fob before jogging into the building.
I arrived and immediately walked up to the cop at the front desk—Atley.
“Hey, Atley,” I called out. “Have you seen my wife and kid?”
Atley nodded his head and then gestured for me to follow him.
I did, following him through a maze of hallways until I arrived at a door that was partially closed.
“Thank you, Atley,” I said softly.
He nodded his head and continued on to the nurses’ station, looking bored.
I would be, too. It was seven in the morning, and the only car in the parking lot had been mine and the staff.
I pushed in through the door and felt my heart melt at what I saw.
Raleigh was sitting up on the exam table, her eyes closed, her head resting on the top of our son’s head. He was in his glow in the dark pajamas that I’d dressed him in last night, and his curly blond hair was a rioting mass that went every which way but the one it should.
His little arm was wrapped up tight in an ace bandage, and it was covering the majority of his face as he snoozed away, impervious to the harsh fluorescent lights that were shining bright.
Our daughter was cocooned in the mass, too. I could just make out the fuzzy, brown curly hair peeking out just above the baby carrier that Raleigh had her wrapped up in.
All three of them slept, Raleigh partially reclined on the exam table, the rest of her leaning against the wall at her back.
I found myself breathing deep since I’d gotten the call and pulled out my phone so I could remember this exact occasion.
The shutter of my camera had Raleigh’s eyes snapping open, and the moment she saw me, she started to cry.
“I didn’t mean to!” she whispered fiercely.
I found myself walking farther into the room and lea
ning both arms on the padded bench beside her hips. “J never gets into our bed, honey. It’s not your fault. You didn’t mean to, either.”
Her lip quivered. “I didn’t know what it was. I honestly thought it was that Build-A-Bear that we bought him last week. The Iron Man thing that glows in the dark?”
The ‘Iron Man thing’ was actually a Star Wars thing, and she was right. His lightsaber did glow.
When I’d gotten J dressed last night, I’d seen those pajamas hanging up in the closet, and I’d realized that they were almost too small for him and he hadn’t even worn them yet. After putting them on him, I’d gotten him into bed and closed the door—unaware that by doing that I’d be putting him in something Raleigh wouldn’t recognize in her weakened state.
If anything, I blamed myself for her tiredness, too.
I’d brought the flu home from school, and had given it to her, Charlotte, and J. Raleigh had been the last one to get it, but she didn’t have time to lay around miserably. She had to take care of our babies because I was knee deep in football playoffs.
Not that my woman would ever complain.
In the two and a half years that she’d officially been mine, she’d never once not been there for me, and I felt like I’d failed her time and time again. I always put her first…but it never felt like I did—especially during playoffs.
Not that she would ever say that.
It was just how I felt.
“I love you, Raleigh,” I told her. “And this is not your fault.”
A couple of hours later we were sprung from the ER, and I went back to work, but this time I took my family with me.
I had tried to leave them at home.
Raleigh wouldn’t think of it, though. Not with her favorite student shining in the spotlight.
***
A few days later, I stood at the podium and called out Morgan’s name.
“Morgan Leigh Bryce, your senior spokesman for this year’s graduating class!”
Morgan had changed quite a bit over the last year.
Time had definitely been in his favor.
Though he still was quite literally bound to his wheelchair, he was making great progress.
Morgan rolled his wheelchair—he refused to have a motorized one after the low battery incident where he fell out of his chair—and came to a stop at the steps.
When I realized what he was about to do, I stiffened with pride.
Then he did the unthinkable.
He moved the brakes on the wheelchair in place and then started to stand.
The entire two hundred and eighty-nine students, who knows how many faculty, and parents here gasped in shock as he made it to his own two feet.
Morgan was a good kid, and well liked all around. His accident had rocked our entire community, and there wasn’t a single person in the entire room that didn’t know his story.
When I saw him stand, my eyes automatically went to my wife in the side row where the faculty had come to witness the senior night.
Morgan and Raleigh had been through a lot over the last couple of years, but the year that I’d met her and made her mine had definitely been the most trying. Raleigh had been there for him when nobody else had thought to look at him twice.
Nobody else would’ve seen the sadness in his eyes—at least not someone that didn’t have that bleakness in their own.
I hadn’t realized the extent of both of their anguish until I’d seen them talking out in the hall all those years ago—the day I realized that I wanted to date her. That I wanted her to be mine.
And now, seeing how far that Morgan—and Raleigh—had come made my heart full.
Morgan took his first step up onto the platform, and I heard Raleigh burst into tears.
Consequently, so did Morgan, who turned to her with a smile on his face.
He winked at her, and then turned back around to continue climbing.
It took him a lot less time than I would’ve expected.
Forty seconds instead of the minutes that I’d seen him do the night before.
Then he was taking slow, measured steps across the podium until he reached me.
I held out my hand the moment he was close enough to reach it, and then shook his before I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I threw my arms around him and hugged him hard. “I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, kid.”
Morgan squeezed me back. “Thanks, Coach.”
Then I stepped back to surrender the microphone to Morgan.
When I took a seat at the rear of the stage, I watched, just as everyone else did, as Morgan began his speech.
“You might not have known it, but two and a half years ago, I was well on my way to committing suicide.”
There were more inhaled gasps.
Raleigh and I were likely the only ones in the entire place that realized there’d ever been something wrong with the kid.
“I was in a bad place. I didn’t like getting up and facing a day where I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t get into the shower without help, and not a day went by where I didn’t think about how much easier it would be on me and everyone else if I wasn’t there to need to be taken care of,” Morgan continued.
“But then Mrs. McDuff, previously Ms. Crusie, changed my life.” Morgan’s gaze turned to Raleigh. “She said something to me…told me a joke…and I couldn’t figure out why I was laughing, but I was. She said, ‘What is a soldier’s least favorite month?’ and then told me ‘Allich.’”
The crowd laughed.
“And I spent the rest of the day thinking about that laugh that she coaxed from me.” He looked at my wife, who was still looking really run down.
But, since it was senior night and Morgan was our well-loved water boy, she’d come to support the seniors.
“She didn’t know that she saved me,” he said, sounding happy. “But she did.” He looked back over the crowd. “Mrs. McDuff was that teacher for me. The one that changed my life. The one that parents always hope that their children have. The one that makes sacrifices and spends her own hard-earned money on school supplies. The one that comes to games even though she hates them. The one that will do anything in her power to make sure that you excel in life. And I have a feeling that I won’t be the only life that Mrs. McDuff changes.”
No. Morgan definitely wasn’t the only one that my Raleigh had changed.
She’d changed me.
She’d made me a better person.
She’d been there when I hadn’t even realized that I’d needed a person to lean on.
She was the one for me, and always would be.
Hell, she was such a good person that she’d fought for Mackie to be taken to a mental health facility to help him move on with life. To help him see that what he had with Coach Casper was bad.
And as of a few weeks ago when I had checked on him, he’d been doing well.
Not that I particularly cared whether he was or not. But Raleigh did.
As for Coach Casper? Well, she’d lost her teacher’s certification, was now a registered sex offender, and was spending about eight years in jail for her crimes.
“I don’t think any of us would be here without Mr. and Mrs. McDuff. So thanks to the McDuffs for getting us to where we are today!”
The newest graduating class of Gun Barrel High cheered.
We turned to each other and grinned. Them Morgan gave me a high-five.
What’s Next?
Snitches Get Stitches
Book 8 in The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Series
4-9-19
Prologue
Do not accept a friend request from Hormel Foods. It could be Spam.
-The only thing to make Theo smile in 4 weeks
Theodora
6 years ago
“You’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it now, or I’m going to make your life a living hell,” my sister hissed in my face.
Another slap, follow
ed by a vicious right hook to my stomach.
The air whooshed out of me all over again, yet I still didn’t agree.
I wouldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
Not today.
Not this time.
“Did you know that Tyson is in town?” my sister suddenly hissed.
I felt my belly start to sink.
No.
No, no, no, no.
“You’re going to do it.” My sister smoothed a palm down my hair, her breath fanning my face. “If you don’t, I’ll go do the same thing to our brother.”
I wanted to say that she wouldn’t.
But she would.
Mostly because she had.
My brother, Tyson, was my one and only friend in life.
He was my confidant, and the only other person aware of the sickness that ran in our family.
He was the success story, too.
He thought he’d made it.
But in reality, the only reason that he was able to live a life that was free of anything remotely sick—I.e. my sister, father, or other brother, Andy—was because I sacrificed my freedom for his.
He didn’t know it, though.
I’d made sure of that.
“W-what do you want me to do?” I asked softly.
“I want you to go sleep with someone.” She smiled. “And make sure you get pregnant when you do.”
I would’ve laughed in her face had she not been serious.
“I…I can’t do that, T,” I said softly. “That’s immoral.”
My sister glared at me. “You can, and you will, sister. At least the sleeping part. I’ll take care of the rest if you don’t end up making a baby tonight.”
She sounded so sure of herself that I realized she would figure out a way to make it happen.
“Why?” I asked softly.
“Daddy wants this man’s support.” She shrugged. “I’m just following orders.”
I looked away.
There was no way. None. I just wouldn’t be able to do it.
My virginity had been the one and only thing I’d been able to keep.
So she and I would agree to disagree.
“I won’t do it,” I said firmly.
Hissy Fit (The Southern Gentleman Series Book 1) Page 20