Chapter 15

A beard is nature’s way of saying let’s fuck.

-Fact of Life

Hannah

“Goddammit, I hate this man,” Michael muttered, immediately reaching forward and skipping to the next song, but realizing that there was no button to actually skip. “Alexa, skip song!”

I slapped his hand and shoved him away from my counter where my Alexa tower was located.

My brother just laughed.

“Hey, fucker!” I hissed. “I liked that song!”

My brother gave me a droll look.

“You know what I do when I pull someone over and Sam Hunt is playing?” he questioned.

I shrugged, vaguely interested in what he had to say. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what he did. It was likely that I wouldn’t like it.

“I write them a ticket.”

“Right on,” Travis muttered as he came into the room, the puppy hot on his heels. “Fucking hate Sam Hunt. Country music poser.”

“You know,” I smiled, watching the man that had my heart and soul. “You did buy me tickets to see Sam Hunt in concert.”

He’d gotten them for me for Mother’s Day, and had given them to me last night.

Travis shrugged. “Know you like him.”

Michael started to chuckle. “You know that she’s going to take you…right?”

Travis looked up at my brother and sneered. “Actually, someone has to stay home with the kids.”

That was true…but still.

“My brother can watch the kids…right?” I asked. “Nikki won’t care.”

Nikki was Michael’s wife and I had no doubt in my mind that she wouldn’t care.

Nikki started to laugh. “You walked right into that one, big boy.”

Michael grunted and turned to his wife. “I don’t think I could handle them all by myself.”

It was clear that he thought to rope Nikki into helping watch my heathens. Little did he know that TJ had full blown colic, and there hadn’t been a night that passed since he was born where I hadn’t had to walk with him for hours a night.

“So, tell me about this woman that’s ruining your life?”

My brother didn’t mince words, and I’d had to give him something to come over here with Travis here.

They were under some sort of truce—a truce that they had to talk about outside for fifteen minutes the moment Michael got here—and so far, it’d been fairly calm.

A lot calmer than it had been the day that I’d given birth, and I woke up to my brother, Travis, my parents, and his parents in the hospital room with me.

Travis and his family were on one side, and my family was on the other.

My baby had been in Travis’ arms, and all of them had been sitting so tensely quiet that I’d had the urge to laugh.

Now, though, they chatted amicably about work, the weather, and even about their kids.

I noticed the tension between the two since I knew them both so well, but they were trying…and for that I was grateful.

“She’s not ruining…”

“Allegra is a conceited, self-centered, ruthless bitch whose father ‘practically owns this county.’ Her words, not mine,” Travis butted in. “I met her when I was young and dumb, while on leave. We met up another time when I came back on leave, and then I decided while drunk as a skunk that it would be a great idea to get married to her. When I came home for good eight months later, we married, and had a kid within six weeks. What I didn’t know, and my whole fuckin’ family forgot to tell me, was that she was a catty bitch who thought she was getting somebody that had a lot of money. Unfortunately for her, my father was the one with the money and not me.”

My lips thinned.

I hadn’t actually heard this story before. I’d wanted to know all about it, but I’d never found the courage to straight up ask Travis why he’d want to go anywhere near Allegra, even with a ten-foot pole.

Hearing that Travis had fallen for Allegra’s ‘good girl’ act had me kind of feeling worried. How did he not see her for what she really was?

But then he explained it better a few moments later, making me think more of him.

“I hadn’t spent more than forty-eight hours with her at a time until I got home for good,” he continued. “She was like hot and cold. At first, she was hot. She was nice. She was great. Then, after we were married, and she found out that marrying me didn’t come with my daddy’s money, she started to change. She no longer liked spending time with me. When she was pregnant with Alex, I couldn’t get fucking near her. I think we had sex all of four times while I was married to her.”

My mouth fell open.

Four times? That was it?

“That’s impressive,” Michael grunted. “How long were you able to stick it out?”

Travis had a comical look on his face when he answered, “Five years.”

I had to laugh at the look of surprise on Michael’s face. “You went five years without getting any?”

Travis shrugged. “We were starting up Hail Auto Recovery. When we got that on its feet, we started up Hail House. There wasn’t enough time in the day to worry about whether I was getting any.”

Michael snorted.

“I should introduce Allegra to Hannah’s ex. They seem like they’d be a good fit for each other.”

Travis snorted. “As bad as I’ve heard her ex could be, Allegra would rip off his head and eat his body before he could do more than wave at her.”

I giggled and pulled the pot off the stove that I was cooking spaghetti in. I was making Million Dollar Spaghetti—a favorite in this house. The plus side was that it was easy as fuck to make, and that Reggie normally asked for seconds.

That, in and of itself, was a small miracle.

The girl survived on chicken nuggets and sour cream and onion potato chips.

There was literally nothing that kid would eat…but this.

I’d tried it on a whim a few months into my pregnancy because it all sounded so good. I liked cheese. I loved spaghetti. So why wouldn’t it all taste good together? Well, it didn’t taste good. It tasted divine. So divine, in fact, that I wanted to offer The Pioneer Woman a marriage proposal.

Not that she would ever leave her Marlboro Man for me, but one could hope, right?

Well, that night I tried it out on my daughter, and lo and behold she adored it too. Even asked for second helpings.

Since then, we’d had it at least once a week, and I still wasn’t tired of it.

I poured the noodles into the colander and drained them, then set the pot down just as the phone next to my hand rang.

Since it was the house phone, we only had one of them due to us having to have it since we got Internet through the phone company, I wasn’t in a rush to answer it. Nobody ever called us on it, so it was a surprise to actually hear the sound.

Nevertheless, I put it to my ear just before it quit ringing and said, “Hello?” All the while I continued to drain the spaghetti.

“Hello, is this the Hail residence?”

I froze at the official sounding voice on the other end.

“This is,” I confirmed. “Can I help you?”

The man on the other end of the line didn’t beat around the bush.

“I’m the county coroner for Chase County…” he said.

My whole entire being froze.

My parents weren’t here in Chase County. They were in Gregg County, which was close. My brother and his family were here, but we were all safe…that only left a few people.

As I racked my brain about who he would be calling about, the man continued speaking.

“I witnessed an accident on the corner of Eighteen Ninety and Meadowbrook,” he continued. “A woman and a child…”

My belly soured.

“I’m not calling on official business. The police have already been called, but I just wanted to call you since the woman in the car gave me this number to call.”

I was so confused.

“What’s her name?”

I was going through all of Travis’ brothers.

His mother and father weren’t in town. They’d gone to see Tobias and Finley out of state. Reed was deployed. That only left Dante and Baylor.

“Allegra and Alex were in a very bad wreck…”

I looked over to see Travis staring at me, no longer talking.

“What is it?” he mouthed.

I opened my mouth and tried to explain, but the man on the other line was still talking, and I couldn’t talk and listen at the same time, apparently.

“The girl wasn’t in a restraint. They found her on the side of the road…”

The side of the road.

“The woman was restrained. The police have just arrived,” he continued. “My number is…” his voice trailed off as static started to interfere.

“Travis,” I mewled. “Alex.”

He was in front of me seconds later.

“What happened?”

The line went dead.

“There was an accident.”

***

I’d never been so scared in my life.

We made it to the scene in less than ten minutes after Michael and Travis had left, and what I arrived to was utter chaos.

There were emergency crews everywhere.

Two cars were on their sides less than ten feet from each other. Smoke filled the air from both cars. The smell of burnt rubber and something I couldn’t decipher were assaulting my nostrils, and the sound of a man yelling as well as a heated engine ticking could be heard over the rest of the noise.

It didn’t take me long to locate Travis.

He was being pushed back by a burly police officer on his front side, and Michael on his back. But he wasn’t having any of it. He was frantic to get to the other side of what I now realized was Allegra’s car.

There were large emergency floodlights erected on all sides of the accident scene, but most of the chaos seemed to be surrounding where Travis was trying to go.

And I knew that was where Alex was.

My heart was literally ripping to shreds.

“This way,” I told Baylor.

Baylor was one step ahead of me.

When Travis had left, he’d made me wait for Baylor to get me before I left. It’d been the worst ten minutes of my life.

But now we were there, I could tell that this was very bad.

The moment I got up to Travis’ side, I saw the tiny, sequined slip on shoes that I’d bought Alex a few weeks before lying precariously on the edge of the asphalt. One was flipped on its side, and the other was straddling the white line that signaled the end of the pavement.

And just a few feet from those shoes were tiny little feet.

My heart lurched.

“Let me go,” Travis shoved at the police officer again. “I’m not kidding, Andi. I need to…”

“You need to back off. You need to let them work. You need to calm yourself down so we can get this done without us having to worry about you instead of her.”

That got him calmed down faster than anything else could, knowing that the attention he was garnering from the emergency services crew was actually taking away from them taking care of his little girl.

“All right,” he pushed away and immediately placed both hands onto his forehead. “Fuck.”

I pushed past Travis, and was stopped by the same cop that had pushed him back. “I’m a nurse,” I informed him.

He waved me past him, and I spared one look over my shoulder at Travis before I hurried past and stopped next to one of the medics that was stabilizing Alex for transport.

I tried not to look at her bloodied clothing or the makeshift cast around her arm that clearly indicated she had a broken bone. Nor did I pay attention to the way that her eyes were closed tightly, showing me that she was conscious, but in pain.

The C-spine on her neck, holding her head immobile, was making my hands itch to pull her into my arms and whisper to her that it’d be okay. I wanted to cradle her like the baby she was. I wanted to wipe that blood from her nose and kiss it all better.

But I did none of those things.

“I’m a nurse,” I told the medic. “Is there anything I can do?”

He looked at me, and shook his head.

“Life Flight is ten minutes out,” he said. “Closest hospital that’s not on divert is Children’s in Benton, Louisiana.”

I nodded, knowing what divert was, and how a lot of the area hospitals were having to go on that due to a high volume of patients lately. When ICU was full, they were practically forced to put the rest of the hospital on lockdown to incoming patients, and the two closest hospitals that were equipped to take a patient in need of the ICU—which was obvious Alex was—had been extremely overwhelmed. Not to mention they were short staffed on top of that.

Children’s in Benton was a good choice, if not a little far.

But if that was what had to happen to make sure that Alex had the best care, then that was what we’d do.

And that was what we did.

“Who are you to the little girl?” the medic I’d spoken to minutes before on the side of the road asked as we walked Alex to the waiting helicopter.

“Stepmother,” I told him.

It was partially true.

And the moment that I’d come on scene and gotten past the cops that were guarding Alex like a couple of linebackers protecting their quarterback, Travis had seemed to calm even more.

He wasn’t happy that they wouldn’t let him near her, but having me there was reassuring enough that he stopped trying to push through.

“You’re really a nurse?”

I pulled out my badge—the one that was no longer useful since I didn’t work at the clinic anymore—out of my pocket, thankful that I’d had the wherewithal to grab it on the way out of the house, and showed it to him.

I thought I’d be using it at the hospital.

“They’ll let you ride with her then. They’ll always allow medical personnel if the circumstances warrant it,” the paramedic explained. “Help me get her onto the gurney.”

I did, lifting her slight weight up the foot that it took to get her up on the gurney, and nearly cried out when I heard Alex’s low moan.

“Alex?” I murmured, leaning forward, touching the side of her face.

Alex cracked open one eye, and then closed it again.

But it was enough. She knew I was there.

“Can you hear me, honey?”

“Daddy.”

The word was so soft, so ragged, that I had to strain to hear it.

But I knew what she was asking.

“He’s here, baby,” I assured her. “Just a few feet away.”

She licked her lip, tried to lift her hand, and then sighed like just doing that one thing had taken it all out of her.

I reached for her hand.

“Are you meeting the helicopter here, or are you transporting her?”

The medic lifted his bags to the bottom of the gurney and fastened them with a few snaps before replying.

“We’re meeting them just down the road,” he clarified. “There’s an open field right next to the library.”

I nodded and stood up as the paramedic’s partner, a slight woman that didn’t look like she was holding her lunch down well, raised the gurney.

I held onto Alex’s hand as they walked her to the ambulance.

“How are her vitals?” I questioned.

“Everything was slightly elevated, I gave her some pain meds about a minute and a half before you got there, which is likely the cause of her sleepiness,” the medic explained as he helped lift the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “Her arm’s broken at least in one place, but likely more since I couldn’t set it. Pupils dilated, most likely indicating a concussion. She’s got bruises and scrapes, as well as road rash along her left side.”

I closed my eyes and stood beside the ambulance for a few moments.

“Once we get her to the LZ—landing zone—and loaded, we’ll come back for the mother.”

I wanted to say, “Fuck the mother” but managed to hold my tongue.

Instead, I got up into the ambulance, sat down on the bench next to the medic, and bowed my head over Alex’s body.

Then I prayed.

I prayed that she’d be okay.

I prayed that she wouldn’t have any lasting damage due to this wreck.

I also made a promise to God that I’d make more of an effort to get to know this little girl.

“Ready, Freddy?”

The medic nodded at his partner, and she shut the doors before rounding the ambulance, hopping in the front seat, and driving off.

I looked out the window to see Travis watching, tears coursing down his cheeks, as we sped away toward the LZ.

I held his gaze until I couldn’t see him any longer.

***

Travis

I wanted to rewind to yesterday when I last saw Alex, and take her. I wanted to bring her to my house, tell her that she was never leaving again, and that would be the end of it.

But life didn’t work like that.

Allegra really had been drinking with my daughter in her care, and then she’d driven.

She had then gotten into a wreck by driving off the side of the road and hitting a parked car.

She’d done a lot of things wrong in this situation. She’d drank with my child under her protection. She’d gotten into the car when she had no business doing so. She hadn’t restrained or made sure that Alex had restrained herself. She hadn’t seen the parked car due to her inebriated state. Then, she’d wrecked and my daughter had been thrown free of the car.

No father wanted to hear that his kid was hurt.

No father especially didn’t want to get a call that not only had she been hurt, but the mother—the woman that you thought you could trust to take care of your baby—had been irresponsible.

“Travis, what are you doing here?”

I tore my eyes away from the retreating ambulance, and turned dead eyes on the woman that was supposed to take care of our baby when I wasn’t there to do it.

“Do you know what happened, Allegra?”

I didn’t care that she was bleeding from her head, a constant torrent of blood filtering through her hair and down her hairline to curl around her chin.

“I…we got in a wreck.” She sounded confused.

That, and she also smelled like a brewery.

“Yes, you did,” I confirmed, somehow keeping myself calm. “When did you start drinking?”

I’d half-assed listened to one of the cops trying to get Allegra to talk, but with the state she was in, they didn’t know how to handle her.

They were terse with her. Too abrupt, and they didn’t sound like they were caring about her state of being, but somebody else’s.

I gave her my complete attention, and was acting like she hadn’t done anything wrong, when in actuality she’d done a whole lot more than that.

“I didn’t,” she lied, seeing the trap. “What are you talking about?”

My gaze moved to the officer. “What’s her alcohol level?”

“Point two one,” he answered. “Almost triple the legal limit.”

I turned my attention back to Allegra. “Your daddy won’t get you out of this one.”

She pursed up her lips and tried to stand, but the officer refused to let her do that.

“Move again and I’ll cuff you.”

“You can’t cuff me!” she declared loudly.

I wanted to yell at her. Scream that she’d fucked up so royally that she’d never see her child again—if our child made it.

However, I held my composure, and looked away. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her she was the worst parent in the world.

The sound of a helicopter brought my attention away from the woman looking like I’d hurt her feelings, and I gazed up to see the Life Flight helicopter coming closer and closer to the ground.

It circled at one point about a half mile away, and slowly started to descend.

I watched, even when it disappeared into the trees.

“Come on, brother.” Baylor was suddenly at my side. “They’re taking Alex to Children’s an hour and a half away.”

An hour and a half.

That was going to be the longest drive in the history of drives.

I started to walk to the car, but stopped when something white caught my eye.

A bear.

Alex’s bear.

The one I’d bought her years ago that she took everywhere with her. The one thing that had given me hope that maybe she didn’t hate me as much as she said she did.

“Travis?”

That was Michael.

He’d fallen in step beside me, but when I stopped, he did, too.

“One second,” I said, jogging over to the patch of grass where the bear lay haphazardly.

The moment I had it in my hand, I jogged back to the truck where Baylor was already waiting and slid inside.

Luckily, we were in my actual truck, which had a backseat.

That way, Michael was able to go, too.

Thankfully, Nikki had stayed with the kids.

“Let’s go,” I ordered. “I want to be there in less than an hour.”

Baylor opened his mouth to protest, but Michael beat him to it.

“We’ll get there at a respectable time, but if you want to speed, I have a feeling they wouldn’t ticket you.”

I laughed humorlessly.

“Don’t think this day could get any worse.”

How wrong I was.