“Dammit. Damn. Damn,” I grumbled. Then fell back on the shitty, cold bed and closed my eyes.
I needed to stop.
Really. I needed to.
But I didn’t.
And within two weeks, she would have all the evidence she needed.
Chapter 15
Give up carbs? Over my bread body.
-Meme
Mina
“Sienna,” I called. “Are you ready to go to camp?”
I’d signed Sienna up for a week-long camp called ‘Police Explorers’ that was put on by the local police department. Though, she had been the one to request to go. She’d asked me to do something, anything, but the daycare that I’d planned to put her into while I worked, and Aaron, one of the Dixie Wardens in this chapter, had suggested the summer camp.
One was put on each week for four weeks by a different officer at the department, and they had no problem, whatsoever, if a child attended all of them as long as she was picked up by the time the camp let out.
At first, that had been a problem for me since I didn’t get off of work until six, and the camp ended at four, but I’d then been informed by the ladies of the club that she would go home with one of them for the two hours it took me to get off of work, and that I could pick her up there.
So that was what I’d done, and had been doing for the last two weeks.
Today, Sienna was being taken home by Aaron, though, since he was the one putting on the camp with his K-9 officer, Tank.
“Yeah, Mom. Does this look okay?”
I turned to see her dressed in blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and tennis shoes.
“Yes,” I informed her. “Looks perfect. Why?”
She looked down at her pants. “Someone said that they were too tight yesterday, and that I was showing off my butt.”
My brows furrowed. “Who said that?”
“Another boy in the camp with me,” she answered.
I growled under my breath.
“Well, how about next time, you tell Aaron that someone is bothering you, and he will take care of it?” I suggested. “Your pants aren’t too tight. They’re jeans, they’re supposed to be snug. Now, are you ready?”
She nodded her head and we walked out the door. I had my nursing bag in one hand, the one that held my stethoscope, blood pressure cuff and other shit that I needed on a daily basis, and my keys in the other while I tried to juggle locking the door without dropping either bag.
Sienna waited patiently for me to lock it, and then walked to the car where she waited for me to unlock it.
“He’s mowing our yard again.”
My head whipped around at the sudden sound of a lawn mower running down the side of the yard, and I blinked when I saw Ghost there, covered in sweat, mowing the lawn.
He’d mowed the lawn before, of course, but that time I’d only caught him finishing up. It’d never occurred that he would mow the entire yard, which was a half an acre big, with a push mower.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“We’re going to be late.”
I rolled my eyes and walked to the car as I unlocked it.
“He looks hot,” Sienna said as I settled into the car.
I agreed. He did look hot. Though it wasn’t hard to get hot when it was almost ninety degrees at eight o’clock in the morning.
“Why do you think he’s mowing the lawn with a shirt on? I saw the guy across the street mowing the lawn, but he had his shirt off.”
I didn’t know the answer to Sienna’s question.
“I don’t know, baby,” I offered. “Maybe he wants to wear it.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Let’s go.”
We went, but not far.
“Shoot!” she cried out suddenly. “I forgot my papers that I was supposed to do for homework!”
I looked at the clock.
It was fifteen until eight, meaning that I would have fifteen minutes exactly to get her back home, get the papers, drop her off, and then get to work on time.
“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath, and then turned around.
***
Ghost
It would be my baby girl that broke the camel’s back.
The moment that I saw her car leave, I shucked the shirt.
It was way too fuckin’ hot already, but adding a shirt to the mix made it nearly unbearable, and it was barely eight in the morning. The heat index projected that it’d feel upwards of a hundred and ten by midafternoon.
But I wasn’t going to expose myself to the woman, because it wouldn’t take her but five seconds to see my naked chest and know exactly who I was.
See, I had a very distinctive tattoo. One that Mina knew I had. One that she’d studied up close and personal.
One that was only half there now due to the burns and would be readily visible if my shirt was not on.
The day that I’d become a Dixie Warden, I’d gotten a tattoo of the wraith-like woman that was on the back of The Dixie Wardens cut. It took up half my right side and was beautiful. Was being the operative word.
Beneath that tattoo, I’d gotten another tattoo that was Mina’s. It wasn’t anything too over the top. It was a skeletal hand – depicting me – holding onto a strand of curls – for Mina – in a tight grip that signified I was never letting go. In a swirling cursive font and hidden in the hair, the word ‘Mina’ was entwined through multiple strands of hair.
But during my brush with death, I had suffered severe burns that had melted away half of not only my club tattoo, but also my tattoo for Mina. The burns healed in a curve around my shoulder blade that formed a sort of C shape and cut off the left half of the club tattoo into something unrecognizable, and leaving the curly hair of the Mina tattoo, which made it look like the wraith lady’s face and hair were melting off.
Overall, it was a pretty cool effect, but the loss of Mina’s tattoo, along with my club’s tattoo, left a hole in my soul that felt like it would never mend.
But, to those who knew me, they knew what those tattoos were once. That’d been how I’d been able to convince Silas of exactly who I was.
Sighing long and loud, I turned the corner of my house—now Mina’s house—and started walking away from the driveway and the entrance to the street.
I’d just reached the end of the yard and had maneuvered the mower back around to go back the way I’d just came, when I stopped dead in my tracks.
My hands let go of the lever that kept the mower running, and I stared in shock at Mina’s car that was in the middle of the street, still running.
Where was Mina?
She was standing in the middle of the street, her hands falling limply at her sides, with tears running uncontrollably down her cheeks.
She knew.
I knew she knew.
There was no doubt now that she knew exactly what was going on. Who I was. Who I once was.
I saw the moment she compartmentalized it. Saw the moment that she decided that she couldn’t do it.
She walked into the house, came back out moments later, still crying might I add, and walked back to her car. All the while I watched her, a sick knot in my stomach that was on the verge of pain.
She got into her car, stared at me for a few more long moments, and then backed down the road, turned it sharply like she was in a hurry to leave, and peeled out before speeding down the road.
I watched her go, knowing that everything had changed.
Everything.
Chapter 16