Ask Your Mom If I’m Real (Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC #9)

Prologue

Prologue

[ ] Nice

[ ] Naughty

[ X ] I tried

— T -shirt

JEREMIAH

“ What can I do for you?” the helpful outdoor mall attendant asked.

I smiled and kept walking but said, “ Just heading to the Angel Tree .”

I had no clue what I’d find today, but seeing the tree with so many children’s wishes wasn’t what I expected.

Usually , at this time of year, a lot of them had already been adopted.

Hell , I’d already picked up twenty-five Angel Tree kids myself utilizing my family’s help.

But this year had been a bad year.

Bad enough that even my own grandmother had broken down and asked me to cover her electricity bill.

It was frustrating sometimes because I had all this money thanks to my job, and my entire family refused to let me help them.

Stubborn asses.

“ Oh , okay. Well it’s right here, let me…”

My sister waved him off. “ It’s okay. We know where it is.”

She said it so sweetly that the woman nodded and smiled, when in reality, my sister was being an asshole.

She’d perfected the art of saying “fuck off” without actually saying “fuck off.”

And she did it so nicely that you couldn’t even tell that she was doing it.

“ Noel .” I laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “ We don’t need her to show us because it’s literally right there in the middle of the mall.”

We were at an outdoor mall that had tons of shops in a star shape leading off of the central hub. It was an awesome outdoor shopping experience, and something that Hooker , Oklahoma , had finished only recently.

It wasn’t brand new, per se. Some of the buildings in downtown Hooker had been renovated and turned into outdoor lounging areas, while others that were in pretty bad disrepair had been torn down completely.

With the already star shape of the downtown area, it worked out well to promote foot traffic instead of vehicles.

“ I’ll be at the food truck there getting coffee. You grab the rest of the angels.”

I gave her a thumb up and walked up to the tree.

But as I got closer, I didn’t go pulling off all of the angels and stacking them in my hand. I instead went to one white cardstock paper in particular and reached for it.

I’d been staring at that particular piece of paper since I’d walked around the corner.

I don’t know why that one drew my attention.

But it did and held it.

I pulled it down off the tree and stared while absently pulling all the other angels off the tree.

I must’ve stared so long that my sister had time to get through the line for coffee and get back to me.

“ What’s taking you so long? Just grab them,” my sister grumbled.

I glanced at her as she tapped her foot impatiently. “ I’m working on it.”

“ Well , what it looks like is you’re standing there with your thumb up your…” She trailed off as she saw that I had the entire stack of Angel Tree kids in my hand. “ Is that all of the kids?”

I shrugged. “ Yeah .”

She sighed. “ My husband is so going to kill me. This is going to take all day.” She smiled. “ You’re such a little pushover.”

“ It’s a week before Christmas . If they were going to get chosen, it would’ve already happened,” I pointed out.

“ You’re right,” she agreed, her shoulders slumping. “ But we could’ve just offered them money like we did last year.”

I knew that they would choose the gifts.

But there was just something about this one little girl…

“ Okay , how about this,” I suggested. “ We buy this one.” I held up the one little girl that had caught my eye. “ Then we offer them money for the rest of these.”

She narrowed her eyes. “ What’s so special about that one?”

I showed the one that’d instantly caught my eye the moment I’d walked up.

“ That’s not very much,” she mused. “ It’s like she really only put the necessities on there.”

I agreed.

The woman that’d filled out the questionnaire hadn’t wanted to overburden other people, so she’d taken the things that she needed, and a few of the lower priced item wants, and written them down.

She wasn’t like a few of the other kids that had listed an iPad or an Xbox console.

Name : Anleigh

Age : 2.5

Sex : Girl

Favorite thing : Christmas

Needs :

— Winter Jacket

— Size five youth shoes

— Jeans 3T

Wants :

— Christmas shirt

— Books

— Personal sized Christmas Tree

“ Come on,” she said. “ We’ll go offer the money for these like last time.”

The woman manning the donation station beamed. “ Oh my god!” The five grand that I’d offered should cover the last ten kids on the list. “ This is amazing.”

“ I’m going to go shop for this one,” I said. “ I’ll have it back by the deadline this evening, though.”

She nodded, her eyes wet with tears. “ This is amazing.”

I winked at her and peeled off, heading toward the first store. “ What do you think we should buy her?”

“ I would suggest buying a couple of pairs of shoes,” she said. “ They grow fast at this age. I say we go with the size listed. Then buy a few in the next couple of sizes up. We should also buy her a bigger pair of winter boots.”

I agreed. “ I think we should be able to find her a couple of Christmas outfits, too.”

“ Oh .” She snapped her fingers. “ Let’s go here.”

She pointed at a boutique that I’d seen but had never gone into before in my life.

I assumed she shopped here for my nieces.

For the next hour, we bought the little girl that asked for practically nothing everything.

Shoes . Sweaters . Books .

Oh , so many books.

I even picked her up a cute little Christmas -themed teddy bear with red and green paws and a Santa hat.

Once everything had been purchased, we went back to the attendant and dropped it all off.

The attendant smiled. “ You are seriously the best, Mr . Dixon .”

I grinned. “ Thanks , but it’s the least I could do.”

She carefully put everything into a trash bag, then zip-tied it closed with the Angel Tree tag on the makeshift handle.

“ This year has been so hard,” she said quietly. “ Everyone is struggling to make ends meet. Some kids are barely getting groceries right now, let alone toys for Christmas . It breaks my heart entirely that we had so many this year. Usually we only have half that. But you just saved Christmas , Mr . Dixon . Thank you.”

I smiled uncomfortably. “ If this ever happens again, let me know. I’m more than willing to make sure each of Hooker’s kids has something under the tree Christmas morning.”

She patted my arm. “ You’re one of the good ones.”

We were walking out, and I felt like my heart was left in that bag with the Christmas items we’d just purchased.

What the hell was wrong with me?

“ If she only knew how bad you smelled after a game or how you liked to sit on us and fart, she wouldn’t think you’re one of the good ones.”

I flipped my sister off.

And still, our lightheartedness didn’t alleviate the hole that was opening up in my heart.

MERRIAM

Tears literally spilled over my cheeks when they hustled back into the room with the Angel Tree items for my little girl.

“ What ?” I gasped, startled to find all the toys, clothes, and gifts displayed so beautifully. “ What is all of this?”

“ Your Angel Tree items.” She beamed. “ Don’t overthink it, darlin’.”

The woman was the same one that I’d turned the small paper in to a month and a half ago.

She’d told me that if someone picked my child, that they’d get me everything that was purchased for her as soon as it was brought back.

It was so close to Christmas now, though, that I truly hadn’t expected it to happen.

I fingered the cashmere sweater and felt my heart literally break. “ This is expensive.”

I knew because I’d walked by that boutique a hundred times in the last month. Our candy store was just around the corner from it.

“ Some athlete came in and dropped five thousand dollars on the kids that were left,” she said. “ He did it last year, too.”

I could do nothing but shake my head in disbelief. “ This is too much.”

“ This is everything we could’ve ever asked for.” She shook her head. “ Like I told him, this has been a very hard year for everyone. You have no idea how many parents came in here, feeling utterly defeated, because they couldn’t give their children Christmas gifts this year. They’ve struggled so hard because of the economy, and they were barely staying afloat. Don’t feel like this is too much. The man wanted to help.”

I took the gifts into my shaking hands and said, “ Thank you.”

She patted my arm. “ You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

On noodle legs, I walked out to my beat-up hatchback and muscled open the back end.

Placing the beautiful things inside and closing the hatch, I walked back to the driver’s seat and drove home.

I looked in the mirror at my daughter’s sleeping face and felt the tears start.

The lady with the Angel Trees was right, though.

This year had been harder than any other one I’d ever experienced.

At least last year, I’d made enough in tips to buy my girl something.

This year…this year had been god awful.

Thank God for the mystery athlete.

He’d definitely saved Christmas .

That night, in the privacy of my own bedroom, I gave my girl her presents.

I wouldn’t pretend that they were from me and put them under the tree.

For one, we didn’t even have a tree— Dad despised Christmas . Two , since we had no Christmas tree, I hadn’t really tried to get Anleigh hyped up about anything Christmas . Three , even if I had managed to get a Christmas tree up, Dad would’ve just torn it down.

So it was better this way, giving her these things in the privacy of our little room.

“ Anleigh ,” I said. “ Come here.”

She tiptoed toward me, my little baby that should have no idea that she needed to be quiet but did. “ What , Mommy ?”

Her whispers broke my heart.

My father had been so awful that my baby didn’t know how to be loud.

When she was loud, she got in trouble and was yelled at.

So she’d learned that being quiet was the best way to be.

“ Come look,” I whispered.

She came around the side of the bed and gasped so quietly that a tear slipped down my cheek.

“ Mama !” she gasped. “ Bear !”

“ Yeah , baby,” I said as she took it and placed it up against her chest. “ Bear .”