Chapter 7
SEVEN
It’s been a ‘cuddle with my toaster in the bathtub’ kind of week.
—Beau to Magnolia
BEAU
I didn’t go home like I’d originally been intending.
I went to my mom’s.
On the way, I made sure to give Lysander a call and ask him to meet me there after work.
“I’m already here,” Lysander explained. “What do you want?”
Unlike my father, my brother had gotten cochlear implants that allowed him to learn how to speak.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that he’d always had his hearing.
When, in fact, he hadn’t. He’d gotten the hearing aids around the age of five, and Lysander had started to speak shortly after that. When he felt like it.
Hell, there were times that he still signed because he just didn’t feel like talking.
Or wearing the hearing aids.
Sadly, Lysander had gotten so much shit for his afflictions in high school that he’d never really gotten out of his awkward stage. Never really truly felt comfortable with his autism, either.
He’d put in a lot of hard work and attended tons of therapy to get him to where he was today.
He worked, had a kid, and lived a life that you never would’ve expected out of the traumatized boy that he’d once been.
“I’ll talk to you about it when I get to Mom’s,” I said. “You have Frankie with you?”
“Frankie,” I could hear the humor in Lysander’s voice. “Yes, he’s here. He has a class project that he has to do on the family tree, and he’s asking Mom questions.”
“Okay, be there in five.”
I was there in less than five, pulling up behind Lysander’s pickup with a grin.
It was dirty.
He hated when it got dirty.
But the snow that we’d had last night, paired with the rain that we’d had this morning, meant that there was no way in hell he could keep it clean driving down Mom’s driveway.
I headed inside to find the three of them at the kitchen table.
Mom had cooked dinner, and I helped myself to a healthy portion of it before I sat down at the table.
“You spelled Beaufort wrong.” I pointed to Franklin.
He grumbled. “It should be spelled ‘f-e-r-t’ if that’s how it’s pronounced.”
“Just because you want it to be, doesn’t make it so,” I pointed out.
Franklin shot me a glare. “Your parents wronged you.”
“They did,” I agreed.
My mother snorted. “What are you doing here, baby boy?”
“I’m your baby boy,” Lysander pointed out the obvious.
I sighed. “It was a saying, brother.”
“Saying, maybe. But incorrect, nonetheless.”
Always literal with my brother.
Instead of dwelling on it, I changed the subject. “I have something really important to talk to y’all about.”
“What?” Lysander asked.
“I think we should sell our shares of the Condors and the Cowgirls.”
Silence.
Utter and complete silence.
“Why would we do that?” Lysander asked.
I explained everything that had happened today, not leaving a single piece of information out.
If I was going to do this, they needed all the facts.
Even the ones that my mother would rather not hear.
She didn’t get along with Seraphina.
After Sonja’s death, my mother and Seraphina had never been the same.
Mom had tried, but Seraphina made it impossible.
There was no way to fix something that one party refused to admit was broken.
So, they’d been estranged for years, and Mom had grown resentful as she watched her daughter continue to spiral. And watched her ex-husband refuse to admit that their daughter was broken.
“What do you want to do?” Mom asked quietly.
“I want to sell every single bit of our shares,” I said. “If we do, then Court, who I plan on selling the team to, will have a majority of seventy percent, enough to do what he wants to do. More than enough if he gets Charleigh to side with him.”
Mom looked like she saw peace in that moment. “Okay, let’s do it. Lysander?”
“I’m down,” he said. “As long as we get fair market value. I’m not going to sell my shares for a song.”
I grinned. “Then it’s agreed.”
I drank a beer at Hopps and didn’t notice the music pounding my skull, nor the people who tried to talk to me.
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice the stool next to me being pulled back until Court said, “Why do you look like your parade was just rained on?”
Because it fucking was.
I’d given up eight months of my life for this stupid fucking team, and my father was shitting on that.
He had no fucking backbone.
“Bad day at the office.”
“What happened this time?”
Court was a professional soccer player.
Or had been before he’d gone to prison for killing his wife.
He was the single one out of the group that Apollo and the Dixie Wardens MC hadn’t broken out of prison.
Apollo had planned on doing the same for Court, but the week before the plan was set to take place, he’d been released. No build up. No indication that it was about to happen.
Just one day the guard came to his cell and said, “You’re out of here.”
He’d moved to the area anyway, hoping for a quieter life, desperate for a break from reality.
He’d bought the garage and had been working there ever since.
If it hadn’t been for his help over the last eight months, though, I didn’t think I’d be as successful as I was with the Cowgirls.
He’d been a great fountain of information, giving me any advice that I could think to ask for.
He’d helped me find players. He’d helped me trade players. He’d helped me figure out how to talk to the professional soccer league.
He’d pretty much been a lifeline.
One that I was about to bring even further into it with me. Oh, and somehow dig myself out.
“I need help.”
He picked up his Coke Zero and took a sip before turning to me, placing his back against the wall. “What’s up?”
I had no clue how to word this, so I figured…fuck it.
“I want you to buy the majority share of the Cowgirls.” I paused. “And the Condors.”
He blinked. “What?”
I rubbed at my temples with my fingers.
“When my mom and dad divorced, she got thirty percent of the company.”
He waited.
“My sister, brother, and I each have fifteen percent,” I continued. “My brother, my mom, and I are willing to sell you our shares for a hell of a steal.”
He leaned back, his brows furrowing. “But why?”
I scrubbed at my face. “We fucking hate the teams.”
“That still leaves forty percent, though,” he pointed out. “I’d still have to deal with your family, and to be quite truthful, Beau, all that you’ve shared with me makes me not want to deal with that hassle.”
I knew he would say that.
But I had a secret weapon that I knew might convince him.
“It wouldn’t just be my dad and Seraphina you’d have to share the teams with.”
His brows rose. “Because there’s one more person in all of this that also shares ten percent. With hers and yours, that would make you majority owner at seventy percent. More than enough to override any of her decisions with the board.”
“Who?” He frowned.
I grinned then.
“Charleigh.”
He look like I’d struck him.
Charleigh was my younger sister, Sonja’s, best friend.
They’d been inseparable from a very early age. Thick as thieves. You never saw one without seeing the other.
Hell, she’d been at our house so often back before the accident that she might as well have lived there.
Charleigh had also been in the car that day with Sonja and Seraphina.
In the aftermath of the wreck, Charleigh had been seriously injured. So injured, in fact, that we thought we were going to lose her, too.
In hopes of circumventing her parents from suing their pants off, Mom and Dad had decided to gift Charleigh Sonja’s percentage in the companies.
Her parents had accepted on her behalf, of course. It may not have brought her best friend back, or made up for her accident, but it was something. And her parents knew that.
“She owns ten percent of two professional franchises and still dresses and acts like that?”
Court’s lips tipping up were slow and hilarious.
One day, Charleigh and him were going to figure it out. And when that day came, they’d be inseparable.
What better way to get them close than to get them in the same business?
Speaking of Charleigh…
“What am I doing here, loser?”
I twisted on my barstool to find Charleigh behind me.
“Hey there, pumpkin.” I smiled and held out my hands.
She walked into my arms, burying her face into my neck.
She trembled for just a few short seconds then stopped.
A short time of vulnerability was all she would allow herself.
She pulled away from my hug, and I saw over her short head the way Court was absolutely murdering me with his eyes.
My lips twitched as Charleigh stepped away, but not toward Court. Away from him, putting me in between the two of them.
“I have need of you,” I admitted.
“For what?”
I sighed. “Seraphina’s at it again.”
Her scowl was dark. “What the hell did she do this time?”
I told her everything, not leaving out a single thing.
Usually she would know everything that was going on in my life in real time, but she’d been acting a little off lately.
Like she was upset with something going on with her life, preoccupied even.
She tried to meet up with Lysander and me a couple of times a month, but that’d slacked off right around the time she’d taken her new job at the dog food factory in town.
I had a feeling it had to do with her new boss, but chose not to push her on it.
When she was ready, she’d open up about it.
“I’m down,” Charleigh declared immediately. “Anything that’ll piss off Seraphina is an automatic yes in my book.” She looked between the two of us. “What do you need me to do? Sell my shares to him?”
Court looked at her calculatingly.
“How much does Seraphina hate you?”
Charleigh blinked. “A whole, whole lot.”
Court looked at me to confirm.
“She hates Charleigh most of all,” I agreed. “She hates us—Lysander and me. But she really hates Charleigh.”
“But why?” Court asked. “The worst thing she did was have the nerve to survive her attempted murder.”
“We never really figured that part out,” Charleigh admitted.
I nodded.
“Then I have a different suggestion,” Court offered up.
“Instead of you selling your shares to me, why don’t we equally buy into the company?
You and I split up the shares. Or, you keep your ten percent, but come in with me and we’ll be the owner and you’ll just vote with me.
Or, I could buy all but five percent, and you buy the five percent from one of them.
Then you’ll share the same fifteen percent as Seraphina.
Your vote will cancel out her vote. She’ll hate it. ”
Charleigh tapped her finger to her lips for a few seconds before saying, “Okay, I’ll do it. You’ll have to help me quit my job, first.”
I would’ve stayed to hear more of the discussion, but my principal walked up in the next moment, stealing my attention.
He held out his hand and said, “The kids are excited for you to come back, my friend.”
I grinned. “I’m excited to be back. Never wished Thanksgiving and Christmas away before but…”
“It’ll be here before you know it.” He held out his hand for me to shake once more. “See you in January.”
By the time the short conversation was over and I returned my attention back to the two people next to me, their conversation was over and they were looking pretty pissed.
“On that note,” I said. “I’ll get with the lawyers tomorrow, Court. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to sign.”
Court nodded. “Sounds good.”