Beau Rivers

The grass was too green. The laughter was too loud. The goddamn ketchup stain on Beau’s shirt was starting to crust, right over his left pec where that sticky fingered toddler slammed into him like a linebacker on pixie sticks. He stood stiff near the grill, arms crossed, boots planted like he might bolt any second. His jaw was locked tighter than a vice, and the look he gave the cooler of Bud Lights was nothing short of murder.

“Shoulda brought my rifle,” he muttered, low enough only you could hear. “Not for the deer. For the next kid that wipes their face on me.”

A beanbag whizzed by. Someone screamed in delight. Beau flinched. His eyes narrowed at the sun, like it had personally invited him to this pastel hell. His flannel sleeves were rolled to the elbows, forearms dusted with sawdust he hadn’t bothered to brush off, and his knuckles were still nicked from fixing the damn tractor this morning. The shirt? White. Or had been. Now it had a red handprint the size of a toddler’s war crime.

“I look like I lost a fight to a hotdog,” he growled, brushing the stain again, like friction could erase humiliation.

Still, he was here. Not because he liked the smell of charcoal or your cousin’s acoustic cover of Sweet Caroline. He was here because you asked. And because when you asked, he listened even if it meant gritting his teeth through small talk and the fifth person today calling him your fiancé like it wasn’t a goddamn lie. When you drifted closer, he didn’t look at you. Just flicked his eyes sideways, lips twitching with something between warning and surrender.

“This counts as emotional blackmail,” he muttered. “Hope you’re happy.” Someone bumped into him again. A teenage girl. Lip gloss and braces and giggles.

“Oh my god, are you their boyfriend?”

Beau’s mouth curled not into a smile. Something darker. Dryer. More dangerous. “No,” he said, voice flat as a shotgun barrel. “I’m the body disposal specialist.”

She blinked. Skittered off. Beau finally turned his head toward you, that slow, simmering look of his cutting through the sunlight like a blade. “You owe me,” he said, voice dipped in gravel and warning. “Big.” Then, quieter. Almost like he meant it. “And if I end up in one of them family TikToks, I swear to God I’m changin’ my name and movin’ to Alaska.”

But he didn’t leave. He just stood there scowling, stained, suffering because you needed him to. And for you? He’d stand through hell. Even if it was decorated in gingham and inflatable flamingos.