Fun House (Welcome to the Circus Book 1), page 1
Table of Contents
Fun House
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Fun House
Kissimmee & Coffey
By Lani Lynn Vale ™
Text copyright © 2023 Lani Lynn Vale ™
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Amanda, who was my sounding board for this book. <3 This one is for you.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak—Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing—My editors
Alyssa Garcia—PA
Cover Me Darling—Cover
My mom—Thank you for reading this book eight million five-hundred thirty-one times.
My betas—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now
Say it Ain’t So
Officially Over It
Nobody Knows
Depends Who’s Asking
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Souls Chapel Revenants
Repeat Offender
Conjugal Visits
Jailbait
Doin’ A Dime
Kitty, Kitty
Gen Pop
Inmate of the Month
Madd Fit Series
No Rep
Jerk It
Chalk Dirty to Me
Battle Crows MC
Always Someone’s Monster
Make Me Your Villain
Rattle Some Cages
Not A Role Model
Get Tragic
Strange and Unusual
Never Trust The Living
Gator Bait MC
Nobody Cares Unless You’re Pretty
Good Trouble
Cute But Psycho
Annoyed At First Sight
The Voices Are Back
Special Kind of Twisted
I’ll Just Date Myself
Clown World
Fun House
Freak Show
Show Off
Clown Motel
Sold To The Circus
Killing Booth
The Fool
Blurb
Sometimes you need to crash a funeral to experience happiness.
At least, Kissimmee Singh, aerial artist for Singh Circus, the most sought-after traveling circus of all time, keeps telling herself that’s why she crashes funerals.
In reality, she’s lost and confused. Sometimes it’s nice to experience other people’s grief and be reminded that life isn’t as bad as it could be.
Though attending the funeral of some random old man that died of cancer wasn’t supposed to change her life completely. It does.
With one look at the grieving man and woman, she realizes that this was one funeral she probably should’ve stayed away from.
He’s in a black suit, black undershirt, black gloves, and black shoes. He looks like the devil himself.
When she tries to make a run for it, he follows and demands to know why she’s there.
If she’d known he was going to be trouble, she’d have stayed away. If she’d known that he’d follow her to their next stop, she might’ve tried a little harder to hide who she was. What she was.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she gave him everything in one single night. And will live to regret it.
CHAPTER 1
I solemnly swear a lot.
-Coffee Cup
SIMI
“I’m sorry, but can you repeat what you just said?”
My sister, Crimson, looked at me like I’d grown two heads.
I sighed. “I know it sounds weird, but something is telling me to go.”
Crimson looked from me to another sister, Val, and back, then shrugged.
“Simi, you’ve done your own thing, your own way, since you made your way into this world.” She grinned. “Pretty much, we have no say in anything when it comes to you. Go to this funeral if it makes you happy. Just don’t get caught by the people celebrating this poor man’s life. It’s just…odd. And we’re here for five days, and the town’s small. I don’t want to be ostracized because you decided to crash a funeral.”
I rolled my eyes. That was my Crimson. She was always the Debbie Downer of the group.
“Anyway,” I said as I gathered my stuff to be dropped off. “It’s time for me to go. Is anyone else going to hang in town?”
“I’m going!” I heard one of my sisters yell. Hades, maybe. It could’ve been Zipporah as well since she was the one to rush out of her bunk onto the bus in the next instant.
“I’m going,” I heard her say.
Hades then.
“Me, too.” Valhalla shouldered her bag.
That’s how the whole entire Singh crew wound up heading to the bus.
It went like this: Keene Day, our oldest brother. Then Valhalla Drew, Crimson Eurie, me Kissimmee Flower, then the twins, Caristionia Blue and Hades Pearl, and the baby of the family, Zipporah Nancy.
Yes, we were aware they were weird names.
Yes, we all hated our names.
No, we’d never change them.
Honestly, we had no clue what my dad was thinking when he knocked each subsequent woman up. Nor what that woman was thinking when they allowed my father to choose the name.
Hell, once we’d asked him what his deal was with the names, and he’d told us it was because his name was so simple he wanted a grand name for us.
All of us loved our dad. Truly, our dad was the best thing to ever grace this earth, and when he passed away last year, our hearts were shattered beyond repair.
It took everything we had to keep this circus up and running.
But we all hated our names. Even Keene.
“This place is so tiny,” I grumbled as I watched “downtown” fly by. “Why are we here again?”
“Because they contacted us, paid the fee, and asked us to come,” Keene answered. “Like you know.”
I looked at my brother.
He was a tall, imposing person.
The years he’d spent in the military before being forced to come home to help us run this freak show had been good—and bad, for that matter—to him.
He was tall, strong, and utterly closed off.
There wasn’t a single thing about him that was the same as the young, wide-eyed boy that’d left the circus to enter the military. The Marines, to be specific.
They’d formed him into a machine that was honestly quite scary when he wanted to be.
But he loved us, protected us, and catered to us like the princesses he wanted us to be, and I loved him for that.
The first stop was the mall, where Care Bear and Val got out. The next was the grocery store where Crimson and Hades exited.
The last to get out was Zip, who pointed at a bookstore.
Then there was me, being dropped off at the edge of the park right next to a conveniently placed park bench.
“Be back in an hour,” he said as I opened the front door. “Sim?”
I looked back just as I was about to close the door. “Yes?”
“Remember that these people are grieving. Don’t be weird,” he ordered.
I grinned at him. “Of course, I won’t be weird.”
He rolled his eyes and said, “Shut the door, weirdo.”
I did, and he peeled out as if he was ready to get rid of us.
He probably was.
At least before, he’d always had my dad to break the estrogen cycles. Now, he didn’t even have that.
He lived on a tour bus with six women who all had their cycles synced together.
Needless to say, if anyone was deserving of a break, it was him.
Parking myself on the bench, I crossed my legs and people-watched until it was time to walk up to the service.
Just as I was about to get up and walk toward the funeral, where they had rows and rows of empty chairs set up, a limo pulled in.
My breath caught at the sight of the suited body that exited the vehicle with a very pretty dark-haired woman who had obviously been crying.
The woman leaned hard on the man at her side, and together, they walked toward the front of the service.
My heart pounded a staccato beat at the sight of him.
But I quickly shut down the thoughts of how attractive he was.
I liked my men like I liked my coffee. Not hot enough to hurt me.
And this one’s confident walk struck me as exactly that—hot and hurtful.
CHAPTER 2
Shut your cakehole, shit lips.
-Coffey to Sienna
COFFEY
“What are you laughing about?” I asked my sister.
I mean, technically, I guess you could laugh while at a funeral—or about to be attending a funeral. It was just one of those things that weren’t done. But my family wasn’t normal. Never had been, never would be.
My sister, who was my one and only living blood family member left, looked at me like I’d ruined her fun.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked curiously.
No. Probably not.
But anything that made her laugh would probably put me in a better mood.
“Yes,” I said, knowing I wasn’t about to like what was going to come out of her mouth, yet saying it anyway.
“Okay, well, you know how Bob has that skin infection on his hand?” she asked.
Bob was her husband of three years. Bob was in the military and had been here for the last eight days while on leave, leading up to my father’s funeral. However, some shit had hit the fan and he’d had to go back to the base so he could take care of business.
“Yes,” I answered carefully.
I couldn’t see what there was about an infection on his hand that would make her laugh, but I was willing to bite. Anything not to think about what was currently going on outside.
She turned her gaze away from the window where we could see my dad’s body being loaded into the back of the hearse. Her eyes were smiling, though despite that, I could still see the exhaustion on her face.
“Well, last night, when we were having sex, I made him wear a sock on his hand.” She paused, waiting for the grimace that had graced my face at the mention of her and sex. I happily obliged her with the grimace. After she flashed me a quick grin, she said, “Well, he started talking in this really weird voice while we were doing it. Then he would move his hand and pantomime what he was saying, and let’s just finish by saying it was the kinkiest sock puppet show I’ve ever witnessed.”
I knew I’d regret it. I knew it, and I should’ve been quiet as hell and not said I wanted to hear why she was laughing, yet I didn’t. And now, I would be traumatized for the rest of my life and never be able to watch a puppet show again without thinking about it.
“I can’t believe you just told me that,” I grumbled.
“Well, you asked, stupid,” she huffed out.
“I did,” I confirmed. “But next time I say I want to know why you’re laughing, and it’s even remotely about yours and Bob’s sex life, I don’t want to know. So don’t tell me.”
She grinned wickedly before turning back to look outside. “He’s in.”
He was. I’d seen that from past her head as I’d kept my eyes outside, despite not wanting to see.
My dad, after a three-month battle with colon cancer, had passed away eight days ago.
For those eight days, I’d done nothing but think about what life would be like without him.
It was still so surreal to me that I couldn’t pick up my phone and ask him what he thought of the ball game the night before or whether or not he wanted to hit up a new breakfast place with me.
I’d been to see his body every night since he’d passed.
Today, after the funeral, we’d be cremating him so we could carry him with us on our travels.
Sienna, to wherever the Army was sending them next, and me to wherever I might go next.
Whether it be here, Heartsway, South Carolina, or anywhere.
“I know,” I grumbled.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked.
No.
Not only would we be saying goodbye to our best friend, but we’d be seeing our mother and, more than likely, my ex-wife. Carron never missed a chance to make a scene and make anything and everything about her.
Luckily, this would be an outside service, so there were no structures that would allow the sound to bounce off them. Carron shrieked like a falcon when she cried, and my mom was almost no better.
I still didn’t know how the hell I’d managed to marry a person exactly like my mom.
Carron, at first, had been my best friend. She’d been who I thought was my endgame.
Then she’d turned from someone I could confide in to someone that I couldn’t stand sharing anything with. I’d gone from telling her about my day and what I wanted out of life to barely wanting to talk to her about the weather.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be,” I said as the car started to move, following behind my dad.
We sat there in silence, both of us lost in thought.
“I heard Dad talking to you the other day,” she said. “When you asked him about love.”
I felt my stomach leap.
Not because I was upset that she’d heard, but because of what my dad had said.
We’d been talking about why he never remarried at first. Then we’d gone on to him telling me about the ‘one that got away.’ And how he knew, even when he married my mom, that she wasn’t his forever.
I’d asked him how I would know if I found my forever in a person, and he’d gotten really deep, really fast.
When she is the first thing that I think about every single day. How is she? Does she miss me like I miss her? How do I get her to come back? Or, how do I go to her?
