Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Don threw his bottle at her. He’s still dizzy, so his aim is bad, but he hit her in the shoulder.
And I see red.
I go roaring at Don.
I hit him again and again, sinking one blow after another into his gut, his defending arms, his head. He tries to block me, but I don’t stop. I just pound him, holding onto the axe handle, giving him the full force of my knuckles stabilized by hardwood.
My vision’s red.
Nobody touches my woman. Nobody, nobody, nobodynobodynobody—
“Hey!”
Tess grabs my arm to pull me back.
Her soft hands are the only thing that could have stopped me. Her voice is like a leash on a rabid dog.
I look down and realize Patron hasn’t been fighting back for a while. He’s a bloody mess on the lawn, rolling around weakly. Spitting up blood and teeth.
“I will fucking kill you if you come near Tess ever again,” I spit at him. I sink a kick into his guts.
She pulls me toward my pickup. “You’ve stopped him. It’s enough. Come on, Daddy—get me out of here.”
Get me out of here, Daddy. My little girl’s wishes are commands to me.
If she wants me to forget Patron, I’ll forget him.
If she changes her mind and wants me to take off his fucking head, I’ll do that too.
She climbs into my pickup. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’m spattered in Patron’s blood, and he’s still not getting up.
Maybe I already killed him.
Maybe I don’t give a shit if I did.
I get my woman out of there, and I leave Patron behind to bleed.
Or bleed out.
There’s one big issue we have to take care of before Tess and I can relax: signing the lease for the Paint Forest Program. She explains how she read all the documents.
“I’m not a lawyer, obviously,” she says. “But the lease is in plain English. It’s safe.”
“I trust you,” I say.
Even if Tess were wrong about the lease, I’d still sign it just because she told me to.
So we go back to Lindsay’s office and sign it.
My signature’s not much. A couple slashes on the page. But it’s enough to lift a horrible weight off of me, and I didn’t even realize how much it was hurting me until it was gone.
Lindsay looks delirious with relief, too. “Thank you, thank you,” she says, hugging me and Tess. She smells like patchouli. Her ceramic earrings are cold on my arm. I hug her back, patting awkwardly and making eye contact with her filing cabinet over her head. “You don’t know how much this means to me. This program has been amazing, and knowing we can continue for years to come—just—thank you.”
“Thank Tess,” I say gruffly.
“Both of you.” Lindsay beams at us. “I can’t imagine any of this turning out any better. This is the perfect ending.”
“Yeah,” I say.
Okay, so I’m still not good with words.
I’m walking back to the cabin with Tess on my arm when she makes a suggestion. “This could get a little better,” she says, smiling up at me. The sunlight shines on her face through the trees, highlighting her freckles in gold. “Everything could be a little more perfect.”
For a second, I’m lost, gazing at her beauty. “How?”
“You should join the classes. You’re naturally so talented. I think if you got a little guided practice, you could be even more amazing than you already are. And maybe you would enjoy it, too.”
Has anyone ever cared about what I’d enjoy? I can’t remember it happening before.
Nobody besides Tess sees anything but a reclusive monster when they look at me.
She sees potential for art and happiness.
Fuck, but I would have done a lot more than sign the land away for this woman.
“About my reading,” I start to say.
“You’ve lived in the forest your whole life. Your grandparents took good care of you, but they probably weren’t intellectuals, huh? I mean, when would you have learned?” Tess so readily shrugs it off. Everything that’s haunted me for years doesn’t matter to her. “It’s okay. I can help teach you to read if you want, and in the meantime, I’ll take care of anything you need.”
Fuck. This woman is destroying me, and she doesn’t even know it.
She reaches up and wipes at my sideburn again, like she did that one time in the pickup.
“Pastels again?” I ask.
“Don’s blood,” she says, frowning as she adds, “I’m sure Lindsay probably didn’t notice...”
I cleaned up as much as I could in the car, but he spattered everywhere. Her breath hitches as she strokes my hair, gazing up at me with gorgeous doe eyes.
We don’t make it to my cabin. I carry her off the trail, lift her skirt, and grip her ass. She whispers my name to me.
Rutger.
I lift her up, filling my hands with her backside. She’s got more than I can hold and I love it. I hope she’ll get even curvier when I put my babies in her. I hope she knows that I love her exactly the way she is, and it would be a sin if she lost a single pound of it.