Page 25 of Hard Wood Daddy

He always handed the pinched-faced lady behind the counter a thick stack of money. She would count it and stamp something in a binder, then tell him she’d see him next year at tax time.

Since he’s been gone, I’ve never gone to town to give that lady money, and these people that are coming around say that’s why they can take my land.

Unpaid taxes.

I have no idea if any of that’s true. But there’s another contract next to Lindsay’s, and if I sign that one, I get a lot of money but lose everything I love.

Would signing the lease with the college stop them? Or would it just give my land to the college?

My head pounds like rocks knocking around inside.

“Fuck,” I snarl.

My cabin’s normally a safe haven. I’ve got a few things around that belonged to my grandparents. The blanket thrown over the chair that Grandma knitted. The deer head mounted on the wall that Grandpa shot. I’ve got some food in the fridge that I made with Grandma’s recipes.

The blanket, the deer, and this land are what I’ve got left of them. How could I live anywhere but here? I don’t belong out in the world. I need the trees and the mountain. I hate the concrete and the people in town. At least the artists here accept me. They don’t care about how I’m different.

I have to be sure about these contracts and paper. I have to admit to someone I can’t read them.

I stomp toward my room, fall to my knees and jerk the wooden chest out from underneath. I huff to my feet, kicking at the latch angrily, the top splintering and flinging itself open to keep from being completely destroyed by another kick.

Stacks of green and cream-colored bills tied with pieces of multicolored yarn stare back at me.

I haven’t counted it in a long time, because it takes so long to write it all down, then add up all the numbers. There’s a piece of paper on the top of the money with the amount from the last time I counted it all.

It’s a big number. I added it all up three times. Even asked Lindsay to add my list of numbers on her big desk calculator to double-check.

$1,466,925.

She asked what I was adding up, and I told her it was a lifetime of my steps up and down the mountain. She was impressed, unsure that it was possible, but I grumbled something and took the paper back, put it in the box and never imagined I’d care about how much one million four hundred sixty-six thousand nine hundred and twenty-five dollars really is.

Or what I could do with it to make a life that someone like Tess deserves.

More than enough to buy a lifetime of kitten food. With that thought, I grab a stack and stuff it into the chest pocket on the front of my overalls. Now I can do more to help Tess.

It’s still not enough.

My thoughts drift from the taxes and leases to my woman.

A woman like Tess deserves so much more than a chest of cash. If I’m going to be keeping her—and Iwillbe keeping her—then she needs things I’m not good enough to give. She deserves a king. Someone with an empire. Not some man with a piece of land who can’t read well enough to keep it.

But even though I know I’m not good enough, it doesn’t change anything.

My balls feel like boulders in my jeans. I’m full for her. I want to pour that inside Tess, breed her, make her mine.

I want to watch her belly and breasts grow with my child.

I should figure out the lease. I should swallow my pride, trust Lindsay and tell her to read it to me. To help me know what to do about ‘taxes’. I think she would be honest.

Instead, I’m obsessing again.

When I heard Tess say she would do a fully nude class my chest hurt. I felt like fire was swirling around my ankles, rising up, up, up until it burned me to the ground.

It’s bad enough that men look at her at all, period. It’s worse that they see her with nothing but a blanket covering her mostdelicious parts. The parts only for me. The idea that she’ll bare it all to God and artists soon—I can barely see through the red haze that takes over my vision.

I’m like a stag in rutting season.

Without even thinking about it, I’m storming across the retreat.

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