He took in a deep breath, but it didn’t feel like he was angry. More like he was stalling for time.
“We wait,” he said. “And you start telling me everything.”
I sighed heavily, not a bit thrilled about more waiting.
13
Austin
My arms burned. Sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down my face. The air was cold as I pulled in slow deep breaths between each swing of the ax.
It was the last snow of the season. It hadn’t brought much, and what was here would be slush if the temperature kept going up like it had been.
Pulling the ax out of the trunk of the tree, I readied myself to swing again.
I hated chopping wood when I was a teenager. It was like pulling teeth to get me out here to do it, and I was always grumpy at my younger brother because he wastooyoung.
Thinking about him hit me like a punch to the stomach.
Braden was six years younger than me. He’d graduated college last year, and last I knew, he’d landed a job doing tech support for some widely known company. I couldn’t have been prouder. I just wish things between us weren’t so strained.
As hard as I tried with my brother, I tried even harder with my twin sisters, Dina and Diana, who were even younger than Braden. They were almost fifteen and lived with our mother, which made things hard. Mom and I… well, we didn’t exactly see eye to eye on some things, and that strain often bled into the rest of the family. I loved her, I did. But I also wanted nothing to do with her. Ma made it hard for me to see my sisters, but everychance I was given, I tried my hardest to let the twins know I was there for them.
I swung the ax again.
Over and over.
My arms shook, but I didn’t stop.
I pushed everything down and laser-focused all my energy and thoughts on the tree in front of me.
Sweat dripped in my eyes, but I swung through the salty burn that threatened to temporarily blind me.
I took all of the frustration and rage and tucked it back inside where it belonged.
One more swing and this baby was going down.
But, annoyingly, I was nowhere closer to the calm I’d hoped to get out here. Hadn’t chopped that aggression out. It was still there, bubbling right under the surface where it always was. I hated it, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I knew how to live without it. It had been there for ten years, it was practically a part of me now.
I dropped the ax and gave the tree one good push before stepping back. My head tilted back, watching the top as it fell.
But I wasn’t done. I had to chop this thing up into smaller logs to later be split back at the barn, before I staked them to dry for next winter. It would probably take me a couple of trips back and forth to get the whole tree moved, but it wasn’t like I had anything else going on. And I was currently avoiding the house, because that was where Ford was. Ford and all his constant questions.
“Do you come out here often?”
“Who taught you to cook?”
“What do you like to do for fun?”
“How was it growing up with a serial killer for a father?”
Okay, that last one he’d never asked out loud, but I knew it was there in his head.
There wasn’t a damn question he asked that I wanted to answer. Not even when he got desperate and started asking stupid shit like what kind of food I liked the best and if I was into any sports.
I hated the questions. I hated the genuine curiosity in his eyes every time he asked me something. Oh, and I really fucking hated the way he kept trying, no matter how many times I shut him down. And it wasn’t all at once. He’d back off, but then he’d come back with another one when the silence would get too strong.
My eye twitched just thinking about it.
