Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
My own father doesn’t want me around, so why would a stranger?
I didn’t mistake the offer in his tone. “You’re too late to harvest, but we got seedlings to plant for the spring and meat to cure. There’s plenty to do, you just have to decide if you want to do it.”
I stare at him dumbfounded. Men with my own blood don’t want my help, so why the hell does he?
When I ask him that, he shrugs before spitting out with a snarl, “I’m getting a little long in the tooth. I need someone to—”
“W-wipe your ass? I’m g-good.” I dump the rope on the floor beneath my feet, confident I’d rather preserve with twisted strands of vine than care for a stranger how my father failed to do for his mother.
“I was going to say, ‘lift the deer,’ dumbass.” As he shuffles past me, the scuttle of his feet only just clearing the rope, he smacks me up the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper. “I’ll take myself out to pasture before I’ll ever let a punk-ass kid wipe my ass.”
With his statement sounding more honest than deceitful, I follow his hobbled walk into the shambles he calls a bathroom, certain a couple of hours of delay to my endgame won’t hurt anyone but me.
“Are you just gonna stand there?” the man asks after yanking out a stool from beneath a wooden bench. “Or are we gonna get you cleaned up and ready for work?” He drops his eyes to my distorted wrist. “I ain’t got nothing to fix broken bones, but I have a needle and thread that will close up those gaps quick smart.”
When he waves his hand across the top of the stool, I hesitantly pace his way.
“I don’t bite, boy,” he promises when my first instinct to him raising his hand to my face is to protect myself from another blow. “But if I did, I doubt I could hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt. Who did this to you?”
“N-No one important.”
“That’s right,” he agrees. “Because toxic people are like clouds. When they float away, it sure is a beautiful day.”
Cecil wasn’t wrong. I had so much murkiness surrounding me back then, I thought the only way to rid myself of it was to end my life.
He taught me otherwise.
Despite him having nothing but a parcel of land and a half-built cabin, he took me in, fed me, clothed me, and instilled more morals into me in a year than my father had done my entire life.
He was my protector both before and after his death—as I will be Jae’s.
I just need to find my way out of a second mind-hazing maze first.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JR
“Hey,” Jae mouths when my groggy eyes float over her face and veer toward her kiss-swollen lips. “Do you want to share where you went the past forty minutes?” She doesn’t give me the chance to answer. “Flumazenil is the most effective ten minutes after being administered, but you continued napping like I didn’t give you an extra hit.”
I’m confused as to what she’s referencing until an intense urge to protect her spikes the hairs on the back of my neck. We’re being watched, and once our stalker gets close enough for me to grab them, I’ll be sure to pass on my dislike of being gawked at with my fist.
I hated it when I was a kid, and it grew more perverse when I realized my identity could end more than my second chance at life…
“Does that look like twine to you?”
After bobbing down to secure a tomato plant to a stake with a length of string, I slant my head so my good ear is facing away from Cecil. He can talk about the difference between twine and string for hours, and although I’ve grown to love his debates the past three years, my head is thumping way too much this afternoon to tackle his nonsense.
The dark brown brew Cecil lives off every winter is the equivalent of rat poison. It tastes like shit, burns the fuck out of your throat, and knocks you on your ass. But unlike the rats that got into the crop of corn last year, you’re back onto your feet within a couple of hours of downing a bottle.
Perhaps two if you’re as old as Cecil.
He hasn’t yet reached the age where he needs assistance to wipe his ass, but he’s cutting it close. The only reason he’s held out so long is because of the environmental toilet we installed in a makeshift bathroom a few years back. It’s the size of an aircraft toilet, meaning he doesn’t need to bend to wipe. He can do it while standing.
While the heat of Cecil’s breaths hit the back of my neck, I chuckle about the time he had to wipe with a wad of leaves because I hadn’t returned from the store with toilet paper in enough time. He used the wrong leaf, and the consequences of his actions stretched from the back of his knees to a region of his body I have no intention of ever seeing again.