10. Rutger
Chapter 10
Rutger
I left Tess all fired up to fix the mess I made. Get a deal worked out. Make sure that this land will be a stable platform under her feet so she can be at home. It’s the most basic thing I need to do for her as a man, if I want to be good enough.
The problem with trying to sort out lease issues?
One problem begets another, it seems. Because I’ve just seen Lindsay’s computer screen, and I might not be able to read but I can recognize my girl in the photos she’s found while trying to figure out who Tess is on some Faceboard thing and Instagraff.
And every single one of them has her in the city. Every. Single. One.
My world has changed.
“I have an updated copy addressing the concerns you mentioned,” Lindsay says. She pulls a paper out of her desk. She’s been keeping it in a yellow folder so it’s safe, and she puts it in front of me.
I’m too big for the guest chair. I feel stupid hunching over her desk, staring at the mess of symbols on the paper. Focusing hard and going slow doesn’t help me a lot. Sounding things out without moving my lips is hard.
I want to know what I’m looking at. I want to fix everything. I open my mouth, ready to say the words: I need help reading this . And while you’re at it, there are more papers I need someone to read for me.
Lindsay is watching me expectantly.
Shame burns hot up my neck and onto my cheeks.
I sit back in the chair, fold my arms, and shake my head.
To me, this means, I still can’t sign this because I’m not good enough for Tess. I can’t read. I never learned, because the outdoors was all I needed, but it’s not enough anymore. She’s a city girl. She’ll stay, for now, but for how long? One day, she’ll realize what my mother realized, that this isn’t enough for her.
And I can’t wait for that to happen. I have to sell, and I have to do it today. We’ll use the money to buy some apartment in the city, and I’ll get a job where I have to wear a suit. I’ll do it all, because I’d rather that than live without her.
Lindsay takes my actions as another refusal.
She droops. She looks so sad. “So we still can’t stay? I guess if you’re selling the land anyway, maybe…maybe the new owners will be sympathetic.” She gets up with a heaving sigh. “Those corporate lawyers sent their boss over, so I can speak to Mr. Patron. If he’s still here, I’ll get the ball rolling today, but I’m sure the price will be too high for the university budget.”
Patron? The name tweaks a memory in me. At first I can’t place it, then it comes flooding back.
Eldon Patron.
That’s the man Tess talked about.
Not her boyfriend. I can’t even say his name and that word together.
The asshole who wanted to collect her virginity as a trophy. Who scared her so much that she ran straight into my forest.
He’s in my forest.
“Where is he?” I demand, pounding my fists on Lindsay’s desk as I haul myself to my feet, making her bleat as I get in her face.
“What? He said he was going to see you. Rutger, what—”
I don’t even let her finish. I explode out her office and tear a path up toward my cabin, shoving past the parking lot, some milling students, and the duck pond. My long legs devour the path as I climb the mountain.
Tess’s name rings through my pounding heart. Tess, Tess, Tess…
Throwing the cabin door open, I shout the name that fills my blood: “Tess!”
The cat mewls at me. She usually avoids me, the way I avoid her, but she rubs up on my ankles like she’s trying to tell me something.
Tess isn’t home.
Patron isn’t here. He got her.
I grab the axe off my wall and go after my woman.
Patron isn’t hard to find.
I’ve been a woodsman so long, I can follow a coyote’s tracks after a day’s rain, and this coyote isn’t even trying to be subtle. The grocery store owner isn’t happy to see me back again, but I don’t give a shit. A glare and a growl, and he’s telling me all about the fancy purple Cadillac that rolled past a half hour ago, and pointing me in the right direction.
After that, I just follow my instincts. The airport is in the opposite direction, and I don’t figure he’s the sort to travel by bus or train. No, a guy like that, he’s going to have somewhere close by to lay his head. Not a motel, that’s for sure, and this town isn’t big enough for the kind of hotel he’d be used to.
But there are luxury villas a few miles down in the valley. And that’s the direction he was heading.
I get there as the sun is setting, just in time to see a big shiny car the color of a ripe grape pull up to the front of the biggest, gaudiest house in the row.
There are two shapes moving behind the tinted window.
Tess. One of those shapes is Tess. I can feel her inside of me—I know this for a fact.
I wrench the wheel on my pickup around, block Patron’s car from the garage, and slam on the brake. I’m out and running by the time Patron yanks Tess out of the car. He’s got a Pacifico bottle in one hand and her arm clutched in his other.
Beautiful Tess. She’s still wearing one of the dresses, showing off her thick curvy legs. She’s all smooth skin and big hips. Just a glimpse of that copper hair floods me with the memory of her smells.
“Rutger!” she cries when she spots me.
I put myself between them and the door.
“Let. Her. Go.” I bite the words out one at a time, snapping my teeth so hard I’m surprised nothing bleeds.
Make him bleed. Hurt him. Kill him.
Patron is wary, looking at my axe. “Look, guy, if you think you can scare me—”
“Let her the fuck go!” I roar, lifting it in a half-swing.
He flinches and releases Tess’s arm.
But even though she’s free, she doesn’t immediately run to my side. Tears fill her beautiful eyes. All I wanna do is soothe my baby, kiss the moisture off her cheeks. “He’s going to take your land if I go,” Tess says. “I don’t want this for you. I’ll do anything to make sure you can keep your home.”
She’s got it all wrong.
The forest was my home.
It’s where I grew up, and it’s where I’ve lived my life. But now I know that it doesn’t matter. Not compared to her.
“Home is always with you,” I say. “Anywhere you are, that’s where I’m at home.”
“But…” She struggles with this idea. Tess still doesn’t know how good she is, how special she is.
I round on Patron. “I’ll sell you the land right now if you just leave her alone. Forever. Stop messing with her. You vanish out of her life completely.”
“I have your land. It’s mine. Just a matter of letting the time run out. But you don’t know that, do you?” He laughs. “The lawyers were right. They said it but I didn’t believe them. I mean, why would I? You can’t read.”
Cold washes over me.
My secret is out. Until now, it was my greatest fear that anyone would find out.
Now, I’m only afraid that Tess will realize how far out of my league she is. She’ll never want me now, period.
Running off with Patron must beat dealing with an adult man who can’t read.
Then I see her face.
It’s like she’s just realized something that answers every question she’s ever had.
“Rutger, Lindsay’s contract… I know scams and that’s not a scam. She’s being honest with you. You should sign and let her keep running her classes.” She licks her lips. “But these guys? They’re screwing with you. You take their contract to a lawyer tomorrow, and he or she will have them out of your hair by the end of the week. There’s still time to pay the taxes. You have a year before the courts can foreclose on the land. Every one of them has been lying to you. Even the people at the county. They are probaby taking bribes from--”
“Shut your fucking mouth, whore!” Patron roars.
Nobody talks to my woman like that.
He’s lucky I swing the other fist, not the one holding the axe.
Patron takes my fist in his jaw.
Bone cracks against bone. He stumbles across the lawn with a shout.
He swears at me, rolls up his sleeves. I take a step toward him with a snarl and he loses his footing, crashing down on his ass.
“What about the city?” I ask, turning to Tess.
She frowns. “What about it?”
“If I sell to him now, I can use the money to give you the life you want. I’ll follow you where you want to go, Tess, just don’t leave me. Please.”
“You… You think I want you to sell and move to the city?”
“My mother did, and—”
“I’m not her,” she says, smiling. “I love your mountain, and I love you, silly. What does the city have for me that the forest doesn’t?”
She turns and glares at Patron as he stumbles to get up, clearly three sheets to the wind.
“They’ve been conning you, Rutger. But it all goes away if you just take everything to a lawyer. They can settle the taxes legally. Trust me.”
I nod. “I do.”
“Good. And Lindsay needs you to sign her lease.” She grins, then cries out.
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.
She gazes down at me with our lips almost touching. “Rutger,” she says again.
I’m grinding against her, but I need a free hand if I want her to feel as good as I do. I press her back against the tree.
“If someone comes this way, we’ll be seen,” she says.
“Do you think I’d let anyone see you like that?” I ask, shoving the hair out of her eyes.
I bury my face in her neck, licking and nipping and tasting my way to her mouth, where I can sink into a deep kiss. There’s nothing left for me to hold back. No secrets.
At last, I can completely belong to Tess.
My fingers find her clit through her underwear. I roll and pinch the way she showed me as she gasps against me.
“I love you,” I say.
But I can’t wait to be inside her. I hook my finger in her panties and jerk them aside. Two of my fingers slide inside easily.
She’s ready for me. It’s like she’s always ready for me, the way I’m always ready for her.
Tess grabs my cock and guides me to her entrance.
Our eyes are locked together as I shove my way inside. We are filled with each other, me and Tess. Home with each other. Together forever.