Chapter 10 #2
He looks good. Really good. The afternoon sunlight catches in his hair, making it gleam red and gold like sugar maple leaves.
He’s wearing that too-perfect cream-colored fleece again, the one I happen to know makes his hazel eyes look more green than brown, and when he laughs at something the girl says, he forgets to be prickly, and his whole face lights up.
I watch him help her draw whiskers on her pumpkin cat—probably helping her market the pumpkin, since he’s Mr. Marketing Degree, after all—but I can’t make myself look away.
I watch his hands on the paintbrush and remember them on my skin the other night.
How he gasped my name when I took him in my mouth, and—
“Beckett!” Ames says.
I whip around. “What?”
“The other tent pegs,” he reminds me.
“Sorry. I was thinking about… work stuff.”
Holden’s standing off to one side of the tent with his arms folded, wearing a shit-eating grin. He one hundred percent knows where my attention was.
“You know,” Ames says casually as he dishes out some soup for a customer, “Griffin stopped by a little while ago.”
“So?” I snap back instantly.
This only makes Ames amused too, and now two of my asshole brothers are smirking at me.
Seriously, why do I love these fuckers?
“Sooo… he mentioned you helped him figure out his trapdoor situation,” Ames says. He cuts a look at me. “That was cool of you.”
I shrug. “You make it sound like I’m not nice, Ames. You know better than that.”
“To me?” Ames says. “Of course you are. You’d wrestle a bear for me without thinking twice. Same for Wilder and Eliza and True. Even for Holden, except when he’s being full of himself, and even then you’d still do it, you just might stop to consider for a minute.”
“Hey!” Holden says.
“But to outsiders?” Ames shrugs. “You’re not always friendly. You know this.”
I protest, “I was nice to Kelly… before she ditched True with no warning or explanation and moved back to fucking Portland.”
Holden pulls a face, and I realize I might have yelled the last word. “You have big feels about that, bro?”
“Obviously. Don’t you?” My ex-sister-in-law is definitely and permanently on my shit list.
“Excuse me? Beckett?”
Ed Hawkins appears beside Ames’s tent. He’s a small-time contractor who’s been coming to Axford Lumber approximately forever. He’s also the customer we’ve extended the most credit to. He’s wearing the kind of expression that usually precedes him asking for that credit to be extended further.
“Ed,” I say, stepping away from the tent. “Hey. How’s it going?”
“Uh. Well.” He shifts uncomfortably.
I stifle a sigh.
“I know we discussed that lumber order for the Morrison job. The, ah, pressure-treated deck boards and dimensional lumber for framing.”
I nod. I remember it perfectly. We only quoted the job last week, and he seemed eager to move ahead with it.
“Right. Well. The thing is…” Ed clears his throat. “Cash flow’s been a bit tight lately…”
“Tell me about it.” I shake my head sympathetically. “This economy’s a killer.”
“It is! It is. And actually, ah, cash flow’s been more than a little tight.
I had a job cancel at the last minute, and I need to pay my guys.
So I was wondering if we could work out a payment plan, like we’ve done before?
I can put half down now, then pay the rest in thirty days when Morrison settles up with me. ”
Inside, I groan.
Look, despite my siblings teasing me, I don’t like being a hard-ass. I feel for Ed and for all the other contractors out there. Ed’s a really nice guy, and he’s feeling the pinch, big-time. If I had all the money in the world, I’d float him, no problem.
But I have guys to pay too, despite the fact that they were sitting around holding their dicks last week while I rejiggered our cutting schedules. Rocky, Carlos, Bunsen, and the others aren’t floating me—nor would I ever want them to. So… where does it end?
“Ed, I appreciate the honesty,” I tell him. “But—”
“Heya, Ed!” a cheerful voice booms.
The voice that calls from behind me is warm and familiar. I don’t need to turn my head to know who’s put down his crossword puzzle and decided to join us.
Dad claps Ed on the shoulder like they’re old friends, because they are. Grant Axford knows everyone in three counties.
“Grant!” Ed’s face brightens immediately. “I was just talking to your Beckett here about a lumber order. We were working out some payment terms.”
“That right?” Dad glances at me, then back at Ed. “Well, I’m sure he’ll try to work something out with you. We’ve been doing business with you for… what? Fifteen, sixteen years now?”
“Eighteen,” Ed says with a relieved smile. “Ever since I started.”
“Well, there you go.” Dad spreads his hands. “Family takes care of family, that’s what I say. Don’t I, Beckett?”
“Yeah,” I grind out. “That’s what you say.”
This is so fucking typical. Grant Axford, leading with his heart instead of his head. Making promises without knowing a damn thing about the books anymore. Assuming things will work out because they always have in the past.
Except it’s not working out. That’s exactly the point.
Ed beams and shakes both our hands, thanking us profusely. Then he heads off, probably to tell Morrison that he can start the job next week. Meanwhile, I grind my molars into dust.
The moment he’s out of earshot, I round on my father.
“What the hell was that?”
Dad frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You just committed us to a payment plan without even asking me. Without checking our cash flow. Without asking whether we can afford to carry that debt, or—”
“But it’s Ed Hawkins, Beck. Why wouldn’t we want to help one of our longest-standing customers? I’ve known him since he was a kid. His word is good.”
“But his word doesn’t help us meet payroll.” I huff. “It doesn’t cover our operating expenses when we’re waiting sixty days to get paid. You undermined me in front of him, Dad. As if I’m not the one running the company.”
Dad’s face flushes. “I was trying to help! Last I checked, it was still Axford Lumber over the door, not Beckett Lumber. The way I figure it, we wouldn’t have half our loyal customers if we hadn’t built relationships in this town—”
“Half the customers or half the debt?” I hiss, trying to keep my voice down.
From the look on his face, my shot hit center mass.
I squeeze my eyes closed and take a breath.
“Dad, I love you, but you lead with your heart, not your head. That makes you a great friend and a good man, but the company’s suffering.
I’m trying to fix things. I’m already dealing with not being able to access the Far Tract, I’m cutting costs everywhere I can, I’m working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days—but you’re making my job harder every time you—”
“Every time I what?” Dad’s voice isn’t as low as mine, and it draws attention from nearby vendors. “Every time I remind you that doing business isn’t just about spreadsheets but about people?”
“Every time you make promises we can’t afford to keep!”
The words hang in the air between us, sharp and ugly. Dad’s face goes through several expressions—anger, hurt, sadness—before settling on one that looks uncomfortably like resignation.
“Maybe,” he says, finally lowering his voice, “if you’d ask for help once in a while instead of trying to do everything yourself, you could find a new way that actually works.
Your head and your heart don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
I know I didn’t do the best job at balancing that, Beck.
But you’re overcorrecting. You could try to learn from my mistakes. ”
Before I can respond to that—before I can even figure out how to respond to that—movement in my peripheral vision catches my attention.
Griffin’s maybe twenty feet away now, standing near Rose Levy’s maple syrup booth, but he’s not alone. Derek Sullivan’s with him, and from their body language, they’re deep in conversation.
Griffin looks… wary isn’t the right word. Serious, maybe. Like he’s trying to commit every word he hears to memory.
Dad follows my gaze and lets out a heavy sigh. “And what’s happening with that?”
I don’t know if he’s talking about Griffin or Derek or both, but I decide it doesn’t matter. “I’m handling it,” I say.
Dad eyes me. “Why don’t you reach out to David Halloran? Have him handle the easement negotiations?”
I swallow hard. For some reason, the idea of sending our local attorney in to “handle” Griffin doesn’t sit right with me, even if David would agree to that. And Dad’s suggestion that someone else could succeed where I’ve so clearly failed makes me angry again.
“I said, I’m handling it,” I snap, trying not to think of all the ways I’ve already handled my prickly new neighbor.
“All by yourself, right?” Dad says with a sigh. “You don’t need any help.”
I’m still formulating a response—hell, trying to find a clear thought in the chaos in my head—when Dad walks off toward the river, his shoulders set in a way that tells me this conversation’s over.
Fuck.
I look back toward Griffin and Derek, but Griffin’s disappeared. My first instinct is to go after him, to question him about what Derek wanted. But then I see Derek himself walking toward me.
The guy looks put together, I’ll give him that. In his spiffy polo and tailored chinos, every hair perfectly in place, he’s the kind of guy you might accidentally trust to get you a deal on a used Toyota and leave you owing eighteen percent interest for the rest of your natural life.
When Derek appeared in Winsome with the idea of starting an eco-conscious lumber company a couple of years back, my dad welcomed the competition.
So did I. We were confident in the quality of our product, the expertise of our guys, our cutting-edge sustainability practices.
I almost understand why my dad didn’t think it was a big deal to sell the guy some land we knew we’d never be able to harvest as a way to improve our cash flow.