Take Me Lumberjack (Modern Vikings #4)

Prologue

Twelve Years Ago

Walker

They told me I was a difficult child, one who wore doom and gloom like it was a second skin and that’s why I was never adopted.

No one wanted a child who moped around in their house, scowling at guests and scaring other little kids.

When the social workers came to the group homes, they were in the market for kids with sunny smiles and a hopeful twinkle in their eyes.

No one wanted me, and when I was placed into yet another foster home, I figured it was only a matter of time until they too decided the state check they were getting wasn’t enough to deal with a storm cloud like me.

But I was never tossed out. Instead, I was given an ax. While the other kids were handed pencils to draw and balls to kick around, my foster father gave me an ax and a log of wood.

“You have to let those feelings go somewhere, boy,” the old man had said, offering me a kind smile I never returned.

Confused, I’d stared at the ax for several minutes before I allowed myself to use it.

I missed on the first swing, but something about moving the ax—the control and power of it—lit something inside me.

So I made another swing and another until it connected with the log and split it in two.

The wide grin on my face felt as foreign as the ax in my hands but that was more than ten years ago; now, it feels more like an extension of my body.

I own chainsaws. Use them when the job called for it.

But the ax was different. It gives the restless thing inside me somewhere to go.

Those adults were wrong about a lot of things, but they were right about one thing.

I didn’t fit. Not with other kids, not with people.

I was better off on my own, with my ax. It’s all I’ve ever needed and would damn well work better if the sun wasn’t pounding on my back, making my job harder than it needs to be.

The muscles in my arms scream as I swing the ax, sweat trickling down my brow as I bring it down and split the log with much more ease than twelve-year-old me had all those years ago.

Sweat snakes down my forehead, blurring my vision as I reach down to grab another log.

I pause, the ax suspended midair, and bring my forearm up to wipe the sweat from my brows before swinging it down with enough power to split the log in two.

“You should take a break, boy. You’ve been going at it for hours.”

I don’t turn at the voice nor let it pull me from my work. My one-track mind won’t allow it. There are still logs left to be chopped and more work yet with storing them in the shed to prepare for winter. Taking a break is not an option now.

And yet, when I feel the old man’s prodding look, I pause for a second and turn, first taking in the vibrant green of the trees and the piercing blue of the sky before finally focusing on my foster father leaning against an oak tree, arms crossed over his chest. He looks frailer and older than he did when I was first placed under his care, and it’s a wonder he didn’t toss me out when I aged out of the system.

“What?” I ask, swiping a hand over my brows as I return Sam’s gaze with a blank one.

“I’m just thinking how much you’ve grown.

Twenty-three years old now,” he muses, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

“It feels like yesterday when they brought you here. A skinny kid with a glare that could pierce through concrete. You looked like someone who carried the weight of the world on their shoulders.”

I bite back the annoyance that floods in.

Sam knows how much I despise talking about my past. Unlike some wards of the state who don’t remember their past, I remember every sordid detail that pushed me into the system.

I remember the parents who chose to spend money on drugs rather than on their child’s food.

If I was skinny when Sam took me under his care, it was because there had never been enough food available to keep up with my growth.

And if my glare could pierce concrete, it was because I didn’t trust anyone.

Hell, I would have burned down the world to ash if they’d given me the matches.

Instead, they gave me an ax. And with that ax, I became stronger. No longer skinny or scared.

I am the furthest thing from that pitiful kid. And I don’t care to be reminded of him.

“It’s the past,” I grunt, picking up my ax to get back to work, but Sam cuts me off with his next words.

“Don’t you know, boy, that you cannot move on until you address the past?” he asks, forcing me to drop the ax once more and turn to him. “The past will always catch up with you if you keep ignoring it.”

“Why are you bringing this up now?”

Sam smiles, something wistful in his eyes as they move to the three-story house I’ve spent nearly half my life in.

He built it with his own bare hands, a gift for his wife, he once told me.

But then she died before she could move in, and he would have followed her into the afterlife and beyond if not for the kids he decided to foster.

Calling him Dad had always felt too dangerous somehow. Too permanent. Sam never pushed for it, and I never offered.

“I found an old picture of Teressa,” he says, turning back to look at me. “You never met her, but you would have loved her. Everyone did.”

I stay silent as he dives into the past, unwilling to follow him there. “We couldn’t have kids of our own, and since we’d grown up in the system, we thought we could become foster parents.”

“You never remarried.”

“How could I?” he says with a laugh empty of mirth.

“I could never replace my Teressa,” he says softly. “My Tessa. We were together for twenty-five years, and they were the best years of my life. I could never recreate that with anyone else. You’ll understand one day when you find your own Tessa.”

“I don’t need to be with anyone,” I grind out, picking up my ax and swinging it down on the wood with more force than needed. “What’s so great about love anyway? Here you are, old man, thinking about her. Hurting for her.”

Just like I hurt for my mother when they took me away.

She was too high to make sense of it or try to stop them.

Kicking and yelling, I fought to stay in that dirty little trailer with a woman who didn’t care for me.

Never again, I promised myself. Never again would I allow myself to love someone enough that I would give them power to hurt me.

“You think you’ll have a choice?” Sam laughs, his voice echoing in the woods.

“You won’t know what hit you when you see her.

You won’t be able to stop yourself from falling, and then she’ll become the most important thing in your life.

More important than your own life, your happiness, and your pride. ”

I leave Sam to his delusions and tune him out as I get back to chopping wood.

Love isn’t worth a dime and I will not be pulled into its propaganda.

I’ll be damned if I’m sixty and thinking about a woman who left me years ago.

I got my first lesson in heartbreak years before most people do.

I got over that, didn’t I? I’ve survived my entire life without anyone loving me.

I’ll be fine living the rest of it without it.