Baby For The Mountain Man

“What do you know about business?” she asked.

“More than you think. I know the first rule of thumb is to provide something to the public that they need.”

“Women like me need resources to escape the lives they were bred in,” she said.

“Then the next question you need to ask yourself is this: is there a big enough market for what you’re selling?”

The blank stare on her face told me she hadn’t thought any of this through. And I felt bad for her. I really did. She was a product of a family that had failed her, and the more she talked about them the more I knew it was that same Lucas family. They were born out of Seattle but owned half of Kettle as well as other smaller areas of the Washington State area. Our families weren’t really rivals, but they were a family that had been putting bids in to buy the rest of the Kettle area. They got ruthless there for awhile, trying to dig up dirt on my family and blast us in the media. They tried to rally the town around them in order to force us to sell.

But the strong-armed tactics didn’t work with my father and they finally backed down.

Her family had been one of the several we had battled against for this land over the years. And with the way it sounded like the Lucas family operated, Ava probably had no idea who I was. She probably had no idea that she was looking at the son of the man her father tried to bury with lies and deceit and dirt. Her helpless stance on life was born from her family’s own helpless disposition and anger, and she was scrambling. I could tell Ava didn’t want the life her family had set out for her to have, but she hadn’t been raised with the tools to create a life of her own.

She packed up her shit, left, and hoped she could learn things along the way.

It took a great deal of confidence and courage to pull some shit like that. And part of me admired her for it.

“No,” she said. “I haven’t thought about college yet.”

I suppressed the grin trying to grow across my cheeks as she backtracked into the cabin. I felt sorry for her and the position she had found herself in because of her family, but she had a fire in her that drew me in. She came from a wealthy family but wanted nothing to do with it. She knew what it was like to have money and she was willing to leave all of it to start a life of her own. A life she could be proud of and smile at whenever she got up in the morning.

In some ways, Ava Lucas was stronger than I ever had been.

Funny how tables easily turned like that.

Five

Ava

I walked back into the cabin and sat down on the couch. College? Was that something I could do with my life? I hadn’t had the option growing up. I graduated high school and immediately delved into the role my family expected me to have. Society-wide parties and formal functions. Winter and spring balls with gowns that sparkled and flowed. Sliding into the life my parents wanted for me was easier than trying to get them to understand that I had other plans for my life.

At least, it was easier for a while.

Once they started setting me up on blind dates, however, my tune changed. I found out they expected me to marry. I figured out I wasn’t going to be able to wait out their insane familial views or outgrow their needs for my life. They were determined to push me into their lifestyle one way or another. So, I started to rebel. Telling them things I wanted and didn’t want, even though it incurred the wrath and anger of my father. That was when the name-calling started. Things like ‘embarrassment’ and ‘selfish’. ‘Bratty’ and ‘vulgar’. Like I had cursed the entire family and had resolved myself to a life of dancing in a cage in some club.

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But all I wanted was to make my own decisions for my own life. And that didn’t fit in with my father’s plan.

But college? Who the hell did this Travis person think he was? Did he think he was going to fix my car and just start throwing around his own expectations for my life? The last thing I needed was someone else telling me what they thought I should do with my life. This was my life. It was my heart that beat in my chest and my thoughts that ran through my head. Even if I had wanted to attend college at one point, now I had other plans.

Plans that required me to be in California.

My phone rang in my pocket and it caught me off guard. With the amount of rainwater that drenched my body last night, I expected my phone to be dead. But there it was, vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw it was my father calling, so I ignored it. Then my mother called, and I ignored it again.

My brothers called, my aunts called, and even a few of my cousins called. Everyone was trying to get in touch with me. Travis was outside doing hell-knew-what with my car, I was sitting in a cabin that was just as foreign as the mountains around me, and the one thing I was trying to escape was ringing through on my phone that, somehow, still worked.

Fucking great.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Ava Laura Lucas. Where the hell are you?”

“Nice to hear from you, too, father,” I said.

“Where in the world did you get off to? Your mother and I have been worried sick.”

“Just stayed at a friend’s house last night,” I said. “Nothing major.”