But getting out from underneath her meant I had already gotten out from underneath my parents. If my father was desperate enough to send me away to a house like hers, then it meant he had run out of options. In an odd way, I had defeated my parents. I had pushed them to their limits and this was their way of washing their hands of my future.
Now, all I had to do was make sure Aunt Myrtle did the same.
Twenty-Two
Travis
It has been six weeks since I had heard anything from Ava. Not that she could have called me-- she had no way to-- but she hadn't come over. I ventured into town more often to see if I could run into her accidentally, but she was nowhere to be found. She wasn't at the coffee shop she frequented, she wasn't at the library, and after talking with an old woman there and figuring out where she lived, I figured out she was no longer at her home.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting and I wasn't sure what would have been easier to stomach. I didn't know if I wanted the house to be deserted or if I wanted the house to be full of life. Deserted meant that she had left me like I knew she would. Just a fling for her to get her rocks off and feel like an adult for a little bit. But deserted also meant her father had swung her back into his traps, and that worried me. But if her home was full of life, that meant she was intentionally shooting me down. She was intentionally dodging me, which only reinforced the idea of my being an escape for her.
Either way, it was the same situation as before.
I drove past the massive compound Ava apparently called home in Kettle as a feeling of loneliness washed over me. I found myself in the same situation I had endured years ago and I felt my chest being crushed. Her house was completely deserted, not an ounce of life in sight. The garage was empty, the yard was eerily quiet, and there wasn’t a light on in the house to denote any sign that someone was still there.
I had been left behind by a woman who had greater intentions than me for her life. Ava had left me, deserted and alone after promising me she would come back. After telling me she would make sure to come visit me once she worked things out with her parents. Once again, a woman had promised me the world before leaving me in her dust, and it made me sick.
The property was eerily vacant. Like no one had been there to begin with.
I sped back to my cabin that same day and tried to erase all memories of her in my home. I washed all of my sheets, I vacuumed all the carpets, and I disinfected all of the surfaces I had taken her body against. I threw out the chair I had pulled up to her body that night when I feasted on the depths between her thighs and I bleached the shower she had cleaned herself in multiple times. I had someone come in and deep-clean all my furniture to try and rid her smell from the cabin.
I even scrubbed my skin red for days, trying to remove the memory of her lips upon my skin.
Nothing, however, could rid my mind of her memory when I closed my eyes.
She was gone and there was nothing I could do about it. Just like I had stood at the altar, helpless and confused, I wandered around my cabin wallowing in my own self-pity. At least when I have been alone before, I had gotten used to it. Loneliness had become a way of life for me, and I had forced myself to make my bed in it. I had put enough time between myself and my ex-fiance for me to forget what it felt like to have someone at my side. I had nothing to compare the loneliness to, and that somehow made it easier to bear.
But having Ava in my arms, having her in my bed, having her in this cabin... it gave me something to compare it to. Gave me a juxtaposition that brought to light how lonely I had truly become. And now, her absence hurt. I laid down in my bed at night and would roll over to see if she was there, and my soul would be broken all over again. I knew it was ridiculous. I knew I was going crazy. I hardly knew anything about this woman. In the back of my mind, I knew I had only known her a few weeks at best. Maybe even a shorter time period than that. But she had touched a part of me I had allowed myself to ignore and forget for years.
And I didn’t know how to shut it off.
So, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I threw myself into work. That was what I did when I was stood up at my own wedding and that was the only thing I had now. Breathline Energies was still breathing down our necks about the property we owned in Kettle, which meant I had more meetings with my lawyer to figure out what we can do. They had stopped the threats of government intervention, but they were bringing up valid points about the way we did business in the mountains. And they were points that had me worried.
Every year, my father wrote off our property in the mountains as a business expense. He could get away with that because we purchased it for environmental purposes and sometimes had to take a chunk of money from the company just to help with the property taxes. We took out licenses for the land and were working to get it permanently protected in the State of Washington. My father was trying to get it nationally recognized as a park because the mountains held a couple of species of animals that were closely considered to being extinct.
But, we did run a few seasonal businesses out of the mountains. Hunting and the camps, specifically.
Breathline Energies was threatening to sue us under the assumption that we were writing this land off wrong on our taxes. Which would bring the IRS down on our back. Even if the judge sided with us, we would be so inundated with paperwork to prove ourselves to the tax department, and I could see that mound of paperwork forcing my father to sell the land just to get rid of the headache. I was beginning to get nervous and I threw all my energy into making sure Breathline Energies didn’t strongarm my father into selling our land.
We pulled all the documents we could and did all of the research we knew we needed to. We began to build a case against Ava’s father’s company once they served us with official paperwork. They were taking us to court under the prospect of fraudulent tax write-offs, and I knew we had to prepare ourselves. And so far, our lawyer thought we had a strong case.
Because the licenses and the camps did not provide my father's company any sort of profit, the lawyer was going to argue that they were only set up to help us pay the yearly property taxes on owning the land. During some years, we could even prove that my father had to chip in money from the company just to make the tax payments as well as to make sure the camps were kept up to legal standards set forth by the state.
That gave us the ability to not only argue the environmental aspect of us owning the land, but it gave us an avenue to argue non-profitability.
The lawyer believed if we played our cards right and got in front of the right judge, they would not only favor our case, but they would push through the Environmental Protections we were seeking for the land. We could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, so I set my sights on that goal. It was a lofty goal, yes, but it was a goal that helped to take my mind off Ava.
I knew she had been too good to
be true. I knew that a woman like her, with the spunk and the fire she held in her soul, could never be confined to a lonely cabin like mine. I knew I would never be able to offer her the life she was dreaming of. The freedom and the exploration of the world she craved. She had fires that burned in her gut that had died in me long ago. I was content with staying on my mountain, only venturing into town when I had to. When it was necessary. When I had to interact with people to get food or supplies for my home.
But a woman like Ava could never be confined to a lifestyle like this.
No matter how hard I worked, there was always something reminding me of her. A voice that sounded like hers or someone walking around town that had her same hairstyle. Everywhere I turned, I could see her in something. I could hear her laughter echoing through the crowd of people in the grocery store. I could see her every time I picked up a bottle of dried spices. Memories of her would drown me whenever I drank a mug of coffee in the mornings, and soon I found myself not eating breakfast to rid my memory of her for just a moment.
Just a second’s peace without being inundated with a mesmerizing woman that had never been mine.
The case against my family’s company was mounting and tensions were rising. I was losing sleep and slipping on my duties to the company. My father and mother had to come back from Florida early to make sure the case was stable. And to make matters worse, Jasper and Leo started taking it upon themselves to check in on me. They knew something was wrong, even if I wasn’t talking, and that was never good. That meant Mom and Dad knew something was wrong, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.