Her Dirty Billionaires

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 still breathed 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 brought 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 worked to get it permanently protected in the state of Washington. My father tried 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 threatened 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 began 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 would 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 sought 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 dreamed 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 lost sleep and slipped 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.

I wasn’t ready to admit to them that I had made the same mistake twice.

Every once in awhile, my twin brothers would knock on my door and for a split second, my heart would slam in my chest. I would convince myself it was Ava until I opened the door, taking in the sight of my brothers standing there. Disappointment would pool in my chest as they peppered me with questions, and all it did was bring Ava back to the forefront of my mind.

I deserved better than this. I knew I did. And Ava did, too. She deserved better than the life I could have ever given her. This much I was sure of. But I wanted her. The selfish part of me wanted her more than I could understand. I was worried about her. I wanted to know what her father had done with her. I wanted to know if she was still making it okay. I wanted to know if her brothers still stood at her side and if her mother had found her strength. I wanted to know if she was fighting her battles or if she had caved. Because if she caved and if she needed it, I had no issues knocking on her father's door and taking her away forever.

But I had no way of knowing anything. I had no way of contacting her. There was nothing. Only myself, my wandering thoughts, and my dreams. She was there one second and gone the next, like waking up from a nightmare and feeling the panic quickly wash from your veins.

I went from having hope to having nothing. And as I looked in the mirror and stared at the haggard face of the man I’d become, I relinquished myself to the truth.

I had allowed myself to love Ava, even though she had never loved me back.

Twenty-Three

Travis

As I walked through the woods and ventured toward the edge of the mountain, I gazed out over the sight. I breathed in the freshly scented air and took in the birds and bugs chirping around me. The ground beneath my feet felt sweeter than ever. Like it carried me along my pain as the wind whipped around my body.

We had won the case. Breathline Energies put up an incredible fight, but our lawyer was more prepared than ever. My father appeared in court with all the documents he needed and took Ava’s father head on. Not only did we win the lawsuit to keep our land, but we were also able to push through our protection paperwork. The judge had ruled in our favor to protect the mountains of Kettle we owned because of the endangered species that dwelled within these forests.

But then, the judge dealt a final blow to Breathline.

The judge ruled that Breathline Energies was, in fact, harassing us. The courts ordered them to pay a fine not only to the government, but to us as well. That money was then going to sit in an investment account my father could draw from to pay the property taxes on this land for the next ten years.

I smiled as the warm sunshine beat down upon my skin.

It had been three months since I’d seen Ava, but it wasn’t getting any easier to forget her. Now that this debacle with her father’s company was behind us, I hoped I could get my life back to normal. No more meetings in town with the lawyer and no more mentioning of her father’s company. I knew once I could unload those reminders of her off my back it would be easy to forget her.