Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
At the top was a Laurel Country Day sweatshirt with a graphic of a football on the arm. I’d never been much of a football player, but I liked being on the team. I dug past the sweatshirt, finding a certificate from some debate club thing. Debate club? I didn’t remember doing debate club. The truth was, I didn’t have clear memories of most of my childhood. When I left for my freshman year of college, I hadn’t planned to come back. I thought I’d stay on campus during breaks, cut my father out of my life, and start fresh. That hadn’t worked out exactly as I thought it would. For one thing, unless you were an international student, campus was closed during holidays.
Then there was that endless, miserable summer after my freshman year. Living back under my father’s roof had been worse than I’d imagined. I tried to get a job cooking in town. One word in the ear of every restaurant owner in Sawyers Bend, and I was effectively unemployable. When I tried to get a job in Asheville, he took away my car.
According to Prentice, either I worked for Sawyer Enterprises or I didn’t work at all. Since he wasn’t planning on giving me any cash, not working wasn’t an option. To Prentice’s disgust, I ended up working on the grounds crew at the Inn. I’d enjoyed both the job and my father’s impotent frustration. If I’d known what that little rebellion would cost me, I might have taken the office job.
Chapter Eleven
FINN
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could leave. For one thing, I wanted to go back to college. At nineteen I’d been stuck in a merry-go-round of hating my father, performing for him to get what I wanted, then hating him all over again, even more than before.
The merry-go-round ground to a halt on spring break of my sophomore year in college.
I’d jumped on a plane to Cancun with some fraternity buddies and a vague plan involving tequila and hot girls in bikinis. Exactly what every guy dreams of for spring break. Except mine had ended in terror, pain, and the death of the life I’d known.
The second night of the trip, I got a little too drunk in a bar on the beach. Par for the course for spring break. But instead of waking up face down on the beach or half on top of a beautiful girl, I’d come to in a bare concrete room, my hands cuffed behind me, a black bag over my head, and a splitting pain behind my eyes.
All the arrogance I’ve acquired in the years since still can’t match my nineteen-year-old self. Even in that dark, cold room with a bag over my head and my hands cuffed behind me, I’d been so sure that being a Sawyer would save my ass.
Being a Sawyer was how I ended up in that concrete room to begin with.
And more than that, being a Sawyer was worth absolutely jack shit when the man with the checkbook declined to write the check that could have bought me my life back.
I’d never gotten over that betrayal. It was a miracle that I survived. By the time I made my way back to civilization and a phone, I knew better than to call my father for help. For anything.
I remembered vividly the fear and pain of that moment, the fists and flashing lights. Knowing, for the first time, that I was on my own.
I stared into the cedar-scented trunk with blind eyes, back in that cold concrete room, replaying the last time I ever heard my father’s voice. He’d told my kidnappers, “I don’t give a fuck what you do with him. He’s worth nothing to me.”
Was that why my father had spent so many years trying to sire so many kids? So that when push came to shove, he could write one off and still have a pile of heirs to fall back on?
And now, since the bastard was dead, I’d never know what his reasoning had been. Why he and Ford had thrown me to the wolves. And Hope? She’d worked closely with all of them. Had she known? I wanted to believe that she hadn’t, but I didn’t know. Not for sure.
We never made amends. I wasn’t sorry I’d missed my chance to talk to him one more time. What was there to say? It’s not like Prentice Sawyer would have apologized. Hell would have frozen over first. Even if he had, I had nothing to say to him.
I don’t know if he ever looked for me. Obviously, he told some bullshit story about me running off to join the army. Maybe the rest of them believed him. Maybe they didn’t. It didn’t matter. For me, that moment—my father saying I was worth nothing to him—was the end.