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“You don't know me,” she says in a monotone. “You’ve threatened me and tried to intimidate me. I was right when I called you a bully and yet I’m still here. I’ve gotten pretty adept at taking shit off of people who think they’re better than me.”

I take the second chainsaw in hand. “You give as well as you receive. The only thing I ask is that you do as you’re told and stop acting like the world owes you something.”

“I thinkyou’rethe one who believes I oweyousomething.”

Her statement stops me dead in my tracks. “Cut the fucking tree, Gilli.”

It’s an impasse, at best, and the manual work gives me an opportunity to work out more of my anger. It’s not the same as punching a bag, or punching a person and feeling the give of their muscles, but it counts.

I feel like absolute garbage.

She takes one end of the tree, the thinnest portion of the downed trunk, and I take the other. Woodchips fly. I’m loath to admit it but she’s a hard worker. I only hear her complain once when a large chunk of wood drops on her foot.

Maybe she isn’t so bad after all.

Her mother might be a real homewrecking piece of shit, but is it fair to take it out on her daughter?

Her machine cuts off and I swing my gaze around in time to watch her drop it in the dirt.

“Didn’t you pack any water?” she asks. “I’m thirsty.”

My brows crash together into a harsh line as I stare at the chainsaw. “There’s some in the back.”

She pulls out a bottle and holds it up. “You want one too?”

“I’m good.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring beer,” she says. “Although you don’t strike me as a beer kind of guy. What do you like?”

A trail of sweat drips beneath Gilli’s glasses and down her jawline. Her tongue darts out to wet her lower lip. She twists the top off the water bottle and takes a long swig.

I pause, resting the battery of the saw against my leg. Breathing heavily but not from exertion.

“You strike me as more of an Old Fashioned kind of guy,” she adds.

My good mood, such as it is, sours immediately. “That’s my father’s drink of choice,” I growl.

Her lips twist, chastised. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. Because why wouldn’t I be like my father? Apples not falling far and all that.”

“It seems like I’ve struck a nerve.”

She’s pleased about it, too.

“What strikes a nerve is how you dropped the damn chainsaw in the dirt without giving a shit about it. You have to have a little more situational awareness and respect for other people’s property.”

She holds her hands out in front of her. “Don’t take it out on me because you hate your Daddy.”

Wrong thing to say. “It’s not myDaddyI hate. It’s your whore Mom who chose to get her knees dirty while she sucked his cock.”

“It’s beeneight years.” Gilli says it like I need to give it a rest.

“Yeah, eight years,” I agree. “And my mother has been medicated heavily for the majority of those years. Two of them she spent in a psych ward.”

Gilli huffs. “I’m just trying to talk to you. Trying being the operative word here, Soren, because you’re making it difficult to sayanything. You act like a dickhead every time I open my mouth.”

Then maybe she should shut up, because something might just get stuffed in it tomakeher shut up. Like mother, like daughter.