Page 62 of Timber's Line

“I mean, yeah, you should find someone nice,” I say, trying to backpedal.

“What am I supposed to look for? Why don’t you tell me? I feel like everyone knows me better than I do myself.” She is seething.

“Timber.” I step toward her.

“Dayton, tell me. I feel like you’re confused, and while you don’t want to be with me, you don’t want me to find someone else.”

“That’s not true.” I pull her toward me and kiss her, pressing up against her so she can feel what she does to me.

She pushes me back, and I try to reach for her.

“Do you know what you want?” she asks.

“I do, and I’m going to spend the next couple of days or weeks, months, years showing you that it’s you I want.”

“Once you know the truth, you won’t want me,” she says and takes off.

Game on, Timber.

“I don’t care about your past,” I yell at her as she rushes out of the barn.

Time to turn it up a notch.

First, Hunter. I head for his cabin and knock.

“I figured you’d be paying me a visit.” He moves so I can enter.

“Hunter.”

“Dayton, I already know the score. A lot of what I did tonight was for the show. She’s a nice girl.”

“She is.”

“Don’t you think you should be having a talk with her?” he questions.

“I tried, but my past holds her back.”

“As does her past as well,” he replies. I nod because it’s true.

“I don’t understand what she thinks is so bad that I wouldn’t want her.” I sit down in the chair at the small desk. Sal upgraded these small cabins.

“What do you think of when you hear the words slut and whore?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question,” he quips.

“I think it’s a girl who sleeps around.”

“And when girls are called that, they don’t think they can be loved.”

“I haven’t heard anyone call her that, just implied.”

“If at any time she is called that, then she’s going to shut herself off,” he says.

“Oh.”

“Girls are hard nuts to crack. And once they think they’re ruined, they think they can’t be loved.”