Lumberjack Daddy by Valentine Layla

Author:Valentine, Layla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Cain

Cain had done something wrong.

What? He had no idea. But apparently, he had. Daniel had been grumpy all morning, and Cain had been trying to remain optimistic and patient, and he thought he’d been doing a good job. Daniel was a great son, and Cain loved him deeply, but all the love in the world sometimes didn’t help things be less frustrating.

And then, Dee had suggested that they move somewhere less rural.

It was as if she had expected him to say Oh, golly, I hadn’t thought about that! I guess we’ll just pack up and move somewhere easier to live! Like he hadn’t considered it a thousand times, like it wouldn’t be nice to not get stuck in the middle of nowhere all the time during winter, like it wouldn’t be nice to have a community and friends and coworkers.

But that’s not how it was, and it was never how it could be. As long as people from his past were looking for him, he had to stay low for Daniel. He had to stay out in the middle of nowhere, make the sacrifices necessary to keep his son safe. The minute the mob figured out where he was, was the minute that he was a dead man and Daniel would be shipped off to a children’s home—if he was lucky.

Cain normally did a good job of swallowing that frustration. Even today, in the face of Daniel’s insistence that he wouldn’t ever actually use math, he did a good job of keeping that frustration from slipping into his interaction with his son. But then Dee had to ask that stupid question and remind him that he couldn’t leave.

Breakfast had been… tense.

Daniel had been delighted that he no longer had to do his homework, and he’d been all smiles when he’d gotten to eat breakfast. But there was a tightness, a tension, an elephant in the room, between Dee and Cain.

She’d sat on the other side of the table, picking at her food with a guarded look on her face. Her eyes were glazed over, and her motions were like she expected him to yell at her or something. She looked like a child who knew they’d been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and now they were just waiting for their dad to get home to punish them.

As the time passed, the excruciating silence stretching between them, Cain finally made a pass to try to repair whatever had happened.

“Thanks for making breakfast.” He took a bite and a sip of coffee, trying and failing to force a positive inflection in his voice. Why did he have to act happy? He wasn’t. It wasn’t like he was yelling at her, but he was allowed to have emotions, and right now, he wasn’t in a giggly mood. But based on her silent treatment, she was upset with him, and he wanted to give it a genuine shot at repairing that bridge.

Her eyes darted up to him, locking gazes with him for a second before she quickly looked down.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.