Chapter 3: Breaking Point

He’s nothing like the gentle boys from our neighborhood. He’s tall and burly, muscles everywhere. Years of working the land have given him sun-baked skin. He rarely smiles and always looks fierce.

He had that silent, big-sky confidence you see in farm kids—like he’d sooner drag a tractor out of a mud pit than bother with small talk. Even his voice was gravelly, as if he chewed on gravel for breakfast.

Every time he walks by, his gaze lingers on me for a moment. That look is intimidating—it makes my knees shake. Especially after I heard from the locals that the crew chief hates laziness more than anything, and if he gets angry, he’ll really lay into people—even women. That made me even more scared, so I never dared slack off.

I overheard some of the guys talking after work, swapping stories about Derek. They said last summer he tossed a guy off the hay wagon for goofing off. Maybe it was an exaggeration, but it didn’t help my nerves any. I worked myself to the bone every day. In just a few days, I did more work than I had in my entire eighteen years. Every night, my whole body ached so much that I couldn’t help but cry quietly under my blanket.

I didn’t dare cry out loud since I lived with other female volunteers, and I was afraid they’d find me annoying. The more I cried, the worse I felt. I missed my parents, and my cousins too. Would they ever come get me? Why hadn’t they called or texted after so long? Thinking about it made me even sadder.

I scrolled through my phone sometimes, hovering over my old group chat, almost texting my family, but always deleting the draft before I sent it. The screen always stayed dark. Even my group chats from Maple Heights had gone silent. They weren’t my family or my cousins anymore, so it made sense if they forgot about me. But life here was just too hard—I might as well be dead. Still, I’d had eighteen happy years, and that was enough.

As I was lost in thought, suddenly a string of comments flashed before my eyes:

[Girl, trust me—just call him big bro and watch him turn into a total softie. He’ll carry your buckets, no questions asked.]

[He circles around you eight hundred times a day not to supervise you, silly girl, but because he wants you.]