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I can see where my fingers creased the pages when I grabbed the damn thing out of my dad’s hand yesterday. I hairy-eyeballed my mom like my life depended on it and silently cursed my granny for her wild notions that ruined my life long before my own mother was even in existence. That right there is the contract promising me to Thaddius Wonderduck.
I don’t even get it. Honestly, I don’t.
Rationally, I know I could just live my own life. That the contract doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like we’re married, and it’s not like assets have been promised or the world is going to end.
It’s just wrong.
That’s the long and short of it. It’s just wrong that our names and our parents and grandparents’ signatures are on that document. I could have just torn it up. I just finished college, so I have a degree. I could have supported myself and told my family to go to hell. But I love them, though, and I didn’t want to cut them out of my life forever. People get crazy ideas and wild notions, and they do silly things. It doesn’t make them bad people, though it does sometimes make them obnoxious. This mistake has to be righted.
This contract needs to be unsigned, and it needs Thaddius Wonderduck’s signature right there beside my own, stating that we’re voiding this bitch.
I don’t even know, but I knewonething yesterday. The only way this was going to be made right was if Thaddius and I undid it ourselves.
Except I am in New York, and he is in Seattle, and our families are standing in the way of righting anything because they don’t think there’s anythingtoright. In their minds, I’m not just a possession being possessed by a possessor. I’m not a tool, a thing, or an object. In their minds, this is a happy thing and a dream come true.
Okay, my bladder is probably all dry and good. I should definitely get moving before I moon the entire state of…well, wherever the hell I am.
I pull my panties back on and adjust my dress, smoothing it down. Then, I march over to the driver’s side of the car and slide in behind the wheel.
My parents made the unfortunate mistake last year of saying some things about Thaddius when they thought I wasn’t listening. Something about him making a truck ton of money off some medical software and then getting his heart broken by a woman who was only ever with him for the money—a fact unfortunately very clearly revealed to him by his grandmother, who obviously had some plans for his life. I’m not sure if he was notified about me at that point or if he knew before, but he went completely off the rails and declared he was going to become a homesteader and a sheep farmer.
Sheep, as pets.
The place was about an hour from Seattle and twenty minutes from some town called Upperhand, which sounds like one of those can’t-miss places. Someone there will surely have heard of Thaddius Wonderduck and can point me in the right direction.
So, yup.
Currently, I’m back behind the wheel of my super stiff, super uncomfortable, made-for-short jaunts little sports car, heading out to find my sheep farmer sort of betrothed to annul a marriage that hasn’t even taken place yet.
After this, I can see the appeal of getting away from one’s family and everything one knows and going alone. Sheep seem like great company when finding out what one’s family is capable of. Maybe Thaddius can teach me a thing or two after signing whatever it is we’re going to have to sign to grant us our freedom.
Sheep or not, whatever’s in my future, I’m facing it with my eyes wide open and head on this time.
Fourdaysand nearly twenty-five hundred miles later, I face something head-on, alright.
Unfortunately for me and my very low-to-the-ground, very uncomfortable, very sporty car, that head-on bit is a big pothole in a bumpy, rutted-up, muddy asshole of a back road justfour—and this one deserves full-on, capital letters to showcase my internal shouting—FUCKING miles from my intended destination.
CHAPTER 2
Thaddius
I don’t know if there’s a saying that goes assholes finish first as opposed to the nice guys finish last thing, but I do know a quick and easy recipe to make an asshole.
The first step is to take a nice person and do some not-so-nice things to him. Then add a tablespoon of humiliation, a cup of heartbreak, and a heaping pinch of crazy grannies. Lastly, put it in the oven and bake it in a world where things are already pretty shitty. When it’s done baking, out that asshole comes, freshly baked, golden brown around the edges, flaky, crispy, and chewy-ooey-gooey.
That’s me in a nutshell. A freshly minted asshole. But this asshole? He has no interest in conquering the world, breaking hearts, and being a dark, broody, moody son of a biscuit who needs saving. This asshole is the kind of asshole who would rather remove himself from life in order to find just a second of peace. This asshole doesn’t have an imperiled soul. This asshole isn’t mired in sludgy darkness, and his soul is just fine, thank you. This asshole was also made, not born, but it doesn’t make this asshole a bad person. It just makes this asshole someone who likes to refer to himself as an asshole using the third person.
Maybe I’m not an asshole. Maybe I’m just someone who needed to take himself away from the city, away from everything and everyone. Someone who needed some sheep, chickens, one ornery donkey, a dog, some cats, and one old farmyard in the middle of nowhere to get on with getting on.
Alone.
And still refer to himself in the third person.
I suppose that, right now, I’m not really alone. The sheep are behind me, watching me intently and half guardedly while I fix the fence where it’s starting to sag. I didn’t say the place was perfect. It’s perfectlyfarfrom being perfect. The two cats that are kind of feral barn cats—they came with the place—are out skirting the perimeter of the yard, hunting. They’re perfectly happy to be left alone. My guard dog, who isn’t much of a guard dog at all, is passed out on his side, twitching as he dreams, his tongue lolling way out in the grass. Shaggy’s only a few feet away from me, as per usual, and his long, fluffy white coat flutters in the breeze. He might also have been inherited with the place, along with the sheep, the donkey, and the chickens, but he hardly ever leaves my side when I’m out here.
My side of the world tends to be more forest and less grass. When you go northwest of Seattle, you hit the more touristy parts of the country. The woods, mountains, scenery, lovely nature, endless skies, and vast, rugged terrain…all of it attracts some pretty good attention in the warmer months, so I made sure I was tucked away in the least valuable part of the area. I have enough grass for the sheep, a few scraggly trees minus the maple, some decent fields that are decent because the previous owner fertilized the hell out of them to get the grass to grow for grazing, and pretty much no view of the mountains even though it’s impossible to hide them. I also live off a gravel road that, if it were ever driven on, would choke us all with dust. Thankfully, almost no one ever comes this way. It’s kind of a dead-end, end-of-the-line place to live.
Although, with the pleasant baa’s and clucking of the chickens in the yard, the warm sun on my face, and a long, drawn-out fart from Shaggy as he dreams, I can’t say this feels like the end of the line to me.
