Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
But burying my head in the sand about my daughter and Jetty wasn’t going to fix the problem at hand.
She was still going to have a baby in six months.
There was no amount of ignoring the kid that was going to change that.
“Come out to the porch with me then,” I said.
Joe looked on with a worried expression, but I didn’t tell her it would be okay.
I wasn’t sure it would.
I mean, she was pregnant and hadn’t graduated high school yet. She had a whole future ahead of her before that’d happened, and now she was going to be stuck lugging a kid around wherever she happened to want to go.
That was going to be hard.
And Jetty needed to step up.
When we made it out to the porch, I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the railing.
Jetty cleared his throat a couple of times, shifting from foot to foot in nervousness, before he said, “I passed my GED test. I dropped out of high school.”
My brows rose. “What?”
“I was ahead anyway. Could’ve graduated this fall if I wanted. But there’s no point in wasting time.” He looked out over the land that I loved with all my heart. “If you’ll be okay with it, I’d like to start working full-time here.”
That was a surprise. “I thought you wanted to go to college.”
“I will,” he admitted. “Eventually. But for now, I need to get an income going so that I can pay for the baby. Plus, with my parents making as much money as they do, the Pell grants won’t apply to me. Which, might I add, is really fuckin’ stupid. My parents haven’t helped me a damn bit since I turned fourteen and got old enough to work without them being deemed bad parents. Food, water, and necessities. I’ve been paying all of that since I was fourteen. I don’t think it’s fair that they base my ability to get need-based grants off of parents that don’t want to have anything to do with you.”
I didn’t argue with him, because he was right.
A parent’s income should only be taken into account if they had anything to do with the children.
That wasn’t always the case for some.
“You want to work here full-time?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Full-time will give you benefits. Room and board.” I thought about it for a moment. “If you can sign a contract for five years of work here, I’ll also pay for your college.”
Because there was no way that I was letting my grandchild’s father fail.
Because what would that accomplish?
I’d only hurt my family.
And family was everything to me.
My girls were my life.
My mom. Brother. Sister. Nephew. All of them were everything to me.
Even my found family. My club brothers meant the world to me. Every single one of them.
I’d give them the heart out of my chest if they had need of it.
So no, I wouldn’t hurt my grandchild by denying his father the leg up that he deserved.
Even if he’d make a stupid mistake like knocking my daughter up at sixteen.
“I’ll sign anything,” he replied. “I’m emancipated now.”
That was new, too.
After his parents had kicked him out upon finding out that he’d gotten Joe pregnant, he’d been forced to do a lot of hard things. One of those was going to talk to a judge about emancipating himself so that he could do adult things—like get his GED and drop out of high school.
“I’ll get it drawn up,” I said. “I think it’d be a good thing to have you close anyway. So you can help Joe.”
“I agree.” His shoulders slumped. “Thank you, sir.”
“Call me Denver, kid,” I said. “Guess we’re family now.”
Jetty closed his eyes.
The relief on his face and in his shoulders made me feel for him.
He’d lived a hard life.
When I’d first met him, he’d explained that his parents had opened a petting zoo just outside of Sawtooth. The vibe I’d gotten off of him was that Jetty was the hard laborer. He did the cleaning, the lifting, the moving. All while maintaining a 3.8 GPA and attending extracurricular activities.
With him gone, I wondered how they made it.
Surely, they’d had to hire hands.
Jetty was a hard worker. He’d helped me out plenty around the farm when he hadn’t had to.
I would be stupid not to hire him on.
“Thanks, Denver,” Jetty said. “You won’t be disappointed.”
“No, I don’t think I will.” I held out my hand.
After shaking it, he headed back to the family room.
I chose not to say anything as I went to my bathroom, showered, then hit the sack.
Tomorrow was bound to be a better day…right?
FIVE
No thanks, malls. I shop from home without pants like a normal person.
—Holly’s secret thoughts
HOLLY
I slept like shit.
There was no other word for it.
I tossed and turned, thinking about what I was going to do, and got almost zero sleep because of it.