Chapter 1

Scott

Another day, another dollar in my pocket, swinging a hammer, carrying some wood, doing whatever needed to be done. I rose before the sun and went to bed long after it set, but that was my life as a construction worker. Sure, I could go home at five when the bell rang, but what was the point? I didn’t have anyone there, no wife or girlfriend, no roommate or parent. It was just me. So, I ended up at the bar either alone or with my best friend, destressing from the long physical day and looking toward the endless drone of the ones ahead. It was what people like me did, what our fathers did, and what our children would do.

That particular day we were busier than usual with building a new residential neighborhood. No one complained about being busy when hours weren’t always at their peak. We took the good with the bad, hoping to get through another month of bills. The guys I worked with were all kinds of different people, some old, some young, others in between with families to feed. I was single, no kids, and instead of mouths to feed, I had dreams to fund—the kind that would get me out of this life and make a better future for me and for whatever family I had one day. I welcomed the hours as much as I could, and I never felt bad about putting in some overtime. It was all money in the bank.

This project was huge, probably the biggest we had seen all year. We had already been working on it for a month, but there were at least eleven more months to go. It was a year’s worth of stability in a job that rarely had two weeks’ worth of good hours. Everyone knew they were lucky, which meant everyone should have been on their best behavior. But some of the guys I worked with were more than thick-skulled. They had been born and raised in this environment, were roughnecks with old-school mentalities, and though I was in the same boat as them, I thought differently. I kept to myself and hated the fact that the construction yard had as many rumors flying around it as a high school campus. It was insane how much these guys gabbed and gossiped.

The big buzz going around the site today was the rumor that the boss’s daughter was coming to town to intern for the summer. I didn’t know much about the boss, or that he even had a daughter, but I really didn’t give a shit. All I knew was that if it were true, she had her work cut out for her dealing with these assholes and their inability to keep their mouths shut. They sometimes forgot that not everyone appreciated their heathen, low-brow banter and that some girls weren’t their wives or girlfriends and weren’t used to the bullshit that flowed out of them.

“Yeah, man,” one of the guys said, talking to the others. “I heard old chief’s daughter is coming in from college, fresh off the boat, here for a summer internship.”

“What the fuck is some rich daddy’s girl gonna do up here with us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She’s studying engineering or some shit. I do know she is finer than hell. I’ve seen her, at the company Christmas party last year. Long brown hair, luscious curves, a big fuckin’ mouth.”

Several of the guys whistled and laughed, elbowing each other. It was like watching a bunch of fucking apes during mating season. I finished hammering in my board and sat down, wiping my forehead and pulling out my thermos of coffee.

“I think she’ll become the site’s new plaything,” one guy said.

“Yeah, right. With a daddy like that? She’s probably got ten frat boys lined up at college waiting for that ass,” another guy said and laughed.

“Nah. Women like her, they like the attention. That’s the reason she’s rolling into our world,” asshole Carl said. “I’ll have her on her back in no time. Just you watch.”

I shook my head listening to them. They were all a bunch of idiots, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. I wanted to try to get through the day without a fight or an argument. The owner, Mr. West, was a hard man, expecting us to pay attention to what we were doing, act like adults, and get the job done. When you didn’t do the job, he wasted no time kicking your ass to the curb, but when you did, he left you alone. I’d never touch his daughter, not for all the fucking tea in China. That was a one-way ticket right out the door and into the street, and I needed my job. I had been working it since I was sixteen to help support myself and my ma after my pops died. No woman was worth risking my job and income over. That was for damn sure.

My dreams were bigger than me, or at least it felt that way sometimes. I grew up poor, watching my dad work the nine to five, drink, then do it all over again until the day he died. My mother did odd jobs trying to fill the gaps and took care of us. I didn’t want to live hand to mouth that way, and that was why I planned on opening my own business. I had dreamed of that since I was sixteen and dropped out of high school to work and support my mother. I was making some good headway with my savings, too, and there was no way I was going to mess that up by chasing some girl with a rich, powerful daddy.

“I think you’re in over your head, Carl,” one of the guys said. “A pretty little thing doesn’t want no roughneck asshole like you.”

“Nah. You got it all wrong,” Carl said. “She wants these big rough hands and this giant cock. She don’t care where I come from. Girls like that want what they aren’t supposed to have. They want to make their daddies mad. It’s a typical spoiled rich-girl thing.”

“How many rich girls do you know?” They were laughing at him.

“I’ve fucked enough in my day to know what they are looking for,” he said, grabbing his junk. “They can’t stay away from this big cock.”

“Yeah, right,” one of the guys said, waving him off. “Carl will be the asshole that gets turned down and then fired for sexual harassment.”

“Sexual harassment,” Carl said, shaking his head. “No such fucking thing in construction. She’s asking for it.”

“How about you, Silent Scott? What do you think?” one of the guys yelled at me.

I stood up to grab another board, glancing around at all the men’s faces, waiting for my answer. “I think you guys are spending too much time talking and not enough time working,” I said. “And as far as the boss’s daughter, you guys are dumb to think that you could get anywhere near her. She doesn’t want some nasty ass construction worker, and even if she did, her daddy would take care of that really fast.”

“Well, what we can take away from this, gentlemen,” Carl said, “is the fact that Scott has zero experience with women and is too chickenshit to even think about approaching a woman like her.”

“No wonder we don’t ask Scott anything,” one of the other guys said and laughed. “He always has some dumb shit to say—shit that no one else thinks. Seriously, boy, you need to do a little research into who your daddy was, because he would have kicked your ass for saying some stupid shit like that. Man up. Go pay for a whore and get your dick wet. Then come back to us and try to say somethin’ worth listening to.”

They were trying to pick a fight with me, bringing my father into it, but I wasn’t taking the bait. I had been in too many fights over my father when I first started out with the crew, and I wasn’t about to risk my job because of it. These guys needed drama, and I was not the guy who was going to supply them with it. I had too much pride in myself and too much invested in my future to bet it all because they wanted to call me stupid. They were right. My father probably would have kicked my ass. He’d been a roughneck like them, but it didn’t make any difference because he wasn’t here. I turned around and put a board in place before grabbing my hammer and sticking two nails between my lips.

“What do you expect?” Carl laughed. “He was raised by his mommy, and it’s made him weak.”

I ignored him, knowing he was pushing my buttons on purpose. I cleared my throat and situated the board. I pulled my hammer back and zeroed in on the nail, trying to drown them out.

“Too bad his mommy is fuckin’ every worker in town,” Carl said, laughing hysterically.

I gripped the hammer tightly and dropped the board to the ground. Everyone laughed, whooping and hollering. I spat the nails out on the ground and clenched my fists tightly.

“What’s wrong, Scotty? You hurt over your mommy’s loose legs?” Carl taunted.

Without warning, I dropped the hammer, turned around, and rushed toward Carl. I grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back against the scaffolding. He chuckled, not even struggling to get away. I put my face in close to his, watching his smirk fade away. He was trying to save face with the other guys.

“You ever talk about my mother again and I’ll drive one of those nails through your mother-fucking skull,” I said low and deep. “You fucking get what I’m saying?”

“Sure, man,” he said with a smile. “I got you. Calm the fuck down. It was just a joke.”

I stood there staring at him for a minute, everyone else watching with baited breath. I shook my head and let go of his collar, pushing him back before turning around and walking to my station. The rest of the guys laughed and continued talking while Carl adjusted himself. I looked over my shoulder at him but ignored the death glare he was giving me. Fuck him and fuck the other guys too. I didn’t need friends. I needed to get my work done. You could say a lot of things to me, but fuck with my mother and I got angry in about two seconds. They had no respect for her or my dead father, and working with them made me sick.

“So, who do you guys think she will sleep with first?” one of the guys said.

“I put five on Carl,” someone yelled out.

“Thank you,” Carl said. “I think he has something going there with that.”

They started a pool, talking about who would sleep with this poor girl first. Of course, I was nowhere in there, nor did I want to be. I shook my head and picked up my things, going back to work. I didn’t have time for those idiots, or for the anger Carl made me feel. It was a waste of emotion. I tried to cut most of them some slack, knowing they were in their early twenties, young and inexperienced. All they knew were the slums they grew up in, the dream about the day they could take their dad’s place on the crew and do exactly what he did. It was like a fucking badge of honor for them, but they didn’t know any different. They never once thought about something better. They were happy to live in the slums, poor as dirt, married with four kids that would follow right along behind them. Not me though. I wanted something more, and that was what I was going to get.