He stared down at the loan document in front of him. God, he hated reading. He hated paperwork.

He especially hated reading paperwork.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them hard with the palms of his hands. If he just concentrated hard enough, he’d be able to read this. He could make it happen.

He opened up his eyes and stared down at the loan paperwork. The words swum around, letters going every which way.

He went back up to the top and started with the first word. “This.”

Okay, this was good. He was making progress. One word at a time. That was his mantra. He could read any document, one word at a time.

He struggled to the end of the first (stupidly long and convoluted) sentence and realized he was covered in sweat. He might as well have run a marathon. He would’ve at least had the endorphins from the exercise.

As it was, he just felt like shit.

He sat back in his chair with a groan. A large part of him just wanted to give up and sign the damn things. He needed seed for next year. He needed to upgrade his combine; his current one barely made it through the season. Declan had never been as happy as he was to see the combine drive off the field one last time. It’d made it through, helped along by a lot of cursing, oil, and thumping with a wrench.

He didn’t want to upgrade, of course. The newer ones had enough features on them that he was quite afraid that if he pushed the wrong damn button, he’d launch a rocket ship into space. He didn’t need GPS and a seat warmer and a back massager built in.

Realizing that even he couldn’t make his current combine last another year, though, he’d spent yesterday talking with a salesman down at the John Deere dealership, picking out a stripped-down model that, you know, harvested wheat.

No rocket ships or back massagers included.

But now came the dreaded part: The loan paperwork from the bank. He opened up his eyes and glared at the papers spread across his dining room table. His father had taught him how to grow crops and by God, Declan Miller could grow crops. He learned all he needed to know from his dad on the topic, and if he had any questions, he could always ask a seed salesman for help and ideas.

But loan paperwork? His dad hadn’t taught him some simple work around for it. He was stuck with it, whether or not he wanted to be. Whether or not he could even read it.

He toyed with the idea of calling Stetson or Wyatt. They didn’t know that he could barely read, of course. That wasn’t something that you just went around telling everyone.

Or, in Declan’s case, that he went around telling anyone. Anyone ever, except his beloved mother.

And look at how that turned out.

The idea of telling his brothers he needed help made his stomach clench with a toxic combination of fear and panic. A real man just did what he needed to do. A real man didn’t need help reading his goddamn loan paperwork.

A real man didn’t have dyslexia.

Of course, Declan didn’t know for sure if he did. He’d made sure to stay far, far away from any tests that would have diagnosed him as such. It was bad enough to guess he had dyslexia. It’d be so much worse to know.

He’d made it through school by the skin of his teeth. And through the help of Iris, although of course she didn’t know either. The idea of telling her sent ice thrumming through his veins. That was a terrifying idea. He figured he’d rather swallow hot lava than tell Iris that the man she’d loved and dated for so long was dumb as a pile of rocks. She was so damn smart; valedictorian of their class. Scholarship to Idaho State University. Top scores on her SAT. If she knew the truth about him…?

Well, he just wouldn’t let it happen. Ever.

He had a second chance with Iris. He’d been stupid before, letting the panic and pain of losing his mom affect him so irrationally. He wouldn’t be stupid again.

Well, at least not stupid when it came to giving up Iris. He was obviously stuck with the stupidity of not being able to read. That was a condition that he was stuck with for life.

The best he could do was make sure no one ever knew.

He sat up, grabbed his pen, and signed the paperwork at the bottom. Whatever it said, he’d just have to live with it. He’d used Freddy down at the bank since the beginning. He'd trusted him thus far. What was one more loan?

He shoved the paperwork into an envelope and stood up. Time to deliver it to the bank and cross his fingers that he wasn’t getting screwed over.

If he wanted to be a farmer, he didn’t have any other choice. And really, what else was he going to be? An employer would expect him to be able to read, so it wasn’t like he could go to work for someone else. 

And if he wanted to raise farm animals instead – like pigs; oh, how he wanted to raise pigs! – he’d have to figure out how to deworm them and feed them and how to buy a sow and how to breed them and when to take them to the butchers and…

Impossible. Just impossible. The idea of that much reading made his right eye twitch with panic.

He was a row crop farmer for life, and that’s all there was to it. He had no other choice.