My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Woodpile
The trucks came up the hill road on the first Saturday in March, ten of them, one behind another.
Cedar posts were stacked in every bed.
I stood at the top by the woodpile with Pfeffer's reins in my hand and watched them come.
The pyre was the size of a small barn.
My hands had been stacking mesquite and oak limbs on it since January, twelve feet high and a good twenty across.
A hollow in the middle held the kindling.
It had never held cedar.
The men who drove the trucks were the husbands and sons of the sixteen women in the church hall.
They got out in their good work hats and nodded to me, one after another, and did not say a word.
Each of them took a post from the bed and carried it to the pyre.
Each post had a brand burned into the butt end, a ranch brand I had seen on a hundred gates.
There were forty posts, and forty brands.
They laid them on the pyre side by side, around and over the stacked oak, a ring of cedar under the open sky.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
← Chapter 20 · All chapters · Chapter 22 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend