Page 3 of Why We Break

While Caroline is a beautiful girl, I’ve never been the slightest bit attracted to her.Her best friend on the other hand…my subconscious chimes.Shut the hell up, I remind myself again.

Before Theo even puts the truck in park, Caroline is throwing herself out the window and catapulting herself over to Hannah’s side. “Goddamn it, woman,” Theo yells at her from the open window. “I swear to Jesus you are going to give me a damn heart attack one of these days.”

Caroline just turns and blows him a quick kiss which seems to shut him up before turning back to her best friend and me. “God, I should have known you two would already be at each other’s throats. And wait, Hannah, where’s your shirt? And why are you wet?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later, but right now we have a farm to put back together,” Hannah retorts, pointing across the pasture where Seth is gesturing wildly at the runaways, trying to get them back through the opening in the fence.

Caroline lets out a chuckle before replying, “Right. Will and Theo, why don’t you help Seth get the cows back in? I’ll stay here with Han.”

“Yeah, you boys run along, and we’ll bring up the materials to fix the damn fence in a few minutes,” Hannah says, leaning down and patting the heifer at her feet. “We’ve gotta go check on Margaret anyway.”

“Where is my sister?” Theo asks, looking around the field where it’s quickly growing too dark to see without the glow of the headlights.

“My asshole little piggy broke his pen again and was headed toward his favorite mud puddle. She tried to stop him while I pulled the calf, and I’m sure she’s still running after him knowing how fast Leroy is. In the meantime, Seth started rounding up the other runaways,” Hannah replies without taking her eyes off the calf. “If you can’t tell, it’s been a freaking disaster of an afternoon. But thankfully these two look like they’re gonna make it, and Doctor Bozeman will be here as soon as she can to check them over.”

Caroline lets out a snort of laughter before shouting, “We’re coming Margaret! Come on boys, we’ll drop you at the fence before we check on her.”

“Babe, I love you, but do you really think I’m gonna let you drive my truck through this bumpy ass field after dark?” Theo asks with a smirk.

“Excuse me, what?” Hannah asks, getting ready to come to Caroline’s defense. “What is it, the 1800’s? I’m pretty sure we don’t have to have a dick to drive a truck!”

I hold in my burst of laughter, not wanting Hannah to have the satisfaction of knowing I think her desire to defend everyone around her can be amusing at times.

“I’m well aware of that, Hannah,” Theo says calmly. “You don’t understand. Sunshine, do you want to tell her or should I?”

Caroline’s face grows pink before she sighs. “Ugh, it was just the one time…”

“No, it was just the one time that you got us stuck in the pond because you didn’t believe me when I told you we were close enough to sit on the tailgate and see the fish. If I hadn’t had the tractor, I would have had to call a tow truck out there. And there was the time last week you insisted that we needed to go to the top of the property to see the sunset and hit fucking sixty in the driveway. I just think we have enough chaos around here tonight. We don’t need to pop an axel too.”

Hannah and I both try to hide our grins at Caroline’s shrug. “You’re such a grandpa. Fine, you can drop us off. But you’ll hear about this later, Cowboy!”

“Never doubted it,” Theo says with a smile before wrapping an arm around her shoulder and dropping a kiss to the top of her head, making eye contact with me over her head and rolling his eyes at his fiancée’s antics.

They lead the way to his truck, and he pulls her into the front seat, leaving Hannah and me with no choice but to slide into the backseat together. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but since Theo has bags of feed piled in the seat behind the driver’s side, there isn’t much room for us both. After a moment of staring each other down and waiting for the other to move, Hannah groans out. “God, I so do not have time for this today,” before sliding in and scooting as far from me as possible in the cramped space.

It only takes us a few minutes to make our way down the pasture toward Hannah’s farmhouse, but it feels like it takes forever. Every time Theo hits a bump in the field, Hannah’s tanned leg bumps mine and her exposed shoulder taps my arm. I pretend not to notice, but I most definitely do. On top of that, her vanilla perfume seems to fill every inch of the space, and I fight thinking too much about the times I drank in that scent like it was the air I needed to breathe…Not again, stop thinking about that, my subconscious reminds me again.

After what feels like an eternity, we pull up to Leroy’s pen, and Theo throws his truck in park. The girls scramble toward Margaret who seems to still be in an epic stare down with the wiggly pig.

Throwing her hands in the air, Hannah bellows toward her mischievous critter, “Leroy! We have more than enough runaways without your help right now! Come on!” before taking off, running full speed toward the mud, her feet sliding out from under her when she makes contact with the wet dirt and landing flat on her ass.

The rest of us fight to keep from laughing as she sputters and screams before we all lose the battle, Caroline and Margaret doubling over in giggles.

Have I mentioned, life with Hannah is always a damn adventure?

CHAPTER 3

HANNAH

God, this night is a disaster.

After spending thirty minutes wrestling my muddy pig and trying to get him back in his pen, I turn to my best friends who look just as exhausted as I feel. All three of us are completely covered in the red Alabama mud Leroy is so fond of from our ponytails to the shoes on our feet. As I click the lock into place and turn back to my friends, we stare at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Damn, ladies, when I told Theo I wanted to be dirty tonight, this wasn’t at all what I had in mind,” Caroline says, reaching out to steady herself with the gate beside us.

Margaret shoots Caroline a disgruntled look before saying, “Babe, you know I love you and I think you two are perfect together, but I really can’t deal with hearing any more about my brother’s sex life. After I almost walked in on y’all last week when I came to grab my backup mixer from the house, I think I’ve hit my quota for the month.”

I look at my best friend who has the decency to look slightly embarrassed before we burst into laughter again. “Sorry, Marg, I’d say I’ll try to tone it down, but I don’t think I mean it.”

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