Chapter 3
If we date, there isn’t such a thing as a breakup. We’re too old for that. If your love runs out, we can use mine. I’ll hotspot you.
— Brecken’s secret thoughts
brECKEN
Heart pounding, I watched the gorgeous man go and wondered what in the hell had just happened.
“He’s your brother?” I asked.
The owner sighed. “It depends. Did he make you mad?”
I snickered. “No.”
“Then yes, he’s my brother,” she grumbled. “He’s been telling me to get rid of that girl for years. But he seriously has no idea how hard it is to find good help. He has no problem with that, because the people that work with him want to impress him. These people”—she gestured toward the coffee shop behind her—“they’re here because they are just starting out at the job life. They have no experience yet, or if they do, they have no ambition in life. No one takes a job like this seriously.”
“I work with high schoolers,” I admitted. “But I can tell you that this new generation that’s coming through the high school right now, they’re a bit better than the previous years.”
“Oh, that’s a good sign.” She set my latte in front of me and said, “What kind of coffee for your brothers?”
“Four black coffees,” I said. “Large.”
“Done.” She smiled. “I’ll bring them over to you.”
I smiled and said, “How much?”
“On the house.” She shrugged. “We owe you one, Brecken.”
I wasn’t surprised the owner knew my name.
I came here almost every single day after work.
She’d been here the day that I’d had my world shattered with Rupert, too.
She’d seen the devastation and had consoled me with coffee and dairy-free cookies.
I’d liked her ever since.
“Thank you, Milena.” I smiled.
I headed back over to my brothers, who were dwarfing the small tables that filled the tiny café space of the coffee shop.
“Was it milk?” my oldest brother, Ryler, asked.
“She quit before she could tell me,” I admitted. “Or she was fired. I’m not really sure what happened there.”
“She was shit anyway,” Bronc admitted.
I sighed. “I know.”
“What’s on your agenda this week, Breck?” Holden asked. “Tibbs and I want to know if you want to go fishing with us.”
My brows rose to my hairline. “Are you telling me that you’re actually taking some time off of work?”
I had four brothers and two sisters.
We were a family of seven belonging to two of the best people in the world, Cane Sweat and Reba Faith Sweat. Daddy was a bull rider and was on the circuit since he was a baby and his own dad had hauled him around from rodeo to rodeo.
Dad had caught the bug and had devoted his life to it, even taking Mom along for the ride when they met at a rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
They married fast and produced kids faster.
They’d produced four boys first: Ryler Hughes, Bronc Kash, Holden Tru, and Tibbs Thomas.
But it wasn’t until the first girl was born, me, Brecken Navy Sweat, that Mom and Dad started to settle down.
They found a house in rural Texas and had started raising bulls for a living instead of Dad riding them.
Over the next couple of years, Mom and Dad had two more girls, JJ—Judy June—and McCoy Mariah.
And though we all loved our parents to death and thought they were the greatest parents ever, none of us fell in love with their rodeo life.
So the moment we were all eighteen, Mom and Dad started traveling with the rodeo again, leaving us the property and some cash.
As my brothers turned eighteen, all of them joined the military.
As for my sisters and I, we’d all taken different paths.
I was a high school teacher. JJ was a court reporter. McCoy, the one to never leave, had taken over the farm.
When my brothers had gotten out of the military, they’d started a construction company.
But not your normal construction company.
A construction company that specialized in building fortresses. Places that not even God could break into.
Their business was booming, and it was amazing to me that people wanted houses like the ones that my brothers built.
But I had a feeling there was more to it than construction.
They just didn’t want me too far into their business.
Which I allowed.
I wasn’t one to insinuate myself into things.
I was more lackadaisical. If they wanted me to know, I’d know.
“No McCoy or JJ?” Holden asked.
“Nope,” I said. “JJ is on a case today.”
“Shocker, she’s actually working for once,” Tibbs grumbled.
I laughed. Tibbs was right, though.
JJ had crazy hours. She barely worked and she made way more than me.
If that wasn’t a great job, I didn’t know what was.
JJ was like the wind. She went wherever life carried her. She was what you would call a free spirit. She lived, laughed, loved, and ran.
Then again, mine gave me three months off during the summer, so mine wasn’t half bad, either.
“McCoy couldn’t get out of her chores?” Bronc questioned.
“McCoy is McCoy,” I said. “I told her about the meet-up, but you know how she is.”
If there was something she was supposed to be doing, she might be doing it. Or she might be fishing.
There really was no telling. The farm came first but if she could fish, she was at the pond.
That was Mom coming out in her, though.
“Figures.” Ryler laced his fingers behind his back. “How’s school going with the asshole back?”
“It’s going,” I said. “Luckily, he’s not the principal anymore.”
“Can’t believe they were forced to let him back in.” He shook his head. “Have you seen Jolessa?”
“Not yet,” I grumbled, “but I’m sure that I will.”
The school board had filled Jolessa’s previous position as art director.
When they’d gone to court and won their jobs back—as well as had all charges against them dropped for indecency with minors—the school had been forced to reinstate them or risk even more legal ramifications.
So the beginning of this semester, after everything had happened last February, they’d come back.
But not to the jobs they left.
Jolessa was teaching art, and Rupert was teaching science.
I was teaching history in between them both.
This was going to be so much fun.
As it was, I didn’t see it or them lasting long.
The parents that knew about the issues at hand wanted their kids nowhere near the old principal or his flame.
I didn’t blame them.
So the kids were pulled from their classes, one by one, since the semester’s schedule was released.
“As of right now,” I said to my brothers, “I think Rupert has a whopping six students in his class that don’t know—or their parents don’t care—about what he did. Jolessa is teaching art, and she has eight students.”
“He should have no students, the sick fuck,” Milena said as she set four large coffees down. “I can’t believe the school let him back in with children.”
“Technically.” I rolled my eyes and used air quotes. “He wasn’t being indecent. The children weren’t supposed to have access to a locked office.”
“Whatever.” Milena rolled her eyes. “Gotta go.”
“She’s hot,” Tibbs said.
“She’s pretty,” I agreed. “And has a very scary brother.”
“We worked on his house when he first moved here,” Ryler said. “Don’t tell anyone that, though. We signed an NDA.”
“Scary and needs a fortress,” I confirmed. “Why are y’all going fishing this weekend?”
“We all are,” Bronc added. “It’s a fishing tournament.”
“Y’all don’t do tournaments,” I pointed out.
“Not usually, no,” he agreed. “But we do when all the bigwigs of Dallas want you to go.”
“You gonna show them up with your fishing skills?” I teased.
“I’m not going there to piss them off. We’ll keep the smaller ones and release the rest back,” Ryler grumbled.
My brothers were good at fishing.
They knew the lakes around here like the backs of their hands.
They’d grown up on the lakes because Dad was always gone, and they had nothing better to do but to tear it up on the lake every weekend.
But they hadn’t fished in a while, and they may be rusty.
I, on the other hand, was still just as good as ever.
“Isn’t it a little cold to have a fishing tournament?” I asked.
“Yes,” Bronc said. “But that is one of the points of this tournament. To see who can stay out in the freezing cold and fish without bitching. Or whatever. I’m not sure. But they know it’s cold. And they might catch less fish.”
“I’ll go, but only if you let me choose the music,” I teased. “And you don’t complain when I start stealing your body heat.”
“Deal,” Tibbs said. “We need at least one girl for the team.”
“Then I’m your girl,” I said as I looked at my watch. “I gotta go, or I’m going to be late for school. This family meeting was fun. We should do it more often.”
My brother patted me on the back. “Love ya.”
I reluctantly left, feeling the gurgle of my stomach the entire way to school.