2. Will
CHAPTER 2
WILL
O ne thing about Hannah Scott—her life is anything but boring.
Seth, my roommate and best friend, and I had been debating walking over to Maracas, the local Mexican restaurant, for dinner when Caroline called us to come help. Seth teaches construction and coaches baseball at Springside High, where I’m the head football coach, and he’s been my closest friend since I moved back to Springside after college.
As soon as we got the call, we jumped in Seth’s truck, bringing Margaret along for the ride since she lives in the apartment next door. It only took us about ten minutes to make the drive to Falling Oaks Farm from downtown, but it looks like we’re here just in time.
As I take in the roaming cattle, the broken fence, the heifer and calf still lying at her feet, the setting sun, and the apparent runaway pig—not to mention the fact that Hannah’s in a sports bra, soaking wet from head to toe, and dirty from pulling the calf—all I can do is shake my head at her antics.
“Damn, Han, what’s got you all wet and bothered?” I tease with a smirk, offering her a hand while Seth takes his old Ford off toward the break in the fence, and Margaret jumps on Hannah’s ancient Polaris toward Leroy.
“Hmm, I know it’s unusual for you to have a woman dripping at your feet, so I wouldn’t expect you to know what to do about it anyway,” she snaps, refusing to take my hand and pushing herself up to her full almost six-foot height.
I roll my eyes at her and try to ignore how tanned her long legs still look, despite the fact that it's fall, and we’ve been back to work for months. I wonder if they would feel as good wrapped around me as they did the time we — damn it, Will — you cannot be thinking about that right now, my subconscious screams.
Shaking my head to get rid of the thought I turn my attention back to the heifer lying at our feet. “You know you’re gonna need to keep an eye on these two throughout the night to make sure they’re okay, right?
“Really? I had no idea, Doctor Will. Pretty sure you’re forgetting that I’m the one who taught you all of this farm shit. Not to mention, I’ve lived on this freaking farm for more than ten years. But by all means, please continue to mansplain how to take care of my animals, though.”
Hannah turns and twists the water spigot on the fence line beside us, before leaning down to clean her hands and arms as she continues to glare at me in contempt.
I’m getting ready to snap back with an equally sarcastic response when Theo’s black truck races down Hannah’s driveway. Theo’s one of my closest friends, but it definitely hasn’t always been that way. I’d been ready to beat his ass when he insulted Caroline and the previous fire chief Huey on his first day of work. Huey’s always been a bit of a stand-in father for me after I caught mine having an affair with a woman named Sandy during my sophomore year of high school. If it wasn’t for Mayor Brian coming to me as soon as it happened and asking me to bring Theo on as an assistant football coach to help get the town back on his good side, I’d probably still hate him. But he's long since apologized for his misstep, and outside of becoming a part of our group, I have to admit he’s a hell of a coach.
I chuckle when I see Caroline’s entire chest hanging out the window waving at us while Theo gestures for her to sit her ass down and wait for him to stop. She and Theo couldn’t be more opposite, but somehow they work.
Caroline and I have been friends since high school. When I walked into the locker room and heard the Austin brothers talking about sneaking up to her place while her parents were out of town to force her into going out with them, I’d come unglued. I knew her parents were always leaving her home alone—Caroline called them free spirits, but I just called them assholes. Either way, I instantly felt like she needed someone to protect her.
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?