Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Second best sucked.
Second best was what I always seemed to be, yet never wanted to experience.
When had I started settling?
I shouldn’t have to settle…not with the man that I loved.
I’d walked into town, which had been interesting seeing as I’d had three goats and a dog with me the whole way. The first car I’d seen had been Evander’s brother, so I’d tied the goats and the dog up to the Jeep’s door handle, and I’d left him a note.
The entire fifteen-minute walk to the bus station, I’d cried.
Which had gotten me on the bus that was leaving to go pick up a set of passengers in El Paso.
The bus driver had been very nice and understanding, and he agreed to take me despite the fact that it’d been against company policy.
Though, I couldn’t tell if he gave in due to the tears that were still in my eyes, or the fact that I practically begged him to take me.
Either way, I’d gone, and had been out of town with just a freakin’ carry-on sized bag in tow, all within about an hour of Evander leaving.
The whole time, I’d refused to think about how that made me feel to have him leave without saying a word to me.
I’d told him I loved him, for God’s sake, and he’d just looked at me.
Looked at me.
His eyes hadn’t flared. His hand didn’t shoot out and wrap around my neck like he did when I’d said something he liked.
Hell, he hadn’t even blinked.
He’d just left.
That’d been it.
No dramatics. No overheated, angry words were exchanged.
One second he was standing in front of me, and the next he’d been walking down the sidewalk.
Then he’d stopped and my heart had swelled.
Only, when he’d turned around, it was to call out to his freakin’ dog.
Not that that dog wasn’t awesome…but it was his dog, goddammit.
And that’d been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
“What are you talking about…” I started to ask.
I tripped over something on the floor and went down hard.
My arms went out in front of me, and I fell…right next to a dead, decapitated chicken.
My face exploded in pain.
My stomach started to lurch, but I held it in check…just barely.
I was much calmer than I was the first time.
I stood up, or rather, I was hauled up by the waist by two big hands, and stared at the carnage before me.
“Oh, God.”
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
They were all dead.
Again.
Every last one of them.
Twenty-nine chickens.
Little Ethel that I’d gotten from the feed store was among them with her missing back right toe.
Martha Stewart, the Ameraucana with the crooked beak.
Donna, my Easter Egger with the twisted foot. It didn’t take me long to love my new flock. I’d already named them all. They were mine. All twenty-three of the new flock and my six chicks were dead.
The cursing followed, and I was turned in big, strong arms.
My face was pressed into a hard chest.
I was in shock.
The chest I was pressed against rumbled, but I didn’t hear what it was saying.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
“No,” I whispered brokenly. “No, no, no.”
Something slippery was on my hands, and I felt something hot on my face.
No, no, no, no.
I chanted it like it was my lifeline, thinking about how I’d just left only five hours ago.
All that damage had been done while I was supposed to be at home.
They’d been locked up in a fenced-in coop, for God’s sake!
“Bro, need you to come over here.”
Seven words that were enough to partially pierce through my shock.
Evander didn’t talk to his brother. Not willingly, anyway.
“Yeah, I’m at home. Or Kennedy’s house.”
I looked up and found Evander looking down at me, then he started to curse.
“Fuck me.”
Exactly nine minutes later, I was at the clinic in town, being seen by a very, very, very pregnant woman.
“What happened?” the woman asked.
Her nametag read: Hannah, R.N.
She moved, and the bulge of her belly brushed against my arm.
Her hand went to my forehead, and she lightly brushed my hair away from what I now realized was a large gash right above my eyebrow.
I was holding my wrist protectively against my belly, and I was sure I looked a sight.
Chicken blood, my blood, and a mixture of dirt and gravel stained my clothes.
Before I could answer, a knock sounded at the door.
“Hannah?”
I turned to find the doctor standing in the room, his eyes not on me or Hannah, but on Evander.
“Yeah?” Hannah asked distractedly.
“There’s a very anxious man in the waiting room saying that you aren’t supposed to be here. Something about how you’re pregnant and overdue, and you keep having false labor. He wants to be there if anything happens. False or not.”
She sighed and turned.
“I’m about to help you stitch this up, and then I’m headed out to go get my daughter from my brother’s house. Tell him that I’ll talk to him later and if the status of my pregnancy changes, he’ll be the first one to know.”