“No, sister.Bree.”
Oh God.
Oh no.
Crap.
“I think they dated awhile,” Abigail said.“I also think Bree never heard the word ‘no’ in her life.Men bending over backward, kissing her ass.Women wanting to occupy her orbit in hopes of castoffs, but instead finding she wasn’t recruiting mean girls, she just was a mean girl.I never liked her.She’s beautiful, I’ll give her that.And she knows it.After the whole thing went down with Hutch, though, people started calling her Caroline.”
“Caroline?”
“You heard Outkast’s song ‘Roses’?”
Holy hell.
I laughed but said, “Yikes.”
“Yeah.She keeps her head low now.And there’s a reason why.Hutch rocked her world by seeing through her, getting shot of her, and she didn’t like it.She also didn’t want to lose him, and she thought she could teach him a lesson.Gossip gets exaggerated, but I heard one story where she texted himone hundred timesin a singleday.”
I’d had a taste of this, nowhere near as bad, so I was feeling nauseous, listening to the fact Hutch had endured it.
But Abigail wasn’t done.
“She’d pitch up at his place just to yell at him.He’d be sharing a drink at The Hole or The Halfway with Doc Riggs or Jaeger Rhett, and she’d turn up and give him shit.This went on for months, with things escalating, until she somehow got wind he was at the feedstore.And this isn’t exaggerated.There were witnesses.She laid into him.Followed him around the store, shouting at him.All that ‘Who do you think you are?’and ‘You think you’ll do better than me?You’llneverdo better than me,’ nonsense.”
Gross.
Abigail continued, “Word is, he didn’t even glance at her.Just bought his dog food, put it in his truck and got in.The problem was, he’d backed into a spot, behind which was the store, and she stood in front of his grille, shouting at him through the windshield.This went on alongtime.He couldn’t leave.Eventually, the cops were called, by Hutch or someone else, I don’t know.They took her away.What I do know is, after that, Hutch slapped a restraining order on her.”
“Did it stop?”
“Word got round, some of that word got back around to her, it penetrated her Pretty Girl forcefield, that and the fact she could suddenly no longer snap her fingers and bring a man to heel.So yeah.It stopped.That was a couple of years ago, though, and small-town folks have long memories.I can’t know, but I don’t think she’s even had a date in all that time.I’m thinking that’s why she keeps her head low.”
“That would be why,” I muttered, upset for Hutch that he had to go through that.
And not insignificantly, maybe understanding why he was Mr.Grouch.Why he was a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am, get-your-orgasm-and-go kind of guy.
Maybe even why he extended his peace offering yesterday.
In the time in between, I’d proved I wasn’t a psycho.
This didn’t anger me.
It wasn’t only women who men tore through, making them cautious, distrustful, which in turn made any new folks, romantic or not, but especially romantic, have to stand the test of time and prove themselves.
Men experienced that too.
And it sounded like Hutch sustained a wallop of it.
I hated that, and the strength with which I hated it stunned even me.
But I did.
I wanted to find this Bree bitch and punch her in the throat.
I told myself this was because he won Emma her teddy bear and made Liam’s year by offering him a private tour of the sanctuary.
And I knew it was that.
