His eyes are practically dancing as he stares at me. “This year, we collected all the eggs and didn’t let them nest.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“We don’t do it every year. We probably will next year, though, to replace the layers who are too old to lay.”
I stare at the chickens in each small tub, watching as they jump and chirp and tilt their little heads. They’re honestly toodamn adorable for words. “Can’t believe they grow up to be little dinosaurs.”
“They sure do,” Hunter says, chuckling.
“Can I have some?” I ask, turning to look at him.
His eyebrows shoot up. “You want baby chicks?” He considers it for a second. “Yeah, we could do that. We’d just need to get stuff for a brooder.” He pauses, waving toward the containers. “Kinda like what they have set up here. We don’t usually raise them ourselves. We let the hens do it all. It’s not a big deal, though. You sure you want some?”
I open my mouth to say yes and then shake my head, my mood dimming some.
“Whoa, hey,” Hunter says, tilting my face up to look at him. “What happened?”
I shrug. “It would be nice to have some, but that’s good-day me talking. Bad-day me will probably come back sooner rather than later, and I don’t want something relying on me to take care of it.”
Hunter brushes his thumb along my jaw, his smile so soft and adoring that it almost knocks the breath right out of me. “I’ll be here, sweetheart. If Bad-Day Theo shows up, I’ll take care of the babies.”
“I can’t put that on you,” I say, shaking my head again.
“Chicks are easy. Clean their bedding once a day, and make sure they have food and water. They’re pretty self-sustaining. C’mon, gorgeous. Let me buy you some chicks. Theo’s first farm animals.”
That draws a laugh out of me. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Inhaling a deep breath, I nod. “Okay, yeah, if you’re sure.”
My hesitance from before is replaced with giddy excitement as Hunter tells me about the different breeds available, explaininghow some get bigger than others and some lay green eggs and some lay brown.
“I want some that lay green eggs.”
He points to one of the far containers. “Then you want these. Let’s go get all the stuff we need for their brooder, and we’ll grab the chicks last, before we leave. They need to stay warm, so we don’t want to get them until we’re ready to head home.”
I nod. “Okay.”
Hunter grabs one of the big flat carts, and we go through the store together, loading it down with big bags of feed. And then when he’s done with that, he fills a giant tub with food and water buckets, bedding, a heat lamp, and a thermometer.
“To make sure the temp stays good,” he says, showing it to me before he puts it in the tub with everything else.
My stomach is flipping, and I want to kiss him so badly I almost can’t stand it, but I figure I better wait. At least until we get outside.
“Where are we going to put them?” I ask while we’re waiting on an employee to come get them for us.
“They’ll go in the barn we had Lila in. And then when they’re big enough, we’ll integrate them with the rest of the flock.”
I bite my lower lip. “Are the bigger chickens going to be mean to them?”
“Maybe,” Hunter says. “But that’s what they do. They’ll figure out their new pecking order, and it’ll be all good.”
I’m so excited that I feel like I might explode. Over some chickens. Ridiculous.
After we buy our chickens and get back to the truck, I’m grinning from ear to ear. It feels strange on my face. Like it belongs to someone else and not to me. And the second I climb into the cab, carefully placing my new babies in the passenger seat, I turn to Hunter and slam my mouth onto his.
He startles. He seems to always do that when I kiss him like this. But it doesn’t last long before he’s threading his fingers into my hair and pulling me closer.
