Free Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) by Aubrey Gross

The book sounded like one her kids would enjoy and that would engage their imaginations, and the idea to bring Matt in would definitely impress at least some of her students. Talk about a great discussion on how fiction often mirrors real life.
    Her fingers itched to write down notes and ideas, but Jenn forced herself to take a mental step back. First, there was no guarantee that Matt would remotely agree to this. Second, by the time her classes got around to reading the book he might not be around anymore. She didn’t know much about brain injuries, but common sense dictated that they weren’t something to mess around with. His head looked like it was healing, but from the little she did know, that didn’t mean he wasn’t still having concussion symptoms.
    Besides, according to Twitter Matt’s career was all but over anyway.
    Not that she believed that, and she certainly didn’t think Matt believed that. The rumors, however, weren’t pretty, and if she were a betting woman she would venture that the very public speculation about his future was a big part of the reason why he’d been acting so weird here lately.
    And dammit, she really didn’t want to empathize with him at all, but she couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be to live your life in the spotlight like that, and to have every little thing dissected by people who acted like they knew everything but who really knew nothing. She certainly didn’t want to admit that she’d been following the tweets and the speculation, but for some reason she hadn’t been able to look away.
    Something about Matt simply got under her skin and piqued her curiosity.
    She hated every second of it.
    Annoyed with herself, she squeezed the bridge of her nose and sighed. Here she was, thirty-two-years old and acting like a twelve-year-old with a crush. It was pathetic.
    “Get your shit together, McDonnell, and get back to lesson plans.”
    Determined, she went back to her lesson plan research and managed to push Matt out of her thoughts and immerse herself for the next hour, until her cell rang, bringing her back to the here and now.
    Mom .
    “Great.”
    She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, prayed for patience and hit the green icon.
    “Hi, Mom.”
    “I didn’t interrupt you, did I?”
    “Kind of, but I needed a break anyway. What’s up?”
    “Oh, nothing much. Your dad watched a YouTube video earlier on charging your battery with a chainsaw, so now he’s out at the truck with the chainsaw seeing if it works.”
    “Um, is that safe?”
    “Of course it is! You take the blade off and wrap a fan belt or something around it and hook it up to something under the hood and it’s supposed to charge the battery.”
    Images of her father electrocuting himself danced in her head.
    “Well, if it works, great, I guess.”
    “Oh! And we also got our new composting toilet installed.”
    Fantastic. Just what she wanted to talk about.
    “It’s great. Your sister complains about having to stir it, but I keep telling her it’s a part of her science project for the next few months.”
    Only Rebecca McDonnell would consider stirring crap inside a composting toilet to be a suitable homeschooling project. Jenn could only imagine how thrilled her fifteen-year-old sister, Lacey, was about that. Lacey who should be getting her learner’s permit and dating boys rather than stuck out in the middle of nowhere with their crazy prepper parents.
    “Oh! And I bought you some more MREs. You should get them today or tomorrow. You do have your BOB ready, right?”
    Jenn tried to remember where the BOB—or bug out bag—her parents had given her four Christmases ago was. She vaguely remembered shoving it into the back of the closet of her spare bedroom, along with the other dozens of survival supplies her parents had sent her over the years. At this point the closet was beyond full and the buckets of Meals Ready to Eat were lined along one wall and slowly beginning to climb up it.
    “Yeah,