Free Only The Beginning (Rockin' Country) by Laramie Briscoe

tip of her tongue to ask what he was doing, but he pulled his hoodie over his head, leaving him in a long sleeve shirt. “Here, wear this. The heater is good, but if you’re anything like me, you get cold and it’s hard to get warm again.”
    “I am the same way, so thank you.” She put the hoodie over her head and noticed that it swallowed her whole. The ends of the sleeves fell so far past her hands she could probably double them up, and she figured that when she stood it would probably look like a dress on her. Hannah couldn’t help but pull the neck of the shirt into her nose and breathe deeply. It smelled just like him, and she knew that if given the chance, she would take it with her when she ultimately had to leave.
    “You’re welcome, now I have to figure out how to get the fuck outta here.”
    He glanced over at her, a smile playing at the corner of his lips.
    “You said that just because you know I hate that word,” she accused.
    “Maybe. But it’s one of my favorite words, so we’re going to have to come to some sort of compromise about it.”
    Ignoring him, she checked his blind spot. “Do you know where you’re going?”
    “Kinda, and I’ve got the GPS,” he pointed to the satellite map on the console.
    “Are you one of those people who has to have complete quiet when it comes to finding your way out of a place you aren’t familiar with?”
    “Not really, but as soon as I make this turn, I’m on the main highway, so feel free to talk as much as you want,” he told her as he merged into traffic and took the exit that would take them straight to Omaha.
    “I meant to tell you something.”
    “Oh yeah?” He set the cruise control and moved to lean on the console, one hand on the wheel. “What’s that?”
    “I got myself a ‘Garrett’ file.” She pointed to her forehead.
    His dimples showed as he looked between her and the road. “You finally got enough information, huh?”
    “I did,” she nodded. “You’re persistent, you love your fans, you like apple pie moonshine, and you love your best friend more than he probably even knows.”
    On impulse, he reached over and grabbed her hand, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. “Thanks for listening to me by the way. I’m glad I didn’t scare you off. I was scared I would.”
    “I’m not saying that it didn’t scare me at all. I don’t like physical violence, and I didn’t like what I heard, but I understand that it was necessary. It takes a lot to scare me off of something that I want.”
    He liked the sound of that. “So do you want to hear about what we’re going to do tomorrow?” It was getting a little too serious between the two of them, and he wanted it to go back to a fun date.
    “You have something planned?”
    “Well,” he pulled his hand from hers and scratched the stubble on his cheek. “I wasn’t going to have one, but I made the mistake of opening my big-ass mouth to my mother. I told her I was taking a beautiful woman out for the weekend. Of course she knew it was you, and then she hounded me for a few hours about what I had planned for us to do. When I told her I didn’t have anything planned, she literally sent me a list of things that we can do in Omaha. I found something that I thought you would enjoy. Then I sent it to her for her approval.”
    Hannah laughed. “Oh my God, your mom and my mom could be BFF’s. Mine’s the same way. She’s texted me a few times since that picture of us showed up together.”
    “Your mom texts? That would be nice if mine learned how to do that, but no, she calls me at 5  a.m. , and then bitches when I’m not in the mood to talk.”
    “Oh yeah, my mom just learned how to do all the tech-savvy stuff like texting, Facebook, and Twitter. So she’s cute about wanting to use it all the time. She would rather do that stuff to show me that she can rather than call me.”
    “Hey, don’t knock that shit. At least then you can pretend like you didn’t get the text or