The Heartbreaker I Adore (When In Waverly 2)

“You big scaredy-cat!”

“Hannanah, I will save you from a burning building—obviously, I’ve already done that once, kinda—and I will fight a grown man for you, but do not ask me to save you from a snake. Okay, if I really have to, I will, but I might pee my pants doing it.”

“I had no idea you were so gallant, Seth. Is this how you woo all of the ladies?”

“Not all of them. Just one,” he says. My heart sinks a little as I wonder who she is.

He keeps my shoulders gripped in his hands as we slowly step to the side, still looking at where the sound is coming from. A second later, a small kitten pounces out of the grass, followed by another and another. I gasp in excitement.

“Seth, they’re kittens. Look at their cute furry bodies!” I say as I turn to face him. I walk over to them to see if their mama is anywhere around. I don’t see her anywhere, and they rub up against my legs, making sad mewing sounds. “I think something happened to their mom,” I say.

Seth begins backing away and shaking his head. He knows where this is going. “No, Hannah. No, no, no.” What’s he going on about? I’m not asking him to keep them. I’m keeping them. They’re adorable. The absolute cutest. I want to put little bows on all three of them. I pick one up, hold it close to my face, and give Seth the biggest pouty face I can manage. “Seth, how can you say no to this precious little thing?”

“Hannah, it’s probably covered in fleas. Put it down.”

“I will not! We can’t abandon them. They’ll probably get eaten without their mom to protect them.”

“It’s the circle of life…” I stop listening to his protests and scoop the other two up as well. I lift the hem of my shirt and create a little pocket for them to sit in. “You cannot be serious. Colby is not going to let you keep them in his house.”

“I can’t think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow,” I say, channeling my inner Scarlett O’Hara. She never let anyone tell her what to do. Granted, she did make some truly horrible decisions, and she was a downright awful human being. Look at how many people she slapped throughout the movie. I tried to count once, but there were so many I lost count. But she knew what she wanted, and she went for it. There is something to be said about her tenacity.

“Colby’s going to kill you when he finds these things in his house,” Seth continues to argue.

“Then you’ll know who to tell the police to look into when I go missing. Tell my mama I want peonies on my grave,” I quip. That was a little dark. What if Seth doesn’t like dark humor? He eases my mind a moment later with a booming laugh. He watches me as I struggle to keep all three kittens contained in my shirt. His gaze heats as it rests on my partially exposed belly. I lower my shirt a bit, and he clears his throat and redirects his eyes.

“Fine. Let me take one, then,” he says. He takes hold of one of the kittens, but its claws are clinging to my shirt. It thrashes its body around in protest of being taken from its new, cozy home. “You can keep Crazy, there. I’ll take this one,” he says as he grabs a calmer kitten. This one goes to him willingly and cuddles up on his chest with soft purrs. He rubs the kitten’s tiny head, and as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, I know he’s already falling in love with it. The gentle smile on his face gives him away.

“I think it likes you,” I say with a grin.

“Well, yeah. It’s me,” he says. So humble.

I roll my eyes and add, “And you like it, too.”

“Nope. Don’t think so,” he says in a firm voice that makes me want to taunt him more.

“Look at you! You have hearts in your eyes.”

“Hannanah, I have never had hearts in my eyes. Never. Now, if you want help carrying these creatures all the way back to town, you better zip it!”

I mime like I’m zipping my lips and throwing away the key, but I can’t stop the giggles from escaping.

We arrive back in town two hours later, looking like we got into some kind of bar room brawl out in the Old West. The kittens collectively got tired of their makeshift homes in our t-shirts and tried to claw their way out to escape. After the third incident, Seth wanted to let them go find their own way in the world…death. He wanted to let them escape and die.

After my two tried to run off, we stood arguing for a moment until I took off in a run after them. I tripped over a branch in the road, fell, and scraped up my legs. Seth insists that it was just a stick, but that thing was huge, okay? When Seth tried to help me up, his kitten attempted to escape but ended up falling onto my face and embedding its sharp claws into my forehead and cheeks. So, really, Seth looks perfectly fine. I’m the one who looks like a crazed maniac.

It’s Saturday evening, so of course, town is bustling with people when we walk in all haggard and bedraggled. We run into Millie and Jameson as they’re leaving a restaurant, and Millie stops in her tracks and grabs Jameson’s arm. Her eyes are bugging out of her face as she gives my face and legs a onceover.

“Hannah, what happened to you?”

“It was the cats.”

“What are you talking about?” Millie asks as she moves in closer and gets a look at the feral kittens finally sleeping in my shirt. Of course now that we’re in town and I have somewhere to put them, they calm the heck down.

“That’s not important right now,” Seth cuts in. “Jamesy, Shelby is broken down outside of town. She’s all alone.”

“Who’s Shelby?” Millie asks, looking around at all of us.

“Shelby will be fine. I have a very expensive antique bookshelf sitting in a trailer where anyone could walk up and take it.”