His snicker was soft and it made me laugh.
Rome hadn’t been built in a day.
“No? Okay. I’m going back to my room. Let me know if you talk to Zac though, would you?”
* * *
Two days passed and I didn’t see Zac once. I wasn’t sure when he ate because I never saw him, and if it wouldn’t have been for his car in the driveway and the occasional flush of the toilet from the bathroom adjacent to his room, I wouldn’t have known he was home.
I knocked on his door once, but he didn’t respond.
But by the third full day of not seeing him, I figured he’d had enough time to stew in his pot of pity. Finishing the two projects I’d assigned myself for the day, I headed across the hall to his bedroom and gave the door two raps.
Nothing.
So I knocked again a little harder.
Still nothing.
“Zac Attack?”
And nothing.
“I know you’re in there. Open up.” I pressed my ear to the door and listened. “Zac, come on. Open the door or I’ll pick the lock.”
No response.
“I know how. Don’t tempt me.” I waited a beat and then kept going. “I used to break into my boyfriend’s locker in high school.” Not necessarily my most mature moment, but it had come in handy a couple of times.
He wasn’t biting.
“Zac, buddy. Come on. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but let’s go get some Mexican food.”
The mattress creaked loudly enough for me to hear and I smiled.
“If you’re a nice boy, I’ll take you to do some two-step at that honky-tonk place you like. What do you think?” I tried to bribe him.
He definitely made some stirring noises. It took what felt like a couple minutes before he finally spoke up like I had hoped he would. He’d never say no to going to a country-western club. Which I guess worked out in his favor because if he had the kind of status that Aiden had, he wouldn’t be able to do that sort of thing without getting hounded and now wasn’t the time for that. In that kind of club, he wouldn’t stand out.
Then finally, he answered, “You’ll drive?”
“I’ll drive.”
“Give me an hour to get ready.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “It doesn’t even take me that long to put on my makeup.”
There was a pause and what sounded like his bed springs squeaking confirmed he really was moving around. “I gotta straighten my hair too, sugar. Gimme a break.”
I smiled at the door. “That’s my girl.”
* * *
“I hate to be the one to say this to you, but you need to go on a diet.”
Zac managed to take a step forward before he swayed so much most of his weight ended up on me. Again.
He was no Aiden, but he definitely wasn’t anywhere near underweight either. Good grief. I started panting as we took another two steps closer to the house, seriously reconsidering the big guy’s suggestion that I start doing some weight training. I’d been walking, jogging, and running nearly five days a week for the last two months so I could begin training for a marathon, but that didn’t prepare me for carting around Big Texas. I was planning on starting to do some cross-training soon but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
To make matters worse, like an idiot, I’d parked on the street like I usually did, but the difference was that I didn’t usually have a two-hundred-pound drunk man hanging off my arm for dear life.
Instead of drinking away his sorrows with margaritas like I’d originally suggested, Zac had gone straight for the Coronas. Many, many Coronas. So many I’d lost count even though my wallet hadn’t.
But I wasn’t going to say anything because the moment he’d arrived at the doorway to my room, dressed, I saw ‘devastation’ in the flesh.
Zac, who was normally a vision of health, vitality, and friendliness, looked like shit.
I didn’t comment, and I had to settle for smiling in his direction and giving him a slap on the butt as we headed down the stairs and toward my car for our evening. Sure enough, he hadn’t wanted to talk about getting let go from the team and instead he’d slapped on a somewhat bright smile after a few minutes and made every effort to have fun.
Up until he’d gotten wasted.
“Hey, hold on to the wall a second so I can get the door unlocked,” I ordered, poking him in the side at the same time I tried to angle him so he could grab ahold.
“Sure, Vanny,” Zac muttered, smiling at me dreamily, lips pressed tight, and his eyes closed.
I snickered, made sure he had one hand firmly planted on the wall, and then slipped under his arm. It didn’t take me long to unlock the door and turn off the alarm. With Zac’s arm over my shoulder again, I shuffled him three feet inside before he started tilting sideways, one clumsy foot in front of the other until he crashed into the side table next to the couch. The lamp on top teetered as Zac tried to right himself, but it lost the battle with gravity and clattered to the floor, the shade flying off, the bulb cracking into a thousand pieces.
Damn it.
I sighed. One, two, three. “All right. You’re done for the night, buddy.” Grabbing Zac’s arm, I led him onto the couch like he was a little kid. Opening them just as his butt hit the cushion, his eyes were glassy, wide, and so completely guileless I couldn’t even be irritated with him longer than a second. “Sit here.” He did. “Let me go get you some water, but don’t move, okay?”
He forced himself to blink up at me, totally dazed, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me even though he was obviously trying. He smacked his lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
Ma’am? It took everything inside of me not to crack up. “I’ll be right back,” I croaked, pinching my nose and taking a couple steps back to avoid the broken pieces of light bulb before heading toward the kitchen. I flicked on the lights, filled up a plastic cup with water, because I wasn’t about to trust him with glass, and grabbed the broom and dustpan from the pantry closet.
Zac sat on the couch where I’d left him, his boots kicked off in the middle of the room, and his butt scooted up to the edge. His eyes were closed.
But it was the big smile on his face that killed me.
This surge of affection filled my heart as I squatted down to poke him in the shoulder. The second he lazily cracked those blue eyes open, I held the cup of water toward him. “Drink up, buddy.”
He took the cup without argument, and I went over to the mess on the floor. I swept up what I could, poured the shards in a small cardboard box I’d found in the recyclable bin, and tossed it all into the trash. Taking the vacuum from the pantry, I pulled it after me and into the living room, where I moved the suction all over the floor just to be on the safe side.
I’d barely unplugged the vacuum and turned around to put everything back when I sucked in a breath and let out the girliest, most pathetic squeak in the universe. It wasn’t “ahh” or “eep. It just sounded, well, I’m not sure what it sounded like, but I would never take credit for it.
Aiden stood there, not even two feet away, literally cloaked in the darkness of the hallway like a damn serial killer.
“You scared the hell out of me!” My heart… I was going to have a heart attack. I had to slap my hand over my chest like that would help it stay in place. “Oh my God.”