“What are you doing?” His voice was raspy and low.
Hand still over my chest, I panted. “Somebody broke a light bulb.” I gestured toward the drunk Texan on the couch oblivious to everything and everyone around him at that point.
I eyed Aiden, his sleepy face, the wrinkled white T-shirt he had on, the thin lounge pants I know he’d thrown on to come down the stairs, because in the two years I’d been responsible for doing his laundry, I’d only washed them a handful of times, and I immediately felt guilty. The big guy usually went to bed at the earliest possible time he could to ensure he got a minimum of eight hours of sleep, and here I’d been vacuuming, waking him up.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I whispered, even though I was sure I could have walked around the living room banging pots and pans and Zac wouldn’t have woken up.
He shrugged one of those big shoulders, his eyes going from me to his now ex-teammate. I didn’t need to look at Zac to know he was more than likely passed out on the couch by that point, especially not when Aiden’s stray gaze stayed on the spot behind me. “How much did he have to drink?” he asked, yawning.
A pang of guilt hit my belly. “Too much.” As if to explain, I added, “I just wanted to get him out of his room for a little while. I thought it would be good for him.” Maybe too good for him, but it was too late to take the evening back by the time I figured getting shit-faced wasn’t the best thing for him to do.
To be fair, it had been a lot of fun.
A loud, rough snore ripped through the air and the sharp, sudden rumble of Zac snoring had me glancing over my shoulder. “I need to go grab something. I’m sorry if I woke you. “
Before he could say anything else—or not say anything else—I hauled ass upstairs and into Zac’s room, internally cringing at the mess he’d made since he began locking himself in, and the smell, it was bad. Real bad.
Grabbing the corner of the wrinkled comforter on the bed and his pillow, I ran down the stairs and found Aiden standing next to the couch talking to Zac in a low voice and…
Was he patting the armrest?
“Here.” I handed over the pillow.
Aiden took it, his attention still on Zac, and set it alongside the armrest I’m pretty sure he’d been petting a second ago. “Lay down,” he ordered the drunk one in a quiet, no-nonsense voice that obviously left no room for argument to even someone who was mostly out of it.
Sure enough, Zac lay down without opening his eyes. His arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder cocooned into the couch cushions. I tossed the comforter over his long body and smiled at Aiden who was still standing over the couch, looking extremely, ridiculously serious at what was essentially us tucking a grown man in.
Zac made some funny kind of puttering sound that made his lips flutter, and I snorted. “He looks like a little kid, doesn’t he?” I whispered.
“He acts like a little kid,” Aiden grunted, shaking his head in total disapproval.
“What is he going to do now?” I found myself blurting the question out.
The big guy hummed. “What he should do is quit acting like the world has ended and get back to training so another team will pick him up later on in the season,” he stated. “What he’s going to do—I don’t know. If he waits too long, it’ll hurt his chances of getting another opportunity in the future. Every day we get older and our bodies can’t…” Aiden tipped his chin to the side and cast me a long look. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea. I think he’ll listen to you.”
“He’d probably listen to you more.”
That had me frowning at him at the same time I shoved my glasses further up my nose. “You think?”
His attention didn’t stray from the couch as he answered. “I know.”
I didn’t necessarily believe that was true, but okay. “I’ll try, I guess. The worse he’ll do is not listen to me, and it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.”
That had his head turning. “Are you talking about me?”
I pressed my lips together. “I wasn’t talking about you, but…”
“But?”
I kept my gaze on the wall away from Aiden. “You haven’t listened to me before, if you want to get technical.”
Aiden didn’t respond.
“A lot of times,” I added in a mutter.
Nothing. Okay.
I tipped my head toward the kitchen. “I was going to make a sandwich before I went to bed. Do you want one?”
“What kind?” he asked, like I’d offer him a turkey club.
Chapter Fourteen
“So how’s it going, living in sin?”
I gave an awkward laugh, shaking the wok in my hand at the same time. Uncomfortable laughs were what you got when you felt guilty. I still hadn’t told Diana that Aiden and I had gone to Las Vegas.
It was a damn miracle. She usually knew I started my period ten minutes after I did. We liked to celebrate another month of not being pregnant.
I could only think about two other things I’d ever lied to her about. Apparently, I liked to live life on the edge because I knew I was in for a reckoning the likes of which I’d never seen when she found out the truth. Because, at this point, I was in too deep and there was no way in hell I was going to admit what I’d done.
The biggest problem with lying to your closest friend was finding the right line to straddle. Enough truth to be believable but not enough of a lie so they could notice you were full of shit, which was exactly what I needed to find, so I went with diverting her attention by going for middle ground. “It’s going fine.”
“Fine? That’s it?”
“Yeah. Fine.” What the hell else could I say? While things between Aiden and I were better than they ever were, nothing amazing had happened. He lived his life and I lived mine. He was a busy guy; I’d always known that and nothing had changed. “The most exciting thing I’ve found out was that Aiden gets his groceries delivered once a week, and that he hired some lady who lives in Washington to answer his e-mails. Crazy stuff, huh?”
She went “hmm,” paused, and then asked, “Why does it feel like you’re lying to me?”
She could already tell. What the hell? And why was I surprised? “Because you’re crazy?” I offered, making a face into the phone in panic.
“Doubtful.”
“It’s more like a fact, but anyway, there’s nothing to tell you. We don’t see each other that much. The most he does is wave at me.” Sometimes he talked to me, but we didn’t have to be technical, did we?
“B-o-r-i-n-g.”
I groaned. “S-o-r-r-y.”
“Really? You don’t have anything juicy to tell me?”
“Nope.” I’d already worked for him for two years, if there was something bad to tell her, I couldn’t have told her anyway. I’d signed a non-disclosure agreement.
The disgruntled sound out of her mouth made me grin. “Fine. Are you going to El Paso this weekend after all?” she asked, already moving on, knowing if I hadn’t already told her something, I probably wouldn’t.