He scoffed. He scoffed so hard his nostrils flared and he shook his head, his eyes going everywhere except at me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I felt my blood rush away from my face, but I’d be damned if I walked back up to my room now. Sometimes facial features said so much more than words could, and I hoped the smart-ass smile I was giving him said exactly what I wanted it to say. Fuck you.
A sharp noise that could have been mistaken for a bitter laugh exploded out of Aiden’s mouth. “I’m not paying off your loans and buying you a house to have to put up with this, Van. If I wanted someone to nag at me, I would have gotten a real wife.”
Oh… hell… no.
Every drop of blood in my upper body went south. Ugly, hurtful words pinched my throat and I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even breathe.
I didn’t have to take this shit.
Standing there on the step, I nodded, my hands shaking. “You know what? You’re right. You’re completely right. I’m sorry I opened my fucking mouth. I’m sorry I gave a shit and started looking forward to you coming along with me.” And I was sorry I was blaming him for starting off a chain of events that spiraled downhill.
I really was being a wee bit of an asshole, but I couldn’t muster up enough fucks to give in that moment to let the situation go.
Clenching my hands together, I jogged up the steps with my suitcase in my bad hand and slammed the door shut behind me once I was in the room. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, staring around me at what suddenly felt like a five-year prison. If we weren’t already “married,” I’d pack my stuff up and leave.
But I’d signed the papers and made a promise to him. Five years. I won’t go anywhere until you’re a resident, I promise.
That was the difference between Aiden and me though.
I actually kept my word.
Dropping my bag on the floor, I scrubbed at my cheeks with my hands, trying to calm down. My eyes felt oddly dry. This hole the size of Crater Lake took residence where the important parts of my soul used to be. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to fucking cry.
I bent down to unzip my suitcase and took all the clothing out to wash later when The Wall of Asswipe wasn’t hanging around. That knot in my throat I’d gotten back at Diana’s seemed to swell back to its original size. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry even if the urge to was more overwhelming than it had ever been.
I was in the middle of sliding my suitcase beneath the bed a little more forcefully than was necessary when a knock rapped at my door, two taps too low to be Aiden.
Controlling the anger and the not-tears creeping around in my eyeballs, I called out, “Yes?”
“Van.” It was Zac.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?”
Taking off my glasses, I rubbed at my eyebrow bone for a moment with the meaty part of my palm and let out a shuddering breath. “Of course. Come in.”
Sure enough, Zac opened the door and slid inside my room, a funny, wary smile on his face as he closed it behind him. “Hi, darlin’，” he said in an almost delicate voice.
I gave him an equally wary smile, trying to suppress my aggravation with the guy downstairs, with my family back in El Paso, and the idiot known as my best friend in Forth Worth. I played with the sleeve of my hoodie again to make sure it was down to my wrist. “Hey.”
“I like your hair.”
“Thanks.” I probably would have liked the teal color a lot more than I did, in any other circumstance, but I was so pissed and disheartened, I couldn’t find it in me to care my hair was now like something straight out of Candyland.
“You all right?” he asked, moving to take a seat on the edge of my bed just a couple feet away from where I was kneeling.
Reluctantly, I kicked my luggage the rest of the way under the bed frame and got to my feet. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Shit. “You heard all that, huh?”
“I heard,” he confirmed with a blink of those wonderful blue eyes.
Of course he had. I’d been pretty much yelling toward the end. “He gets on my nerves so easily sometimes, I don’t understand.” I took a seat right next to him with a sigh.
“I know.”
“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
“I know.”
“Then he gets mad when someone is disappointed in him,” I grumbled at the floor.
“I know,” Zac agreed again.
“I didn’t beg him to go with me. I just mentioned it. I would have been fine if he’d said he was too busy.”
“I know.”
“Why is he such a pain in the ass?”
In my peripheral vision, Zac held out his hands. “The world will never know, darlin’。”
I snorted and shifted my gaze over to him finally. “No, probably not.” I nudged his elbow. “You wouldn’t have backed out on me, would you?”
“No way.” He nudged me back with his thigh, drawing my attention down to the reindeer print pajamas he had on. “Bad trip home?”
I hadn’t told him much about my family situation in the time we’d known each other. Besides a few casual mentions of how I wasn’t close to my mom, how much of a pain in the ass my sisters were, and possibly bringing up my foster parents in passing once or twice, I’d never gone into too much detail with Zac. But he knew enough.
Drawing my gaze up, it settled on the stubble he’d let himself grow out over the course of some time; he usually shaved that baby face every day. Light blue circles were nestled under his eyes and his cheeks looked hollower than they had two weeks ago, making me feel like a self-centered asshole. Some people had real things to worry about, and here I was losing it over people who didn’t care about me.
“Yes.” That was an understatement. I shook my head, bottling up the argument with Susie and her husband for the time being. “It sucked. A lot.”
Zac fed me a pity smile that I ate up. “Why do you think I haven’t gone back home?”
Ahh, hell. “I hear ya.” Tilting my head to look at him, I took him in. “I’ve been worried about you, you know.”
He made a dismissive noise in his throat. “I’ll be fine.”
How many times had I not said those exact same words to myself when it felt like the world was falling apart on me? Reaching over, I put my hand on his thigh. “Of course you’re going to be, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry or wonder what you’re going to do.”
That sandy head dropped back and his sigh seemed to fill my room. “I don’t fucking know, Vanny,” he admitted to me in a tired voice. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
Maybe I couldn’t fix the situations with Aiden, my sister, and Diana, but I could try to help Zac as much as possible now that he finally wanted to talk about it. “Do you still want to play?”
He chuffed. “Of course.”
That was easy enough. “Then you know what you’re going to do. You’re going to start training again, and you’re going to get your agent to find you another team to join. Maybe not this season, but at least next. No if, ands, or buts about it. Don’t give yourself another option,” I told him. “What about that?”