Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
But I saw it. Saw him.
His hands were shaking.
They were shaking big-time.
Shit.
He said “okay” and “uh-huh” a couple more times as he dumped more clothing into his suitcase. And yeah, I listened the whole time. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Love you, Mama.”
His mom.
He was clutching my phone hard as he ended the call and stood there. He’d pulled his cowboy hat off at some point—this plain brown thing—and his hair was tossed all over his head, messy. I could see in the bedroom light that he was really tan from all his outdoor training, and he looked more muscular than I’d ever seen him. His torso was lean and endless, his shoulders so broad in person, those strong arms lined with ropey muscles; it caught me off guard.
But his face….
It reminded me again of how long it had been since I’d last seen him in person. He was about to be thirty-five in a few months. I could faintly remember his seventeenth birthday when Mamá Lupe, my grandma and the person who had babysat Zac for years, had surprised him after football practice with his favorite tres leches cake—cake made with three different kinds of milk. She’d kept the picture of him blowing out the candles on that day, with an enormous smile on his face, on her mantle for the rest of her life. You could barely see me right beside his shoulder, all cheeks and chins, peeking at what I’d known was going to be some awesome cake, with Boogie on Zac’s other side.
I had kept the picture after we cleaned out her house years later. I had it sitting in a drawer in one of my nightstands. Me with one of my favorite people and a childhood friend who had grown up to be a superstar. I could tell my kids about it someday. I saved his life once, I could tell them too.
Well, for now, my job was done. I could go home, watch some more of the Turkish romance, and brainstorm my chocolate and banana recipe some more. I could call Boogie tomorrow and see how Paw-Paw was doing.
“Zac—”
“Could you drive me back home?”
I froze.
He wanted me to drive him? When he had a house full of people?
Blue eyes met my own, filled with worry and distress and probably a dozen other emotions I didn’t know how to classify or what to do with.
“Please?” Zac asked in a quiet voice that snuck straight into the place inside of me that had managed to hold on to the love I had for Zac even after so long.
The memory of him surprising me at my high school graduation, holding up a Mylar balloon and waving at me like a lunatic while I’d approached my family, hit me right then. He’d been living in Dallas at that point. I had been staying with Boogie’s parents for a couple months. He’d warned me via text that he wasn’t positive if he’d be able to make it or not, but he had.
It had been one of the last times we’d seen each other, but that was beside the point.
He had come when he didn’t have to, and now….
“Sure,” I told him, only a little reluctant, watching his face. I was surprised he still felt comfortable enough around me that he would ask me. And if I wondered again why he didn’t hit up one of the many people at his house—or whatever this place was—I kept the question to myself. It wasn’t my business, and he wouldn’t ask me unless there was a good reason.
His hand went up to his face, and he dragged the back of it across his forehead. How he could still look like an innocent boy and a full-grown man at the same time was beyond me. He swallowed hard as he quietly zipped his suitcase, giving me a tight smile afterward before gesturing toward the door.
He wasn’t crying, so that was a good sign, right? That meant nothing could be so bad. Maybe I should text Boogie and ask him once we traded phones.
I headed down the hall in silence, down the stairs the same way too. At the bottom of them, I stopped and glanced over my shoulder at the tight, strained face that was busy focusing on the floor. His cheeks looked hollow, that light pink mouth thin. “Do you need to talk to anyone before you leave? Or kick everyone out or something?”
The man I had known looked up with eyes that were more distressed than kind at that moment, his forehead furrowed. “No.”
All right. He knew what he was doing.
I nodded before handing him his cell, which I’d stuck in my back pocket while he’d been talking to his mom. He took it with a dip of his chin, then handed mine over. We kept going, and I couldn’t ignore the stares from the strangers in the house as they watched Zac carrying his carry-on suitcase around and through them. If I’d expected some expensive luggage with initials and designer logos all over it, I would have been disappointed. His suitcase was black and looked like it had been around the world a couple of times.