Unfortunately in the process, I hadn’t been a good friend to Zac. I knew he’d been worried about me; it would have been the same if our shoes had been on opposite feet. I realized he still was worried about me.
Zoning out in the kitchen didn’t help anything, and I really had to dig in to manage to smile for him. “I’m not hungry yet, but thanks, Zac.”
He nodded a little reluctantly but didn’t press the issue as he faced the stove again. “What’d you do today? Eight miles?”
Planting my elbows on the table, I eyeballed his cast. “Yeah, and I did three at marathon pace,” I bragged. He’d run with me enough and cussed alongside me when we’d started adding marathon pacing to our runs. Zac knew it was hell.
As selfish as it made me, my disappointment had reached a level I didn’t know what to do with; the reality harsh and bitter. After everything that Zac and I had been through together, all the times we’d taken turns throwing up after we’d started hitting the seventeen-mile-long, slow, distance runs, the times one of us had had to help partially carry the other once we’d run out of steam thanks to training five days a week, all the aches and pains we’d shared… I was going to have to go on this journey on my own, without my closest companion.
The guy who had lost his favorite thing in the world and had let me force him into training for a marathon.
If that wasn’t friendship, I don’t know what was. It just made me feel more terrible about disappearing on him, even if it had just been because I didn’t want to drag him into the pit I’d fallen into, when now he had something else to contend with on his road to recovery and the rest of his career.
From the choppy sigh that came out of him, I already knew what he was going to say before it actually came out of his mouth.
“I’m so sorry, Vanny.”
And just like the other time he’d apologized for slipping off an icy curb by accident, I said the same thing. “It’s okay. I promise.” Was I slightly brokenhearted? More than slightly. Would I ever tell him that? No.
“It was stupid.”
The urge to rub right between my breasts was overwhelming. “It was an accident. I’m not upset with you.” My voice cracked and I had to swallow. “It’s just been everything. I’m fine, I promise.”
The expression on his face when he turned around said what his mouth didn’t: You’re not okay.
Was anyone ever totally okay though?
I found myself lowering my head to rub the back of my still sweaty neck. “You know you don’t have to stay here with me if you’d rather go back home, right?”
The original plan had been for him to go home right after the marathon, spend some time with his family, and then begin working out with his old college coach. Now? Well, I wasn’t positive, but I did know he was supposed to be moving out and he hadn’t yet.
Zac slanted me a look.
“What?”
“I’m not leavin’ until you do your damn marathon, all right?” he insisted.
“But you don’t have to, okay? I promise you have nothing to feel sorry for. If you change your mind and you want to go—”
“I’m not.”
Since when did we have three stubborn asses living at the house?
“But if you do—”
“I’m not. PawPaw can wait a week. He’ll probably outlive me,” Zac argued.
“If you want to stay, stay, but if you don’t want to, it’s all right. Okay?” I insisted too, trying my best to give him a reassuring smile.
He simply shook his head.
Just as he opened his mouth to say something, the doorbell rang and we shot each other a frown. “Did you order pizza?”
“No.”
I’d ordered a couple of my books that had gone to print a few days ago, but chose the free shipping option, so there was no way it was them. I shrugged at him and got up, walking slowly toward the door, trying to get myself to relax. When I glanced through the peephole, I took a step back and stared at the door blankly.
“Who is it?” Zac called out.
“Trevor.”
“What did you just say?”
“It’s Trevor,” I answered coolly, knowing he was already screwed by yelling. “Have you been ignoring his calls?”
“Maybe.”
That was a yes.
“I just won’t open the door then,” I said before there was a loud knock on the door.
“I can hear you!” Trevor bellowed.
I didn’t feel like dealing with this, now or a decade from now. “What do you want me to do?” I ignored the man on the other side of the door, all of a sudden not caring if he’d heard us or not.
Zac cursed from the kitchen and a moment later, his crutches hit the tile as he hobbled his way toward the front door. With a resigned sigh, he said, “I can get the door.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, even if inside I was kissing his feet for not making me have to put up with Trevor.
“Yeah.”
I took a step away. “Do you want me to stay down here?”
He hesitated for a moment before nodding. “I’ll take him into the living room so you can eat something.”
Nodding, I walked pretty damn quickly into the kitchen and busied myself pulling things out of the fridge to eat, despite still not being hungry, as Zac opened the door. I really tried to ignore them, but it was hard. Bits and pieces of conversation floated from the living room to the kitchen way too easily.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“What’s going on with you?”
“What am I supposed to do with you when there’s shit floating around the Internet about you falling outside of a club and breaking your foot?”
“You think anyone’s going to want to take you now?”
Now that comment had me taking a step away from the stove and toward the hallway that led into the living room, ready to tell Trevor he needed to shut the hell up. But Zac didn’t need me defending him. He’d been avoiding Trevor for a long time anyway, and even if he knew what he wanted to do, and I knew, he needed someone else in his corner.
I just didn’t necessarily want it to be Trevor the douche, but it was his career, not mine.
Almost an hour later, the sound of someone clearing their throat had me looking up from where I was sitting at the breakfast table with my feet propped up on one chair, a movie playing on my propped up phone, and a plate I’d just finished scraping the last bit of rice off of.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go with Aiden to Colorado,” the manager commented from his spot leaning against the framing between the hallway and the kitchen.
I raised my tired gaze to his and shook my head. “I couldn’t. I have something I have to do here in a couple of days,” I explained, purposely leaving out what happened to Diana and my run. He didn’t need to know, and what would he do anyway? Give me some half-assed apology I didn’t believe? “There’s no point in my flying back and forth,” my dry, monotone voice added on. Plus, it wasn’t like Aiden had invited me. He’d barely wanted to talk about it each time I’d brought it up.
The snicker that came out of him made me straightening my back. “He could afford it.”
And there it was. I blinked at him. “I make my own money, and I’m not going to waste mine or his.”
“You sure about that?” He had the nerve to raise an eyebrow.
Could he not tell this was the last thing I wanted to do? “Yes, I’m sure. You want to check my bank account?” I’d already had to send in copies of my bank account information to the government to prove I could support Aiden and me—in a much less lavish lifestyle, but I could if push came to shove, at least the government thought so.
Trevor made a small noise in the back of his throat that had me leveling my gaze at him.
I didn’t want to talk to him; now he was just downright pissing me off. “Is that what this is about? Do you think I’m here to blow all of Aiden’s money? Did you think I was trying to win him over or something?” I asked slowly, carefully trying to finally understand what it might be about my personality that had made him so hostile from the moment I’d started working for him.