I smiled at him.

He didn’t smile back.

I grabbed some sauces and let Zac carry the tray over toward the drink station. We each filled up our cups and took the table in the corner, farthest away from the front counter. I was going to be hurting soon. I’d make it worth it in the meantime, though. My stomach was grumbling.

I took a bite of my crunchy tacos and then said, “I’ll go with you if you want me to. I’ve only been to a haunted house once, and I closed my eyes the whole time, but it’ll be fun, right?”

Zac, who had his mouth full of chalupa, nodded. “Very fun.”

Liar. I had no problem with scary movies, but I did close my eyes from time to time—most of the time.

Speaking of doing things together. “Hey, have you watched the video I uploaded of us lately?”

He shook his head.

“It already hit four million views.”

Zac set his chalupa down. “You serious?”

I nodded at him and grinned. “Yeah. They went up like crazy over the last week. It’s been years since the last time I got that many views so fast. Everyone loved it.” Especially me. It made me smile the times I watched it. All right, I’d smiled the entire time I’d edited the video, but that was a different story. I just loved watching Zac talk and do everything in general.

Oh God, I was screwed and needed to stop thinking that way.

“Thank you again for doing it for me,” I added, giving him a smile I hoped was as appreciative as possible.

His own smile in response was big. “Mama and Paw-Paw watched it and loved it. Mama said I should do more with you.”

“Hey, whenever you want.”

“Whenever you want,” he insisted.

I couldn’t help but beam at him. “Deal. My subscriptions went up about ten thousand after the one I did with CJ and Amari.” That one had done really well too. “It went up another twenty after yours.”

“’Course they did, darlin’.”

“Your fans seemed to be super excited about it. Did you read any of the comments? One guy wrote that he’d never been a fan of yours before, but he was now,” I told him.

He grinned.

So I told him another one. “Another lady said you’re cuter in an apron than in your uniform.”

His smile widened. “What else you got?”

I thought about it for a second, thought specifically about a handful of comments that implied more or less the same thing. They loved our video.

SOMEBODY PLS TELL ME THEY’RE TOGETHER

Number one fan???! #dead #deceased

Get married already!!!!

I think I just died of cuteness overload. Zac Travis + The Lazy Baker = magic

ThE sExUaL tEnSiOn!!! AnOtHeR ePiSoDe PlEaSe!

I love you, Bianca, but please change the channel to THE LAZY BAKER AND ZAC TRAVIS SHOW. I need more!

Came for the baking, left needing to masturbate.

“Go read them yourself,” I said instead and decided to change the subject. “Everything going okay with the team? Sucks y’all lost the last game, but they could’ve put you in, so it’s kind of their fault.”

He gave me a long, long look as he chewed.

Oh God. They’d released him. Those pieces of—

“I’m gonna be startin’, Bibi.”

I dropped the packet of hot sauce I’d just torn open. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t look happy, which didn’t help convince me I’d heard him correctly. “I’m gonna be startin’. Fisher tore his ACL this mornin’ durin’ practice.”

Yup. I gasped and only barely managed to keep my voice down as I asked, “Are you serious?”

He nodded.

“Why don’t you look excited then, Snack Pack? I thought you’d be overjoyed. I’m overjoyed,” I whispered.

His pink mouth twisted to the side just a little, and I knew in that instant whatever had driven him to come over and get a huge hug was back in business. “I should be, you’d figure.”

Yeah, he should be.

Zac’s hand went up, and he fiddled with the short hair by his ear. “I’m just….”

“Nervous?”

His mouth twisted a little more. “Somethin’ like that,” he admitted. “Haven’t felt like this in a while, but so many things seem to be on the line now. Things that didn’t seem to be on the line before and….” Zac blew out a breath toward his food, and he seemed to eyeball his chalupa for a minute before he continued. “I’m lettin’ dumb shit I heard get under my skin. I should be excited, but I’m worried I’m gonna fuck this up too.”

“You’re not going to fuck anything up,” I told him as calmly as I possibly could.

“My last coach said I could fuck up a done deal if somebody left it alone with me long enough,” he said with a deceptively casual shrug. “I don’t wanna screw any of this up. I wanna do well. I always have, but it’s just different now. Now it feels like this could be it. Most of my life, Peewee, I’ve felt like I was missin’ somethin’—just this little somethin’ I can’t shake off no matter what.... Maybe it’s just me needin’ to really live up to what other people used to think of me, what they expected. I don’t wanna be a disappointment, to me or to anybody else.”

“You’re not a disappointment, Zac. You’re amazing. You’re tremendous. Some people are just assholes, and you shouldn’t listen to them. You know that. You’ve got this.”

“But what if I don’t?” he asked softly, still looking down at his food and breaking my heart. “What if I’ve lost it? What if I’m broken, like they said?”

I didn’t know who the hell they were, but I was going to light them on fire if I ever found out. It took every single thing in me to keep my voice calm, my face neutral. “You’re not, but if we have to, Snack Pack, we’ll go buy a lot of super glue then. Just to reinforce everything. Make sure you’re better than ever.”

His eyelashes lifted, and he settled those milky light blue irises on me. Zac didn’t say anything or even sigh, which I’d consider to be a good thing. He just… looked at me. Calmly. Totally. His eyes roamed my face for so long and so intensely, I couldn’t do anything but smile at him.

It was like… he was looking at me for the first time and something had caught him off guard.

After a moment, with his gaze still locked on me and with his eyebrows knitted together, he just said, “All right, kiddo. That’s a plan then.”

And it was my turn to wink at him.

We finished eating our food pretty quickly with Zac changing the subject and telling me about a conversation he’d just had the night before with Paw-Paw in a tone slightly more restrained than usual. He gathered our trash and went to dump it while I washed my hands. We had just made it to the door to leave when the fucking cashier called out, “The White Oaks suck,” just as Zac started to push open the door.

He paused for a second, and I saw something ripple across his face.

And I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it at all, especially not after the conversation we had just had.

And this fierce protectiveness I felt for Zac, one I had always felt for him, surged up inside of me, and I turned around to frown at the guy standing there with a surly expression on his dumb face.