“Your face sucks. Have a nice day,” I called out to him right back, even giving him a sarcastic wave as I gestured super over the top for Zac to keep moving.

He blinked, and it took maybe three seconds, but his smile went wide before he walked out and I followed after him.

“What a dick. I’m sorry, Snack Pack.”

My friend stopped right on the edge of the curb and turned to me with an expression that wasn’t anywhere near being devastated like it had been before. He looked... amused. But more than that. And he was still looking at me differently. “You tell him his face sucks?”

“I should’ve said his attitude sucks too, but it was all I came up with in the moment. Next time.”

That big palm of his went to the top of my head and squeezed it. Those blue eyes glittering. Those white teeth out and flashing at me in a smile so sweet, I sucked it up like it was made of gold.

I winked at him again. “You have to be nice, but that doesn’t mean I need to.”

“You’re the best, kiddo.”

I shrugged a shoulder at him. “I’m all right.”

“You’re better than all right,” he said, still watching me closely. “It ain’t even a competition.”

And my heart… my heart did some shit it had no business doing. It thumped. Again. With recognition. With a love so deep I knew it would crush me if I let it.

And that scared the shit out of me.

I was falling in love with him.

Fortunately, my stomach did a roll right then too—a different kind of roll—right at that moment, and I knew what was happening. I was giving myself a chance. Reminding myself of what we had. And that was friendship. A friendship that would span decades.

And I was going to hold on to it with both hands.

Or at least with one at the moment.

Reaching behind me, I smiled and swiped at the air… and then I made it so I was throwing an imaginary ball at him.

It wasn’t all that imaginary.

I threw my fart at Zac.

I threw it at him and said, “Attack.”

In the time it took him to blink in surprise, he farted too, but not a quiet one, a loud one that must have rumbled his butt cheeks…

Then he was cupping and throwing one right back at me, laughing.

I loved him, and I knew it. I really did. And I had no fucking business doing so.

Chapter Fifteen

Zac had been staring at the heels of my boots on and off from the moment he’d pulled up to find me outside, waiting for him.

And he was staring at them again now as we walked from the enormous parking lot settled across a few acres surrounding the haunted house.

There weren’t too many cars in the lot yet. Then again, we were there fifteen minutes before the doors even opened in the first place. Zac had said that his teammate had wanted them to be the first “visitors” through on opening day. To avoid the crowds, I guessed, and to have pictures taken of them to put up on social media.

Them being Zac, CJ, and Amari, who had been in his car when he’d pulled up to get me. We’d talked about CJ “practicing” cooking the entire ride over. Zac had been trying to teach him.

“You sure about those?” Zac finally asked, pointing toward my feet with his chin.

I lifted my toes. “Yeah, why?”

“You don’t think tennis shoes would’ve been better to go through?”

“They’re only wedges, and they aren’t even three inches. I can run in taller than these,” I scoffed. “I got this.”

His face implied he didn’t believe me.

“Promise. Connie trained me to run in heels.”

That got me an eyebrow lift. “Trained you?”

“We were bored one night.”

He blinked, but he shook his head with a smile after that.

In jeans, his usual boots, and a light gray T-shirt I’d seen him wear once or twice by that point, he looked happy and great—not at all like the man who had shown up to my apartment looking so sad the day before. More like the man who had thrown his fart at me… after I’d thrown one at him. And even more like the man who had sang about walking a line, crying in the rain, and then cried laughing with me after yelling at the top of our lungs about carving our names into pickup trucks.

And today, he seemed back to normal when he’d rolled down the window and hollered, “Let’s roll, Bibi. Ticktock.”

Based on the expression he was giving my shoes again, he was definitely in a familiar mood.

“Don’t worry about it, Snack Pack,” I told him. “You’re more likely to trip in your boots than I am. These are super comfortable.”

Yeah, he looked skeptical as hell, and he wasn’t trying to hide it. “You roll an ankle, and I’m leavin’ you behind, kiddo.”

I snickered. “Pssh. I go down, and I’m taking you with me.”

Zac’s hand landed on the back of my neck as he chuckled.

Behind us, Amari—I knew it was him because CJ’s voice was really deep and this one wasn’t on the same level; it was just a normal, nice voice—asked, “How do you two know each other again?”

Zac kept his warm palm on my neck as he answered with, “Bianca’s grandma used to take care of me.”

I looked up at Zac and found those soft blue eyes on me. I smiled. He smiled back.

Sure enough, there were maybe twenty people in line to get into the haunted house. There were a few handfuls of employees dressed as everything from zombies to these really ugly clowns with blood and fake guts stuck to their masks and clothes, creeping around the roped lines set and ready for the crowds that would no doubt start showing up. Maybe not today since it was only the beginning of October but closer to Halloween, for sure.

“Did one of y’all tell him we’re here?” Zac asked over his shoulder.

It was Amari that replied. “I did. He said to hold up and he’d be here in a minute.”

We stopped in a circle, right beside the entrance to the line. I could see around CJ’s shoulder and noticed that the people already there were glancing over in our direction. At them. None of the guys were abnormally tall, but it was something about their postures that said “Look at me.” So I sidestepped to the left so that CJ’s ripped up body could hide me a little better.

If he noticed he was being watched, it didn’t register on his face as he asked, “What’s on the menu this week?”

“Vanilla mug cake and another attempt at those stupid brownies I screwed up.”

“I can do another one whenever you want,” Amari piped up. “It was fun.”

“Yeah, whenever you want.” I didn’t want him to feel obligated. People always offered to do nice things, but only to be polite.

The extremely handsome man pulled his cell out of his pocket. “What’s your number? I’ll text you.”

I didn’t even think twice about it. I rattled the number off to him.

But I felt something weird and glanced up to find Zac staring at Amari. And I mean, staring at him. What the hell was that about?

A very deep voice, almost as nice as CJ’s, called out some way that had us all turning to find a man the size of Zac and Amari combined making his way over with three normal-sized human beings trailing behind him, two of which were dressed in black clothing and held walkie-talkies and had different things clipped to their belts. The huge guy lifted a hand in greeting, and if the people in line hadn’t been paying attention before, they were now.