I nodded.

His mouth went flat under the lighting.

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

He looked at the foot I was still holding for a moment, then stood up and turned around.

Zac dropped into a squat position and said over his shoulder, “Come on. Hop up.”

I tried to set my weight down and nope.

“You all right?” CJ asked from behind.

I waved my hand at him. What was I going to do? Take a piggyback ride from him instead?

Nope.

I set my hands on Zac’s shoulders and tried to hop up as far as I could. Those big palms grabbed onto the backs of my thighs, hefting me up higher until I was pretty much straddling him from behind. Over his shoulder, he said, “Remember this, Peewee.”

“Yeah, yeah, thank you,” I said into his ear just as someone jumped out of fucking nowhere again, and I was pretty sure Amari screamed. Someone laughed, and I was glad one of us was having fun, even though I was pretty sure it was the owner having the time of his life laughing at his teammates.

“Hey?” Zac yelled so I could hear him.

“What?”

“Remember that time you said you’d be fine goin’ through a haunted house in heels and rolled your ankle two minutes in?”

I made a face he couldn’t see because mine was right next to his. The short hairs on his face tickled me. “Mind your business.”

I felt him laugh more than heard it as we approached a long length of hallway that was pitch-black. Great. Really, just great.

I tightened my arms around Zac’s shoulders, just in case he took off jogging. I doubted it; he hadn’t screamed so far, unlike my new friends who I hoped were still behind us and hadn’t been murdered. I didn’t want to risk looking behind me to see someone following us, trying to scare me. There was only one thing I could remember ever scaring Zac, and it sure as hell hadn’t been scary movies.

The last time I’d brought it up—a decade ago—he’d still insisted he hadn’t actually been scared and that he just hadn’t eaten breakfast and that’s why I passed out.

Yeah, right.

“You scared?” he hollered as we started down the hall.

“Scared you’re gonna drop me,” I said, even as my heartbeat sped up. I mean, my heart and most of my brain recognized that this was fake and that all these people were actors who wouldn’t even touch us… but the rest of me picked up on the scary music and the chainsaw still going from somewhere coming up ahead….

Well, whatever.

“I’m not gonna drop you, kiddo.”

“Okay,” I croaked into his ear when someone started banging on the other side of the walls we were walking by. “This is so stupid. I should have just stayed home.”

A chin appeared in my vision as Zac tried to glance at me over his shoulder. “We got this.”

“Eh.”

One of the hands on the back of my thighs patted it. “We got this.”

“I’ll poke them in the eyes, and you run.”

Beneath me, I could feel him laugh. “Throw some fart bombs at ’em.”

Pressing my forehead against his shoulder, I laughed. “You liked that, huh?”

“Kiddo, I like everything—goddamn it! Don’t do that!”

I didn’t get a chance to get scared because the actor who popped out of nowhere had appeared on the side of Zac where my face wasn’t. But when he shouted, I lifted my head and looked over to see someone in a creepy clown mask walking beside us, his nose literally inches from Zac’s face. Yeah, fuck this. I closed my eyes and put my face back where it had been, right by his throat that smelled like his nice cologne.

“Fuck it, just run. Amari and CJ are on their own. They’re big guys. They can save themselves.”

“All right, he’s gone,” Zac advised me a moment later. “Let’s wait a sec. I want to see if they scream too.”

I kept my eyes closed but my ears open.

“Oh hell no, this is the devil’s work,” I was pretty sure CJ hollered.

We snorted. Then I felt Zac start moving again.

“Are your eyes closed?”

I nodded against his neck. “They’re really dry.”

He was cracking up again. I could feel it. “I’m sure they are, darlin’.”

The sound of the chainsaw got louder with every step Zac took, and a couple times I heard him suck in a breath. I wrapped my arms around him even tighter, but he didn’t complain. Twice I felt his hands flex beneath my thighs.

“I believe in you,” I whispered. “Save us.”

At the sound of the chainsaw right up ahead, he started walking faster, and I peeked an eye open to see a figure standing at the mouth of what was an open door with fog swirling around. And sure enough, he was holding what sounded like a chainsaw but didn’t look like one.

“If we don’t make it out alive, I want you to know I love you,” I said into his ear and felt him laugh again.

“See you at the gates?”

“Of hell? Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

I knew he shook his head because I felt his chin graze my forearm.

Then he walked, going forward, my instincts warning the chainsaw guy was right there.

Something flashed beyond my eyelids, and I knew someone had taken a picture.

Well, at least they’d think it was scary and come check it out.

I opened my eyes just as Amari, CJ, and the other big guy came walking out. And by walking, I meant, CJ was making a face, Amari was directly behind him looking pretty damn disgruntled, and the owner was grinning wide.

“You can drop me. I can limp back to your car,” I told Zac, tapping at his upper arm.

I saw a flash of his chin. “So you can roll the other one on the walk back to the car?”

“Ha, ha, ha.”

“How’s your ankle, kiddo?”

The icepack I’d slapped on it the second we’d gotten up to my apartment left my toes bared and covered the lower hem of my jeans. He’d carried me up the stairs, and I knew it was going to be a long time before he let me live this down. I wiggled my toes at Zac, who was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from me. He was sipping on one of the cans of grape soda he’d pulled out of my fridge when I’d gone for the icepack to help the swelling. It wasn’t hurting too bad, but it was stiff, and since I was going to have to work tomorrow, I wanted to prevent it from being worse than it needed to be.

“It’s all right. I just tweaked it.” I kept my face even. “It could have been worse.”

The corners of his mouth twisted up around the rim of the can. “Could it? Could it have been worse?”

I reached for the remote to turn the television on. “Yeah. It could have. I could have actually sprained it, and then my boss would have been mad at me.”

“Your boss would be mad at you for sprainin’ an ankle?”

I blew out a breath. “He’d get mad at me for letting my polo shirt get wrinkled.” He’d get mad at me for breathing too, I’d bet, if I did it loud enough.

He frowned. “This the same boss you hate?”

“The one and only.”

“Things haven’t gotten any better?”