Anyway.

The house was empty when I headed downstairs. I made sure to clean up after myself following breakfast and kept busy showering and then sitting at the kitchen island, working on my computer for a few hours. It wasn’t until after I’d made lunch and was sitting there eating it that my phone rang.

I glanced down at the screen and cursed. “Hello?” I answered, knowing I was going to regret this conversation.

“Blanca, it’s Gunner.”

No shit. He was calling me from work, which was listed on my phone now under MAIOHOUSESUCKS. And did he call me fucking Blanca again? My stomach turned in annoyance and I propped my fork against the plate. “Yes?” I replied tightly.

He went right into it. “I was thinking, while you’re on paid vacation—”

Vacation? Is that what he was calling it?

“—Could you get your friend Zac to come by and post a picture or two of him working out here?”

This asshole. I winced, shaking my head in disbelief. Did he really expect me to say yes? “No, he doesn’t have time,” I told him, straight up. What was the worst he would do? Fire me?

There was a sharp sound. “No?”

“No.” I should have known there was going to be a catch with his offer. If anything, it should be surprising it had taken him this long to call with his plan. He had more than likely come up with it from the moment he’d made the offer in the first place. “Is that all you needed?”

“No?” he repeated, sounding stunned.

I hoped he was.

“No,” I confirmed. “He can’t. Like I told you last time you asked. I have to go now, bye.” Before he had a chance to say anything else, I hung up. I was snorting at the nerve of him as the front door opened and heard a familiar “Kiddo?”

“I’m here,” I called out as I set my phone down and saved the footage I’d been in the middle of editing and turned on the barstool to find Zac coming in, holding a small duffel bag in one hand and a glass bottle of water in the other.

The only thing off about him was the weird smile on his face.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked him instantly.

He froze for a second as he dropped his bag against the wall and then headed over to where I was sitting. Zac wrapped his forearm around my neck from behind and pecked me twice on the cheekbone, right by my eye. He smelled like he’d just gotten out of the shower, and I liked it. A lot.

Too much.

“Darlin’, how can you always tell when somethin’s wrong?” he asked, his cheek coming to a pause over the top of my head. I liked that too much too.

Well, if he wanted to be affectionate… I tucked my chin and pressed my lips to his forearm briefly. “Because I know you too well. You’ve made just about every face possible in front of me at one point or another. And you look extra pale. Are you sick?”

He didn’t move from his position, cheek still on my head, and I could feel his chest right behind me, rising and falling.

“Zac?” I cupped his forearm and tried to tilt my head upward to look at him. “If you don’t want to talk about it….”

“I think I might have a fever.”

His arm felt nice and cool under my hand… and he hadn’t looked flushed coming in the house. My Zac senses were going off. “Want me to check it?” I asked him suspiciously.

He paused, then nodded.

“Bend over then,” I told him and felt his arm flex.

“What?”

“I’ll check it rectally.” I laughed. “It’s the most accurate, you liar. What’s really wrong?”

He pulled back a little. That handsome face was still looking totally off even as he narrowed his eyes at me and said, “I’m tryin’ to tell myself I don’t feel good,” he admitted carefully, sounding sheepish. Which was rare because I didn’t think he had a sheepish bone in his incredible body. I mean, body. “I gotta get PRP done on my knee in an hour.”

“What’s PRP?”

Zac took out the stool beside me, pulled my bowl of pasta toward him, and started eating it as he explained to me the treatment that required his blood platelets being reinjected into his body to reduce inflammation he was having that was making his knee achy. The thing was… he looked sick the whole time he told me about it, and I wasn’t surprised once I understood why.

They had to take blood from him, which was bad enough. Then reinject him, several times in several places. To most people, that wouldn’t be a big deal, and part of me was surprised it was still a big deal for him considering the fact he was fixing to be thirty-five and had more than likely gone through who knew how many cortisone injections over his life.

But apparently, Zac was still scared of needles.

Or not scared as I was pretty sure he would insist if it came down to it.

He didn’t need to say the actual words, but I understood.

It was his dirty secret.

I got up, scooped the remainder of the pasta I’d set aside into the same bowl he was still demolishing, and grabbed another fork. I stabbed a couple more pieces of pasta and chicken and watched his face as he then tried to switch the subject to a phone call he’d had with Paw-Paw on the way home.

But he wasn’t fooling me.

“Zac?” I asked him after I swallowed a piece of chicken.

“Hmm?” he answered as he ate more pasta.

“Not that you need me to go or anything… but would you like me to go with you to get your treatment done? So I can drive you home if you… aren’t feeling well after?”

Wasn’t feeling well after. Pssh.

I remembered the stories of him passing out when he’d had to get allergy shots every month there for a little while when he’d been younger.

His blue eyes peeked at me as he speared a piece of cauliflower and chewed it slowly. “You got the time?” he asked carefully. “I was gonna take a car there and another on the way back.”

I couldn’t laugh or smile. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Because God knew if the day came that there was a flying roach, I was going to scream at the top of my lungs for him to come kill it.

“If you want to take a car, go for it. But I’ll drive you if you want.”

He eyed the bowl between us and pushed it toward me for the last bite. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat and dragged the knuckle of his index finger across his eyebrow. “All right. Yeah.”

“Mr. Travis, I’m ready for you, if you’ll follow me,” the nice-looking woman in khaki pants and a tucked-in blouse called out an hour later.

Zac and I had taken a seat in the tiny waiting area of the small facility where his trainer had scheduled his appointment. He’d admitted to me on the way over that he knew people who had gotten this kind of treatment before, but it was his first time. I’d driven his car over one-handed and had tried my best not to look surprised when he’d made the suggestion.

Two light blue eyeballs glanced at me.

And I had to pinch my lips together to keep from smiling at what I was pretty sure was him asking me to follow.

I was touched.

And I wasn’t going to ruin it.

“Can I come too?” I asked the nurse practitioner, knowing I probably looked and sounded like a clingy girlfriend, but I didn’t give a shit. I was only asking to follow because I had the feeling he wanted me to go.