My mind raced, but I took myself back a decade, to when he was my best friend and nothing had ever been complicated or awkward between us, and suddenly, I knew exactly what I would’ve done with this same man ten years ago.
That seems like a good place to start, our friendship.
I rose slowly and kicked off my shoes before climbing onto the massive bed with him. Thankfully, it was large enough that I could comfortably take up the space on the other side of the bed without touching him. I was too afraid that his body would give out if I came anywhere near him right now.
“What do you think?” I asked, inclining my head in the direction of the door. “Theo and Amber?”
“Nah.” Zach groaned under the ice pack. “He’s talking to her like he does Charlotte. I think he’s already adopted her as another niece.”
I chuckled. “That actually makes me feel better about letting them take off alone tonight. I know she’s going to Utah soon and that we won’t be there to watch over her, but I still worry.”
“So do I,” he admitted after a beat. “She really has started feeling like another kid in the house.”
“Don’t ever let her hear you say that,” I warned, but then I fell silent, simply looking around a bedroom I honestly never thought I’d see again.
Although the rest of the house hadn’t changed at all, Zach’s room was very different. There were no more posters on the walls and no more clothes littering the floor. The giant stereo that used to be on his dresser had been replaced by a tiny speaker and the schoolbooks that used to line his bookshelves were fiction novels now, adventure, and fantasy, and suspense.
“How are you feeling?” I asked when my gaze finally came back to him. “You’re looking a little better.”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He pushed himself up into a sitting position as he said it, finally pulling the ice pack away and half-turning to look at me. He was still moving slowly and gingerly, but he wasn’t wincing anymore. “Are you?”
“You mean after your unintended PR stunt?”
“It wasn’t a stunt,” he objected, then groaned. “How many videos have been posted of us online?”
“Many.” I raked my phone closer. “Do you want to see?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Amber told me that we’re trending, though.”
He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. “That’s what I get for proposing in front of hundreds of people. I couldn’t wait, though.”
I reached over and wrapped my fingers gently around his, staring into those twinkling green eyes that seemed so happy despite the obvious exhaustion lining them. “I’m glad you didn’t. I was so scared to tell you how I felt. If you just walked away or saidokay, I’m not sure I would have recovered.”
Fiancé. The word kept hitting me at random intervals like a dodgeball to the face.Zach Westwood is my fiancé.
“You were braver than me,” he said quietly after a beat. “I’m man enough to admit that. I’m not sure what Theo told you, but he’s been after me for weeks about just opening up.”
“So why didn’t you?”
He shrugged, then winced with the movement. “God, I need a new skeleton.”
“What you need is more electrolytes.” I reached for the glass on the nightstand and passed it to him, waiting until he’d taken a long drink before taking the glass to refill it.
As I moved to stand, he took my hand again, stopping me from climbing off the bed. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had no choice, Adeline. I guess part of me thought that if I told you how I felt, you’d feel obligated to say you felt the same way. Either because of guilt or maybe just because you’d feel like you owed it to me. All along, I’ve been wanting it to come from you. I needed you to know our future was in your hands, but I suppose I could’ve been clearer about that.”
I blinked a few times. “You’ve never made me feel like I have no choice, Zach. In fact, you have always been my only choice.”
After a long pause, I set down the glass and buried my face in my free hand. “Theo was right about us, huh? We really have been incredibly frustrating and stupid.”
He stared up at the ceiling for a moment before speaking again. “I was about to quit.”
Thrown by the sudden change of topic, I frowned, but I knew better now than to think he was trying to avoid anything. One way or another, this would circle back tous. “Quit what?”
“Toward the end of the race, during the last five miles, I slowed down. Everything just got too much for me all of a sudden. I was literally about to step off the route, but then I saw Lu. At first, I thought I hallucinated her because I was dying, but then I thought she’d run away again.”
“Oh my God.”
