Shit, I couldn’t even get a date from a man that pitied me.
What did that say about me?
CHAPTER 6
What I really want in a Hallmark movie is where a woman finds her one true love while also hunting a serial killer.
-Crockett to Six
CROCKETT
“Hey, you okay?”
I knew that voice.
I’d been thinking about it for seven and a half days.
I turned, tears still streaming down my face, and blinked at the man that occupied way too many of my thoughts.
“Zach,” I said softly. “How are you?”
His sexy eyes took in my face, tracing a tear as it streaked down the length of my cheeks.
I swiped the tears away from my face and sat up from where I was laying panting, sprawled out on the track.
I’d just had a training run that was called a ‘fartlek.’ Fartlek is actually a Swedish word that means ‘speed play.’ Unlike tempo and interval work, fartlek runs vary between moderate to hard efforts with easy efforts throughout the run.
Essentially, you run faster for shorter periods of time followed by easy-effort running to recover.
I hadn’t run sprints or a fartlek in years, and it was currently showing on my body at that particular moment in time.
Hence the reason I was currently lying on the track with no plans on getting up anytime soon.
And, while I’d been lying where I was, I’d started thinking about everything that I had to do.
“I’m… having a moment,” I admitted. “I started eating better a week ago, and with that came extreme hunger. Which then comes extreme mood swings. Which then turn into… this.”
He grinned and dropped down onto the track next to me, bending to the side so that he could stretch out his right leg.
I watched as the muscles in his quads bunched with his effort.
Luckily, though, my tears were now dry.
“How’s the running going?” he asked.
I suppressed a groan.
“It’s going,” I admitted. “I need more time in my day, though.”
I then went on to explain how busy I was, told him about Murphy’s stroke a few months ago that’d led to me quitting my job, and then coming home to help with the corner store. Then I explained that my car was toast and I would need to look into getting a new one soon so that I could get around town.
I then went off and explained how I just didn’t have time to get back to race shape. There wasn’t enough time in the day to do everything that I needed to do.
“I run at the track every day,” he said as he listened to me all but blurt out my entire life story to him in one long, rambling stream of words. “Start there. Start running again. Get back into a routine. Then, when you’re done with that, start training. From there, get back to where you were. Do it for you, not for him. And, who the hell is to say that y’all can’t hire someone else to work the store? From what Murphy tells me… there’s plenty of money after he won the lottery.”
Get back to where I was.
It’d been three years since I’d put any effort whatsoever into my running.
Sure, I ran, but running to train for something, and running just to run, were two completely different beasts.
I felt my stomach tighten.
I was… excited for this.
Like, super-duper excited.
But then I felt bad because Murphy had started this corner store because he’d been bored. And without the corner store, how would he have any entertainment throughout the day?
Zach was right. Neither Murphy nor I was hurting for money. Murphy had won the lottery. To the extent that neither one of us would ever have to work another day in our lives. Hiring another person to work would be fine, but I highly doubted that they would want to watch Murphy. And I highly doubted Murphy would want anyone to watch him. He barely tolerated me.
Before I could argue, though, and tell him none of that would work, he continued without missing a beat.
“As for your car.” He switched sides from his right side to his left. “I’d buy the one car that he’s always wanted. I’d find the perfect one, paint it exactly like he always wanted to paint it, and then drive it around just to piss him off.”
I grinned then. “I would, but I have no clue how to find cars like that.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“In college, my dad had a brand new Chevy Chevelle. It was one of like ten, I think. Mint condition. Cherry red with white racing stripes. He loved that car, but he sold it so that he could pay for college.” I paused. “That’s the car that he’s always wanted back but hasn’t been able to find one like it.”
His head tilted slightly to the left.
“1970?” he asked curiously.
I thought about that. “I think so. But not really sure, to be honest. I’d have to ask Murphy.”
He grinned then. “Why do you call him Murphy?”
“Murphy is too cool to be called ‘Papap,’” I told him. “Although, I do call him Papap sometimes.”
He put both of his thighs together, then did a rather impressive stretch forward until his chest touched both of his thighs. The man was incredibly bendy.
“Let me see what I can do on the car,” he said softly. “For now, I’ll give you a lift home. You’re right next to me, if you can wait about twenty more minutes for me to run three really quick miles.”
I blinked at him. “You live what?”
“I’m right next to you.” He stood up and stretched his arms up high above his head. “I live literally across the street from you. Haven’t you ever noticed?” he asked.
If I’d noticed, I’d be stalking him way better than I currently was.
“No,” I told him honestly. “I’m up at the store at five in the morning to get breakfast started and make sure Murphy is moving and okay. Then I’m the only one up there until I close at some point for lunch. From there, I go home at about two in the afternoon since that’s the slowest point in the day and Murphy can handle it on his own for two hours before he closes. Then I go to the grocery store, buy fresh fruit, and go home and bake for the pies and pastries I have at the store for the next morning.”
He looked at me curiously. “When do you have time for yourself?”
I laughed then. “Time for myself? What’s that?”
Instead of answering or laughing at my joke, he shook his head, then walked to the finish line at the track and started to run.
I watched him make his first two laps and contemplated my life.
He’d hit me with a few things today that I really needed to think about. Those were also on top of the few things he’d hit me with last week that I hadn’t stopped thinking about.
What was it with this man and his truth bombs?
I hadn’t faced these things in years.
I hadn’t considered what all I’d been hiding from all these years.
Honestly, maybe I was just too nice of a person. Maybe I was…
“Holy hell,” a woman said from beside me. “Who is he?”
I looked over to find a woman that was vaguely familiar looking at me with a grin on her face.
Her eyes, though, kept straying toward the man that was running around the track.