He jerked upright and gave her a small smile. ‘I thought you were watching the best film, ever.’
Concerned, she went to sit next to him. ‘I thought you were, too.’
‘Technically, I was watching a Marvel film. The best film ever—’
‘Isn’t what I’m interested in at the moment.’ She reached for his hand and clasped it in hers. ‘What’s wrong?’
He huffed out a laugh. ‘What’s wrong? I’m sitting eating pizza on my lap on a Friday night with a woman I’m falling in love with, yet I can’t take her out. Worse, she’s forced to look after me out of some vague notion that I’m in danger, and though I want to dismiss that, I also know my father’s out of prison, and two days after his release, someone tried to shoot me. On top of all that, Debs is only fourteen, and she doesn’t know what’s happening. On one level that feels right, because I don’t want to scare her, but on another level that feels so very wrong, because if I am in danger, isn’t me staying here putting her in danger, too? Putting you both in danger?’
‘Wow, that’s a lot of words for a guy who’s usually so measly with them.’
He let out a long, deep sigh, closing his eyes for a moment before looking straight into hers. ‘I don’t feel in control of anything right now. Not my life, not my feelings.’
A woman I’m falling in love with. She tried to think back to his other points, but her mind wouldn’t budge from those words. It wasn’t the first time he’d said them, but she’d brushed over them before. No woman believes what a guy says during sex. This time there was no convenient excuse. This time she had to listen, and she had to act, because he couldn’t do this, couldn’t fall in love with her. God, the thought of hurting this man who’d suffered so much, tore her in two. Yet if she didn’t find a way to get him to slow down, she was going to.
With care, and a gentleness she hadn’t realised she possessed, Kat cradled his face in her hands. ‘Stop overthinking this. We’re eating pizza and watching a movie. It’s what most people do on a Friday night.’
His smile was achingly sad. ‘It’s not that simple.’
‘It can be, if you let it.’ And she needed it to be that simple, because if she thought too deeply about what he’d said, both the falling in love and the putting them in danger, she’d feel panicked, too.
‘Okay.’ He drew in a breath, then gave her a weak smile. ‘Maybe it will help if you kiss me.’
‘You think?’ She gave him a platonic peck on the lips. ‘How’s that?’
‘Not quite what I was aiming for.’ This time he took over. With one hand behind her head, the other resting gently on her face, he proceeded to kiss her until her heart was pounding, her insides melting, and she was ready to climb into bed with him and beg him to finish the job. ‘Now that,’ he breathed when he finally let her go. ‘That is how you stop me thinking.’
***
The film had finished, the pizza had been eaten, and Debs had gone off to her room. Zac stretched out his legs and tried to ignore the discarded pizza boxes. He’d already gone to pick them up twice, and both times Kat, who was now lying across him, had told him to leave them.
‘You’re looking at them again, aren’t you?’ She prodded his too-full stomach. ‘This is like therapy for you. You’re not allowed to pick them up until tomorrow morning.’
‘Tomorrow?’
His face must have signalled his horror, because she let out a big, booming laugh. ‘Oh my God, Zac, it’s not that terrible.’ She waggled her eyebrows at him. ‘And I bet I can think of a few ways to make you forget they’re there.’
As arousal pulsed through him, he felt a buzzing against his thigh. ‘Is that you vibrating with excitement, or me?’
‘Who would call at ten o’clock on a Friday night?’ With an annoyed huff she sat upright and pulled her phone out of her pocket, her face turning from scowl to frown when she read the screen. ‘Hi Mark.’
Immediately Zac shifted. He wasn’t going to sit here and listen to her talk to the guy, no matter how platonic the relationship was. But when he moved to stand up, she pushed him down again. ‘Yes, he’s here with me.’ A pause and he tried to read the expression on her face. All he could make out was confusion and worry. ‘Sure, we’ll see you soon.’ Ending the call, she looked his way. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. Only that the police called Vision Films to get hold of you, and Jerry called Mark, and he’s coming over. With a detective.’
A chill went through him, but he tried to smile through the fear. ‘As you said, just your average Friday night.’
Sympathy edged into her eyes. ‘Okay, maybe it’s taken a turn, but we had a few hours, at least.’
‘Indeed.’ He could feel the knots in his stomach tightening. ‘At least I can tidy up the pizza boxes now.’ Though even that had lost its appeal. Who gave a fuck about pizza boxes when the police had such a serious message to deliver, they were coming round on a Friday night?
‘Oh no you can’t, it will ruin all that therapy. I’ll do it.’ Kat jumped up and started to pick them up. ‘You sit there and …’
‘Panic quietly?’
He received another sympathetic glance. ‘I was going to say sit there and look pretty, but you can do both, if you like.’
The words didn’t do much for his ego, implying he had about as much use as a blasted ornament. ‘They’ve come to see me,’ he said to her retreating back as she carried the boxes into the kitchen. ‘You don’t have to stick around.’
‘Oh, right. Thanks for the let-off.’ She walked back towards him, eyes flashing with annoyance. ‘I’ll just go upstairs and what, wash my hair?’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Clearly fear and frustration were poor companions. ‘Just that I’m not your damn responsibility.’
‘No, you’re not, though apparently, according to what you told Debs, you are my damn boyfriend.’ She seemed to catch herself. ‘Well, sort of, in a loose sense. Anyway, I want to be here, okay?’
‘Boyfriend, huh?’ Why, considering everything that was going on, did he suddenly feel the urge to smile?
She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Look, you don’t have to stress about the term. You told Debs we were dating, and dating’s what girlfriends and boyfriends do, so I guess it just came out.’
‘I like how it came out.’ He rose from the sofa and went to stand next to her, clasping her hands in his. ‘I like thinking of you as my girlfriend.’ After giving her a soft kiss, he drew his gaze up to her eyes. ‘Do you like thinking of me as your boyfriend?’
Her eyes refused to meet his, and his heart began a slow shrivel in his chest. He was racing ahead, telling her he wanted a relationship, admitting he was falling in love with her. She hadn’t come out of the starting blocks yet.
The clang of the doorbell crashed through the silence. As she went to answer it, he realised none of it really mattered, because he had a terrible feeling he knew what the police needed to see him so urgently about. And if he was right, there was no way he could stick around Kat any longer. No way on God’s earth.