I knew that.
So I gave him more of my honesty. I gave him a tiny piece of me that I knew I’d been suppressing around him. For my safety. “I missed your big, dumb face too, Snack Pack.”
His eyes widened. Those dark, nearly blond eyelashes fell slowly over them. And that mouth of his parted slightly.
In surprise?
I gave him a little smile in return. A smile that I wanted to be bigger, but I was holding onto it for a second longer. To make sure. To not overstep myself.
And then he blinked and gave me a little piece of himself too.
“You coulda just said ‘dumb face.’ You know I’m sensitive about my big head,” Zac deadpanned, quietly, almost hesitant.
I couldn’t help it; I nodded at him. “You grew into your big head, if that makes you feel any better.”
His mouth quirked just a little bit more. “It does. Thank you, darlin’.”
My grin went wide despite the warning alarms going off in my head that tried to remind me of what this was, of what my expectations should be.
But Zac’s smile was like one of those slow-motion blossoming flowers on the nature channel.
I only partially hated myself for loving it—not because I loved him like that, but because I still cared so much. And sometimes it was easier not to care about people—at least people who weren’t as invested in you as you were in them.
“We can be friends when we both have time, if that works for you,” I told him gently, trying to give him a smile. “Because I wasn’t kidding about your big head.”
Something in him faltered for a moment—it was in his eyes, I could see it—but a split second later, he opened his arms.
I took the step into them. As an adult, as grown-up Bianca.
He drew me into him, into his chest, into his life, I guess.
Zac Travis hugged me and said, “I sure did miss you, Little Texas.”
Something in me unraveled at the name he hadn’t used in so long.
In so, so long.
With my cheek against his chest, I told him the truth. “I really missed you too, Big Texas.”
Chapter Ten
What had to be one of his million-dollar hands palmed the back of my head, and I liked it. I liked it a lot. “Ah, honey. It’s gonna take some time for my heart not to be crushed that you didn’t want me to know we live so close to each other.”
I pulled back a little, taking in that blond and light brown dusted chin and lifted my index finger. I booped him on the nose, just like old times, and I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t feel wrong. I still did it to Boogie, Connie, and my niece and nephew.
I kept on telling him the truth. “I just didn’t want to be a nuisance or somebody else that wants something from you. That’s all.” At least that was 99 percent accurate.
All right, 90 percent, but who was keeping track? Only me.
His nose wrinkled, and I wasn’t sure how to take his watchful gaze. I wanted to fidget, wanted to be self-conscious about having him so close he could see all of my imperfections. The eyebrows I was a week overdue to get threaded. The upper lip past its prime too. The bags under my eyes from sleep that I only caught up on once a week.
Zac had been around beautiful, pretty, cute women his entire life. It wasn’t like that reality was new to me.
I wasn’t ugly—well, not that ugly anyway. I could date when I wanted to—had dated when I wanted to.
So it made it easier to have him right in my face, sucking up my features because he either wanted to see if I was lying or because he was still trying to remember what I looked like. “I worried about you all the time after I left for school, you know that?”
He was killing me.
“I worried about you too, you know that? I still worry about you every time you play. I loved you—I still do.” Shut up. “But you got busy and had other things to worry about. I don’t hold that against you.” I winced. “Much. I knew that, when you left, the world was going to open up to you. Or at least, I understood that once I got older.” After I’d cried at first, but he didn’t need to know that. I’d only been eleven back then.
Plus, I didn’t want to touch down on the years after that too closely. I hadn’t wanted to bother him, that part was absolutely true. I didn’t want to be the person who his ex-girlfriend had accused me of being. But there had been a reason why the thought that I could even be a bother to my longtime friend had even formed in the first place.
For one split second, I thought about that girl with the long brown hair who had given me this pitiful little fake smile, right before making me feel a foot tall. The girl who had plucked my self-esteem out and poked at it with the tip of her shoe. Doubt was a terrible thing for anyone.
Hopefully she’d gotten crabs at some point over the years.
Zac didn’t say anything to me for so long, I wasn’t sure he was going to despite his big hug. He just kept right on watching me and watching me a little more until eventually his shoulders seemed to relax.
I waited, not sure what the hell was going through his head now since I’d already gotten it wrong. Or maybe I’d gotten it right, and then he’d changed his mind.
This was confusing.
Fortunately, he didn’t exactly confuse me anymore. “I still love you too, Peewee,” Zac told me with a sigh, still watching me way too close and carefully. One corner of his mouth hitched up just a tiny, little bit.
In another lifetime, I would have killed for those words meant in a different way.
But I would take them now, wrap them up in tissue paper, and store them somewhere safe.
I smiled at him, and it took a second for the other side of his mouth to hitch up as well, all reluctant and uncertain. Too careful.
It had taken my ex a year to tell me he loved me. I hadn’t seen Zac in ten years, but it took him weeks to say the same words to me—under a different meaning, but they still meant what they meant. Loyalty. Friendship. Affection. Those three things were basically engraved into his DNA.
How could I not love him? Even if this crap was confusing.
Zac reached up to scrub a hand over his right cheek. “Ten years flew by, kiddo.” He sighed again, his soft blue gaze lingering, unmoving and unflinching. “Still can’t believe it was that long.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” He sighed once more, brushing a hand over his face again before his index finger came up and he pressed the tip of it to the beauty mark right off the edge of my mouth. “I really didn’t recognize you.” That dirty blond head tipped to the side, and he wasn’t looking at anything other than my eyeballs as he asked, “When’d you get to be this cute, huh?”
That would have been a dagger to my freaking heart as a teenager, but now… now I knew what cute was.
It wasn’t like I still thought there was some alternate universe where Zac would ever like me in any other way than how he currently did—because even that, at this point, was kind of a miracle. And it was fine. It was totally fine.
I was pretty proud of myself when a smile slid over my mouth, relatively easily, and I lifted a shoulder. “I stopped using so much gel in my hair, and I learned that I wasn’t supposed to brush it. Exercise, four years of clear retainers, makeup. Connie says I can’t thank puberty for it either since it kicked in like five years late.”