“I—I—shit. Shit,” the woman stuttered. “I’m sorry, I forgot. I… I forgot. I meant to only do it for a little while…. For a couple months, but I for-forgot until now…. Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” she echoed, staring at me with wide, fearful eyes that made zero sense.
What the fuck was she talking about?
“You only meant to do what for a little bit?” Did she have me confused with someone else? Had she been ugly to another person in Zac’s life? One of his cousins, maybe?
But she didn’t respond, because she was too busy chanting, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” under her breath as she lifted her hands to her face… and then dropped them suddenly.
Drama queen much? I’d had this planned for years. I’d lain in bed and worked out my speech a long time ago, ready for just this opportunity, and now she was trying to turn it around and make it about her? Nuh-uh.
“You said things to me. Do you remember? You told me I was—”
The pretty woman shook her head, face still paler than pale, and took a step forward. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did. I shouldn’t have come—”
My mouth ran off before I could stop it. “Yeah, you should be. You were mean. I had just been a kid and you—”
She put up a hand, like to try and keep me away from getting too close to her. “He loved you so much, and I was just jealous, and I’m so sorry—”
“I don’t want your apology. You hurt me. I let one of my favorite people in the world go for ten years because of what you said.”
If I’d thought she looked scared before, her features went straight terrified after my last comment.
“Oh God,” she muttered before turning around, nearly stumbling as she headed straight for the door, saying over her shoulder, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She was out of there, leaving her mask behind.
And goddamn it, my hands were dirty—maybe I could touch her face with my dirty hands as payback—but I went after her, stopping to squirt some hand sanitizer because I wasn’t a total monster…. but confused by the fact she looked so sick and scared. Because something told me that wasn’t the reaction of someone who felt bad for how she’d behaved in her twenties. It was deeper than that. Somewhere in my heart, I knew it.
And that was why I went after her through the door.
And that was why I pretty much instantly stopped on the other side.
Because she’d bumped into Zac, and her whole body was shaking and her mouth was running off a long line of words without a break, without a breath, without the blink of an eye.
“I’msosorryIforgotIonlymeanttodoitforalittlewhilebutthenyoubrokeupwithmeaweeklaterandIwasmadanddidn’tcareandIfiguredyouwouldnoticeandthenyou’dfixitandI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.”
I wasn’t even sure if Zac recognized her from the what-the-fuck expression on his face as she blew through her apology.
But the man I didn’t recognize who had moved to stand beside Zac must have understood enough because he set a hand on her shoulder and said, “Baby, what are you talking about?”
Baby? Her boyfriend? Husband?
Actually… he did look a little familiar.
She swooned. She gulped. She looked like she wanted to fucking run but physically couldn’t because she was shaking so bad.
“Jessica, what did you do? What did you think he would fix?” the tall, super strapping man asked the woman who had kicked me as a teenager with her words.
Zac’s baby blue gaze met mine in confusion, and I knew I had to tell him. What she’d said, what she’d done, and what I had done.
Grown apart. Stopped messaging him. Totally retreated.
I had given up on him in a way.
Just as I opened my mouth to tell him, Jessica looked at me, then to Zac’s confused face, and back to me. And she exhaled three words that made no sense. “I was jealous.”
It was the man who gently asked, as his own expression went about as confused as Zac’s, “About what?”
I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I felt zero sympathy for her. None.
It was then that Zac blinked and then asked, “Wait a minute. You look familiar. Did we—” He stopped and glanced at the man he had to have known, looking sheepish all of a sudden. “—go out? A long time ago?”
I was going to slap him. On the ass so I wouldn’t ruin his photogenic face. He didn’t remember her.
I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
Maybe he needed more information. JESSICA BRUNETTESTUDENT DAL. At least she’d been a student back when they’d dated.
I wanted to kick him right in the asshole.
The woman, Jessica, made a noise in her throat as she lifted her eyes slowly to make contact with Zac, a surprised expression sweeping over her features. I was 99 percent sure there was anger in her eyeballs as she looked at him.
Then, at that exact moment, I might have felt for her a little bit. But just a teeny bit. Because yikes.
Only for a second. Until she opened her mouth again, the anger morphing into incredulousness in the blink of an eye. “For three months, Zachary Travis,” she told him coldly.
She’d busted out his last name. Yeah, she was definitely pissed and insulted.
The other man blinked in surprise, but whether it was at her tone or the fact he didn’t know they had “dated,” I had no clue. I was so mad that I couldn’t finish what I had wanted to do, damn it.
“Still dumber than a box of rocks, huh?” she told him in a mean voice that had the other man stilling. Zac, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes like he was trying to remember… and failing. I could tell by the expression on his face; one eye got more squinty than the other.
But I hadn’t forgotten.
And she wasn’t about to say shit like that to him.
“Don’t talk to him like that,” I snapped, annoyed.
She rolled her eyes, the fear and the body shakes magically gone. “You. Still defending him. Still following him around like a little puppy, huh?”
Where the hell had the scared bitch gone? I wondered, offended and mad all over again. I was nobody’s puppy. I was a German Shepherd, maybe a Belgian Malinois; not the smallest or the biggest but strong, proud and loyal.
Fuck her. Asshole.
“So?” I asked her because it was the first thing that popped into my head. I almost said at least he remembers me, but it didn’t come to me fast enough.
“Jessica,” the man stated, distracting us. “What are you talking about? What did you do?” He paused. “And don’t lie. Don’t even think about.”
And there she was, back to being scared. Or maybe it wasn’t so much scared as… caught. Resigned, and terrified about it, that’s what it was.
And I must have not been the only person to pick up on it because even Zac said, “I remember you now.” And in the blink of an eye, his head lifted, his expression changed into one so serious it was scary, and he asked, “What are you talkin’ about?”
The man said her name all slow and tense.
She gulped again, and a deep feeling of dread filled my stomach. A warning. A premonition.
Tears filled her eyes. Tears I didn’t really believe from how fast they appeared and how effortlessly she batted her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, okay?” she whispered in a tiny voice that made me want to smack her too. Not in the asshole.