too much pleasure at the White Oaks kicking the Thunderbirds ass the night before.
As I had every time they did over the last five years. It was a deep, personal satisfaction that I thought all of us who loved Zac felt when the other team lost. Even Boogie’s daughter had run around the living room giving out high fives when everyone watched the game at our house the night before. I could still hear Paw-Paw hooting up a storm.
Part of me couldn’t believe we were still in Houston. Or that Zac was still starting, not after everything that had happened to him during the first half of his career.
Then again, the other part of me—the majority of me—could believe it. Easily.
Zac had found his feet, his place, and he’d flourished. Even the TSN commentator, Michael B, who had done nothing but criticize him for the longest, sang his praises now.
And Zac had two enormous rings to prove he was worth all his accolades.
Then again, he’d always been worth every positive word ever said about him—at least I thought so. I was biased though.
“But neither one of ’em is my most important ring,” he’d told me with a wink a few months ago, when he’d locked them into the safe at our house near Austin.
“You starin’ at me again, kiddo?” Zac yawned, peeking an eye open before slowly smiling. His shoulders hunched up around his chin as he stretched a little. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just counting all the gray hairs in your beard,” I whispered, taking the tablet off his chest and setting it on the nightstand.
He chuckled as he wiggled deeper under the sheets before turning onto his side and lifting them up for me to sneak under. I caught a peek of his black boxer briefs and all the beautiful, endless lines of his body as I slid in, tugging my pillow closer to his. Zac smiled at me before yawning again and scooting over too until we were face-to-face in our bedroom. “How many did you count this time?”
“I lost count after fifty, old man,” I lied.
He laughed as he settled in. “You got your website fixed?” he asked, referring to what I’d been doing in my office when he’d passed out.
“Yeah, it just took a lot longer than I had expected,” I answered him, stroking a finger down the line of his nose.
That big, warm hand of his curled around my hip for maybe the one-hundred-thousandth time over the last few years. “Good. Did you finally get back to Trevor and tell him you’re gonna do the show?”
The show. Trevor.
That was another thing I couldn’t believe, the fact that Trevor was now somehow my manager too. My agent and manager in one. He’d come to me with the proposition about a month after Zac had won his first ring, weeks after we’d headed to Austin after our first Disney trip. “You’ve got the potential, and I’ve got the connections. What do you think?” he’d offered. And I’d taken the leap, trusting in him, and I could honestly say I hadn’t regretted it much… only when he nagged me. And even then, it wasn’t really regret I felt, more like temporary annoyance.
But I definitely hadn’t regretted him when he came to me with an offer to have me judge a kids’ baking show for the Food Channel.
That opportunity, I still couldn’t believe.
“Yeah. The dates work out perfectly with your off-season,” I told him, scooting in closer to his toasty body. He wrapped his arm even more around me, bringing me in so close my knees brushed his thighs.
“I’m so excited for you,” he said softly as his fingertips grazed my back. “Next thing you know, they’re going to be offerin’ you your own show.”
I could only dream. My WatchTube channel had grown over the last five years, slowly and steadily. I’d managed to squeeze in so many more “guest” appearances since, with CJ alone hitting ten videos with me, Zac clearly in the forties now because he was a viewer favorite—and my favorite—and I’d even had more of his teammates and two coaches join in. Even Vanessa, Zac’s close friend and now my very good friend too, had done one with me.
But it was my books that had really taken off.
Some days, I didn’t know what the hell I’d done to deserve any of what I had, starting with the man looking at me on our bed with the goofiest, most tired expression on his face. He could barely