water,” Zac replied, bringing me back to the present and getting me to stop admiring my kitchen.
I nodded as I grabbed a clean glass and filled it up through the tabletop water filter I’d spent an arm and a leg on as the sound of him pulling out a stool told me what he was doing. Getting comfortable. Sure enough, he was sitting on the other side of the counter, giving me another tight-lipped smile when I set the glass in front of him and pushed it just a little closer.
Zac looked… off. His light brown eyebrows were drawn tight, his forehead was scrunched, and the lines along his mouth were deep, and I didn’t like it. I only partially disliked that I didn’t like it.
“You okay?” I went right out there and asked, taking in his strong, tan face.
He really did still look like some kind of fairy-tale prince.
A fairy-tale prince who a lot of women wanted to do dirty, dirty things to, according to some of the comments on his Picturegram posts. I’d read some of them after his TSN Anatomy Issue had come out—the one with his naked butt cheeks on it—and woo-wee. I thought I liked dirty shit. Not compared to some people.
“Apart from feeling like a shit about what I did, sure, honey,” he answered back, bringing me back to the moment, those baby blue eyes locking on me as he lifted the glass and took a sip out of it.
I mean… if he wanted to feel terrible….
I didn’t miss the way he glanced down at it before he took another sip and licked those cotton candy pink lips. “Is this water delicious or am I imagining it?”
Of course he was going to make this hard.
I snorted, and that earned me half a smile from a handsome face. “It is. It’s a reverse osmosis machine-thing. It filters everything out.”
That blue gaze flicked back down to the glass. “You gotta write the name down for me,” he said after taking another sip, and I’d swear on my life he smacked his lips a little. “This is good stuff, Peewee.”
Talking about water filters was fine and safe. That worked for me. “I will. It’s worth every penny.”
“How much was it?”
I’d lied to everybody else about the price, but… I’d seen pictures of his last car. What car he drove now, I had no idea. You’d figure the same one, but some of the MMA guys at the gym bought a new car like every three months for shits and giggles. You never knew. Plus, I could only imagine how much money he probably spent feeding himself, or more like having other people feed him. “Three hundred bucks, but I can get you a discount code.” He didn’t need to know I had a discount code I promoted all the time that the company had given me. I kept the water filter on the counter so it could be seen in just about every video I shot. Publicity wasn’t free. For a long time, I’d stopped including sponsors—people who paid me to advertise their products—in my videos. I was trying to make up for it now.
“Did you say three hundred dollars?” the freaking millionaire penny-pincher choked on his sip.
I gave him my back as I turned around with a snort that I hadn’t been expecting ten minutes ago, or an hour ago, or five years ago.
This man had been my friend despite our age gap. He had cared for me. I knew that, for a long time, he had loved me.
And that was why his distance had hurt me so bad.
But, even after all this time and… everything, he was still the same cheapskate who waited six months to replace his car window because “the tape is working fine.”
And so I surprised myself when I muttered, “You can afford it,” like I would have if we’d stayed friends.
If we’d stayed friends.
I needed to stop and just… take this for what it was. I really did. A quick, friendly visit like mine was supposed to have been. We were reconnecting.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Zac croaked, making me focus on him. “For three hundred bucks, I’ll drink out of the hose,” he claimed, even as I heard him taking another sip.
I grabbed my can opener, shaking my head as I hooked it onto one of the cans I needed. I could do this. I could talk to him like I would any friendly person who came into the gym. I wasn’t