The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,87

snore ripped through the air and the sharp, sudden rumble of Zac snoring had me glancing over my shoulder. “I need to go grab something. I’m sorry if I woke you. “

Before he could say anything else—or not say anything else—I hauled ass upstairs and into Zac’s room, internally cringing at the mess he’d made since he began locking himself in, and the smell, it was bad. Real bad.

Grabbing the corner of the wrinkled comforter on the bed and his pillow, I ran down the stairs and found Aiden standing next to the couch talking to Zac in a low voice and…

Was he patting the armrest?

“Here.” I handed over the pillow.

Aiden took it, his attention still on Zac, and set it alongside the armrest I’m pretty sure he’d been petting a second ago. “Lay down,” he ordered the drunk one in a quiet, no-nonsense voice that obviously left no room for argument to even someone who was mostly out of it.

Sure enough, Zac lay down without opening his eyes. His arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder cocooned into the couch cushions. I tossed the comforter over his long body and smiled at Aiden who was still standing over the couch, looking extremely, ridiculously serious at what was essentially us tucking a grown man in.

Zac made some funny kind of puttering sound that made his lips flutter, and I snorted. “He looks like a little kid, doesn’t he?” I whispered.

“He acts like a little kid,” Aiden grunted, shaking his head in total disapproval.

“What is he going to do now?” I found myself blurting the question out.

The big guy hummed. “What he should do is quit acting like the world has ended and get back to training so another team will pick him up later on in the season,” he stated. “What he’s going to do—I don’t know. If he waits too long, it’ll hurt his chances of getting another opportunity in the future. Every day we get older and our bodies can’t…” Aiden tipped his chin to the side and cast me a long look. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

“That’s a good idea. I think he’ll listen to you.”

“He’d probably listen to you more.”

That had me frowning at him at the same time I shoved my glasses further up my nose. “You think?”

His attention didn’t stray from the couch as he answered. “I know.”

I didn’t necessarily believe that was true, but okay. “I’ll try, I guess. The worse he’ll do is not listen to me, and it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.”

That had his head turning. “Are you talking about me?”

I pressed my lips together. “I wasn’t talking about you, but…”

“But?”

I kept my gaze on the wall away from Aiden. “You haven’t listened to me before, if you want to get technical.”

Aiden didn’t respond.

“A lot of times,” I added in a mutter.

Nothing. Okay.

I tipped my head toward the kitchen. “I was going to make a sandwich before I went to bed. Do you want one?”

“What kind?” he asked, like I’d offer him a turkey club.

Chapter Fourteen

“So how’s it going, living in sin?”

I gave an awkward laugh, shaking the wok in my hand at the same time. Uncomfortable laughs were what you got when you felt guilty. I still hadn’t told Diana that Aiden and I had gone to Las Vegas.

It was a damn miracle. She usually knew I started my period ten minutes after I did. We liked to celebrate another month of not being pregnant.

I could only think about two other things I’d ever lied to her about. Apparently, I liked to live life on the edge because I knew I was in for a reckoning the likes of which I’d never seen when she found out the truth. Because, at this point, I was in too deep and there was no way in hell I was going to admit what I’d done.

The biggest problem with lying to your closest friend was finding the right line to straddle. Enough truth to be believable but not enough of a lie so they could notice you were full of shit, which was exactly what I needed to find, so I went with diverting her attention by going for middle ground. “It’s going fine.”

“Fine? That’s it?”

“Yeah. Fine.” What the hell else could I say? While things between Aiden and I were better than they ever were, nothing amazing had happened. He lived his life and I lived mine. He was a busy guy; I’d always known that and nothing had