I hesitated to ask my next question.
“What changed?” I whispered.
He moved in so that he was only inches away from my face. His lips so close, if I hadn’t just puked for half an hour, I might very well close the distance and press mine to his.
“I decided that I didn’t care anymore,” he told me. “I decided that I would make you forget that I’m a bad person.”
CHAPTER 13
I wasn’t raised like you. My mama whooped me. She even killed me one time.
-Text from Zach to Crockett
CROCKETT
I decided I can make you forget that I’m a bad person.
His words had my head spinning, and my heart pounding away.
I licked my lips. “You’re not a bad person, Zach.”
“See?” he rasped, his eyes wary and his face slightly blank. The only thing that I could make out was his slight worry over my welfare. “You just don’t freakin’ get it.”
I had no clue what he was talking about.
Furthermore, I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to convince me of anything.
I wanted to stay blissfully unaware of everything that he thought was wrong with him, because I didn’t want him to convince me to stay away.
Though, the more time that I spent with him, the more I realized that his perceived ‘faults’ weren’t faults at all so much as just a constant ‘I’m not good enough for her’ attitude.
I stood up, my stomach only giving a slight roll, and stared at him closely.
“I get it perfectly,” I said softly. “I get that you think that you aren’t good enough for me.”
He said nothing, so I kept going.
“I get that you think that by doing anything with me, dating or otherwise, you think you’re going to ruin my life,” I continued.
His eyes narrowed, but I could see agreement there.
“But let me tell you something,” I said. “Nothing you can say, do or be is going to change how I feel about you. I’ve been in love with you for a while now. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I don’t care. I just know that, now that I know how you feel, I won’t be staying away.”
He sighed, his hands coming up to scrub at his beard, cheeks, and eyes.
“That store you own, once people know that you’re mine, they won’t want to come there anymore,” he murmured.
“That store that I work at,” I corrected him. “And that store isn’t my dream. That store is my grandfather’s way of keeping himself busy. If it wasn’t there anymore, it would hurt me because he’d miss it. It wouldn’t hurt me because I’d miss it or care.” I paused. “And, just sayin’, Murphy really likes you. I think he’d choose you for me over the store any day of the week.”
“A lot of people hate me,” he tried.
“It’s pathetic,” I whispered as I reached for the IV bag that was connected to me and pulled it free of the little stand that it was hung on.
His head tilted sideways, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “What is?”
“How deep you’re having to dig to convince yourself you’re a bad person,” I said. “You’re making shit up on the fly now.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I’m not making shit up.”
I rolled my eyes and shuffled to the bathroom. “If you say so.”
After using the facilities, washing my hands, and brushing my teeth with a brand new toothbrush that I’d found underneath the bathroom sink, I made my way back out into the main room of the pool house to find it empty.
Feeling much better now that I had some fluids dumped into me, and time for whatever Melody had given me to wear off, I didn’t question my need to find Zach. I just went with it, running my hands through my hair as I held the IV bag with my teeth.
Once the tangles were sufficiently combed out, I realized that Zach was nowhere to be found even from what I could see through the pool house windows.
At least, I thought, anyway.
When I made it outside and called his name, he surprised me by being much closer than I thought.
“Zach?” I called out as I paused in the doorway.
“Here.”
I spun slightly to the left, finding him sitting on a lounge chair that’d been partially covered by the large palm trees that took up the front of the small pool house.
“Oh, hey,” I said softly, walking toward him.
He scooted over slightly, and I felt a flock of birds take flight in my stomach.
I knew exactly where he wanted me, and that was a damn sight closer to him than I’d originally intended.
When Zach chose to finally drop those barriers…
“Sit,” he ordered when I must’ve taken too long for his liking.
I bit the inside of my lip and started his way, only belatedly noticing that I’d somehow lost my shoes in the transport from the wedding venue to Lynn and Six’s pool house.