Page 131 of Faking the Shot

“What who meant?”

“Your sister. My friends. All these people messaging today saying Ainsley’s cut her hair.”

“Has she?” He’d unfollowed her on Instagram, but quickly found her profile now and looked at the screen. Saw her last post, with her hair now cut to her chin, which seemed to make her eyes wider and more sparkly. His heart ached. If he’d thought her beautiful before, now she was a knockout. “Wow.”

“No, not wow. This is terrible!” She tapped on Zac’s phone. “You know what that is?”

“A beautiful woman?” Who looked even sexier and more confident than he remembered.

“That is a revenge haircut. I had all these people ask if you’ve broken up because a woman getting a dramatic haircut is a classic breakup move.”

“Okay.” Good to know.

“Okay?” she nearly yelled. “None of this is okay. I loved her. I loved telling all my friends that my son was going to marry Abigail fromAs The Heart Draws.”

“Looks like you spoke too soon,” his dad finally said.

“Don’t you go givin’ me sass.” She scowled at Zac. “You don’t seem nearly as upset as you should be.”

“How upset do you want me, Ma?”

She threw her hands in the air. “A little bit of emotion would be nice.”

Sometimes he thought God had given his mom so much emotion that there was none to spare for him. “Do you want me to cry, is that it?”

“Not cry. But not look like you don’t care.”

“I do care about her, Mom.”

“Then why are you apart? Why aren’t you fighting for her?”

“Because she needs time to sort stuff out, and I was adding pressure to her life. It’s easier this way. Cleaner.”

His dad huffed. “You’ve always been about keeping things clean.”

“I don’t mean it to sound like that. Just I would rather wait until she is fully able to love me like I love her.”

His mom sighed. “You love her?”

“I’m pretty sure I do, Ma.”

“I can’t believe she hurt you like this.”

As his mom kept going on about Ainsley, how she was a man-eater, a one-date wonder with her reputation for casting off men, and she’d never thought her little boy would be among them, that she’d now never get a trip to the ranch to see theAs The Heart Drawsset, he had to keep calling to mind those verses about real love. That it was patient, that it persevered, wasn’t rude, didn’t keep a record of wrongs.

The words were as true for his dealings with his mom as for how he thought about Ainsley. He wouldn’t let his mind dwell on her faults, not when he had so many faults of his own.

His mom pulled out her phone, and it took him a few seconds to realize what she was doing. “Mom, no.”

She glanced up at him, then smiled and tapped her screen.

He leaped up to look at her phone, then she held it away from him. “What did you do?”

When she refused to answer, he got out his own phone. Went to Facebook, and saw—true to form—his mom had posted something mean about Ainsley.

“Ma, you need to delete that.”

“Why? She hurt you, Zac.”

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