Page 126 of Faking the Shot

He coughed, stood. Had to get away. Drew’s hand on his arm stopped him. Zac eyed it, then eyed Drew. “Get your hand off me.”

“No. You need to talk to someone.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. Hey, Chris!”

Zac shook his head. He definitely didn’t need to speak to him. “Leave me alone.”

“What’s going on?” Chris asked. Their other teammates were watching.

He was so sick and tired of being on show. “I’m out.”

Chris pointed at him. “You’re coming with me. You too,” he said to Drew.

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in Chris’s living room, coffee in hands while Zac had green tea. He didn’t touch his, though, too edgy, too tired, too conscious he was likely to reveal too much and expose the great Zac Parotti the hockey world envied as being pathetically insecure and stupid and naive.

“Zac, man. What’s been going on?” Chris asked, in a soft voice Zac had never heard him use before.

Maybe it was the softness of his tone that slid under his defenses, but his eyes welled up with the tears he hadn’t dared shed since Valentine’s Day. He breathed in deep to combat them, but had to glove his eyes anyway.

“It’s Ainsley,” Drew said.

“Did you two finally break up?” Chris asked.

He knew that? That’s right, of course he did. Zac himself had told him and Diana about it at the start. He jerked his chin.

“I’m sorry, man.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Drew.

“You knew this was going to happen, though,” Chris continued. “Like, me and Diana, we warned you.”

“Huh? I don’t think that’s helping the dude,” Drew muttered.

“I think it’s called tough love,” Chris said flatly.

“I don’t need that right now,” Zac managed to finally say. “I just need her.”

“No, you don’t. You need God to be God in this moment. To let Him show you His love and show what real love really looks like.”

“I know what it really looks like,” he snapped. “What do you think I’ve been doing these past few months? Do you know how hard it has been to keep putting her first when she only wanted to be friends?”

“Friends?” Drew murmured. “I thought…”

“It was fake,” Zac retorted. “All of it fake.”

“But that kiss on New Year’s Eve?”

His heart buckled. That sure hadn’t been fake. On his side, at least. “She’s obviously a better actress than we all realized.”

“But why would you two do that?”

His reasons seemed so stupid now. “She wanted to fix her man-eater rep and I wanted time to figure out how to treat a woman right, now that I’m a Christian.”

“You’re a Christian?”

“Yes! Haven’t I told you this before?”

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