Page 50 of Your Secret to Keep

zack brought it over

Lia

pics or it didn’t happen

I’ll get you one

“Uh oh. Who are you texting?” Zack practically sings, slinking into the couch.

Looking up from my phone, I try to play it off like it’s no big deal. “No one.”

His chin tilts down as he stares at me. “Fuck you. I refuse to accept that answer.” He crosses his arms and leans back. “Spill.”

The thing about Zack is he makes you feel like you should tell him everything. I wrestle with sharing about Lia, but the protocol for keeping secrets roars. “I shouldn’t,” I protest, sitting on the loveseat across the room.

“Maybe you should… it looks like you’re sweating bullets,” Zack observes as he leans forward. I wipe the sweat from my forehead—shit, he’s not wrong.

Before I can launch into any of it, he interrupts me. “I’m a vault. I can keep a secret,” he promises, pretending to zip his lips.

I hesitate for a moment, then decide to give him something. “I met this woman a few nights before my first game this year—”

“There’s no way you got her pregnant,” Zack interrupts, leaning forward on his elbows.

I scoff. “What?! No. It’s not like that.It’s—”

“She’s stalking you? Is that why you locked the door?” He turns to look at the entryway.

“Normal people lock their doors. Especially athletes who don’t want random visitors. But no, she’s not stalking me.” I shake my head and run my hands through my hair, nervousness creeping in.

Zack nods his head. “Is she married? Does the guy know? Is he threatening you?” Concern deepens the lines on his forehead, and if I didn’t know him, I’d think he was on something.

I shake my head and let it fall forward. “What is actually wrong with you? No. None of that. If you’d let me tell you, we could quit this weird back and forth.”

To my surprise, he doesn’t say anything else and sits back, his foot tapping on the floor.

“I met her a few days before the game. It wasn’t planned. Sort of just happened. We hit it off. And then a few days later, she got a job offer with the Jags.”

“That’s who you were texting?”

I sigh out a breath. “Yes. I was texting Lia.”

“And you look like that because…you and Lia… are secretly dating? You can’t get enough of her? But it’s probably frowned upon?” Zack unravels the web in front of me. He jumps up, clapping his hands. “We’ve got a forbidden romance on our hands!” He leans over, offering a high five.

I hesitantly hit my hand to his. “Why are you acting like this is fun? Also, who the fuck says forbidden romance?”

He gives me a long look down his nose. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You and I both know you read romance books.”

I pause, locking my eyes on his while trying to keep my face blank. “Who told you that?”

“You did. Just now. Other than that, I heard Riley and Emilie gushing about some book with bats and fairies and one of them let it slip. They didn’t know I was listening.”

Damn. I didn’t think either of them would willingly tell Zack. It’s a guilty pleasure that could be much worse. Who knew that books could be something to help pull you from of a depressive episode? Not me, until my therapist recommended trying something new to keep my mind busy. If Zack went upstairs, he’d find that entire series on my bookshelf and quite a few more like it.

“Listen, no shade. You can do whatever you want, but don’t act like you have no idea what a forbidden romance is.” He grins as he sits, reaching down and petting Rocky.

“Fine. Yes, we’re keeping it a secret. Some could call it forbidden.”

“Well, do you have any skeletons in closets? Perhaps a sex tape you thought was private? Or sexting photos?” Zack’s eyebrows raise as he runs through the questions.

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