Page 83 of Only in Your Dreams

This is swirling into the gutter. Parker leans his elbow on the counter, clearly settling in for an inquisition. He stares at Zac with an unamused twist to his mouth.

“Park, it’s—it’s not what you think,” I stutter in a way that very much reveals that it’s exactly what he thinks. Zac’s jaw twitches unhelpfully.

“Go on, then, Mels. If it’s not what I think, then tell me who you’re with every night.”

Zac raises his brows at me in a way that very much feels like a challenge.

Tell him. I dare you.

Shit. I cast around, working hard to keep my face free of panic. Other than Zac, who would I bother lying about seeing?

I come up with precisely nothing.

God, this is really happening, isn’t it? We’re about to have a blowout in the middle of a breakfast shift at Sheffield’s.

“I… Look, Parker, I need you to not freak out about this,” I say, swallowing hard. “It’s that… well, it sort of started out of nowhere, and really, nothing untoward has happened—well,mostlynothing. There was this one time where we, uh… you know. Certain thingsdidhappen, very adult, very consensual things… Nothing crazy, nothing like the bondage stuff you said you did, which… God, I wish I could forget about that. Anyway, there was an almost-time after that, too, where we were about to… You probably don’t want to hear about this part of it, do you? What I mean to say is—”

“It’s Brooks. She’s seeing Brooks, alright?”

My mouth pops open. Parker’s elbow nearly slips off the counter.

Zac glares at the ceiling, clearly irritated by his own words, and I can tell how much it cost him to save me like this. I haven’t relaxed, not one bit, because there’s still the matter of my sneaking around with a friend of ours to contend with. But I want to throw myself at him for having my back. Kiss every inch of that absurdly perfect face for covering for me when he swore he wouldn’t, if people found out about us.

“I’m sorry, Mel. I hate to throw you and Brooks under the bus, but this has nothing to do with me.” Zac collects his coffee cup and turns to Parker. “Brooks is a good guy. You know that; you’ve been friends with him for years. Take it easy on them.”

He flashes me a half smile and I watch with more than a thread of disappointment as he walks away. I barely got a minute with him.

“Brooks, Mels, really?”

Damn it.

“It appears so,” I say. Parker squints at me like it’ll somehow help him see into my brain. I screw on the lid to the syrup dispenser I long abandoned.

“So… what? Are you dating? Seeing each other? Is it serious? Why him?”

He shoots the questions at me so rapidly I barely have a chance to digest one before the next comes out of his mouth. I knew he’d get like this. I’m just surprised he hasn’t already tried to tell me—

“You know what—I don’t like it. You shouldn’t be hooking up with him. It’s not right—”

There it is.

I hop onto my toes, catching the non-existent eye of a non-existent customer who mouths at me from across the diner. I grab the coffee carafe at my side. “Excuse me, I need to make a coffee run…”

“Mel, seriously—”

I hurry around the counter before he can get on another inquisitorial roll. “You’re the one who encouraged me to get out there, Park! I’m only following your brotherly advice.”

Chapter 20

Zac

“This is, by far, the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.”

I’m standing over my desk, staring at tonight’s playbook like it’s spontaneously grown new pages I haven’t been obsessing over all week. I can feel Brooks’s eyes boring into me from where he sits on the other side of my desk, but I don’t have it in me to return the eye contact.

Between tonight’s home opener and the utter fucking agony of asking him to pretend-date the love of my life, I’m not in the mood to indulge his facial expressions.

“I never said it was a smart plan,” I mutter. “I panicked, alright? She came within an inch of telling her brother we were fooling around the other week.”

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