Page 56 of Only in Your Dreams

It hasn’t been easy, though. It had been a quiet ride home with Parker, but the second he dropped Zac off, he kicked off an inquisition so thorough I had to pretend to go have a nap. And the second I resurfaced from my room for dinner, it started all over again.

It was strange. We grew up with Zac, in the prime of my teenaged sexual awakening. But he’d never once asked if anything outside of platonic happened between us.

Not that it could have, given Parker was always around.

I reach for my purse, fish out some lip balm and pop off the cap. Zac’s gone suspiciously quiet, and I find him staring at my lips. The tip of his tongue grazes the corner of his mouth, and he looks utterly mesmerized. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing.

In the same way that hearing—feeling—his response to my mouth, my hands last week, there’s something incredibly intoxicating in rattling someone otherwise so composed. The way he looks at me now makes me feel viscerally wanted. Like I’m one swipe of lip balm away from seeing him snap.

I cap the tube and hold it out to him. “You want some?”

“Hm?” His brows twitch. He snaps out of his daze, taking the tube of lip balm and turning it over in his hands. “This stuff is gold, you know. Your lips are so fucking soft, Clover.”

“And yours could definitely use some.” It’s bullshit. He’s a fantastic kisser. Zac examines the tube, and I pause on the dark circles under his eyes. He looks just as tired as I feel. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

He fiddles with my lip balm. “I don’t know what it is. Residual panic after the animal thing, I think. I’ll drift off and a second later jerk awake, thinking I’m back in that tent. I look around for you, freak out until I remember you aren’t supposed to be in my bed.”

How did he just manage to make insomnia sound almost… sweet?

“I haven’t slept either.” He finds the dark circles under my eyes, identical to his. “I’ve tried everything. Working out to help tire me out. Herbal tea. I’m driving Parker crazy, pacing my room at night.”

“Because of the animal thing at camp? Or everything with Connor?”

“Both,” I sigh, swinging his swivel chair from side to side. “I wake up at the slightest sound, start obsessing over the Connor thing, and never fall back asleep. I can’t get my mind to shut up.”

“What’s it saying?”

“Aren’t you sick of listening to me talk about him?”

He caps and uncaps my lip balm without losing eye contact. “I fucking hate the guy, but it’s what’s going on in your life, which I want to be part of. You tell me about processing your breakup, I bore you with stories about my impending unemployment. It comes with the territory of getting to know each other again.”

I nod, smoothing my palms on my thighs. I suppose there’s no real reason we can’t become friendly while I’m still in town. It’ll certainly make things a lot less awkward for everyone.

“In that case, I’ve been trying to put together thewhy meof it all. Why was I the one Connor chose? After some deep self-reflection, the conclusion I’ve come to is that I’m a gullible, desperate idiot.”

“I doubt that, but go on.”

I hesitate. I’ve spent the past week trying to dissect my own brain. Trying to figure out why I let myself get sucked into the mess that was Connor. My conclusion hits a little close to home for Zac and me.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? I was biting my tongue in favor of a man’s feelings. I refuse to do that anymore. I force my gaze off my shoes, up to Zac’s face.

“It was kind of the perfect storm, really. No one ever showed interest in me in high school. The guys we’d all hang around with were always weird with me, which wasn’t great for my teenaged self-esteem. And then… that thing happened with us. And I’m not blaming you for anything, but by the time I got over you I spent a long time feeling undesirable.”

My cheeks warm under the humiliation of that confession. It sounds so pitiful said out loud, but it’s the truth. I was single until I met Connor at twenty-two, and after a while, it was hard not to think there was something seriously wrong with me. The guys in high school would get shifty whenever I’d innocently chat them up before making some excuse to run off somewhere else. Couple that with the years it took me to let go of Zac, and my confidence was shot.

Zac has the grace to drop his gaze. When I hold out my palm, he hands me my tube of lip balm.

“Anyway, Connor was into me right away, and everything that followed was… fast. He wanted to be exclusive after only a few dates, we spent every night together. He was my first everything, and it felt really good to be wanted like that. That’s where I went wrong, wasn’t it? I was such an easy target for his brand of manipulation, because I so badly wanted to believe I could be special to someone.”

Zac looks a little ill now, and I have no idea why I felt compelled to spew all that to him when I have a perfectly understanding brother who’d have listened to me. I have Summer, who would no doubt launch into a missive about how much better off I am without Connor.

“You want to know the worst part?” I continue anyway.

Zac fingers the red rope on his wrist. “What?”

I grind my teeth, refusing to cry another tear over my own stupidity. I’ve done enough of that this week. “He told me he loved me two weeks in.Two weeks, Zac. And I actually believed him. How stupid am I? You don’t fall for someone that fast. It’s impossible, and I ate it up. All the signs were there, weren’t they?”

“You’re not stupid.” Zac rises from the edge of his desk, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s possible. I don’t know about this guy, but it’s possible, okay? Between the right people, falling in love can happen quicker than a blink. And that kind of love can last an entire lifetime, waiting for the right moment to show itself.”

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