Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182070 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
And my cousin nodded seriously, his face grave. “I know. You know I love you too.”
Only these two could tell each other they loved each other like it was the most natural thing in the world. I’d always loved it. And I understood why Zac wouldn’t put anything between them. I really did. Who was I to mess this up?
I really was doing the right thing. I just needed time to get over it—time and maybe a distraction. Maybe I could reschedule my trip to Orlando and make an extended vacation out of it.
“You’re the brother I never had and never wanted,” Zac kept going, bringing my focus back to him and the way he was looking down at my cousin.
That had Boogie grinning.
And it was me who felt a little uneasy. Was this sounding like a breakup, or was I imagining it? I had to be imagining it. I’d seen marriages less supportive than these two’s friendship.
“I love you, all right?” Zac repeated.
My cousin sighed.
What the hell was he sighing for?
Oh God, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. “Why are you two acting like you’re splitting up? Nothing happened, Boogie, I swear.”
“Who says we’re splittin’ up, darlin’?” Zac asked, dropping a hand from my cousin’s shoulder to reach over and take my forearm gently, his rough thumb grazing along the inside of it.
“We’re not breaking up,” my cousin confirmed before focusing back on his best friend with a deep breath and then a long, drawn-out sigh that came straight out of his soul. I was pretty positive even his shoulders slumped for a second, but he set them back into place, and it just made me feel again like they were breaking up. “Say what you have to say so I can move on with my life,” Boogie told him, tipping his chin up and everything. “Is this why you’ve been calling me every day to talk about nothing?”
He was calling him every day?
Zac didn’t hesitate. “Yeah. I should’ve told you when I realized it. I didn’t expect it to happen, but it did,” he told him steadily. “I fought it, I swear, but I didn’t have a goddamn chance, Boog. It was like fightin’ the inevitable. Tryin’ to fight a brick wall. I swear on Paw-Paw’s life, I had zero chance. She came up behind me when I wasn’t expectin’ it and gave me the beatin’ of a lifetime.”
“Somebody beat you up?” I asked in confusion, looking him over but finding no bruises on any of his exposed skin.
Boogie said nothing.
I literally had no clue what the fuck they were talking about and wanted some more context clues so I could figure it out.
Zac, though, didn’t let anything stop him. He licked his lips and set his own shoulders firmly down, preparing for… something. “I don’t wanna keep tryin’ to fight it anymore. I can’t. I know you’d want the best for me, and this is it, and I think you know that.” He took a breath and said very carefully a sentence that sent my heart into overdrive. “My whole life, I’ve felt like I was missin’ somethin’, tryin’ to find somethin’. I don’t know how to explain it, and now, it feels like I found it, Boog. It was right in front of my damn face all along.”
My cousin stared at him, and his thinking face was on. It took him a moment, his breathing long and deep, before tilting his head toward the ceiling and eventually saying, “I want to say you could’ve told me all this over the phone, but I’d be lying. I could tell for a while now there was something you wanted to tell me, but I was caught up with Lauren and the baby and let it go.” He lowered his gaze and sighed again. “And I know you never had a chance. You never did. But we need ground rules.”
“Okay.”
Boogie’s face went serious. “There’s only one. You never talk about shit I don’t want to hear. That’s all I want; everything else I might worry about, I know I don’t need to. We wouldn’t be having this conversation unless you were totally sure you knew what you were doing.”
Zac nodded solemnly.
My cousin looked at me, and then he smiled.
I frowned. “I don’t know what you two dorks are talking about. At first, I thought it was me, and now I have no idea.”
His smile just got that much bigger.
“No, I’m serious. What are you talking about?”
Boogie laughed then, erasing every trace of the pressure that had been on his cheekbones a second ago. “We’re clearing things up.”
Clearing what up? I elbowed Zac, who was still holding my forearm. “I’m not trying to mess anything up. I promise. I love you two, and each of you knows that, and I don’t want this bromance to need therapy because I was being dumb.”