A tired-looking nurse started to say, “He needs—oh.” She blinked, and her eyes widened. “Oh. Umm, never mind. Follow me.”
Over my shoulder, I smiled at Zac, wincing only a little when I bumped my elbow by accident.
The nurse took my vitals, being really freaking polite the entire time as Zac stood by the chair I was sitting in, a hand on top of my head. I could feel him fingering my curls, tugging on one and then another. He could’ve put me to sleep if he would’ve done it any longer, and I stayed quiet, just enjoying his touch.
The second she walked out though, I turned to Zac, ready to distract him. “So, you ready for tomorrow?”
“Move your hands.”
I moved them to the side and watched as he turned and settled himself across my lap, not dropping all of his weight down on me, but most of it. I lowered my arms, thought about it for a moment, and set them around him, resting one hand on his thigh and holding my elbow with the other. “Look, you fit.”
His smile wasn’t totally bright, but it was mostly warm as he set his hands on top of my free one. “It’s been a long time since I sat on someone’s lap.”
“Lucky me.” His thighs were like a rock. “You’re lucky I don’t have boney legs; otherwise, it’d be pretty uncomfortable.”
He flexed the long muscles of his quadriceps as he set an arm around my shoulders. “You got a lot of experience sittin’ on people’s laps?” he asked quietly.
“Only some people’s.”
“Whose?”
I smiled at him, fucking around. “People’s,” I answered. “So, you ready for tomorrow?” So far, the White Oaks had played three games at home, and I’d gotten to go to all of them. Boogie had come down, and we’d enjoyed it. I’d even sucked it up when Lauren had tagged along one time and tried my best to be nice to her and ask questions about the wedding. They had decided to have a small one and weren’t having best men or bridesmaids or anything. Worked for me.
Zac was still frowning and looking like he really wanted to say something else that wasn’t football related, but he finally said, “Yeah. About as ready as I can be. You’re comin’, aren’t you?”
I pressed my cheek against his biceps and smiled up at him. “You rushed over here when you were probably in a meeting, and you’re sitting on my lap when we both know I’m probably going to need to get stitches. Yes, I’m coming, Snack Pack.” And then I remembered what happened with my channel and the ache in me grew fierce. “I need to tell you what happened earlier.”
His fingers skimmed the back of my hand lightly. “What happened?”
And it was right then that the doctor knocked and peeked her head inside the door.
* * *
An hour and five stitches later, Zac was heading out of the urgent care room by my side, holding a small paper bag with gauze that the doctor had shoved at me. By the lack of surprise on the doctor’s face when she’d walked in, either the nurse had already warned her who was inside the room or she had no idea who Zac was. She hadn’t batted an eyelash.
Especially not when she’d seen Zac sitting on me.
The doctor was really polite as she took a peek at my elbow and claimed I would need stitches just like I’d thought. And when Zac took a seat on a stool that the doctor slid over, he slipped his fingers through mine—looking sweaty and uncomfortable—especially as she injected me with some numbing stuff. He kept on holding it too as she stitched me up, whispering, a retelling of his last conversation with Paw-Paw as I’d squeezed the shit out of his hand, imagining that I felt that damn needle puncturing my skin, and instead forcing me to press my lips together to keep from laughing.
“How bad is it?” I had asked him while we’d waited to get discharged. He was staring intently on our hands, making it a point not to look elsewhere.
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You’re scarred for life, darlin’.”
There hadn’t been an initial bill, and I wasn’t going to bring it up either. I could pay for it, even though I felt like Gunner should. But with the three weeks he claimed to be giving me off, I figured it balanced out. It was his fault for not just opening the closet and getting us the damn vacuum like we’d asked. And Deepa was going to be leaving anytime now and her poor mom was sick, so….
I managed to make it all the way until we were about to get into his car before I started crying.
Finally.
I was pretty sure he froze in his spot next to me, about to open the passenger door, when he stopped. “What’s wrong? Does your arm really hurt?” he asked in just about the softest, most tender voice in the world before palming my cheek. Tears splashed against the skin of his million-dollar hands.
But I managed to tell him, with big gulps in between every other word, “Zac, I lost control of my Lazy Baker channel. Someone hacked me this morning.”
Before any other words came out of his mouth, he was there, right in front of me, his other hand going to my waist. “Say that again, honey. I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”
So I tried to tell him again. From the beginning. “Someone hacked my account this morning. My Lazy Baker WatchTube account. I got an email from a company asking to advertise on my channel this morning. It looked legitimate. When I clicked on the link for the product they wanted to push, an installer buried itself into my computer.
“I knew what was happening, and I forced my computer to restart and changed all my passwords, but I guess I was too late. The hacker bypassed my two-factor authentication and got into my account
