I shot him another look but opened the door and got out. He was already circling around the front and, again, putting his hand out toward me. I grinned at him, feeling nervous myself, and took it. “If we get arrested for trespassing, I’m blaming you, okay?”
He tugged me closer and pressed his mouth against my temple before leading me forward. Unable to see much as we headed toward the front door, I tripped on something and just barely kept from busting my ass when Zac pulled my arm up with a laugh too.
“You got those heels on again?”
“No! Maybe….” I laughed as I got my feet under me.
He pulled his phone out and flashed the screen toward the ground. Then he slowly looked back up at me. If I had any hopes he wouldn’t recognize my shoes, they would’ve gone to hell with the look he sent me.
They were the same boots I’d worn the day we’d gone to the haunted house.
His mouth twitched.
I just blinked at him.
He blinked back.
“Are we going in or…?”
He shook his head, and he didn’t need to say anything as we kept going to the front door and stopped there. Using his phone, he illuminated the doorknob, and I saw that there was a keypad above the knob. He pressed in a couple buttons, and it unlocked.
Zac shot me another glance as he opened the door and reached just inside, flicking the lights on. “Come on,” he said.
So I went on. Zac led me through a doorway off the white-walled foyer and into an open area with a spacious living room on the left with a wall full of windows, and on the right was a big, big kitchen. The first thing I noticed was the double fridge, then the double ovens, an island with a beautiful white countertop, and a six-range oven with red knobs. And then there were the two-tone cabinets; the ones against the wall were white and the bottoms ones were navy.
“Oh wow,” I said. “This place is awesome.”
The fingers holding mine twitched. “You think?”
“Yeah. I mean, Trev’s place is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but this one….” I looked up at him with a smile. “Is this a vacation rental? I feel like we’re not that far from Paw-Paw’s house, but I would know if they remodeled their place.”
“No, this isn’t Paw-Paw’s,” he confirmed. Zac leaned his hip against the island, crossed his arms over his chest, and fucking said it. “I don’t want you to move to Killeen.”
I blinked. “Okay….”
Then he nodded. “You move, I’m goin’ with you.”
Andddd I froze. The weight of his words kicked me in the stomach. “What the hell are you talking about, Zac?”
“If you move to Killeen, to Morocco, to Orlando… I’m comin’ with you.”
My stomach cramped suddenly.
“I know you said this is all new and it doesn’t feel real and it’s too fast, but… Bibi, I’ve always known what I wanted. Maybe sometimes I don’t think straight and I might fart around, but once I get my head on and decide on somethin’, I’m gonna do it. And if I’ve learned anything the last couple weeks, it’s that I don’t wanna be without you. I’m so damn in love with you, kiddo, and I wanna be where you are.”
He stood up straight suddenly and blazed those light blue eyes at me, his hands going to my wrists, where he swallowed them up, making them feel small. He took a deep breath, and his shoulders fell. “I know you’ve got your own life, and I know you’ve got these dreams and plans that you don’t need me for, but I’ll buy you the nicest kitchen I can afford if you don’t leave.” One hand let go of my wrist, but all he did was stretch my fingers out, and then he rubbed them. “If you stick with me. If you gimme a chance.”
My heart was going to hammer out of my chest at this rate. In about three seconds. Maybe two.
“Zac—” I started to say.
“I don’t know where the hell I’m gonna end up a month from now, or two weeks from now, and I’m sorry—”
“Zac,” I tried to cut him off again.
He wouldn’t let me. “But I bought this place. I closed on it two days ago. There’s twenty-seven acres, plenty of room for us to build you a studio or somethin’ like you said you wanted. I can’t promise I won’t have to move around in the near future, but I wanna have some place to come home to. Some place that won’t go anywhere.” He bit his bottom lip. “If you don’t like somethin’—”
“Zachary James Travis,” I whispered.
He stopped talking and raised his eyebrows. “Bianca Maria Brannen.”
“You told me you loved me yesterday, and today you’re telling me you bought a house? You bought me a house?”
His smile popped up out of nowhere. “I’m hopin’ you’ll let me live in it with you. We can save space and share a room.”
Setting my hands on his shoulders, I went up to my tippy toes, letting the thrill of his words seep into my bones, overwhelming me, taking me over. This maniac. This… this amazing psycho. “You’re never going to make things easy, are you?” I breathed.
“Nope.” He smiled.
His palms cupped my cheeks a split second before that mouth—that mouth—settled on mine. Not with a peck like I’d been more than halfway expecting but like he was in this for the long run.
Because that’s what felt like happened almost immediately after he took hold of me and brushed his tongue against mine.
I brushed mine against his right back, kneading his shoulders and upper arms as I held him close.
I couldn’t believe it. Any of it.
His hands moved slowly as his mouth did the same after time. That warm mouth brushed softly against one corner of mine, then moved to my jaw, making a sweet, perfect line on it before trailing downward toward my neck. I tipped it to the side to give
