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He looked around, but it was after dark. The course was supposed to be closed, and I had called to make sure there wouldn’t be a late-night party. “You like to golf.”
He snorted, but sat and leaned back, stretching his legs out. “I golf. I don’t know if I like it. It’s one of those sports you grow up doing and you have to keep doing because everyone in your world does it. I like drinking when I golf. I do like that.”
I nodded, my stomach still doing somersaults. “Right. That’s good.” I looked around because I thought I had all of this planned. It wasn’t going how I thought it would go. Then again, I’d never done something like this before.
“Ava.”
I paused and looked over. He’d said my name so softly. “Yeah?”
“What are we doing here?”
“I’m trying to do a new leaf thing. And I’m trying to apologize for earlier.” I held his gaze. “For what I said, especially at the end.”
“That was this morning.”
“I know.”
“Where were you all day? You didn’t go to any of your jobs.”
I frowned. “How do you know?”
“Because I scoped them out, all day. You never showed, and they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Oh.” A nervous laugh slipped out of me. I started rocking, self-soothing. “I called in to the stables, said I needed a self-care day. Then I went and had lunch with my mom and she, well, she changed my mind about everything.”
“Everything?”
I nodded, a firm one. “Everything.”
He tilted his head to see me better, and I was beginning to feel warm from the look in his gaze. They were knowing, somber, but also kind. He was giving me the look he’d done when he saw me walking drunk here and when he took me to his place, and when he gave me food, and when he held my hand after my grandmum died, and all the other times that I hadn’t branded to my memory. I was doing that now.
“I overreacted—”
“No, you didn’t.”
I paused.
He leaned forward, his head still turned my way and I realized that Zeke never looked away from me. He always had his eyes on me. Steadfast. “I poked a bear this morning, and I might have to keep poking it to make sure it doesn’t poke me back. You don’t know the reason, but—”
“I don’t need to,” I rushed in, cutting him off and my hand laid on his arm. “I don’t need to know the reason you did what you did. I don’t even know all the details, just that you went to someone’s house, someone that I loathe, and you blackmailed him with something you found when you hacked him. It’s a whole different level for me, but you’re a different level.”
“Ava.” He began to shake his head. “If you start on this where I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re too different, or if you start talking about the differences in our socioeconomic status, I’m going to hurl this beer bottle off into the dark. And I know you hate that shit, so you’d have to go and look for it, and then I’d have to go with you because it’s dark out and who knows what creatures are scurrying around here, and I don’t want to do that. You think I’m all this brave guy, but I’m really just a scaredy cat.”
I was fighting back a grin. “You’d be going to protect me?”
“No. I’d be going so you could protect me.” His tone was dry, and he was giving me a subtle look. A subtle hint. The ghost of a smile was on his face, just briefly. “I told you, I’m the scaredy cat here.”
“But you’re not.” My tone went serious. “Youarethe brave one. You’re the one who wades into any battle that’s going on if it means helping out one of your friends. I don’t know why you swung on Mitchell, but I can take a guess.”
I was holding his gaze this time. I leaned in closer, dropping my voice. “When I thought about it, I figured that probably Dirty Mean Mitchell said some not-nice things, probably about me, maybe about others, but most definitely it was bad enough where you reacted.”
“I’d do it again.”
My heart thumped, real hard in my chest. “I know you deleted my account with his bank. Someone I know who works there called me this afternoon. She was worried, heard what happened, and knew about you and me. She looked me up, saw I wasn’t there, and panicked.”
“Your money is safe. I just transferred it all to your other account. I was going to tell you, but shit hit the fan.”
“I won’t lie. It’s alarming that you can do that, what you did.”
