Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DADDY ISSUES
HAZEL
If someone had told me a month ago that I’d be standing in the doorway of a Detroit hotel room with my heart trying to break out of my chest because there is only one bed, I would have laughed.
Or cried. Probably both. But here I am, frozen in place, staring at the neatly made king-sized mattress like it is an active bomb waiting for someone to cut the wrong wire.
The room itself is nice enough. It’s got warm lighting, a big window overlooking the parking lot, and a clean bathroom—nothing creepy, or stained, or suspicious.
It should feel safe. Comfortable, even. Instead, it feels like the universe is sitting in the corner waiting to see which one of us combusts first. I’m kind of enjoying the fact that Zack is three… two…one…yep, there it is.
Zack stops behind me, and I feel his whole body tense the moment he notices the bed.
It is not dramatic or obvious like you read about in books, but it’s subtle—just like everything else he does.
His inhale sharpens, and I watch as his shoulders lock for a second.
He doesn’t step around me, but I can feel him processing, recalculating, and preparing to retreat in that quiet way he does when something touches too close to a boundary he never explains.
I just wish I knew what to do or say to this man to make him feel more comfortable around me—and this is apparently his biggest nightmare.
I step deeper into the room before he can say anything. If I keep moving, maybe my brain will not have time to implode.
“Well,” I say, tossing my backpack onto the chair like I am handling this normally, “looks like they upgraded us.”
Zack makes a sound behind me that isn’t really a laugh, but not quite a groan, either.
He stands just inside the doorway, hands in his pockets, eyes locked on the bed as if it personally betrayed him.
How the hell am I supposed to keep my shit together in these circumstances?
He makes it too damn easy for me to fuck with him.
“I booked a double,” he says after a moment. “Two queens. That is what the site showed.”
I shrug, trying to appear unfazed, even though my pulse is hammering like I just ran five miles. “These places overbook all the time. No big deal.” Play it cool, Hazel. Yeah—calm, cool, and collected.
His eyes flick to me, sharp and searching, like he’s trying to figure out if I’m just saying that to keep things easy. He is not wrong. The truth is, I don’t know what I feel. Nervous? Excited? Terrified? All of the above?
He steps farther into the room and sets his helmet down on the table. He has that careful posture he gets when he is choosing his words with surgical precision.
“I can sleep on the floor,” he says, simply.
I blink at him. “Zack. No. Absolutely not.”
“It’s fine,” he insists. But there is something too gentle in his voice, like he is trying to spare me from something he thinks I cannot handle.
“Zack, you are six feet tall and built like someone designed you to ruin furniture. You are not sleeping on the floor.”
He looks at me with a startled kind of stillness, like he cannot decide whether to be offended, amused, or concerned by that statement. The corner of his mouth twitches, barely there, but it is the closest thing to a smile I’ve managed to pull out of him since we left the diner.
The air between us shifts. Lightens just a fraction.
“It is one night,” I continue. “We are exhausted. We have a long ride in the morning. We can share the bed. It is big enough for, like, six people.”
He gives the mattress an assessing look that feels almost scientific. “Maybe four,” he concedes.
“Four and a half,” I counter, refusing to let him be the serious one right now. “But we only need room for two.”
He looks down, jaw flexing. He’s uncomfortable, but not because of the bed itself—again, it’s somehow because of me.
Or maybe the possibility of messing up, crossing a line, breaking some rule he has in his head about keeping space between us, even though fate seems determined to shove us into the same square foot of air.
I cross my arms gently. Not defensive, just steady. “Zack. I trust you.”
The words land between us like a stone dropped into still water. His whole posture shifts again, but this time in a way that feels more vulnerable, almost fragile. He looks at me like he’s trying to understand how I could mean that.
“Hazel,” he says, quietly, “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“I don’t,” I answer. “Not with you.”
Silence stretches for a beat. Then two. Something warm flickers and rises in my chest when the tension in his shoulders eases a fraction.
He walks toward the dresser, pulls his phone out, and clears his throat. “I will…take the side closest to the door. You can have the one by the window.”
“Perfect,” I say, maybe too fast, and definitely too brightly.
He nods—unsure, serious, and entirely Zack.
I sit on the edge of the bed, testing the mattress.
It is soft, warm, and very real. He glances over, and I can tell he is bracing again.
The fear living inside him doesn’t know how to handle these moments.
Not for danger, ‘cause we’re not in direct danger.
But it’s for the closeness that was thrust upon us—for the possibility this night might change something between us in a way neither of us can fully undo.
And I cannot tell if that terrifies me or exhilarates me.
Maybe both? Yeah, probably both.