It Happens (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 6)

I scrambled up to my feet just as Zee made it to the bottom of the bleachers and then hopped over the railing as if it was nothing.

He landed lithely on the track, and that was when I got my first look at Zee in his sweatpants.

Today was the first true cold day of fall. At a brisk forty-nine degrees, I had been excited as hell to finally run without sweating so badly that I couldn’t run like I wanted.

Had I thought about the other added benefits of it being this cold out?

No.

But now that I was seeing Zee in sweatpants headed my way, I realized that not only was it hoodie season, it was also sweatpants season.

Jesus Christ.

I swallowed hard and tried to get control of my thoughts even though all I wanted was to continue to stare at Zee’s dick that was swinging away inside his loose sweats.

“Why do you have a key to the lights?” I asked curiously.

Something took off out of my peripheral vision and I tensed.

He shoved the keys into his pocket as he watched the five skunks run toward the open gate where he’d parked his truck.

“Because I run here quite a bit, and I know the maintenance man.” He paused. “Why are you running with it so dark?”

He didn’t look happy to know that I was running here at all, but especially since it was so dark.

I shrugged and bent down to stretch, no longer in the mood to run but knowing I really had no choice.

“Because if I don’t run now, this early, I won’t have time to run later,” I told him. “I have to get two short and two long runs in during the week before work. But today is my really long run. I’ll be about two hours. If I don’t get up and run at four, I won’t be done in time for the Saturday viewings.”

I had no idea why I was explaining this to him. Why was it his business, anyhow?

“How many miles are you doing today?” he asked, eyeing me skeptically.

“Twelve,” I said. “Next week I’m going for the full half-marathon.”

He grunted something out and then looked at his watch.

“If you run for two hours, that puts you at seven thirty at this point,” he mused. “Is that enough time? I know the viewing is at eight.”

Everybody in the freakin’ county was going.

The governor’s son might not have been well liked—he was creepy as hell—but the governor wasn’t. He was actually a really sweet guy.

“Garrena, my part-time employee, is there to get everyone started,” I told him as I stood up straight. “Thanks for coming to the rescue. But I have to start.”

He gave me a chin lift, and with nothing left to do, I started to run.

I didn’t see him as I made my way around the track the first time, and it was on my fourth that I realized the reason I didn’t see him was because he’d made his way up to the top of the bleachers and had made himself at home in the alcove of the announcer’s stand.

He was huddled up in himself, phone light illuminating his face, just sitting there.

Honestly, it would’ve been creepy had I arrived and that’d been where he was sitting.

But knowing it was him, as well as knowing he’d only stayed because of me, made me feel somewhat comforted.

I say somewhat because I was still freaked out that he’d stayed.

It was awkward, to say the least.

The two of us really didn’t get along, and even more, we’d shared a really awkward night three nights ago, and I wasn’t sure where to go from there.

Did I acknowledge that we’d had sex?

Did I ignore it?

Did we do it again?

Because I really, really wanted to do it again.

The more that I thought about that night together, the more I realized how right that it’d felt. How not upset I was about where we’d ended up, even if I didn’t exactly remember getting to that point.

I may not like the man, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t have sex with him.

These thoughts drifted through my mind as I ran, and as the darkness slowly started to fade, and the sun began to rise, I realized that maybe I should just ask him. Maybe I should straight up confront him, ask him where we went from there, and see what he had to say.

Zee was honest to a fault, even when he didn’t like where the honesty would take him.

Though just sayin’, he’d never had a single problem being honest with me. In fact, I knew he enjoyed telling me like it was.

I stopped on mile six for a drink of water and then continued before I could get too comfortable with being idle.

It was at mile marker eleven that he came down the bleachers.