Page 56 of Miss Matched

Kennedy

Lyingheretangledin Zac’s sheets, I can’t help but regret the one-time rule I placed on this evening. I want to feel it again, and more, and deeper. That untamed dance of our bodies on the piano, the couch. Learning each other’s bodies and slowly making our way to his bedroom.

I’m no longer confident my legs are working, but I want to drain every last ounce of myself for him. I want to peel the sheet from his still-naked body and cling on for dear life.

Not that I tell him that. Regardless of the physical push and pull, a rope tied deeper holds me back. This doesn’t change the brutal truth between us. In the end, Zac is still looking for someone I can’t be to him, someone he hired me to find—a wife.

Tonight was a poor attempt to get him out of my system, thinking that dragging the tension into the open would let it out. I just hope he doesn’t notice that inside I’m starting to waver. Because my mind might be made up, but my heart isn’t done with him yet.

“So, Cupid, what made you become a matchmaker anyway?” Zac asks. He pulls one of my legs over his hip, and we lie with arms and limbs entwined, him drawing small circles on my skin, and me fighting my hummingbird heartbeat.

“At first it was joke,” I tell him, and he gives me a curious look. “I wanted to be a criminal psychologist. But in one of my elective classes, I got picked for a project on the psychology of love, focusing specifically on sexual connection and goal-directed motivations. Turns out it was interesting stuff, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Anyway, I made this joke that I was going to become a love expert, and Monica started calling me Matchmaker Kennedy. By the time I graduated, I thought, why not.”

“Criminals to soulmates. That’s a big shift.”

“Depends on the client,” I say, and Zac lets out a deep, gravelly laugh.

“But, yes, I suppose it is,” I tell him. “I liked the hope in it. Figured if I wasn’t capable of finding love for myself, then I might as well help others.”

Zac’s deep moss green eyes search mine. “What makes you think you’re not capable of finding love?”

He might as well have loaded a gun with that question, the barrel of it staring me in the face. And as much as I want to shift the conversation, there’s another need urging me to tell him.

“I don’t know a lot about my parents; I never even met them.” I pause, afraid this is digging too deep into wounds I’ve never been ready to open. “From what I do know, they were high school sweethearts. Whirlwind romance, married young. Became parents young. And then—”

“The car accident?” Zac finishes, and I nod.

“I didn’t have a traditional home growing up. It was one foster family after the next. Different neighborhoods, schools. It was impossible to form any real connections,” I say.

“Do you still talk to any of your foster families?” Zac asks.

I shake my head. “Not anymore. I was close with a couple, but once you move on, you just kind of…” I pause and bite down on my lip. “Well, move on, I guess. And then there’s the ones I wouldn’t talk to if it was an option anyway.”

Zac tips a finger under my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “Why not?”

My instincts urge me to hold back, to look away, to protect my secrets like I always do. But with his eyes on mine, I simply say, “Not every home was a good one.”

His jaw clenches, and his teeth grate against each other.

“You don’t have to worry.” I wave my arm up and shoot him a large Hollywood smile that fades as quickly as I force it. “I turned out just fine.”

Sometimes I do believe it, that the good homes made up for the bad. That it didn’t matter if I lost another little piece of myself at each one, because I was some version of whole in the end. But the breadcrumbs of the woman I became didn’t leave a clear path back to the girl I once was. So even if I convinced myself that I wasn’t broken, it didn’t make it true.

And even if I believe you need to be able to see the scars for them to exist, it doesn’t mean Zac isn’t staring straight at them.

“Besides, they weren’t all terrible,” I say. “Especially not Della.”

“Foster mom?”

I nod. “She took me in when I was sixteen. A difficult age, to say the least. And I sure didn’t make it easy on her. One time I got caught ditching class to drink with friends behind the science building, and I thought for sure that was it. But Della didn’t bat a lash. She just grounded me and sent me to my room. No matter what stunt I pulled she refused to give up or send me back.”

Zac runs a hand up and down my arm, quietly listening, skimming his fingers down until he’s tracing my heart tattoo. The one I got as a reminder of the impressions people leave on you, long after they’re gone.

“Della didn’t put up with shit. Which pissed me off back then, but I appreciate it now. She’s the only reason I made anything of myself, believing in me when no one else did. It was her idea to apply for the scholarship that got me through college.”

“Sounds like she really cared.”

“She did,” I say. “She was one of the good ones. She never had any kids of her own, so being a foster mom gave her a family.”

---