Page 28 of Faking the Shot
“It’s day one and I already feel like I’m in trouble.”
Diana winced. “Why not just tell her how you feel?”
“Because if I do that, she’ll just dump me, and then her agent will find her someone else who isn’t a Christian.” And reading between the lines, those guys would likely not treat her with the respect she deserved. He knew—only too well—what guys could be like. “I don’t want that for her.”
“Or for you,” she said, way too insightfully.
“Does that make me a bad person if she only wants to fake-date me and I want more?”
“Yes,” Diana said.
“No.” Chris said, glancing at his wife. “Why would you say that?”
“Because when she finds out that he likes her, then she’ll just think he’s a stalker and being creepy about all of this, when he should just be upfront.”
“Or he learns to control his feelings and treat her as a friend and helps out a friend in her time of need.”
“That’s what I thought at the time,” Zac confessed.
Diana huffed. “Sure it was.”
“Come on, honey. Cut the man some slack. He’s trying to do the right thing.”
“The right thing is telling Ainsley how he feels. No woman likes to feel like she’s been manipulated, which is how she’ll feel if you carry on pretending that you don’t have any feelings for her.”
Man.
“What is God saying to you?” Chris asked.
Zac sighed. “I thought maybe He was saying yes. Because I might’ve talked to Him about her.”
“You did?”
He shrugged. “At the White Night event.”
“Ha!” Chris rubbed his hands together. “Remember I said to you that you might meet your match that night?”
He nodded.
“I wonder now if that was the Holy Spirit.”
Diana rolled her eyes.
“Come on, hon,” Chris said to her. “We never know what God has in store for those who are willing to trust Him.”
Part of him wanted to scoff, but another part didn’t dare. Chris knew a lot more about God stuff than Zac did. And hadn’t God opened a way to get to know Ainsley?
“I knew you were interested in her after the White Night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You kept going on about how you didn’t want to steal another man’s girl. A guy wouldn’t say that unless he wanted to steal the girl.”
“That’s quite observant of you,” Diana said.
Chris smirked. “Not just a pretty face, this one.”
She checked out the ceiling again and sighed. “Look, Zac, I know you’re trying to figure out how to do relationships as a new Christian. Maybe you just need to have some time out of dating. Learn who you are in God so you’re secure enough in God to offer that to the right girl when she comes along.”