Free The Boyfriend Thief by Shana Norris Page A

school started back in the fall. I wasn’t going to fill Zac in on all the gory details, so I said, “He’s a jerk and I don’t want to see Molly get hurt.”
    “What makes you so sure he’ll hurt her?”
    I lifted my eyes to meet his gaze. He looked completely confused, as if he couldn’t follow the point of this entire conversation. Poor, naïve Zac, he probably still believed in fairy tales that ended happily ever after.
    “Because everyone gets hurt at the end of relationships,” I told him. “It’s not a matter of if, but when. ”
    “But there are good break ups and even good times to look back on after the bad ones are over.”
    “Not always,” I insisted.
    Zac’s eyes bored into me, as if he were trying to read deep into my soul. “Hmm,” he said.
    “What?” I snapped. His gaze made me feel as if I were a specimen under a microscope. He was supposed to be the science experiment here, not me.
    “You know what you need? A date.”
    I choked on the mouthful of Sprite I’d just taken from the can, nearly spraying the liquid across my lap. “I do not need a date,” I told him, sputtering and wiping at my chin.
    “On the scale of who needs a date most in the entire world, you’re probably at the top of the list. When was the last time you had a date?”
    My cheeks grew hot and I jumped to my feet, stuffing my supplies back into my bag. “Obviously, this study date—I mean, session —is over, so I’m going to work.”
    “Hey, wait.” Zac stood and grabbed my arm, his touch electrifying the hairs along my forearm. “You’ve never had a date, have you?”
    “I’ve had dates!” I lied.
    Zac tilted his head to the side. “Who was it? Where did you go? When was it?”
    I yanked my arm from his grasp. “We’re not having this conversation.”
    “Dates with your dad don’t count.”
    I stomped down the hall toward the front door and pretended I didn’t hear him. “Don’t fill out anymore of the business notebook without me.”
    “It has to be dinner and a movie,” Zac went on, remaining close at my heels. “With an actual person, not over the internet.”
    “And you shouldn’t stay up all night,” I said, ignoring the way my neck felt like it was burning up as he kept talking. Why was it so freaking hot in his house? “Your body needs sleep to repair itself.”
    “Have you even been kissed?”
    I spun around, accidentally smacking him with my backpack as I did so. “I don’t see how this is any of your business!”
    Zac grinned. “But it is my business,” he said calmly. “ Our business, remember? We match people up, so why not find a match for you while we’re at it?”
    “We are not matching me up.” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared back at him as my heart rate tried to return to a pace somewhere below cardiac arrest.
    “You can be our first client,” Zac insisted. “Don’t you want to be happy and in love?”
    He grinned down at me and I hated that I had to tilt my face up a little to look at him. It made me feel small and insignificant, as if he were the wise one with all the answers about love and life.
    “I don’t qualify being in love with being happy. My happiness is not dependent on someone else’s affections.”
    Zac waved a hand, dismissing my words. “Of course not, I never said it was. I meant that you could be even happier with a boyfriend.”
    “Oh,” I said, tilting my head to one side, “because everyone in a relationship is oh so happy? You must be one of the happiest people in the world, right?”
    My words were meant as a challenge. I wanted to see him claim how happy and in love with Hannah he was and how they had the perfect relationship. Because I knew better. I knew that behind his back, Hannah was making deals with me to get him to dump her.
    But Zac didn’t answer. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other for a moment, avoiding my gaze.
    “We can find someone else to be our first client,” he finally said after a