Free Knock Me for a Loop by Heidi Betts Page B

weeks to check in on Zack. To talk to him. To do something in an attempt to draw him out of his apparent funk.
    Oh, they’d been subtle and even creative about it, but the pressure—and hints the size of cruise liners—had been there nonetheless.
    Grace had done a pretty good job of ignoring them, too…until last Wednesday’s Knit Wits meeting, when she’d discovered through Jenna and Ronnie that things had apparently gotten so bad with Zack that even his very best friends, Dylan and Gage, had given up on him. They’d recapped the guys’ last visit, and each detail they’d shared had only made her stomach tighten and her heart sink lower than it had been before.
    What they were saying, the man they were talking about, didn’t sound like her Zack. Or the Zack formerly known as hers, at any rate.
    The man she had been engaged to had always been the life of the party, with a zest for life sometimes hard to keep up with. An injury on the ice—no matter how serious—would barely have made a dent in that level of gusto. He would have followed doctors’ instructions to the letter, plus some, and done whatever was necessary to heal, recover, and bounce back like a jai alai ball.
    Hearing that he wasn’t bouncing back, was sitting around like a slug, stagnating in his own desolation, was just enough to push her feelings about Zack and his post-accident condition from apathetic to concerned. She suspected that was her friends’ goal in being so specific and dogged in their recounting of Dylan and Gage’s confrontation with Zack the week before.
    So here she was. Palms sweating, stomach churning, reluctance pouring through her veins like toxic waste.
    She raised her hand to knock, determined to get in, check on him—maybe kick his butt to get him moving in the right direction, if need be—and get the hell out. But before her knuckles connected with the thick wooden panel, she realized that Zack might still be in bed.
    It was only eight in the morning, and he’d never been much of a morning person to begin with. Plus, if Zack really was as depressed and withdrawn as everyone implied, there was a chance he spent most of his time in bed or asleep.
    Even if he wasn’t, he still had a badly damaged leg—one he hadn’t been going to physical therapy for, the idiot—and was in no shape to rush around answering doors.
    Letting her purse strap fall from her shoulder, she balanced the overstuffed bag on her knee and started digging. She shouldn’t still have a key to Zack’s apartment, but knew she did.
    She’d used it to get in the night she’d discovered his infidelity and wanted to destroy him by destroying everything he owned. After recovering from the initial shock and feeling moderately regretful of her actions, she’d told her friends she flushed the key the same as she’d flushed the engagement ring he’d given her.
    She hadn’t, though. She’d kept it—just in case. After all, one never knew when their ex-fiancé might once again do something stupid or the “woman scorned” rage might rear its ugly head and need to be vented by throwing more of his clothes off the balcony.
    The loose key was, of course, floating around at the very bottom of the oversized bag, beneath her own ring of keys, a pack of gum, container of Tic Tacs, and a couple of wadded-up tissues. And she, of course, located it only after rummaging around for fifteen minutes, searching through every inside and outside pocket, and removing just about every large item first.
    Finally, though, she had it in hand and slipped it into the lock. As she turned it, and simultaneously turned the knob, she caught herself murmuring a short prayer beneath her breath that he hadn’t also flipped the dead bolt or hooked the chain; otherwise she would end up banging on the door to wake him—and possibly a few of his neighbors—after all.
    But just like the Zack she used to know, the current Zack hadn’t bothered to secure his apartment past the