Deacon (Unfinished Hero #4)(104)

I clutched the other side of his neck, pushing my face in, whispering, “Baby.”

“Tried to be dead again when I let you go, Cassie. Dead doesn’t hurt. Tried f*ckin’ hard to find it. But I couldn’t find it. You lived in me.”

I closed my eyes tight, pushed closer, and held on.

Deacon gave me a squeeze of his arms and kept speaking.

“Thought my luck had run out. I finally pulled my head outta my ass, made my way back to wage beautiful war, and timed it so your girl was comin’ up the lane while I was drivin’ down it.”

I opened my eyes, lifted my head, and looked at him. “Really?”

“Fuckin’ Hollywood shit, she raced to me, thought she was gonna play chicken, ram right into me or force me off the lane. She cut the wheel at the last moment, cuttin’ me off, rolled out of her truck, and started shouting.”

I started giggling.

And then I got Deacon’s grooves, his crinkles, and I felt glee.

I’d missed that too.

“If I wasn’t shocked as shit she could pull that off without damage to either vehicle, and my head wasn’t filled with gettin’ to you, I woulda bust a gut laughing too, woman.”

“In retrospect,” I said, still giggling. “It’s pretty funny.”

He continued to give me the grooves and crinkles as he agreed, “Yeah.”

He removed one arm so he could curl his hand at my jaw, fingertips in my hair, and yes, I’d missed that too.

“She’s gone.”

His tone was back to serious so I got serious too.

“I know, Deacon,” I told him. “But Milagros is pretty confused, not in a good way, about—”

“I don’t mean her. Milagros, Manuel, the kids, I’ll make that good again. Bust my ass to do it. You need it. I need it. They’re part of you, a part of what you gave me that made me feel clean again. But that’s not what I mean. I mean Jeannie.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Cassidy, what I’m sayin’ is, you wanna make cookies, you make ’em for you and for me.”

Sheesh, he could so read me.

He kept going.

“She does not control me, not anymore. She sure as f*ck doesn’t control you, not ever again. I let you go, let. I could have kept you but I let that shit happen. Raid told me when a man is burned by a woman, he gets over it and moves on. When he burns a good woman, he doesn’t. What I didn’t get is that I got burned, and not by a good woman, by a troubled one who I allowed to drag me down. And I had to find it in me to let her go because of that. Not you. It took a while for it to penetrate, but I finally figured out I would never be able to let you go because you weren’t what I wanted for a good life, like Jeannie. You were what I needed.”

Oh God.

He had to stop.

He didn’t stop.

“But I could let her go. I had that power. She was dead. It was me givin’ her the power to hold on. So I let her go. Now we live our lives. We live ’em good. We live ’em happy. She dragged me down for years.” His hand gave me a squeeze. “Now I’m back at the surface, baby. With you. And she’s gone.”

My smile was shaky, but happy, when I gave it to him, nodding.

He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Your folks pissed at me?”

My smile faded when I kept nodding.

“I’ll fix that too,” he muttered.

I believed him.

Totally.

“Can I ask you something?” I requested.

“Anything.”

Anything.

My smile came back as a small grin. Then I took a deep breath.

“The thirty-eight women…” I said, trailing off.

“Few before Jeannie, most of them after she died. Lookin’ back, I was subconsciously tryin’ to find my way back to clean. None of them did it for me. So, as you know, I quit lookin’.”

“I get that.”

“Good,” he murmured.

“And the non-PDA?” I went on.

“What?”

“You don’t touch me much in public, Deacon. You’re very affectionate but not when other people are around.”

“You want that?”

“Well…yeah. If it’s in you to give.”

“I’ll give it to you.”

“But did you not do it because—?”

“I didn’t do it because, my hands on you, that tended to lead to something.”

I stared at him. “I’m pretty sure you can control your base instincts.”

“I can. But my dick has a mind of its own around you. Don’t need to be fightin’ gettin’ hard while a ten-year-old kid is interrogatin’ me about my life.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, getting it.

“Or when I’m walkin’ down the aisle in a grocery store.”

I started grinning.

Deacon watched my mouth, muttering, “I see she gets me.”

“I get you.”

His eyes came to mine. “I’ll get over that, woman, I get used to you.”

He was teasing.

“Then I’ll have to keep giving it to you good so you don’t,” I retorted.

His thumb slid over my lips again with his eyes watching as he said, “She likes me hard.”