I Love You Like That

by Heather Cumiskey

  “I don’t know . . . maybe? Shit. He won’t stop staring.”

  “You said this was Kingsley’s car!” Hannah’s heart thudded hard against her chest wall. She lowered herself in the seat, suddenly scared.

  “What are you doing? He can’t see us! And we’re looking for him, remember?”

  “I’m freaking out!”

  “Roll down your window or I’ll do it!”

  “Shoot, he’s staring again.” Her voice fluttered up an octave.

  The car behind them laid on the horn, forcing them to pull through the intersection.

  “Keep your eyes on him, Hannah, I’ll pull over as soon as I can.” Toby swung his head back over his shoulder as they passed. “He just looked back. Connecticut plates, baby. He knows the car!”

  She sank lower in the seat, tears springing to her eyes. “I can’t, I won’t . . . I’m going to be sick.”

  Toby laughed. “Calm down, he couldn’t see us. There’s no way he’d assume the two of us were inside. Not in a million years.”

  “Oh my God, I’m freaking out. Do you think it’s him?”

  He turned onto the next block. “We’re following him, I can tell you that much.”

  “I can’t believe this. Oh my God, oh my God!” she said, pulling at her hair.

  “He’s not exactly dressed like himself,” Toby said.

  “Think he’s in trouble?” She gulped.

  “Who cares—he’s fucking alive. I’m not a murderer!”

  Toby’s elation set Hannah’s tears in motion. He reached over and put his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. “Bingo, brother, we found you,” he whistled through his teeth.

  CHAPTER 47

  “ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE RIGHT HOUSE?” HANNAH asked, eyeing the quaint shaker-style home with its long row of steps leading up to the front door. Dark drapes were drawn on all of the windows, which added to her uneasiness. She was focusing on taking long, deep breaths, but it wasn’t doing much to calm her down.

  “Positive,” Toby said. “It’s the house he wheeled her into, see the ramp? You should go in first. Then break it to him that I’m outside and not here to take him out again. I’m not sure what he’ll do when he sees me. Kind of ended badly back there in Connecticut.”

  “You think?”

  Toby laughed, giving her shoulder a light shove. “Go, you’re stalling.”

  Hannah avoided the front steps and used the wheelchair ramp off the side of the house to access the front door. She carefully turned the handle to the screen door, pushed on the inside door—which was already ajar—with her fingertips, and stepped through with little sound. She held her breath as her heart clocked in at a mile a minute.

  The overwhelming mustiness of the air hit her first. The house’s temperature matched the boiling weather outside.

  She squinted, adjusting to the low lamplight in the room. There were framed photographs everywhere. A small black-and-white wedding picture featured a man in a military uniform and a bride wearing a dress with a sweetheart neckline and her hair set in victory rolls like they did in the 1940s.

  It appeared that an English garden had sprouted from every corner of the room, from the Laura Ashley wallpaper to the floral upholstered furniture circling the Victorian rug. A walker stood next to two winged chairs with a half-finished needlepoint on one of the ottomans.

  She picked up the men’s suit jacket draped across the back of the couch, wondering if its owner was in the next room. She brought it to her nose and it reminded her of her parents’ mothball-laden couch in the basement.

  She jumped at the sound of voices coming from what she assumed to be a bedroom. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, moving in her direction. Hannah froze.

  All at once, the bright overhead light in the adjacent kitchen flooded the space where she stood. She was caught.

  He stopped at the sight of her.

  Panic rose up her throat, thinking she was in the wrong house. Then he lowered his sunglasses, revealing those chocolate-brown eyes she thought she’d never see again. Something that had lain dormant since that ill-fated night in Gossamer Park now yanked at her chest.

  Under his floppy hat was a shock of white-blond hair that gave him a strange punk-rocker vibe. His eyes steadied on hers as he began unbuttoning his oversized shirt. It slipped off his shoulders and fell to the floor.

  Hannah swallowed nervously.

  He unbuckled his belt. The plaid trousers fell, too, without trouble. His black T-shirt fit snug across his chest and shoulders. His tanned biceps poked out from his sleeves. Hannah lowered her eyes to his hips, where his shorts hugged him perfectly. Her cheeks grew warm. She blinked several times and bit her lower lip.

  She needed air. I’m not seeing this. It’s not real.

  He had grown taller since she last saw him. All that time, when he was supposedly six feet under, he’d been here, his body looking better than it had a right to.

  The light scruff on his face made him appear older and cursedly sexier. He was leaner than before, his cheekbones more pronounced; new creases circled his eyes. She gaped at the apparition before her. It’s not possible.

  This blond doppelganger wasn’t moving, therefore he couldn’t be real, her brain rationalized. She was bound to wake up, any minute now.

  He took a step toward her. Hannah’s hammering heart accelerated its pace, cutting off her breath. She leaned toward the wall with her arm extended, intending to steady herself, and missed; she stumbled and smacked her head into it first. What am I seeing exactly?

  “I thought you were going to be my father. How are you here?” he whispered, stepping toward her.

  The sound of his voice fired the gun that she hadn’t known was cocked in her head until that moment. The re-verb shot down her face and neck and into her arms. Her vision blurred with tears. She was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief that he was still breathing.

  She knew it then to be true.

  She really had been waiting for him to come back to her.

  He took another step toward her. Her hands flew up, signaling for him to stay back. She stumbled backward, and he darted forward and reached out to catch her.

  “Oh my God, oh my God . . .” she said, swatting him away. He brought a finger to his lips and motioned with his head for her to follow him.

  The anger welled up from her stomach and stampeded her throat, catching her by surprise. Don’t you dare tell me to be quiet, she thought, I’ll kill you myself.

  “This way.” He ushered her outside, holding open the kitchen’s side door for her. They walked out to a modest patio with grass and weeds popping up around its brick pavers. A couple of rusted-out chairs and a small hibachi grill that had seen better days stood off to the side.

  She couldn’t look at him, though she could feel his eyes never leaving her. She read his silence for cockiness, which infuriated her more.

  “You’ve been pretending to be dead . . . why in the world . . . you couldn’t just break things off like a normal person? You opted for a charade instead? You asshole!”

  Deacon ran his hands through his hair, pulling on the back of his head.

  She wondered what story she’d hear now.

  “You just screamed at me saying to never call you again, and somehow you’re here?” He began walking around in a circle. “Wait . . . wait a minute, I never broke up with you.” He squeezed his eyes. “You ended it, remember?”

  “I didn’t know it was you who was calling. I thought— never mind . . .”

  “What happened? Did someone hurt you?”

  She gathered her elbows and pulled them into her ribcage. “Yeah . . . you. You left. Were you like, ‘Let’s make her into the gullible fool’? Was that the plan?”

  “The gun, Toby . . . all of it was real, Hannah.”

  “I saw you die,” she said, her eyes blazing into his.

  “It takes more than that to take me out,” he said lamely.

  She wasn’t playing.

  H
e exhaled and dropped his shoulders. His eyes were shadowed with exhaustion.

  “I never told you. One night after we were together, these undercover cops pulled me over and tried to arrest me. The scumbags threw a bag of coke in my trunk and acted like they’d found it on me. Then everything turned. They didn’t go through with the arrest . . . instead, they wanted to cut a deal.”

  Hannah grew quiet, her breathing slowed.

  “They threatened to bring you up on charges as an accomplice, paint you as the queen of operations.” Deacon’s voice cracked; his eyes flitted away.

  “But I never—”

  “Didn’t matter. They said they’d pardon Jade, and put her charges on you. They’d been watching me for months. I couldn’t . . . I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “When I went unconscious that night, they jumped to put their plan in motion. They confirmed me dead and sent me to this weird facility outside of town that was part hospital, part rehab, I think.”

  A chill ascended the back of Hannah’s neck.

  I forgot to tell you I saw one of your friends here, her mother had said when she went to see her in rehab back in December. A tall, striking boy. I think he was visiting someone down the hall.

  She’d blown off her mother’s remark, thinking she was just being delusional. Her mom had only met Deacon one time, and she’d clearly been high that day. Apparently, he’d made an impression. If only Hannah had listened to her.

  “I woke up two days later with those cops at the foot of my bed. Turns out they were federal agents, DEA.”

  “This is too crazy,” Hannah mumbled, more to herself than him. She pressed a hand to her forehead. “Wait, what about your parents? They buried you, I thought. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the cemetery. But Jade told me. What did they bury, then?”

  “No clue. The Feds probably threw something into the ground. After working with these guys down here, I feel confident saying an extra corpse probably wasn’t too hard to find.”

  Hannah’s cheek twitched.

  “They faked my death, forced me to leave everything and everyone I knew, just so I would work for them. They said they’d take my life away . . . and yours . . . if I didn’t cooperate.”

  “You left . . . to protect me?”

  “I’d rather have died that night than live knowing I dragged you down into my world and helped end yours.”

  She stared at him for several seconds, then turned to hide her face. It was too much seeing him before her. She pinched the top of her hand to stop her emotions from charging forward.

  “When were you planning to resurrect?” she snapped, looking back at him. Her eyes filled, giving her away.

  “When it was safe,” Deacon said carefully, his defenseless eyes reeling her in. “Hannah, I never stopped thinking about you, wondering what you were doing, who you were with. I’d call in the middle of the night just to hear your voice. I was always going to come back for you . . . for us.”

  She tried gathering up his ocean of words before they had a chance to penetrate her parched heart, containing them. It’s too late.

  “So now you’re the son of some Miami drug lord, like the papers say?” Her voice came out panicked, not cool and collected like she hoped.

  “Hannah . . .” He started to walk closer, then jerked back at the sight of Toby emerging from around the side of the house. He threw himself in front of Hannah. “Are you back to finish the job, prick?”

  Hannah stepped around Deacon and faced him. “We drove down together.”

  His head whipped back toward her, then toward Toby. “What, are you two a thing now? You dick,” he sneered at his brother, balling his fist up and lunging toward him.

  Hannah latched on to his arm and pulled back forcefully. “More like a couple of detectives. We came here for you, idiot . . . for you.”

  Deacon stopped.

  Toby didn’t take another step as they sized one another up. “Hey, good to see you’re alive. Big relief.”

  Deacon clenched his hands. “If you hadn’t shot me, they would never have taken me away. You helped put this whole nightmare in motion.”

  “It was an accident,” Hannah said with a sigh.

  Deacon’s mouth dropped open. “You’re on his side?”

  “Don’t twist this. You don’t get to do that. Toby and I started talking this summer and realized that we were both still trying to deal with what happened that night. We became suspicious after I got that last call. We took a gamble and came down here to find you.”

  Toby thrust his hands in his pockets and glanced down at his feet. “I owed you that after what I’d done . . . I had no idea what your life was like, man. No wonder you didn’t want a brother,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head. “After . . . that night, Kingsley got my sentence reduced, he made a deal with the officers. I moved into the house, into your room. Judge ordered me to see a therapist every week in exchange for doing time. Then everything changed. Under their roof, I became invisible. I wanted your life for so long, wanted desperately to be a part of a real family. The joke was on me. I’ve never been lonelier.”

  CHAPTER 48

  DEACON PULLED BACK, LETTING TOBY’S WORDS SINK IN. As they did, a realization reared up—one he did not want to face.

  His shiny gun . . .

  “My father cut a deal with you? The guy who shot me?”

  Toby nodded. “Kingsley’s an asshole. They both are. I was incredibly jealous of you, but I never wanted you dead . . . I just wanted the pain to stop. I hated my life; I was so lonely. That night in the park, I was really messed up. I would have killed myself if Hannah hadn’t been there.”

  Toby’s eyes shifted to Hannah’s. Hers were wide and full of sadness.

  Deacon had never heard Toby speak so honestly before. He knew it had to be Hannah’s influence. She had that noBS, truth-serum effect on people.

  For eight months, Deacon burned with hate for his step-brother and what had happened that night. In one swift moment, the face of his enemy had shifted.

  “The pain,” he murmured, staring into the brown, overgrown garden behind Hannah. “I know it well. I was such a dick because . . . I was jealous of you. The way Kingsley was with you. I saw him visit you at boarding school. That handshake you guys had, all of it. You were a constant reminder of how little he cared for me. I know that I egged you on that night. You know what my first thought was after you shot me? I’ll never forget it.”

  Toby’s eyes grew big.

  “Relief. Relief that all of my pain would finally be over . . . but then you were there,” he said, turning to Hannah, “and all I wanted to do was put the whole night in reverse.”

  Toby stepped forward. “I never meant to . . . the gun just went off. I didn’t know—”

  “You stole his revolver from the desk in his study.”

  Toby shook his head. “No. He gave it to me on my last birthday.”

  “Of course he did,” Deacon said under his breath. “That’s fucked up. Jesus Christ. And he gave you the Stingray, too? You know what? I’m not surprised Kingsley had you move into the house. You replaced me, put the family picture back together. Funny thing is, what you’re saying makes me feel somewhat better. All this time, it wasn’t about me; I wasn’t the one who was unworthy of their attention. They’re just so screwed up. They didn’t know how to raise a kid.”

  “Big time.” Toby nodded.

  God, it was never about me.

  Deacon rocked his head to either side, running his hands through his hair. “I needed to hear that,” he said, watching Hannah. She still wouldn’t look at him. God, he’d missed her. He wanted to inhale whatever breath she had inside and kiss her for a long time. But something in her eyes told him to take it slow. She wasn’t going to take him back so easily.

  Toby stepped closer. “Helping find you this week was the first time I did something for someone else. Seriously, br—” He cleared his throat. “It felt good, that’s all. Now that it’s over . . . I don’t wa
nt to go back to them. Guess I’ll go back to my mom’s . . . I don’t know.”

  Deacon picked up a piece of broken paver and threw it into the garden. “Good thing you’re a bad shot . . . bro.”

  Toby’s head bounced up, as did Hannah’s, hearing Deacon acknowledge him as his brother—a fact he’d adamantly denied the night at the park before the gun went off.

  Deacon could feel Hannah smiling next to him. Her eyes were on Toby and his crimson face, which wore a grin that kept growing. She was happy for him.

  “You and him?” he asked her again, motioning toward Toby.

  She rolled her eyes and turned away.

  “Relax, it’s nothing like that,” said Toby.

  Deacon’s eyes didn’t leave Hannah. He wanted to hear it from her.

  “Pretty messed up, those Girouxs,” Toby said, stepping closer and playfully punching Deacon in the shoulder.

  “Fucking bad shoulder, dick,” he bellowed, wheeling around and rubbing his upper arm. He waited a beat before grabbing Toby in a headlock. Toby’s inflated muscle arms started slapping at him as they began pivoting in a circle. Their wrestling evolved into a full-blown slap fight, until Toby finally fought Deacon off of him. As soon as he freed himself, Toby immediately began fixing his hair.

  “Not the hair,” Deacon said, laughing. “Can’t mess the hair, douche.”

  “Dick,” Toby grumbled before curling up the corners of his mouth.

  Deacon glanced over at Hannah, who was now standing with one hand on her hip, her other one pulling loose strands from her bun across her lips. He’d missed seeing her do that. God, she’s beautiful.

  “Just come here, already,” he said, pleading with his eyes.

  “No,” she said coolly, folding her arms over her chest and shifting her weight to the other foot. Her attitude confused him more.

  “I know I screwed up, but I never stopped thinking about you. I must have called your house a hundred times, just to hear—”

  “I know. That’s what led us here.” She pressed her forearms into her stomach. “Before . . . when we were together . . . your dealing scared me. Your beeper going off all the time, your customers, selling . . . it all came first. You even stashed drugs in my bedroom. What the hell, Deacon? You used me!”