Jagger’s face fell, but he didn’t say anything else, and I knew from his silence that he was now truly pissed off.
Grey looked like she couldn’t decide if she was more upset at Deacon or sad for me, but she mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
“Again, not a big deal. I mean, it’s Deacon, right? But is it okay if I use your car tonight? He left mine in the shop.”
“Of course,” she said, and tugged on Jagger’s arm when he continued to stand there staring at a spot on the floor.
I hurried back to my bathroom, and groaned when I saw my face. It was more than obvious I’d been crying, and if my brother knew I was crying over Deacon, then he knew tonight meant a lot more to me than I’d let on. Which explained his silence just before.
After washing my face, I did my hair and makeup and was finishing getting dressed when I heard Jagger start yelling.
“You really think fucking someone is more important than whatever plans you had? Or making sure she had a ride home?”
My head dropped and mortification slid through my body at the thought of my big brother calling Deacon, before I heard another voice.
“Just tell me if she’s here. She’s not answering her phone!”
“Did you answer yours?” Jagger countered.
“Charlie!” Deacon’s booming voice echoed through the warehouse.
I wanted to hide, but instead of actually attempting to, I froze in place as Deacon and Jagger yelled at each other all the way down the halls. My body jerked when Deacon began pounding on my bedroom door and calling my name. After taking a deep breath in and giving myself a second to school my expression, I walked over to open it.
“Charlie, I’m sorry,” he began, but Jagger cut in.
“You don’t have to talk to him.”
I shrugged and smiled. “Why wouldn’t I? And you don’t have to apologize.”
“The hell he doesn’t,” Jagger growled.
“Yes, I do. I’m sorry, I—I—I lost track of time and crashed, and when I woke up it was two hours after I was supposed to get you.”
“You fell asleep?” I asked, but kept the smile plastered on my face.
“Bull—”
“Jagger,” I bit out, but didn’t stop looking at Deacon.
“I’m sorry,” Deacon said in response. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear to God. Let me—”
“That really isn’t necessary, and actually, I need you to leave. I have a date tonight, and I’m running a little late now that you’re here.”
His eyebrows shot up, as did Jagger’s, and for the first time since I opened the door, Deacon’s eyes slowly trailed over my body. “Oh . . . you have a date?”
“Uh-huh. So if you wouldn’t mind, I need to finish getting ready.”
He nodded absentmindedly and took a step back, but didn’t take his eyes off me. “Then, uh, I guess things worked out tonight.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Funny how that can happen for both of us.”
Deacon’s gaze had been traveling down again, but snapped back up at my words. From the way he quickly looked away, but kept opening his mouth like he wanted to say something, it was clear he’d assumed I had somehow guessed the real reason why he hadn’t been there for me today. But I wasn’t going to make it easier for him by saying anything else. He’d hurt me without even trying or caring.
Unapologetically arrogant and unaware.
Well, I guess now he was apologetic at least.
“Deacon,” I prompted when he continued to stand there, and tried to ignore the chaos his light eyes caused inside me when they finally rested on my face again.
My heart was racing so fast it felt like it would beat out of my chest, and it was taking every ounce of strength to stand still when my body was craving the feel of his against mine again.
“Right, well . . . I’ll, uh, I’ll see you.” After another pause, he turned and walked down the hall. And with a worried look, Jagger reluctantly followed.
I released a ragged breath and slumped against the doorframe, and tried to ignore the way my hands shook from the chaos that Deacon left in his wake. After I heard him leave, I waited in the hall for a few minutes before grabbing Grey’s keys and leaving as well. And soon I was at the babysitter’s house picking up my son.
“Hey, thank you for understanding,” I told her as I handed her some cash, and took Keith’s hand and started backing up toward the driveway. “After what happened today, I really just need to spend the night with my favorite guy.”
“Not a problem! Call me whenever you need me again.”
“I will.” Once Keith was in his booster seat, I kissed his cheek and asked, “Who are you?”
“Mommy!” he said with a laugh and a cheesy grin. “I’m Spider-Man!”
“What do you say to Spider-Man taking me out on a date tonight? I think other guys just make our lives too complicated.”
Keith held out his fist, and I bumped it. “All right! Hot dog!”
My laughter bubbled up, genuine and free. “Hot date, bud.”
“That’s what I said!”
Chapter Eleven
Deacon
June 11, 2016
YOUR TURN . . . come back to me, Words.
I sent the text, then walked into the kitchen to look for something to eat, but I didn’t know if I was hungry. I couldn’t even focus on what was in front of me. So much so that it took way too long to realize that I was staring at the closed refrigerator door instead of inside it.
All I could see was Charlie. Still.
The way she’d looked when I’d gone after her earlier. The way her blue eyes had been guarded.
What she’d said. “Yeah. Funny how that can happen for both of us.”
She knew . . . I don’t know how, but somehow she fucking knew about my afternoon.
I knew I’d fucked up. All I’d wanted was to forget about her, and to knock some sense back into my head. I’d still planned on picking her up and taking her to look at cars once her shift was over.
But one girl had led to another.
By the time I’d gotten the second to leave, I was ready to slam my head into the wall over and over again, if only to get the thought of Charlie out of it. Because she was still there, just as she had been for nearly two weeks, only now it was paired with this overwhelming sense that I’d done something wrong. To Charlie, to Words . . .
But I’d done nothing more than what I’d done nearly every day for years, and Charlie meant nothing, and Words was . . . Words wasn’t real. And yet, as soon as I grabbed my phone and saw the missed calls and the time, my stomach had dropped and I’d felt crippled from the guilt that tore through me.
I’d known that I needed to leave, to get to Charlie. That I had to explain everything and nothing because I refused to let her know what I’d done in an attempt to erase her. But I hadn’t been able to force myself to move.
I’d stood frozen with my hair gripped tightly in my fist as I’d called her over and over again.
I’d thought if I allowed myself to want Charlie, I would do something that ruined everything.
Each call that went unanswered drove home the realization that I’d already done that.
I barely registered the sound of the front door opening from where I was lying on the carpet in the middle of the living room. I didn’t remember walking in there or lying down, but there I fucking was, scrubbing my hands over my face again and again, trying to wash away images I couldn’t keep.
My hands stilled and body tightened when I felt someone settle down next to me. I slowly lowered my arms and turned my head only enough to take in the person next to me when they pressed themselves as close to me as possible.
A shock of red hair met me seconds before her voice did, and I felt myself instantly relax.
“If I hadn’t witn
essed what just happened in my home, seeing you right here would clue me in to the fact that something is wrong.” Grey turned her head to look at me, her gold eyes dark in the room, the only light filtering in from the entryway.
“What do you mean?” My voice was hoarse, as if I’d actually been yelling and screaming at myself the past hour the way I’d wanted to.
“What was it you and Graham said?” She trailed off, and resituated herself so her head was now on my shoulder. “Right . . . you always said Knox was murdering the carpet when all that stuff was going down with Harlow, back before he told you about it. And now for the first time ever, I find you lying here in the dark. I think this carpet means bad things for some of my favorite guys.”
A low, dark laugh vibrated in my chest. “Just a carpet, Grey.”
She didn’t respond for a long time, and when she did, hesitation crept through each word. “Jagger . . . Jagger’s so mad, Deacon.” There was an uneasy pause before she admitted, “And I was too, but then I saw you when you came looking for her, and more importantly, I saw you when you left. I know there’s something going on that neither of you are telling me, and you don’t have to tell me if you aren’t ready, but I had a feeling that you needed me.”
“ ’Course I need you. You’re the love of my life.” It was meant to come out teasing, but my tone only sounded defeated.
“That was so depressing I can’t even roll my eyes,” she murmured. One of her arms suddenly flopped over my chest and tightened around me.
I lifted my hand to her forearm and squeezed back.
Her face was buried in my shoulder, muffling her voice. “I can always count on you for a bear hug when I need it most.”
My next laugh was louder, more genuine. “Is this your version of one of my hugs?”
“Shut up. You’re too big to bear hug, and it really doesn’t make it any easier when you’re lying on the floor.”
I squeezed her arm once more, and said, “Exactly what I needed, Grey.”
She released me and rolled back so her head was barely resting on my shoulder, and blew out a slow sigh. “It wasn’t one of your bone-crushing, breath-stealing hugs, but I tried.”
We laid there in silence for a few minutes as my turmoil mixed with her unspoken questions, filling the darkness above us.
I opened my mouth nearly a dozen times to say something I didn’t want to allow to leave my tongue. As if speaking the words would give them power, would make all of the chaos in my mind real.
“I said you didn’t have to tell me if you weren’t ready, but I know you’re ready. So this is me telling you that you have to tell me.”
Amusement tugged at my mouth for a second before it fell again. “She went on a date tonight.” The words finally tumbled out before I could stop them.
I felt Grey nod. “So I heard. And, no, before you ask, I don’t know who she went with. I found out after you did. But I also heard that you had a, uh—you had . . . you had time with someone of the opposite sex today, as well.” A barely audible gag sounded next to me. “Ugh, God. You, Graham, and Knox have me in a constant state of wanting to throw up.”
I didn’t respond, because at that moment, I was ready to find a wall again. My head needed something hard to come in contact with.
“Deac, tell me why it matters to you that Charlie went on a date tonight.”
“It doesn’t.” My reply was instant; the lie was thick on my tongue, and more than obvious to Grey.
“I’m almost positive I know the answer, but I think you need to hear yourself say it. So why does it matter?”
Christ, why did Grey have to know the three of us so well? Knox kept Harlow from Graham and me, but hadn’t been able to keep her from Grey. And I knew Graham and I were the same—we couldn’t keep shit from Grey because she already knew it anyway. She knew us better than we knew ourselves.
“I have no damn clue,” I said honestly. “I don’t understand it.”
“Not a whole lot to understand,” Grey murmured.
“It’s fucking Charlie, Grey. Charlie.”
“And?”
“She doesn’t talk to anyone.”
“She talks to me,” Grey countered.
“Well, she can’t stand me.”
“You are kind of obnoxious.”
I let her joke roll off without so much as a hint of a smile. “She would hide behind her books if she could.”
“You hide behind a never-ending line of women.”
That stung.
A comment that would normally have me feeling pretty damn proud of myself now made me wince.
“She’s young—she’s so fucking young.”
Grey snorted. “It’s not like she’s underage, Deacon.”
“It doesn’t matter. In my mind, she’s Jagger’s little sister. I remember her in elementary school and middle school and—”
“We all remember each other during those times.”
“And, again, she’s young. I gave Knox so much shit over Harlow’s age, and Charlie is . . . Charlie is . . . what, twenty?”
“Twenty-two,” Grey informed me. “Four years younger than you. It isn’t crazy.”
It was crazy, even if the age difference wasn’t. Because no matter what Grey said, it was still Charlie Easton.
“I think I’ve hated her for the last year and a half,” I admitted suddenly.
I felt Grey shift to look at me, but I didn’t meet her stare.
“How do you go from hating someone—from having that much anger directed at them—to this in a matter of days?”
Day. Hours, I mentally corrected.
Grey sucked in a breath, but it got caught when she tried to speak again. After a moment, she said, “First, why on earth would you ever hate Charlie?”
I finally turned to look at her. One of my eyebrows arched as I waited for her to understand.
It didn’t take long.
There wasn’t much that pissed me off; Grey knew that.
“Deacon, no. No . . . you didn’t—you told her, didn’t you? That’s what the two of you fought about, isn’t it?”
“I love you, Grey.”
And I meant it.
Grey was family. My baby sister even though I was an only child. She was one of the only females who weren’t blood that I would ever love.
“People can’t fuck with the lives of those I love, and expect me to be okay with them or what they did.”
“Oh, Deacon.” Disappointment coated her voice. “You can’t . . .” She trailed off; her head shook against my shoulder. “If you knew exactly what happened, you wouldn’t have ever been able to hate her.”
“Grey—”
“It was messed up, and she was old enough to know what she was doing. She knows that, I know that. But what Ben did to her, the way he messed with her mind with the things he said to her, and after all those years of her feeling the way she did.” One of Grey’s shoulders lifted. “She made a mistake, but it’s impossible to hate her for it knowing what happened to her—especially after.”
The anguish in Grey’s voice for a girl who had slept with her fiancé cut straight through me. As if I hadn’t already known that I’d pegged Charlie all wrong. As if I hadn’t already been rethinking everything I thought I’d known about her. Now I was hearing straight from Grey that I still had no fucking clue at all, that there was still so much I didn’t know about the girl who haunted me, waking or sleeping.
“Look, I already know I was wrong. In thinking that way about her, in saying it to her, all of it.”
Understanding lit in her eyes. “You were apologizing at the wedding.”
A huff of frustration left me. “Trying.”
She nodded absentmindedly. “Well if you hated me and let me know, I don’t think I’d give you a chance to apologize. I stil
l don’t know why Harlow forgave you and Graham for the way you both treated her.” Before I could try to defend myself, she continued. “Okay then. Second, what is the ‘this’ that you mentioned? What has your hatred turned into?”
I looked back up to the darkened ceiling. “Something I don’t understand,” I said after a second, but the confession sounded more like an accusation. “Something I’m not okay with.”
“Why?”
“I already said it, Grey. It’s Charlie.”
I felt her studying me for a long time before she looked up at the ceiling as well. “Is that really it, or is it the fact that for the first time, you’re actually falling for someone, and that scares you?”
“Falling for—no. I’m just—”
“Falling for her.”
“Confused,” I argued, my voice bordering on a growl.
“You’ve spouted off a list of what sounds like your reasons why you shouldn’t be with her. You came storming in and shoved Jagger out of your way to get to her tonight, and looked defeated on your way out.” She paused, then reiterated. “Defeated, Deacon. I’ve never seen you look like that in my life. You’re Deacon Carver, nothing can bring you down, let alone defeat you.”
I was rethinking my love for Grey. She was too perceptive. Too right.
“But a conversation with Charlie did,” she added softly. “I’m not going to pretend to understand what’s going on, and I’m not going to tell you that I’m okay with it. Because even though I’m here right now with you, I know that you have the capability of breaking her heart. She doesn’t need her heart broken again after how hard she fought to put it back together after Ben.”
I ran my free hand through my hair, gripping at it as I did. “I don’t want—” I cut off with a growl. “I don’t want her heart, Grey. I don’t want her in that way. I just . . . I just want her out of my goddamn head.”
Silence engulfed the room again for a long while before Grey sat up and spun around so she was facing me. “I’ll let you keep denying everything to yourself after I leave, but know this: you can’t have it both ways. Charlie isn’t someone who falls in and out of a bed. Charlie is a girl who falls into arms and stays there. So this girl you ditched her for—”
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