Deacon (Starkis Family #1)

by Cheryl Douglas

  “Don’t say that!” My long strides ate up the small room, and I was on her before she could blink. “You’re mine. You’ll always be mine.”

  “No.” She turned her face away, biting her lip when I tried to kiss her. “I gave myself to a man I thought I knew, a man I thought I could trust. You’re not him.”

  “I am,” I said desperately, wishing I could find the words to make this mess go away. I hated the man I’d become, the man who’d driven her away with his sickness. “You just have to give me a chance to prove it.”

  She shoved hard against my chest. “I did give you a chance, and you blew it.”

  “I love you,” I whispered, letting my hands fall to my sides as she reached behind her for the door handle. “Please. Don’t do this. Don’t leave me.”

  “You haven’t given me a choice.”

  I watched her walk away. The pain grew with every step she took until it felt as if it would cut off my air supply.

  “You wanna talk about it?” Damon stood in the doorway, blocking my view of Mia’s back.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as the numbness set in.

  “I came to ask Eleni out for lunch, but she had other plans.” Damon stepped inside, closing the door behind him, when I retreated into the security room. “What happened, man? I heard you two arguing, and when Mia left, it look like she’d been through hell.”

  “She knows about…” Christie was the only person I’d told outright about my problem, but others—like my brother, Blake, and Selene—knew instinctively, after years of observing my behavior. “My issue with women.”

  “Your issue?” Damon raised an eyebrow. “You mean the sex addiction?”

  I swallowed, having difficulty owning that clinical term. Damon wasn’t much better than I was. In fact, he was the one who’d proposed we both find a counselor to talk to about the cause behind our respective issues with women and relationships, but I’d remained in denial. “Yes.”

  “You told her?”

  “No.” I sank into the leather swivel chair, staring numbly at the cameras monitoring all of the building’s exits. Of course, Mia was long gone. “She overheard a conversation I was having with her ex.”

  “How the hell did he know about it?”

  “I had a thing with one of Mia’s friends, another model.” I sighed, thinking back to the night I’d spilled my guts to Christie. My moments of vulnerability were few and far between, but I’d felt particularly low that night. I’d been depressed after Mia had told me she had plans with Drew, and I was questioning whether she would ever leave him. “I told her about it when she started asking me why we couldn’t be exclusive.”

  Damon frowned. “That was stupid, and it doesn’t sound like you.”

  “It wasn’t me talking. It was the scotch.” I scrubbed my hands over my face.

  “That’ll do it.” Damon sat in the leather swivel chair beside mine, looking concerned. “So what now?”

  “She said it’s over.” I could barely process the words, let alone what they meant.

  “Did you cheat on her?”

  I scowled at him, mainly because I needed to take my anger out on someone. As my brother, he seemed like a logical candidate. “Of course not.”

  “But you were tempted.”

  “There was one night when I was home alone with Selene. Nothing happened.” I sighed. “Mia showed up.”

  “Do you think something would have happened had she not shown up when she did?”

  “I want to say no.”

  “But you can’t?”

  “No.” God, what did that say about me? My brother had been right when he’d told me I had a serious problem. Maybe if I’d listened to his warnings a year ago, I would have had a handle on it already. “Mia and I weren’t even sleeping together yet.” My excuse sounded pathetic, even to me. “I needed to believe it would be different now.”

  “Deacon, I saw someone while I was in Greece.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw a therapist.” Damon looked me in the eye. “I wanted to talk to him about my inability to commit to a woman, my promiscuity, my fear of being hurt and abandoned.”

  I was in shock. Even though Damon had suggested we seek help for similar problems, I’d had no idea he would actually go through with it. In that moment, I respected him more than I ever had. He’d done something I couldn’t bring myself to do: admit he had a problem and ask for help.

  “It wasn’t just the relationship thing that was bothering me,” Damon continued. “It was the fact that I wasn’t contributing anything of value to the world. I was tired of coasting, tired of living off my trust fund. So I decided to come back and get involved in the business. This is Dad’s legacy, and I want him to know that means something to me.”

  Damon had always had a better relationship with the old man than I had. As the firstborn, Dad had always been harder on me, expected more from me, which had made me bitter and resentful.

  “It wasn’t easy, sitting down and talking to a total stranger about this. In fact, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it helped. A lot.”

  “I’m glad.” I was happy my brother was finding his way, but it was ironic that it seemed to have happened at a time when I’d never felt more lost.

  “I haven’t been…”—he looked awkwardly at his laced hands—“intimate with a woman in almost three months.”

  My head shot up as his words registered. Damon had always been a three- or four-date-a-week guy and always with different women. No way could he be telling me he’d taken a vow of celibacy. “Why? Your therapist told you to?”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “No, I decided this was the right thing for me. The next time I have sex, I want it to mean something.”

  I understood how he felt since I’d been with Mia. I’d had sex more times than I cared to count, but it had never felt more incredible than it did with her. “You’re a smart man.” I met his eyes. “But do you think you can be faithful to just one woman? You and I are cut from the same cloth, especially when it comes to our outlook on relationships. Do you really believe you can be with just one woman for the rest of your life?”

  He considered my question a long time. “If she’s the right woman, yeah, I do. How about you?”

  “I love Mia so much I can’t imagine wanting anyone else.”

  “There’s only one way to prove that to her, you know.”

  “How?” I would do anything to get her back.

  “Take time. Give her space.”

  Time and space? That sounded like a lethal combination. “I don’t think so.”

  “Just hear me out,” he said, lifting his hand. “Find a professional, someone you trust, to talk to about this. Believe me, it’ll make all the difference.”

  I couldn’t imagine airing my dirty laundry in some shrink’s office, but I would have to do something drastic to convince Mia I wanted to change. “I’ll think about it.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll lose the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  He was right, and I hated it. “I’ll find someone.”

  “You have to take time and just be by yourself for a while, Deacon. You’ll be amazed how much clearer your head will be after a couple of months.”

  “A couple of months without Mia? Are you crazy?”

  “Won’t it be worth it if you can go back to her as the man she deserves?”

  I considered my options and realized I had none. Getting help seemed to be my only hope of proving to her that I wanted a life with her no matter the sacrifice. “Yeah, it will.” I stood as my brother did the same, and I drew him into a hug. “Thanks, Damon. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I can breathe.”

  He slapped my back before pulling back to look me in the eye. “Trust me, it only gets better. Every day, you’ll be able to breathe a little easier.”

  “It was getting harder and harder to move through life with this weighing me down, especially after I met
Mia.” I’d never thought I’d admit that, but Damon had found the courage to face his demons, and now I felt braver too. “I finally had the woman of my dreams, but I was so afraid of losing her.”

  “Because you knew you didn’t deserve her. You were living a lie, trying to sell her a version of yourself that the rest of the world had bought. But it didn’t feel good because you really wanted to be yourself with her and couldn’t.”

  “How’d you get so smart?” I smiled as I grasped the back of his neck.

  He grinned. “It’s amazing what thousands of dollars of therapy will buy you. If you’re lucky, you come away from it almost sane.”

  “You? Sane?” I wrapped my arm around his neck as I guided him to the door. “Let’s not get crazy.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mia

  Fifty-nine days without Deacon, and I’d survived. People said time healed all wounds, but if anything, I missed him more than I had the day I walked out on him. But according to Eleni, life had to go on, so I’d agreed to let my roomie set me up with someone new—someone incredible, according to her, unlike any other man I’d ever dated. She said she met him at work. Her work. I’d left Alabaster’s right after I found out the truth about Deacon. To my surprise, he hadn’t tried to enforce my contract. He just let me walk away. That still hurt when I let myself dwell on it.

  I was sure Deacon had moved on already, probably to a gorgeous model who had no problem sharing him with his harem. But that could never be me. As hard as it was to live without him, I’d much rather do that than share him.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  I froze when I heard his voice. Deacon. He hadn’t tried to contact me, not even once, since we’d broken up. It had to be a coincidence he was there. On the very day I’d agreed to meet someone new.

  “What are you doing here?” I sounded breathless, torn between fear and elation at seeing him again. I’d finally stopped crying myself to sleep, but I knew seeing him would reopen those wounds, and I didn’t want to go there again. “You can’t sit down.” I tried to sound firmer. “I’m meeting someone.”

  “I know.” His hand curled around the back of the chair. “You’re meeting me.”

  “You?” I couldn’t believe Eleni would do that to me. She, of all people, knew how hard the breakup had been on me. “No, Eleni wouldn’t set me up to meet you.”

  He sat down, staring at me for a long time. “It was hard to convince your best friend that I’m the man you belong with, but the facts speak for themselves.”

  “The facts?” I licked my lips, almost afraid of the compelling argument he would present. I wanted him to convince me we were meant to be together, but at the same time, I was afraid to believe him.

  “When you walked out on me, I had no idea how to move on with my life.”

  “I guess you figured it out.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice as I smoothed the napkin in my lap. A man who was pining over a woman didn’t take a vow of silence. He did anything in his power to get her back, even when she threatened him with a restraining order.

  “I did.”

  We waited while the waiter delivered the wine Deacon had apparently taken the liberty of ordering for us. I listened politely while the middle-aged gentleman rattled off the specials. All the while, I silently screamed at him to leave so I could hear what Deacon had to say for himself.

  Deacon lifted his glass, a slight smile on his lips. “To making amends.”

  That was ambiguous. I touched my glass to his. Was he there to apologize? To absolve his conscience so he could move on with someone else? Would he suggest we be friends or ask that I return to Alabaster’s? I had no idea, and the uncertainty tied my stomach in knots.

  “The day you left, I was a wreck,” he said, captivating me with the intensity in his hooded gaze. “You’d seen the worst of me. You knew my deepest, darkest secret, and I was humiliated. I always wanted you to see me the way others do, as a man in control. But that day, you learned I was a fraud. I wasn’t in control, no matter how it seemed. I was a slave to my addiction. It owned me.”

  I knew how difficult it must be for a man like him to acknowledge his shame. I looked around the restaurant, feeling as though all eyes were on us, but I was just being paranoid. Everyone was either enjoying their meals or engrossed in conversation with their companions. “I can’t pretend to understand this problem you have—”

  “Call it what it is,” he cut in. “An addiction. It’s the same as drugs or alcohol.”

  I didn’t know why that made me feel worse. Wasn’t the first step in overcoming addiction to admit he had a problem? But the thought of Deacon being a powerless addict didn’t sit well with me. It meant he couldn’t control his urge to have sex with other women, and if that were the case, we had no future.

  “How do you deal with something like that?” I asked, licking my lips. “How do you overcome it?”

  He leaned back, looking relaxed and confident. “The old-fashioned way—one day at a time. In the beginning, it was one hour at a time. It’s marginally easier now that I have a couple of months under my belt.”

  Was he saying he’d abstained from sex for the past two months? I wanted to ask, but I wasn’t sure I had the right. He hadn’t said anything about getting back together. He was merely telling me his story, perhaps to help me understand so I could move on with my life.

  “When you left that day, my first impulse was to go after you and beg you to take me back.”

  I hated to admit that was what I’d expected him to do. When he hadn’t, I’d been almost disappointed, in spite of the hard line I’d taken with him in the security office. “Why didn’t you?”

  “My brother convinced me to step back and take a good, long, hard look at what drove you away.” He ran a hand over his lilac silk tie, flattening it. “So I did.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t like what I saw when I looked in the mirror that day, theia. I’d accomplished everything I had set my mind to in business and life, yet I was still a prisoner to this thing I couldn’t eradicate. It was insidious, eating me up inside like a disease doctors couldn’t find no matter how hard they tried.”

  I’d never expected to see a humble version of the business mogul I’d fallen in love with, and I didn’t know how to respond. I heard the sincerity in his words and didn’t question whether he was being honest with me. I knew he was.

  “I knew I had to do something about it. I couldn’t go on being ashamed of the man I was, trying to hide from the truth and convince myself I deserved someone like you even though I knew I didn’t.”

  Imagining someone like Deacon feeling as though he weren’t good enough was hard. I assumed only regular people like me battled insecurities, not gorgeous billionaires with dignitaries on speed dial.

  “Admitting I had a problem and asking for help was the single hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He waved the waiter away as he approached and leaned in to add, “But it was also the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. My healing began the day I was able to look a total stranger in the eye and bare my soul. He didn’t judge me. He didn’t make me feel weak or ashamed, and when I was hard on myself, he reminded me I hadn’t committed a violent act. All of my partners had consented. That made it easier for me to let go of some of my own judgments about my behavior.”

  “I’m glad.” I was certain Deacon was his own worst critic, seeing any shortcoming as a fatal flaw. “Everyone makes mistakes. We all have weaknesses.”

  He smiled. “Tell me yours.”

  You. But of course I couldn’t say that. “Peanut butter chocolate ice cream. I know I shouldn’t eat it, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

  “So you indulge.” He let the statement rest between us.

  I wondered if he could tell I was wondering whether he would always feel compelled to indulge his penchant for other women. “I do.”

  “I don’t. Not anymore. Not since I realized I had a choice to make: you or my habit.
I chose you.” He reached for my hand.

  I let him hold it, trying to breathe through the electrifying jolt that bolted up my arm. I felt as though his words were echoing through the room, but I knew that was just my scrambled brain playing tricks on me. I hadn’t expected him to be here, and I certainly hadn’t expected him to tell me he’d slain his demons for me.

  “Say something.”

  “I’m not sure what to say,” I admitted, withdrawing my hand. “This is a lot to process. I came here hoping to meet someone new so I could move on with my life, but here you are, claiming to be a changed man. And you’re asking for what? A second chance?”

  “I’m asking for a chance to prove to you that I’ve changed. Can you give me that?”

  I wanted to, more than anything, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that would make it too easy for him. He expected me to acquiesce because that’s what people did when he made demands. I didn’t want to be one of those people. “I’ll need some time. I don’t know how I feel right now.”

  “I understand.” He stood and kissed my cheek before stepping away from the table.

  I grabbed his wrist. “That’s it? You’re going to accept my decision just like that?”

  He smiled as he ran his fingertip down my cheek. “Why wouldn’t I? You didn’t say no. ‘Maybe’ is more than I dared hope for when I came here today.”

  I watched him leave, wondering how I would ever survive if he broke my heart again.

  ***

  “I can’t believe you did that!” I tossed a throw cushion at my so-called best friend. Rosie danced around on the couch, leaping over my lap. “How could you send me there to meet some mystery man?”

  Eleni hugged the pillow. “I’m sorry, but I got so sick of seeing you mope around this apartment missing him.”

  Eleni had moved in with me when her lease ran out, which had happened to coincide with my breakup with Deacon. The timing had been perfect. I’d never needed my best friend more. Some days, she forced me to take a shower. Other days, she wrestled the phone out of my hand when I was determined to call him. But mostly she just listened and dried my tears.