Show Me How (12 page)

You have no idea how much I wish I could be there to dry your tears.

Words:
My heart . . .

Words:
Stranger, don't. Don't. Didn't you just hear me? I already want to tear myself away from the happiness that I've found. Don't make me wish that you would hurry up and find me just so I could rip myself away from you, too.

Fuck if you think I'd let you rip yourself away from me, Words. If I find you, I'm not letting you go.

Words:
There you go sweeping me off my feet again, Stranger . . .

Words:
How is it possible that I'm unreasonably jealous of the girl you'll one day leave me for, when you can't leave what you never found?

I dropped my phone on my chest and let my eyes shut. I wanted to swear that I wouldn't leave. I wanted to tell her that I would find her.

But I couldn't.

Words was my outlet. She was the only person who had allowed me to be
me
without judging me for my past. In the last weeks she had unknowingly forced me to see what I really wanted out of life, when I'd spent years thinking I was happy in my repetitive life. Letting her go, closing that connection, scared the hell out of me. But I knew one day I would.

Because when I thought of Words, I only ever pictured one thing. A thousand faces blurred into one. Always one.

One I could reach out and touch.

One who was real.

One I would give up everything for.

Charlie.

 

Chapter Fourteen

Charlie

June 18, 2016

D
EACON SIGHED AS
he unfurled his large frame from under the hood of my car. “It'll run for a day or two . . . maybe.” He turned his light eyes on me, and looked at me guardedly. “Charlie Girl, I'm serious. You—­”

“Need to get a new car,” I finished for him, then let loose my own sigh. “I know. You and Jagger keep reminding me.”

He wiped his hands on a rag, and pulled me close with one arm. His lifted my chin with his knuckles to press his mouth first to my jaw and then my lips.

I felt his mouth spread into a slow grin when I shuddered from the warmth that moved down my spine at the contact.

After four days, I still wasn't used to it. To this.

If it would always feel like this, if it would always leave me breathless and weak, then I wasn't sure that I ever wanted to get used to it.

“Speaking of Jagger, what do you think he's going to say?”

My eyebrows rose in question, and Deacon's smile grew.

“About us, Charlie Girl. About the fact that I can't stop kissing you and don't know how to let you go.”

I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth when he pressed me tighter to his large, muscular frame. And as I had the last few days, embraced the way my heart beat wildly in my chest. One of these times it was going to break free, and I wasn't going to attempt to stop it.

All of this was happening fast, I knew. But I had a feeling that all those years I'd felt betrayed by my irrational heart around Deacon had been leading up to this. When I would be ready to trust someone with my heart again. When Deacon would be the one to take it.

“Does it matter?”

Deacon looked at me with open disbelief.

“If what Jagger said really mattered to you, then you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have been here yesterday, or the night before . . .” I trailed off, and lifted one of my shoulders. “You would've never come after me.”

I knew from Deacon's expression that he couldn't deny what I'd said. “Still, it's going to matter to you, and that will matter to me.”

“He doesn't always know what's best for me.” I trailed my fingers over his lips, then pushed up on my toes to press my mouth to his. “Besides, they won't be back from Seattle until late tomorrow night. I still have until Monday morning to prepare for whatever he'll say.”

The corner of his mouth slowly lifted in a mischievous smirk. “Guy isn't going to know what hit him if you've been preparing your comeback all this time.”

I laughed and pushed at his chest, but he just pulled me back in for another searing kiss that made my head spin before he released me.

Deacon stepped back to push down the hood of my car when I started toward my house, and continued to stare at it for a few seconds before following me. “Tell me what's stopping you from getting a new car. I know from talking to Grey and Jagger over the years that you have money from your grandparents, so why?”

The daze that Deacon's nearness and his kisses had put me in abruptly disappeared. My blissful smile fell, my stomach dropped, and my palms suddenly felt clammy.

I
'm not like her. I refuse to be her. I'm not like her. I refuse to be her
, I chanted over and over again as a tremor of unease slid through me.

“Um.” I swallowed thickly and studied the ground for a second before taking a step back. “I need to go. I have to wake up Keith and get him over to the babysitter's, then get to work,” I mumbled, then took another two steps back.

Deacon's brow furrowed, and in one step, he closed the distance I'd managed to put between us. “Charlie—­”

I turned and hurried toward the front door, calling over my shoulder as I walked. “Thanks for coming over so early.”

“Charlie, damn it, stop,” he demanded, and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his chest. “Why do I have to hold you still to get you to talk to me?”

“Why don't you understand that when I walk away, I'm not ready to talk?”

“That's not how this works. Not with us. Not with you.” His large hand pressed firmly against my stomach, his fingers spread so wide that his thumb brushed the underside of my breast with each breath that I took. “I may not have been paying attention to you all these years, but that doesn't mean I don't know you. That doesn't mean I don't know what you're doing when you walk away from me. It's just another form of hiding for you.”

His hold loosened. His hands went to my arms, and slowly slid down. The tips of his fingers teased my own before he released me completely and took a step back. He was giving me every opportunity to try to leave, only now I couldn't move.

“You've spent so long trying to be invisible, but I told you, I can't stop seeing you. Stop trying to hide from me. Stop walking. Talk to—­”

“I don't want to be her.” The confession tumbled from my mouth like a dirty secret. Fast, soft, and full of shame.

“Who?” Deacon asked after a few seconds.

I turned to look at him, shaking my head as I did. “My mom blew through all of her money. If it weren't for our grandparents, we would have starved. If it weren't for Jagger, we wouldn't have made it. If she had a dollar, then she spent five. I don't want to be her, and I'm so terrified of turning into her. I have to think of Keith, always.”

“Charlie, buying a car isn't going to turn you into your mom.”

One of my eyebrows arched, and a sad laugh sounded in my chest. “Are you sure? I mean, it's like you said, I've already pawned my son off on my brother. I already took a huge step toward being like her.”

Deacon's shoulders sagged as I threw his words back at him. As he finally understood why I didn't want to have
this
conversation with him. His face tightened with regret and pain. “Fuck . . . Charlie. No, that—­you can't . . .” He trailed off and scrubbed his hands over his face. “God damn it.”

I tilted my head back toward the house. “Sometimes, when I'm walking away, you should let me
walk
. I can forgive you and try to forget things that you've said or done, but that
trying
becomes so hard when your words fueled lifelong fears.”

“I don't expect you to forget what I said that day, but you have to know that I was wrong. All of it, everything was wrong.” He gestured to me, his eyes pleading with me. “
Clearly
. I was mad when I didn't have the right to be. When I only had a fraction of the story. I get that now. But, Charlie, turning into your mom? That won't happen. In the last three weeks alone, anyone could see that that won't happen.”

I gritted my teeth when my jaw began to tremble, and blinked through the burning in my eyes, determined not to cry. But my voice shook with every emotion I felt, giving me away. “I have less than a week, Deacon. One week until we go back to court. I need to get my son, do you understand?” I gestured to the house with a hand. “He's here. He's with me, but I need him to be mine. I can't risk messing that up.”

Confusion swept across Deacon's face, and something close to panic filled his eyes when my voice broke on the last word. He reached out for me, and I let him pull me close as he struggled for something to say. “Charlie . . . what are you talking about?”

With how close he was to Grey, with how often they saw each other, I was sure he would have already known. “Keith. I don't have custody of him, I never have.”

“What do you mean? Who does?”

My head slanted to the side as I tried to understand the frustration and determination that wove through Deacon's words. “You really don't know? Grey never told you?”

“Why would she have? If it had to do with Keith she probably knew I didn't want to know. It's not really a secret I don't like kids.” When I flinched, he hurried to say, “You know he's different.”

I blinked quickly and mentally shook away the quick stab of pain from his declaration. Like he'd said, it wasn't a secret. “Um, my mom,” I began, and looked back up into his eyes. “Before I had Keith, she kept telling me that I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I wasn't ready, that I would ruin the baby's life, that the baby would one day resent me. It was just . . . endless, and repeated every day until I believed her. Until I finally signed custody over to her. When Keith was two and Mom left, we went to court to try to change custody over to me. We had more than enough proof that my mom hadn't ever been a fit mother anyway, but the judge said that he wasn't sure that
I
was either.”

“What the hell?” Deacon growled in a dangerous tone.

“I was living in the back room of my brother's warehouse and I didn't have a job. I'd never gotten one because I needed to be there to take care of Keith since my mom always randomly left. The judge thought I needed to finish school and get my life in order before I was ready to get custody of Keith, and granted Jagger and Grey temporary custody until then.”

“Charlie Girl,” he whispered; his head shook subtly. “Fuck, Charlie, I'm sorry. But you're not your mom.”

I smiled weakly. “Jagger felt like the judge helped his argument to get me to leave. So I left and finished school. I have a job, thanks to your grandma. And thanks to Graham, Keith and I now have our own place. I did exactly what the judge said, and I'm terrified that if I do one thing out of line, he'll stop me from getting custody again. Keith is three and a half, Deacon. I want my son to be mine.”

Deacon's hands cradled my face gently as his face dipped closer to mine. “So wrong about you,” he whispered against my lips, then pressed a feather-­soft kiss there. “So damn wrong.”

I gasped against the force of his next kiss, and clung to his muscled forearms as he walked us toward the house. My back had barely touched the door before it was falling open and Deacon was moving us inside and kicking the door shut behind him.

Heat pooled low in my stomach when his mouth made a line down my throat, and cool tingles spread across my skin when he gently bit down there. The conflicting combination made me feel more alive than I had in years.

His lips replaced his teeth, but instead of continuing, he paused for a few seconds. His low laugh and voice rumbled against my throat. “Who are you today, kid?”

I blinked my eyes open, and tried to orient myself.

Before Deacon's question could register in my mind, a soft, anxious voice came from beside us. Ice filled my veins when I heard Keith ask, “Are you gonna go to the grassy place?”

Keith, no!

All the air in my lungs came out in one fast, rough whoosh, and I shoved Deacon away from me as quickly as I could.

For once I was able to move him.

Deacon stumbled back, caught off guard by my sudden movement, but I couldn't look at him.

Agony pierced at my chest and made it hard to pull in a breath at that innocent,
innocent
question.

I'd been so careful not to kiss Deacon in front of Keith the last few days, because one good-­bye kiss from Deacon that first night had nearly devastated my son, and had absolutely destroyed me.

“Keith,” I said breathlessly. “When did you wake up?”

He looked up toward the ceiling for a second, then shrugged. “I donno. Deaton, are you—­”

“Keith, stop!” I pled, and fell to my knees with the grief that slammed into me. I gripped Keith's shoulders and pulled him close so Deacon wouldn't hear the shaking in my voice. “Buddy, stop. Remember what I said? Remember? We don't ask that. That isn't going to happen.”

Again, it felt like my soul was grieving. I wanted to tear myself apart, rip myself away from Deacon and any man that might come into our lives in the future.

Keith's nearly identical question on Wednesday night had destroyed me. I'd barely made it from his room to mine before I'd crumbled under my grief and the torrent of sobs.

I didn't want to go through it again. Not now. Not when I couldn't escape him or Deacon.

“What's the grassy place?” Deacon asked warily, and my eyes shut in pain.

“Deacon, don't,” I whispered my plea.

There was a pregnant pause before he asked hesitantly, “Does he want me to take him there?”

“Deacon!” I meant to shout his name, but I would have been surprised if he heard it at all. My head fell so I was staring at the ground when I said, “If I could, I would walk. Let me walk away.”

For once, Deacon didn't push, and I was thankful for it. I felt so beaten down from the past five minutes that I didn't know if I could get myself standing again, and I knew I wouldn't have been able to keep it together if Deacon forced me to talk again.

I drew in two deep breaths, trying to steady myself, then looked up at Keith. “We have to go. Do you need to use the bathroom?”

He shook his head quickly, and whispered, “Mommy. I don't want Deaton to go to the grassy place. Is that okay? Mommy, don't make him go.”

A choked cry forced from my chest before I could stop it. I didn't know if I was nodding or shaking my head, only that it was moving. “Yes, that's okay. I won't, baby. I swear I won't.”

I stood on weak, shaking legs, and avoided Deacon's questioning stare as I left to go help Keith change clothes.

A few minutes later, when I approached the front door he was holding open, I glanced up and forced a smile that he didn't return. “I'll talk to you later.”

He nodded slowly. His face was guarded, but his eyes were searching, begging, questioning everything he'd just seen and heard.

I couldn't give him an answer to any of the questions he had. Instead, I grabbed Keith's hand and walked to my car.

. . . which was now no longer working again.

Deacon didn't say anything about my needing a new car, or say anything at all. He just waited silently as I got Keith's booster seat into his car, and kept quiet during the drive. By the time we got to Mama's, I was ready to run from the awkward silence of Deacon's car, but he gripped my hand in his as soon as he pulled into a parking spot.