Charlie gave me an odd look just as Keith came running in.
“Deaton, Deaton, Deaton! Guess who I am!”
I huffed when he slammed into me, then held him away from me to look at his face. Across his forehead was a large A.
“Uh . . . Ant-Man?”
Keith sighed. “No, I’m Captain America.”
I laughed. “Of course you are. Where’s your shield?” But Keith was already running away, and my attention went to the girl backing away from me. “Why are you walking to work?”
Again, that odd look. “My car doesn’t work. You didn’t finish fixing it.”
“Yes, I did,” I said, disagreeing with her. “I stayed up—” I cut off quickly before I could tell her that I’d stayed up talking to some girl, and instead said, “I didn’t sleep at all after the wedding, so I came here and finished working on it. There’s no real fix for your car unless you want to spend thousands of dollars, and honestly, your car isn’t worth it. No offense, but it would just break down again in a year if you’re lucky, probably six months. So there are temporary fixes that might help it run for a couple days at a time. I did what I could.”
She stood there for a few seconds without saying anything or looking at me, and finally, her blue eyes flickered up. “Really?”
“Yeah. If I can get it into the shop, I might be able to get it to run for longer periods at a time, but I think you should look into getting a new car.”
Charlie sighed, and mumbled, “Now you sound like—”
“At least someone agrees with me,” Jagger said as he came into the main room from the back halls.
I hadn’t even realized his music had turned off.
“Deacon,” he said in a low tone. His gaze went from me to his sister, then back again.
“Jag.” I dipped my head in his direction, and tried not to follow Charlie’s movements as she left the room.
“Deaton, Deaton! Guess who I am!”
I pulled my attention away from the entrance to the halls, and watched Keith as he raced toward me with a piece of a cinnamon roll in his hand.
“Uh,” I sucked in a quick breath as I glanced as his forehead. The A had been wiped away, leaving only black smudges. “Definitely not Captain America. Let’s see . . . Loki!”
“No! I’m Darf Vaber!”
My head jerked back. “What? Darth Vader isn’t a superhero. He isn’t even with Marvel, kid!”
Keith sighed like he was getting annoyed that I wasn’t keeping up with him. “Supaheroes can’t defeat the ladybugs ’cause they take away the supapowers, memember?”
“So you need to be Darth Vader in order to get rid of ladybugs?”
Another long, drawn-out sigh. “Yes, Deaton,” he said as he went to go sit at the table. “One day you’ll undastand.”
“You’re right, kid. Maybe one day.” I caught Graham smiling impishly at me, and my smile abruptly faded. “What?” I demanded.
He gestured from Keith to me. “Thousand bucks, man.”
I flipped him off, but held back any verbal retort as I slipped quietly from the room while Jagger’s eyes were off of me.
I set off toward the hallway to try to find Charlie, but as soon as I turned the corner, I nearly knocked her over.
“What—” Charlie began as she danced out of my way, and hurried to finish pulling her hair on top of her head. “Deacon, what are you doing back here?”
“Looking for you.”
She bit down on her full bottom lip, and her cheeks turned pink. “Uh . . . I have to get to the café.”
“Right, about that. I was wondering if I could take you.”
Her steps abruptly halted, and she turned slowly to look up at me. “Why would you want to?”
If only she knew it was the least of the things I wanted to do with her at that moment. Pushing her up against the wall and tasting that lip she kept biting on came close to the top. “I can take you, and then I’ll take your car into the shop—try to figure out something else to do with it.”
Surprise settled over her features. “You’re really going to do that?”
“Charlie Girl,” I said with a laugh. “Yeah. But I was serious; it’s really temporary. It’s just something that will have to continue being fixed. You need to look for a new car.”
Her surprise faded into defeat. “I know, I just . . . I know.” With a sad sigh, she began walking again, her voice trailing behind her. “I will.”
I followed her back out to the main room, and tried to ignore Jagger’s warning glare when he found out I was taking Charlie to work. Graham’s assessing gaze that kept bouncing back and forth between Charlie and me was harder to miss. Each time he made the pass back to her, the mixture of confusion and worry in his eyes grew.
I was already struggling with trying to understand why I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl standing just a handful of feet from me. I didn’t want to spend time trying to understand the way Graham was looking at her, or why it was bothering me.
But I thought about that damn look the entire drive to Mama’s.
Fucking Graham. Whatever was going on between them, I knew it hadn’t been like that before, and it was pissing me off more each time I saw them together.
“Hey, Charlie, what time do you get off today?” I asked before she could get out of her car once I pulled up in front of the café.
“Oh, it’s a weird shift, I get off at three thirty. But don’t worry about it if you’re not finished with my car, I can walk back.”
“No, I’ll be here no matter what; my car or yours. Since you get off early enough, do you want to go to some dealerships in Richland after?”
“With you?” she asked, clarifying.
“Yeah.”
For long moments she studied me as her head slowly shook. “Why do you keep doing this? Why do you—I don’t understand why you’ve been talking to me the way you have been, or trying help me. And now—”
“Would it really be so hard for you to believe that I just want to spend time with you?”
Her cheeks turned red as my question hung in the air. “Yes,” she finally replied.
“Why?”
“Because you’re Deacon Carver, and the minute I believe that you do want to is the minute I find out this is one huge joke to you.”
An agitated huff left me. “And you can say that because—”
“I know you.”
“Do you?” I challenged. “I’ve already proved that you were all wrong about me the night of the wedding, didn’t I?”
Whatever response she’d had waiting for me died, and her lips pressed firmly together. After a few seconds, she nodded distractedly, and whispered, “Why, Deacon?”
“Why? I told you, I just want to spend time—”
“No. Why now?”
The silence in the car felt like a living thing as I searched for an answer, but I’d been searching for an answer for over a week now, and I still hadn’t found one.
“I don’t know, Charlie Girl,” I said honestly.
For some reason, my answer seemed to surprise her. After a second’s hesitation, she nodded, and said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“If you want to take me, let’s go. Jagger and Grey are leaving for Seattle for a little over a week, so Grey’s supposed to drop Keith off at the babysitter. I’ll just ask her to keep him longer.”
I tilted my head slightly at the mention of Jagger. “Your brother’s going to kill me.”
“For taking me to look at cars?” she asked, her tone both curious and testing.
My eyes slid down her body, and before I could stop myself, I said, “Let’s just say he has every reason to tell me to stay away from you, Charlie Girl.”
By the time I was looking at her face again, her eyes were wide and her chee
ks were the brightest red, and it looked like she was fighting a smile. “Um, okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you then. After work. When I get off,” she stammered as she opened the passenger door of her car.
“If I’m not here to pick you up, then I’m still at the garage working on your car. I’ll get your number from Grey and text you so you have mine in case I’m not here.”
Charlie still looked like I was speaking some foreign language to her, like she didn’t believe this was happening as she turned and walked into Mama’s. I didn’t blame her. I was still trying to make sense of it myself.
It wasn’t until Grey sent me Charlie’s number twenty minutes later, and I automatically sent Charlie a message from my regular phone, that it clicked.
I hadn’t once thought about adding Charlie’s number to Candy. I hadn’t even used Candy other than to talk to Words since the wedding. Actually, I hadn’t used it for its designated purpose for almost a week before that.
From the day I’d walked into Mama’s Café and found that journal, I’d been so consumed with Words that I hadn’t had sex in nearly two weeks. On top of that I’d been trying to apologize to Charlie for how I’d treated her, and somehow . . . somehow those two things had started affecting how I now saw her.
Charlie—Charlie of all people. A girl I’d never looked twice at, I now couldn’t stop thinking about, and I now had no doubt that it was because I’d gone from having sex nearly every day to not at all. Because I was addicted to a girl who was real, but would never be real to me. And now I knew I needed to put an end to this before I did something that ruined fucking everything.
Chapter Ten
Charlie
June 11, 2016
I CHECKED MY phone for what had to be the twentieth time since I’d last tried calling him, and after looking out into the parking lot once more, called Deacon again. But like the first two times, it just rang until his voice mail eventually picked up. And again I hung up without leaving a message.
It was one thing to be ten or fifteen minutes late, it was even okay to be twenty minutes late if there was traffic on the freeway. You know, if we had freeways or traffic in Thatch. But even then, you expected a call or a text from the person you were waiting on explaining why they were late. That’s what normal people did anyway. Normal people probably also only waited for about fifteen minutes before leaving.
I was the idiot waiting for Deacon for nearly an hour and a half, sure that he would be coming in “just a couple minutes.” I could’ve walked the length of the town multiple times in that amount of time.
My fingers drummed agitatedly on the table I was sitting at in Mama’s, and I wondered again what I was doing sitting there.
I had nothing to go home to at the moment. Keith was at the babysitter’s house. Jagger and Grey were already on their trip to Seattle. I could have spent the time possibly messaging Stranger, but every time I’d gone to message him I’d told myself that Deacon would show up as soon as I did, and I knew I wouldn’t want to give up talking to Stranger so soon.
With one last look around the café, I slid out from the corner booth and finally left. After a quick scan around the parking lot to be sure I didn’t see my car or Deacon’s, I started walking in the direction of Danny’s Garage.
My chest tightened uncomfortably when I passed by and found it deserted. A sign hanging on the door stated they were closed and, being a Saturday, had been for hours. Instead of calling Deacon again or turning around, I continued on in the direction of Deacon and Graham’s house.
I kept thinking of different scenarios as I walked. Most of them began with me being the one to find out that something had happened to him; the others with Deacon apologizing over and over again for forgetting to pick me up, and showing me in more ways than with just his words how sorry he was.
Irrational, betraying heart.
Those scenarios made my eyes roll, and left me rethinking tonight altogether. Like I’d told Deacon, I was so sure that the minute I agreed to spend time with him, I would find out this was nothing more than one huge joke to him. What I hadn’t said was that I’d been afraid that’s what I would find out.
The more Deacon had forced himself into my life lately, the harder it had been to ignore that I liked when he did it. I liked knowing that when I walked away, he couldn’t help but follow me. I liked knowing that when I tried to leave, he would do everything to keep me to stay. And I liked the way he couldn’t seem to figure out what to say when he was around me.
And, damn him, I liked the way he was with my son. For someone who claimed to hate kids, he always knew what to say and do with Keith.
No one else would have thought to cover the ladybugs on the kid’s menu at Mama’s.
I still didn’t understand the sudden change in him, and that made me want to guard my heart and myself. Because I knew all it would take was Deacon proving to me that he was nothing more than Deacon Carver to make me regret ever letting my guard down—even for a second.
The sound of a sultry female laugh caused me to do a double take just as I was rounding the corner onto Deacon and Graham’s driveway, and I stumbled to a stop. I wanted to turn around and run, but couldn’t stop looking at what was happening in front of me.
Deacon was shirtless and buttoning his pants, and the girl I’d heard laughing had pulled him close to kiss him before walking toward her car.
My stomach sank and chest ached. As much as I wanted to make myself believe that I’d come in at the wrong time and was taking what I was seeing the wrong way, I knew I wasn’t. I’d waited for him, I’d let myself believe that maybe . . .
That was the problem.
I’d let my mind run wild with the possibilities of what could be with a guy like Deacon. One huge joke to him, or not, Deacon Carver obviously hadn’t changed. I wouldn’t waste my time waiting around to see if he ever would, and I refused to let myself fall into a place where I allowed myself to be another girl that Deacon would never remember.
I wrapped an arm around my waist and took two hesitant steps back as the girl’s voice floated over to me.
“I had fun. Call me,” she said over her shoulder as she slid into her car, but got too busy checking her face in the mirror to realize that Deacon never responded.
Not wanting to be found staring at them like some deranged, lovesick girl, I turned around and headed home as fast as my legs would take me without breaking into a run. I hated that my vision kept blurring, because I knew Deacon wasn’t worth my tears, but it was hard to stop them.
I hated that the first time I thought I could move on after years of hanging on to Ben’s memory, I once again felt like I wasn’t enough. Despite everything he’d told me, Ben had needed Grey. She was his safe place, his comfort. And Deacon needed a different face every night, and a girl willing to be used for a few minutes of pleasure.
But I have Stranger. . .
The thought made me laugh sadly.
Unfortunately, tonight only reaffirmed why Stranger should stay a stranger.
Because there was something safe in keeping him fake. The screens of our phones helped guard my heart because I knew that no matter how much I loved our conversations, I would never be able to get invested enough to the point where he could break it.
I was only five minutes away from home when my phone began ringing. I didn’t have to look at it to know who it was, but I was disappointed that it took him that long to check his phone and realize what he’d done even after the girl had left. Seconds after the ringing stopped, it started up again, and again, and again.
My fingers twitched to grab my phone and answer it, to let him attempt to give me some bullshit explanation, but the tears came faster with each time he called. And that made me angrier at him—that he somehow had enough of a hold on me to make me cry harder at the thought of letting him explain away why he’d forgotten me for another girl.
This was Deacon Carver! I didn’t want to care if there had been another girl at all. I should have expected this. I should have never let myself feel anything for him in the first place.
I’d barely made it two feet inside the door before Grey was rushing toward me from where she’d been looking in the fridge.
Crap.
“What’s wrong?” Grey asked loudly.
“I thought you were going out of town,” I said as I quickly wiped at my wet cheeks.
“What happened?” Jagger’s worried voice sounded throughout the open space from upstairs, and within seconds he was looking over the rail.
“I thought you were going out with Deacon,” Grey said, ignoring both Jagger and me.
Jagger bit out a curse as he ran down the stairs. “Deacon? You were going out with fucking Deacon? What’d he do?”
“Nothing,” I said firmly, then repeated, “I thought you were going out of town.”
Grey’s eyebrows drew together as she studied me. “We started to, but Aly got sick on the way there, so we’re going to leave in a few days. Now what’s wrong?”
I laughed and waved them both off, and tried to walk toward my room in the back. “Again, nothing. I’ll be leaving again soon, can I take your car?”
Grey held on to my hand to keep me from walking away. “What happened? Did he say something to you?”
My body deflated, and I huffed at my own stupidity. “He would’ve had to actually show up in order to say something,” I whispered. “But he was busy.”
“Busy with what?” Grey asked at the same time Jagger growled, “When were you two going to tell me that you were going out with Deacon?”
“Jag, now is not the time to be like this, okay? Don’t—just don’t.” Grey had let go of me to try to calm Jagger down, and I used that to my advantage to walk toward the hall again. “And since when is it a what with Deacon, Grey? It’s always a who.”
“He wouldn’t when he had plans—”
“He would,” I said, cutting Grey off. “I called him a few times, but he never picked up. I walked over to the house, and he was seeing a girl out while buttoning up his pants.” I tried to sound like it didn’t matter, but my voice cracked more than once during my explanation.