Internal Fixation - Tawdra Kandle Page 0,42

what you did to me as Deacon, the guy who was sleeping with me. I realized damn fast after you took off that I never meant anything to you, and I also realized that I was better off without someone like that in my life.”

“You don’t get to play both sides, Emma.” The same fire licking at me blazed in his eyes now. “Either you don’t give a fuck about what was between us, in which case I have nothing to be sorry about, or you’re still pissed about—about everything that happened last year. Make a decision. Don’t try to skewer me from both sides to justify the fact that you’re angry.”

“You don’t get to tell me how to be mad. You just get to deal with it.” I pushed the chair toward him, rocking it onto two legs before it banged against the floor again. “I don’t plan to interact with you any more than is absolutely necessary to do my job. So you can take your—your dynamic, your intensity and your apologies and shove them right up your ass.”

A muscle jumped in Deacon’s cheek. “Fine. Then I guess we’re on the same page.”

“I think we are.” I spun on my heel and marched out of the office. The fragile calm I’d managed to construct between getting out of bed and hearing Deacon call my name was shattered.

Somehow, I must have fallen through a wormhole in time and space, because crazy as it was, I was right back where I had been on the first day I’d spoken to Deacon Girard.

Mad as hell, and spoiling for a fight.

7

Deacon

Despite the fact that I’d grown up without either of my parents in my life, I’d always loved the holidays. That was entirely thanks to two grandparents who’d made sure that I had the best Christmases possible as a kid, with every bit of celebration and revelry imaginable. We did it all, and we did it up big: from the community party on the weekend before Christmas to the church service on Christmas Eve, from the huge fresh evergreen that took up residence in the corner of the living room in mid-December to the stockings hung on the fireplace, overflowing with gifts.

This year, I didn’t expect much. After all, Gram and Pop hadn’t expected me to be home to spend Christmas with them, so they couldn’t be blamed if they’d made other plans or if there was nothing under the tree or in those stockings for me. But to my surprise, when Gram had called me downstairs on Christmas morning—I always spent the night with them on Christmas Eve so that we could enjoy breakfast and gifts together the next day—I walked down the steps into the same holiday wonderland that had greeted me every December twenty-fifth of my life.

“How did you do this?” I stood alongside the tree, my hands on my hips, staring at the beautifully wrapped presents.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do a thing.” Gram pressed her hand to her chest. “This is all the work of old St. Nick. He came down the chimney while you were sleeping. Somehow, you must have bamboozled him into thinking you were a good boy this year, because look at all these gifts!”

“Hmph.” Pop grunted. “Can we eat breakfast before we open gifts this year? I’m starving, and those pancakes smell good.”

He wasn’t wrong. I consumed massive quantities of Gram’s delicious buckwheat pancakes, sausage and hash browns, along with her homemade butter and maple syrup from a cousin in Maine.

“Gram, I haven’t eaten this well since the last meal I had in this house,” I announced as I helped her clean up. “You’re spoiling me.”

She paused as she carried a pile of plates to the sink, patting my cheek with her damp fingers. “You deserve some spoiling. You’re my boy, after all.”

I grinned, feeling incredibly lucky that even if fate had robbed me of my mother at an early age and saddled me with a neglectful, immature father, I’d been privileged to have been raised by Gram and Pop.

Opening the refrigerator, I replaced the maple syrup, accidentally knocking out a small plastic bag of what looked like crumbled sausage in the process. As I bent to pick it up, I frowned at the printing on the front of the bag.

“Hey, Gram. What’s this?” I held it up for her to see.

“Oh, that’s vegan sausage.” She gave me a sunny smile.

“Why do you have vegan sausage in your fridge?” I had a