“Are you gonna stay?” I asked.
“For two more days.”
This did not make me happy.
My eyes went to the pillow by his head and I stopped stroking his jaw.
My hair was released, falling down, curtaining our faces, and this happened so Deacon could wrap his arms around me.
I looked again to him.
“I’ll be back,” he said quietly.
“When?”
“Got a job. I do the job, I’ll be back.”
My eyes drifted away again but came back when one of his arms gave me a squeeze and his other hand moved up and again pulled one side of my hair away from my face.
Then he kept talking.
“Not in three months, not in eight. When the job is done. Could be a few days, a few weeks, maybe a month. But when it’s done, I’ll be back.”
That was better news so I gave him a small smile.
His arm around me shifted down so he could trace random patterns on the skin just above my hip.
That felt heavenly.
Even so, inside, I felt weird.
Right and wrong. Comfortable. Sated.
And awkward.
“I don’t know what I can ask,” I blurted. “What to say. What to do.”
He bunched my hair at the back of my neck. “Do you know what to feel?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Go with that, Cassie.”
Cassie.
My family called me that, some friends back home. I liked it.
It felt disloyal but I never liked it more than the two times it came from Deacon.
Yes, I absolutely knew what to feel.
“You don’t seem to feel weird about what’s happening,” I observed.
“I’m not ’cause I’m not takin’ the risk. You are.”
“Are you a risk?” I asked cautiously.
His eyes gentled and his hand splayed flat on my hip as he chided softly, “Baby, you gotta quit askin’ questions you know the answer to.”