“All of this is your choice.”
“I know it is,” I replied.
“Any time, you can go back on that choice.”
I sucked my lips between my teeth, not liking that idea and finding that I kind of wanted Deacon to go back to nonverbal communication.
Or silence.
“You change your mind,” he carried on, “I won’t like it, but I’ll submit to it.”
“That feels sweet at the same time not so much,” I admitted.
“Yeah,” he muttered to the windshield, again speaking like he was talking to himself. “Your world, a man gets hold of you, he’s a fool, he lets go.”
His words made me pull in a soft breath.
He looked to me and finished, “I don’t live in your world.” Then his eyes went back to the road.
I knew this but having it confirmed, waking up tucked to his back, being in his Suburban, it hit me with a clarity it never had before because I’d accepted him in my life. A man who existed most of his time in a world I’d never share, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to, but even if I did, he wouldn’t let me (which made me know I was right about that feeling).
And that clarity was what that would mean to me, not just right then, but if it happened that he became a bigger part of my life, my world, like he’d mentioned frequently.
If he became my man.
If, when he was with me, he was at my side.
If he met my friends. My family.
If the time came where life needed to be lived.
Commitment.
Babies.
This made me ask, “Forever and ever?”
“No, baby,” he said instantly, his hand moving to curl around my thigh, a gesture of affection and connection that he was spare in giving when we were not in bed, making each one he gave more meaningful. But at that moment I was glad he gave it because it was what I really needed. “You do not live in that world forever. You find your way in it while that way is healthy and then you get the fuck out.”
That made me feel better.
“So, when—?”
“I don’t know,” he cut me off to answer my unasked question. “I just know for the first time in ten years, I got an incentive to find the door outta that world and use it.”
There was a lot there even when there weren’t that many words.
Most of it was good, that part being it was clear I was his incentive.
The ten years, though, that was intriguing.
“Bein’ in that world, Cassie,” he went on, “you gotta know, even when I find that door, in some ways, it’ll always be with me.”
“It’s with you now,” I noted. “And I’m with you now knowing it. So why would I care if it stays with you?”
His fingers squeezed hard at my thigh but he didn’t say anything.
Back to nonverbal communication.