I drew in a breath and released it.
Then I asked, “Ten years?”
His hand left my thigh and went to his coffee. He took a sip, put it back in the holder, and put his hand back to the wheel.
Okay, that one he wasn’t going to answer.
I looked to the road and took my own sip of coffee.
No music, no words, we sat there in silence. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I was wondering if I was crazy at the same time knowing I totally was and not caring even a little bit.
This, of course, making me crazier.
“Magnificent.”
Deacon said this on a mutter, breaking the silence.
I looked at him again. “Sorry?”
“The way you laid it out for that punk-ass bitch before you stomped outta that cabin. Fuck, so goddamned magnificent, if I wasn’t fightin’ the urge to rip five teenage fuckwads’ throats out, I would have clapped. “
I grinned at him, feeling the heaviness in the air dissipate and going with that flow.
“That was good, wasn’t it?”
“Nope,” he disagreed. “It was magnificent.”
I kept grinning but did it at the windshield. “I find it amusing that you call them punk-ass bitches. Not to mention apropos.”
“Apropos?”
“Fitting,” I explained.
“Know what it means, woman, just don’t know a single person who would use it.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
There was a slender thread of humor in his voice when he muttered, “Look forward to that.”
I liked that thread of humor. Even slender, I didn’t care. It was there. And I gave it to him.
“That’s why,” he stated confusingly and I looked to him again.
“What?”
“That and your eyes.”
I didn’t say anything, just watched him drive.
He said something. “And your Christmas kiss.”
Oh my God.
My Christmas kiss. He remembered my Christmas kiss.
“Deacon,” I whispered.
“And a hundred other things,” he stated.