I went silent again.
He kept talking.
“That’s why I’m bein’ a dick. Why I didn’t leave you on that table and walk out, like I should. Why I kept comin’ back when I knew I shouldn’t, every time courtin’ my control slippin’ so I’d be in the place where things got outta hand and I got your back on that table. Why cabin eleven was home to me for a few days every year, the only home I had, ’cause you were there.”
“You’re gonna make me cry,” I warned on a whisper, my voice already clogged with tears, feeling that emotion at the same time being annoyed that he was again doing way better at making me more and more happy.
He didn’t look at me.
He said to the road, “You gotta know.” He reached to his cup, took a sip, and finished on a murmur, “Now you know.”
“Now I know,” I replied, still whispering.
He finally fell silent.
I put my coffee in my cup holder, undid my seatbelt, and leaned across the cab where I kissed the hinge of his jaw then said in his ear, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Gotta know something else, Cassie,” he told the road.
I dropped my forehead to his shoulder. “What?”
“Anything. You want it, I got it in me to give it to you, you got anything from me.”
My hand darted to his thigh and curled tight as tears pricked my eyes.
“Now, baby, sit back and belt up, yeah?” he ordered gently.
“Yeah,” I said to his shoulder, shifted to touch my mouth to his neck, then I sat back and belted up.
I looked to the road.
Deacon drove.
Silently.
* * * * *
“So badasses play footsie,” I noted, my ass on the pad in my sanded and repainted Adirondack chair, my stocking feet up on the railing, tangled with Deacon’s.
“Yup,” Deacon replied nonchalantly and I looked his way to see his gaze to the trees, his hand wrapped around a glass of my good Kentucky bourbon, his profile soft and at peace.
I liked that look so I kept teasing.
“And they melt when confronted with a pregnant German Shepherd.”
He’d done just that. Badass one-name Deacon melted right before my eyes. I watched and did it almost having an orgasm, at the same time wondering if you could fall in love in an instant.
He took a sip of his bourbon before he replied, “Man’s no man at all, he doesn’t like dogs.”
I started giggling.
He looked to me. “Disagree?”
I stopped giggling and replied, “I think people can like what they wanna like. Though, I don’t really understand not being a dog person. Or a cat person. Actually, an animal person.”
Deacon looked back at the trees, asking, “So why am I buyin’ you a dog six years down the road?”
He’d done that too. Bought the dog for me.