But I knew it wasn’t that simple.
I was staving off heartbreak…again. Doing it with the impending official adoption of the dog Deacon bought for me. I had pictures. The breeders e-mailed them to me weekly—the puppies rolling around, nursing from their momma, growing up, and playing.
I was in love with all of them and had no idea how I would choose when the time came two weeks from then when I’d have to.
I also had no idea how I would claim and care for a dog that would forever remind me of Deacon.
I closed my eyes tight on that thought, fighting the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me, and not in a warm way. In a devastated, I’m-an-idiot, I’d-picked-the-wrong-guy, when-was-I-gonna-learn way.
But I opened them when I heard the growl of an engine through the patter of rain.
I turned my head right to see who was there, and when I saw the rain slicked black Suburban through the gray dusk, I quit breathing.
I started again but only to do it erratically as I watched the driver’s side door open and Deacon unfold his long frame from the seat. I heard the door slam and remained still, my eyes on him negotiating the trees at the side of my house as he stalked to the porch.
My breath caught again when he arrived at the porch and I could see his eyes pinned to me, his face blank, the mask returned (not a good sign), but there was no escaping the heaviness that descended from whatever it was that was emanating from him.
This could have been why I couldn’t move.
Deacon could move. He put his hands to the porch railing, and even though the porch (and definitely the railing) was elevated several feet from the ground, he hauled himself up and threw his body over the rail, his boots hitting the deck with a definitive thud.
At this miraculous display of upper body strength, I swallowed a gasp.
I had no idea what he was doing there, and even if his expression was giving me nothing, I still understood from somewhere deep he didn’t want to be there.
But he was.
And I didn’t get that.
Though maybe I did. Maybe I was right. Maybe it was Deacon’s time to say good-bye, face to face.
Suddenly, I wished he’d left me hanging.
He stared down at me and I still didn’t move. Just had my neck twisted, my head tipped back, because his unfathomable eyes were locked to mine in a way I couldn’t escape.
“Thought you were more woman than any woman I’d met,” he declared, his voice low but cold, a voice I had for six years. A voice I thought was gone forever.
A voice it was a blow that hurt like a bitch to have back.
It was also a bizarre opening.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“A woman who’s any woman at all, she wants shot of a man, she’s got the guts to tell him.”
I stared in disbelief.
What did he just say?
Shot of a man?
Before I could ask, Deacon kept talking
“You don’t have that and I should let you make that play. But what you gave me, Cassidy, not gonna let you make that play. So you want shot of me, I’m standin’ right here. Now you say the words.”
“Are you crazy?” I whispered, knowing he was because there was no way in hell he could think I was shot of him.
Him shot of me, yes.