live…even though she should have more than enough money in her bank account now. “One of the best litigators in Manhattan is a friend of mine. I talked to him about your situation. He said he would take your case and get you legal custody—if you want to pursue that.”
“I already said no.” His tone didn’t turn hostile, but it was definitely abrupt.
“He’s the best, Deacon. I know you’re scared—”
“No.”
I wanted a Plan B if getting Valerie to move here was unsuccessful. Having Deacon move back to California wasn’t an option—at least not for me. “Could you tell me why?”
His jaw tightened like I’d poked a festering wound.
“You don’t have to. I just thought—”
“No.” He took a quiet breath, letting it escape gradually in an effort to relax. “I’m used to people prying, but I know you aren’t prying. You’re trying to help me…like always.” He seemed to be talking to himself, calming himself. He turned back to me. “When my father passed away, it was rough for me. I started to drink a lot…the hard stuff. It became a problem. There’re at least six months of my life I can’t really remember because I was drunk all the time.”
I didn’t react, but I was surprised it had happened, that someone so strong would succumb so completely.
“If I take her to court, she’ll use it against me. Not only will I not get Derek, but I’ll lose all my credibility. My medical license might be suspended even though I was never drunk on the job, and I could get stuck with a reputation that would tarnish all of my accomplishments…even if they happened long before I grabbed the bottle.”
I hated imagining him in that much pain, so disturbed that he had to alter his reality with booze. “Alright. Then we’ll convince Valerie.”
He stared at his hands.
“I don’t think less of you, Deacon.”
“I know…” He released a sigh and looked at me, like he had complete confidence in me. “I know you never would.”
That kind of trust meant the world to me, to see someone so hard become so soft with me, to share his darkest secret without fear of retribution. “It might take some time to get Valerie to come around, but if we play our cards right, we can make it happen. Now that we’ve gotten Derek here once, I’m sure Valerie will let me get him again. And this time, maybe he can stay longer…for a couple weeks.”
“I hope so. A weekend wasn’t long enough.”
“A lifetime isn’t long enough…not when it comes to the people you love.”
He watched me, a slight smile moving onto his lips.
I stared at him for a while, admiring his sculpted shoulders, the muscles in his neck, the way he looked at me. It was easy to get lost in those brown eyes, to be comfortable with that level of profound intimacy.
He was the one to break eye contact. “Tucker told me you stopped seeing each other.”
I hadn’t thought about him since he’d left my apartment. It never felt right, but I’d tried to force it to be right, tried to feel something I was incapable of feeling. “We agreed to be friends. You don’t need to worry about it being weird when we’re in a room together.” Tucker took my rejection so well, like it wasn’t personal at all. It made me realize his jokes and humor were just an aspect of his personality, but underneath that, he was much more mature than he let people realize.
Deacon was quiet.
He’d never asked me about Tucker when we were together, so I was surprised he asked now that we were apart.
“May I ask why?”
That wasn’t a question I expected him to ask—at all. I didn’t even know how to answer it, what the real reason was. It just wasn’t right. “Tucker is a great guy. He’s funny, interesting, kind…but he just wasn’t the right person for me.”
He continued to stare at his hands.
It was quiet for a long time, but not in a comfortable way. Instead, it was tense. He seemed to be thinking. There was that energy filling the room around him the way it did when he stared at his laptop on the dining table—as if he was intently focused on something outside the conversation.
After a few minutes passed, he turned to me. “When are you free for dinner?”
It took me a second to process the change in subject. “Deacon, you don’t have to do that—”
“You’re always taking care of other people. I’d