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Chapter Eight
Deacon
June 5, 2016
“JESUS CHRIST, DUDE, stop yawning,” Graham said with a groan the next morning, and kicked at my leg.
I ran my hands through my hair and bit back another yawn. “Shut up, you don’t look any better than me,” I grumbled, and picked up one of Keith’s crayons to fix some things on his kid’s menu before he woke from his nap on the short drive over.
“I need coffee,” I said distractedly as I colored. “It was a long night.”
“Ew,” Grey said, then pretended to gag. “Ew, I don’t want to know.”
“Did you really take home someone from the wedding?” Knox asked, and shook his head. “Come on, man. It was my wedding.”
“He didn’t,” Graham answered for me. “But he probably had a line waiting when we got home. I made him turn off Candy for a couple days until the wedding was over.”
Knox barked out a laugh, and everyone else sitting at the table looked among the three of us with clueless expressions.
“Didn’t,” I said through another yawn. “Just . . . I just couldn’t sleep.”
“Yeah, I bet you couldn’t,” Knox said through his laughter.
I’d spent the entire night and morning texting the owner of the journal while working on Charlie’s car outside the warehouse. After the bullshit that had gone down at the wedding with Charlie, I probably would have done exactly what Graham and Knox thought—I would have gone down my list of waiting girls in Candy. But that message, that fucking message with that one word had changed everything.
Stranger . . .
I hadn’t been able to respond fast enough.
I also hadn’t responded to anyone else, or given a shit that hours had passed or that night had turned to day as we’d texted.
I still didn’t have a name, but I didn’t care. I knew she was somewhere between the ages of twenty and thirty, so at least I knew she was legal. And I knew she was single . . . that was all I needed to know to not put a stop to this now. The rest of the specifics didn’t matter.
Her words and everything else I learned about her through them mattered more than specifics ever could.
The fact that I had been able to open up to her in a way I never had with anyone else meant fucking everything.
Because to her, to this girl, I wasn’t Deacon Carver. I wasn’t the guy everyone in Thatch knew me to be.
“Hey, everyone. What can I get you?”
My head snapped up at that voice, and my gaze locked with eyes so blue, it was hard to look away.
To this strange girl, I wasn’t what Charlie had so perfectly described me as: Unapologetic and arrogant.
A chorus of “Heys!” went up around the table, and as soon as they died down, Jagger cleared his throat.
“Well, apparently Deacon needs coffee to get through the morning after the marathon of women from last night.”
My eyes shot to Jagger, but he was looking at his sister pointedly.
“Ew,” Grey and Harlow said at the same time, and after a slight pause, I heard Charlie mumble under her breath, “Disgusting.”
Before I could say anything in my defense, Charlie looked at Harlow and said, “Shouldn’t you be on your honeymoon?”
I didn’t pay attention to Harlow’s response, or anyone else as they gave Charlie their drink orders. I couldn’t stop watching Charlie and the way she was once again so obviously trying not to look at me.
Without realizing it, my gaze
