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“Charlie, damn it, stop,” he demanded, and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his chest. “Why do I have to hold you still to get you to talk to me?”
“Why don’t you understand that when I walk away, I’m not ready to talk?”
“That’s not how this works. Not with us. Not with you.” His large hand pressed firmly against my stomach, his fingers spread so wide that his thumb brushed the underside of my breast with each breath that I took. “I may not have been paying attention to you all these years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know you. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re doing when you walk away from me. It’s just another form of hiding for you.”
His hold loosened. His hands went to my arms, and slowly slid down. The tips of his fingers teased my own before he released me completely and took a step back. He was giving me every opportunity to try to leave, only now I couldn’t move.
“You’ve spent so long trying to be invisible, but I told you, I can’t stop seeing you. Stop trying to hide from me. Stop walking. Talk to—”
“I don’t want to be her.” The confession tumbled from my mouth like a dirty secret. Fast, soft, and full of shame.
“Who?” Deacon asked after a few seconds.
I turned to look at him, shaking my head as I did. “My mom blew through all of her money. If it weren’t for our grandparents, we would have starved. If it weren’t for Jagger, we wouldn’t have made it. If she had a dollar, then she spent five. I don’t want to be her, and I’m so terrified of turning into her. I have to think of Keith, always.”
“Charlie, buying a car isn’t going to turn you into your mom.”
One of my eyebrows arched, and a sad laugh sounded in my chest. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s like you said, I’ve already pawned my son off on my brother. I already took a huge step toward being like her.”
Deacon’s shoulders sagged as I threw his words back at him. As he finally understood why I didn’t want to have this conversation with him. His face tightened with regret and pain. “Fuck . . . Charlie. No, that—you can’t . . .” He trailed off and scrubbed his hands over his face. “God damn it.”
I tilted my head back toward the house. “Sometimes, when I’m walking away, you should let me walk. I can forgive you and try to forget things that you’ve said or done, but that trying becomes so hard when your words fueled lifelong fears.”
“I don’t expect you to forget what I said that day, but you have to know that I was wrong. All of it, everything was wrong.” He gestured to me, his eyes pleading with me. “Clearly. I was mad when I didn’t have the right to be. When I only had a fraction of the story. I get that now. But, Charlie, turning into your mom? That won’t happen. In the last three weeks alone, anyone could see that that won’t happen.”
I gritted my teeth when my jaw began to tremble, and blinked through the burning in my eyes, determined not to cry. But my voice shook with every emotion I felt, giving me away. “I have less than a week, Deacon. One week until we go back to court. I need to get my son, do you understand?” I gestured to the house with a hand. “He’s here. He’s with me, but I need him to be mine. I can’t risk messing that up.”
Confusion swept across Deacon’s face, and something close to panic filled his eyes when my voice broke on the last word. He reached out for me, and I let him pull me close as he struggled for something to say. “Charlie . . . what are you talking about?”
With how close he was to Grey, with how often they saw each other, I was sure he would have already known. “Keith. I don’t have custody of him, I never have.”
“What do you mean? Who does?”
My head slanted to the side as I tried to understand the frustration and determination that wove through Deacon’s words. “You really don’t know? Grey never told you?”
“Why would she have? If it had to do with Keith she probably knew I didn’t want to know. It’s not really a secret I don’t like kids.” When I flinched, he hurried to say, “You know he’s different.”
I blinked quickly and mentally shook away the quick stab of pain from his declaration. Like he’d said, it wasn’t a secret. “Um, my mom,” I began, and looked back up into his eyes. “Before I had Keith, she kept telling me that I wouldn’t be able to handle it, that I wasn’t ready, that I would ruin the baby’s life, that the baby would one day resent me. It was just . . . endless, and repeated every day until I believed her. Until I finally signed custody over to her. When Keith was two and Mom left, we went to court to try to change custody over to me. We had more than enough proof that my mom hadn’t ever been a fit mother anyway, but the judge said that he wasn’t sure that I was either.”
“What the hell?” Deacon growled in a dangerous tone.
“I was living in the back room of my brother’s warehouse and I didn’t have a job. I’d never gotten one because I needed to be there to take care of Keith since my mom always randomly left. The judge thought I needed to finish school and get my life in order before I was ready to get custody of Keith, and granted Jagger and Grey temporary custody until then.”
“Charlie Girl,” he whispered; his head shook subtly. “Fuck, Charlie, I’m sorry. But you’re not your mom.”
I smiled weakly. “Jagger felt like the judge helped his argument to get me to leave. So I left and finished school. I have a job, thanks to your grandma. And thanks to Graham, Keith and I now have our own place. I did exactly what the judge said, and I’m terrified that if I do one thing out of line, he’ll stop me from getting custody again. Keith is three and a half, Deacon. I want my son to be mine.”
Deacon’s hands cradled my face gently as his face dipped closer to mine. “So wrong about you,” he whispered against my lips, then pressed a feather-soft kiss there. “So damn wrong.”
I gasped against the force of his next kiss, and clung to his muscled forearms as he walked us toward the house. My back had barely touched the door before it was falling open and Deacon was moving us inside and kicking the door shut behind him.
Heat pooled low in my stomach when his mouth made a line down my throat, and cool tingles spread across my skin when he gently bit down there. The conflicting combination made me feel more alive than I had in years.
His lips replaced his teeth, but instead of continuing, he paused for a few seconds. His low laugh and voice rumbled against my throat. “Who are you today, kid?”
I blinked my eyes open, and tried to orient myself.
Before Deacon’s question could register in my mind, a soft, anxious voice came from beside us. Ice filled my veins when I heard Keith ask, “Are you gonna go to the grassy place?”
