Page 26 of Forever My Soldier

Deciding to stick it to her, I blurted out, “He’s back, you know?”

“Who?” she questioned, positively confused by my outburst.

I grinned, smugly. “Deacon, Mother.” Then I repeated it for good measure. “Deacon’s back.”

For the first time since I got here, I felt good. Really good. I did what I never thought I’d do—bring his name up to my mother again. And look at that, the world around us didn’t collapse. I felt like superwoman.

“How nice,” she only said, surprising me to no end.

I wondered, that was it? No threats? No insults? Nothing?

That was when I saw the gleam in her eyes as she cracked open a bottle of Pellegrino on the counter.

Maybe it wasn’t going to happen now, but it was coming, that was for sure.

She wasn’t going to let this one go easily.

* * *

I had plenty of regrets in my life, but my latest one was trying to stick it to my mother, telling her about Deacon being back. That had to be the dumbest decision of my life and I’d been kicking myself almost the whole afternoon over it. Hell, I could barely concentrate on work to get anything done, so once six o’clock hit, I bolted with the clock-punchers and didn’t look back.

Driving up to my house, I saw a motorcycle outside—Deacon.What was he doing here? Was he ever going to give up?

I didn’t know how much longer I could do this for, though. The more I saw him, the harder it was becoming to lie to him, to myself. But the secret about our baby still hung over my head like a storm cloud and I wasn’t ready to tell him about it. Mostly, I was scared how he’d react, what he’d say. Would he blame me?

“Jenna,” my name in his mouth made me want to melt into a puddle right there.

This was quite possibly the worst time to be around him because I was so vulnerable from being with my parents. The only thing I wanted was to put my head on his shoulder and let him make everything better, just like he always did.

I couldn’t succumb to it, though. So I mustered up all the anger I had for my parents and pushed past him, sticking my key in the lock and opening my door. “I’m not in the mood, Deacon,” I said, entering my house.

I left the door open because I think on some level I wanted him to follow me in. I threw my purse down on the kitchen counter and turned to him, crossing one foot over the other. “What do you want?” I asked him.

He stroked his jawline that had a shadow of stubble on it. “What’s going on here?”

My shoulders fell as I took in his words. “What do you mean?”

He walked closer to me, trying to close the gap, but I backed up. “Come on, Jenna, it’s me. You can tell me anything.”

I shook my head. “So you came here to accuse me of keeping something from you?”

“No,” he said matter-of-factly. “I came here to apologize for last night and offer to cook you dinner tonight to make it up to you.”

I closed my eyes and tried to come up with a good reason as to why I couldn’t possibly let him do that. But I came up short.All I needed was one reason. What was wrong with me? Oh, that’s right, I didn’t want to fend him off anymore, I didn’t want to resist him at every turn. I wanted him, dammit.

When I opened my eyes, he stood right before me and gripped my shoulders, nudging me to turn around for a shoulder rub. He dropped his head and whispered in my ear, “It’s just dinner, princess. Say yes.”

I cleared my throat. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

I shook my head in the affirmative. “The kitchen’s all yours.” Then I spun around and slipped away from his reach. “I’ll just be upstairs, taking a shower.”A really cold one.

I was halfway up the stairs when I heard him clanking around with pots and pans. “Hey,” he called, and I looked over my shoulder. “This would go a lot easier if you’d let me in.”

I knew he was right, but that could never happen because then any relationship, even a friendship, with him wouldn’t be a possibility. There was no way we could come back from something like that.

As I undressed, my mind wandered back in time to the moment in time where I knew everything changed. Any possibility of us ever getting back together was completely obliterated.

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