Page 37 of When You Saved Me

“Ah! Ow!” I hissed, retracting my arm to my chest. “Shit!”

Before I could turn around, Deacon was by my side. “What happened?”

I raised my wrist and twisted it to the side so he could see where the edge of the pan burnt me. With a gentle touch, he took my wrist between his hands and inspected it.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth at the stinging sensation that permeated the area. “I burned myself on the pan.”

His tone was tender as he cradled my wrist in his palm. “It doesn’t look too bad, but let’s get it under some cool water.”

“Okay,” I whimpered as he led me to the sink. Water rushed from the faucet when he turned the knob. I bit my lower lip as he tested the coolness of the water before sliding my wrist under it.

“Better?” he asked.

I peered up at him. There was still a paleness to his skin from how sick he’d been, but the color was starting to come back already. I could stare at him all day, I realized. Despite the pain in my wrist, I felt an urge to run my fingers through his hair like I’d done all morning to make him feel better. But this time, I wanted to do it for myself. I wanted to explore every part of his body. The parts that were honed from years of hard labor. The parts I hadn’t seen yet. I wanted to spend the rest of my days getting lost in those green eyes, noticing all the changes within them from every kind of light that shone.

And most of all, I wanted to feel him pressed against me with nothing between us.

“I’d be better if you kissed me right now.” The words I meant to keep in had slipped out, but I didn’t care.

Deacon’s breathing hitched and his gaze fluttered to my lips. When his head tilted downward slightly, butterflies flew freely in my stomach.

God, I needed him to kiss me.Please, kiss me, I silently coaxed him.

His head dipped further and I closed my eyes. But then I felt the gentle scrape of his closely shaven beard against the edge of my ear as he said, “Not yet, beautiful.”

Chapter 14

Charlie

Not yet, beautiful.

Deacon’s words swam through my mind for the past hour. I didn’t know how to act throughout dinner and now that we were sitting on his sofa together watching the fire roar in the hearth with a cup of hot chocolate between my hands…well, I still didn’t know how to act.

Did he mean that he fully intended on kissing me eventually? Or was he just trying to ward me off so I wouldn’t bring it up again?

After another ten minutes of reeling through all the possible scenarios of what he meant, I decided to shut that part of myself off. If Deacon didn’t want to kiss me, that was fine.

I was fine.

Everything was fine.

I sighed before taking a sip of my hot cocoa and tried to focus on the sweet warmth as it traveled down my throat.

Casper laid between us, and I was thankful for the barrier so that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself again. Just being close to Deacon was proving to muddy my mind in ways I wasn’t sure I would ever recover from.

But I could handle it. I’d become good at packing things away in a pretty little box so they didn’t bother me anymore. Really, it was something I’d done my entire life without trying. Perspective was everything. You could either be grumpy that it’s pouring down on you or you could dance in the rain. And I loved to dance.

So, I shrugged off the remnants of my sour attitude and gazed into the flickering flames.

After a few minutes, the leather sofa creaked, and I could feel Deacon’s eyes on me. I slid my gaze to him and raised my eyebrows.

“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” Another compliment that I tossed to the side. If Deacon wanted me, he was going to have to actually show me after all the shenanigans he’d been pulling.

But there was no reason for me to give him the silent treatment. We were stuck here together as wind whistled through the trees outside, bringing even more snow with it.

“I was just thinking about my papa and how much he loved having bonfires.” I rubbed at my scar. The skin around it was getting more irritated by the day, but Deacon didn’t grab my ointment from under the bathroom sink when he brought some of my things over from the tiny cabin.

“Oh yeah?” Deacon’s smile wasn’t as bright as the one from earlier, but he almost seemed more at ease with thegesture. Like something inside of him had cracked open and the barrier to his happiness had crumbled, giving him free reign to enjoy it again.

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