Page 74 of Show Me How (Thatch 3)

I glanced at the doorway leading to my bedroom, and listened for a few seconds until I heard the loud boom of fireworks over the lake.

The breath I had been holding in was quickly forced from my lungs, and I reached up for my hair again when another noise filtered in from the front of my house that I was certain wasn’t fireworks.

I let my towel fall to the bathroom floor and tried to remain as quiet as possible as I walked into my bedroom and pulled on a clean shirt and pair of sleeping shorts, then grabbed my phone off the nightstand and pulled up Deacon’s number as I crept out of the bedroom and down the hall.

It didn’t matter what had happened between Deacon and me at the LaRues’ house. It would take the sheriffs much longer to get here than it would Deacon, and I knew he cared about us enough that he would at least hurry.

Besides, he was the most intimidating-­looking man I knew.

I paused near the end of the hall to listen to the noises in my kitchen, long enough to be sure that Keith hadn’t woken up and wasn’t the one making the noise, then tapped on Deacon’s name, and tried to figure out a way to get to Keith without being seen.

Seconds later, a phone began ringing in my kitchen before it abruptly cut off when Deacon answered my call.

“Charlie Girl.”

My shoulders sagged, and I forgot about trying to remain silent as I stepped out into the living room, bringing me face-­to-­face with my intruder.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded through gritted teeth.

His eyes never left me as he ended the call and set his phone on the counter, then took two large steps toward me. “How’s Keith?”

“I asked you a question, Deacon. What are you doing, and why are you in my house?”

“Tell me how Keith is.”

I lifted my arm out in front of me, gesturing toward the other side of the house that held Keith’s room, then let it slap down on my thigh. “He’s asleep. He got sick a ­couple more times. Now what are you doing in my house?”

He glanced back at my kitchen island, as if the answer should be obvious.

I looked at what it was now covered with—­medicines and sports drinks and the types of foods meant for sick stomachs, none of which I had bought. “You got all this?”

He ignored my question, and instead said, “If you don’t want me in here, you shouldn’t have made sure that I was one of the ­people who had a spare key.”

“I told you I was walking. That should have been a sign not to come here tonight, and especially not come in uninvited!”

“You don’t get to do what you did tonight,” he said in a low tone, and closed the distance between us a little more. “If you’re gonna walk from me, then you better do it for a damn good reason. But you can’t just take Keith from me because of a knee-­jerk response I had. You can’t just take you from me because you’ve decided that I don’t want you.” He gestured around us, and said, “That I don’t want all of this.”

I shook my head quickly. I didn’t want to listen to what he was going to tell me. I didn’t want to believe his lies. “I heard you tonight, Deacon!”

“Yeah, you heard something I’ve said most of my life. It’s gonna be hard not to automatically come back with that. But I also panicked tonight when Keith got sick, and I just had to stand there and watch and wait because I didn’t know what to do, and you wouldn’t let me help you. Do you see this?” he asked, and threw his hand behind him toward the island. “You left and I immediately began searching what Keith needed and calling my grandma for help, and then I stood in a store for nearly an hour staring at boxes and reading them trying to figure out if it would help him or not because after all that, I’m still fucking clueless. That should tell you what I want, Charlie. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I want to try. I want to learn. I want to take care of him, and I want you to let me help you. I want you to let me take care of you.” His last statement was full of multiple meanings, his eyes pled with me to hear every one of them.

Heard, Deacon. Lies received.

“Just last week you said—­”

“A lot can happen in a week, Charlie!” He laughed, but there was no humor behind it. “A lot can happen in a day, or a few hours, or even a ­couple minutes if you think everything is being taken from you.” His chest moved exaggeratedly as he stared at me.

As much as I wanted to continue denying his words, pushing them from my mind, I couldn’t. Not with that look, not with those words.

Because I knew both too well.

The tortured look on his face and in his light brown eyes screamed exactly that—­that he’d felt like everything wa

s being ripped from him. Like it still was . . .

He took a cautious step toward me, and then another. “I won’t tell you that I’m in love with you, because I’m still not sure that I’ll ever know what that word means. But I know that I can’t lose you. I know that my life feels wrong if you and your son aren’t in it. I know that I wanted to tear my damn heart out watching you walk away from me.”

He took the last step and cradled my face in his large hands, and tilted my head back so he could look directly into my eyes.

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