Chapter 29 #3
“Do you mind?” I ask quietly. “I need to get dressed.”
His eyes remain closed. “You know how hard it is not to say nothing I haven’t seen before?”
I blow a wet hair away from my face in irritation. “And yet it’s like you just said it.”
“I’m not going to watch you change,” he murmurs. “Scout’s honor.”
And maybe the craziest part of this entire day is that…I believe him. I drop the towel to the floor, eyes on his unmoving face, and stand there, naked. My heart slams as I wait for his eyes to pop open with a crude comment or joke. But none come.
I change swiftly, black crewneck sweater and Harker sweats as planned, and tuck my wet hair down my neckline to feel the cold on my burned back. Everything aches, but I try to appreciate the fact that at least I’m still in one piece.
I’m about to tell him I’m decent when I realize Deacon hasn’t moved a muscle—in fact, he’s so serene, I wonder if he’s fallen asleep.
It’s like seeing a lion at the zoo curled up after a long day.
Declawed by fatigue and the universal need for rest. He’s so huge, lying on my bed, feet hanging over the edge.
“Deacon?” I whisper. “Are you asleep?”
“Don’t sleep,” he says, eyes still closed. “Remember?”
“Do you want a shirt?” Feels polite to offer since his was eaten to threads by naga venom and left in a soaked pile in my bathroom. “Or…dry pants?”
“Don’t think I’ll fit in your ex’s polos or Reid’s Harker hero gear.” Finally, Deacon’s eyes flick open and I am reminded of the pale blue of his eyes. Like mist curling through the morning, lit only by the first licks of dawn. Kind of breathtaking.
Deacon is…kind of breathtaking. All that clean, cut muscle.
The pure white of his hair and the grit of his voice and the stark black ink of his tattoos paired with that chain he wears around his neck.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is silver, and he’s just grown immune to the pain.
Perhaps through years of self-inflicted torment. Perhaps through centuries—
Oh my god. “My locket.” My hands fly to my throat, only to find it vacant.
I bolt from the room and out to the kitchen, where all the naga venom is gone.
“Did you…clean up? While I showered?”
Deacon strolls out behind me and assesses the kitchen. “Venom would have scorched through your floorboards if you left it much longer. Nothing a little baking soda couldn’t fix.”
“Thanks.” Confusion and gratitude war in my mind. “Did you see a locket by chance?”
“You mean the silver one you’re always wearing?”
I nod, hopeful.
But he shakes his head. “Nagas like shiny things. He might have eaten it while you were brawling. And then…” Deacon makes a boom motion with his hands.
The sorrow is a physical weight in my chest as I realize what he means. Destroyed. The only thing I had left of my dad’s that I could carry with me everywhere I went. All the secrets stowed in there that I could never get open. A piece of him, gone.
Deacon doesn’t say anything, and I guess that’s a kindness. I wipe one of the tears that’s slipped down my cheek as discreetly as I can. But I know he’s seen.
“I need to search the place for it.” My voice comes out thin and reedy. “It was my father’s.”
“We should go before Finn realizes his men failed.”
Finn’s men. The Brood from the restaurant and his naga. “That thing…It almost killed Penny.”
Deacon weighs this, jaw shifting. He’s looking at me with an emotion I don’t recognize. Something gentler than pity. “We’ll be more vigilant.”
I try to remain strong. Today has kicked the shit out of me, emotionally, physically…But we have a lead now. A ring. A way for me to get free of this spell. “We will be.”
We’re a few feet from the door when Deacon stops short.
I turn, expecting a joke or nasty comment.
A jab about my small tits or my shitty apartment.
Something to bring us back to the far more comfortable status quo of snapping at each other.
Not this bizarre new terrain I’ve been grappling with since the lagoon—finding somehow I’ve befriended my nemesis.
But he does the opposite.
“I was only fucking around today,” he says, eyes steady on mine. “I know how you feel about me. More importantly, how you feel about my brother.”
Breath doesn’t arrive in my lungs on time. “Why are you telling me this?”
But I know why. Because it’s easy to joke about attraction when it’s clearly absent.
When the joke is how ridiculous it would be for either of us to be interested physically in the other.
It’s different now. After what happened tonight.
In the most shadowed corners of me, I’m not even sure the nakedness of the shower was the most intimate part.
Deacon saved my life. He risked his literal skin to spare me from pain. He was…gentle and kind…and—
“Felt it should be said,” he replies, hands in his wet pockets.
I almost died tonight and Reid wasn’t here. But Deacon was. I hope he can’t discern exactly what the rush of complicated emotions are that swell up inside of me at his words. God knows I can’t.