Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dove
I discovered a new kind of heaven and hell the night of the springtime zoo gala, when I offered to babysit Simon. I wanted Hannah and Hawk to have a couple hours to walk around, have some fancy canapés, and decompress from newborn life. Hell was the three minutes that Simon woke up and started crying as I tried to quickly change his blowout diaper, only to have him immediately poop again the second I picked him back up.
But what came after was pure heaven. My sweet, pink, little nephew slept on my chest as I rocked back and forth on the deck of Hawk and Hannah’s cottage. I patted his little bum in rhythm to the rocking chair, and his chunky, little cheek melted in the warmth of my chest.
As I hummed a little tune to him, I saw the flickers of a flashlight weaving between the hedges of the path that led to the cottage.
“Did you manage to steal any desserts?” I called out to Heron, who had offered to purloin a tray of catering for me while Frankie wasn’t looking.
“I did,” the voice replied, but it wasn’t my younger sibling.
“Deacon?” I asked to the shadowed figure as it wove the last few steps to the deck and appeared into the light.
Dear sweet Babybel cheeses. What I saw made my jaw unhinge like a boa constrictor.
Deacon stood there in a perfectly tailored charcoal-gray suit, fitted satin vest, and purple pocket square that matched the lining of his open jacket. Suddenly, I fully understood all of the “suit porn” Pinterest boards. I’d seen enough photos of Deacon on red carpets and the covers of magazines to know that he looked great in a suit, but seeing it in person was another thing entirely.
“Heron had to give a tour of the hippo enclosure to some big donor so they asked me to bring these to you,” he said, coming to sit on the rocking chair beside mine.
“Of course they did,” I said, knowing full well that Heron had made up that excuse just to send Deacon over here. But I definitely wasn’t about to point out that our zoo did not in fact have hippos. “Did you see Hawk and Hannah?”
“They’re having a great time,” Deacon answered with a laugh. “Although maybe a little sleep-deprived. They have a bit of a deer in the headlights look about them. It’s really cute.”
He set the dessert tray down between us, and I eyed all of the little bite-sized treats arranged around the silver base like a confectionary checkerboard. I lifted my bum patting hand to reach for one, and Simon let out a little grunt of protest, and I immediately went back to bum patting, looking forlornly at the tray of food.
Deacon chuckled. “He’s already got you wrapped around his finger, doesn’t he?”
I twisted a little in the rocking chair to give Deacon a better view of Simon’s face. “Could you say no to this face?”
He put a hand to his chest as he took Simon in. “No, you’re right. He’s already won me over too. And I thought letting my legs go numb when my cat falls asleep on them was bad.”
“You have a cat?” I asked.
“Spud.”
“Spud is still alive?” I exclaimed, remembering his family’s chunky orange tomcat that had traveled to the island with them every summer. “He was old when I knew him.”
“Twenty-four,” Deacon informed me with a shake of his head. “He has more than nine lives, I think.”
“I thought for a second you meant your own cat,” I added mildly.
“Nah, maybe one day,” he mused, rocking in rhythm to me. “But right now I travel too much to have a pet. It would be someone else looking after them most of the time, and I’d want them to be my pet, not the petsitter’s, you know?”
I nodded. “I get it.” Deacon lifted a cube of carrot cake and held it out toward me. “What are you doing?”
“Feeding you,” he said, as if it were obvious.
“You can’t feed me . That’s too weird.”
He laughed louder. “I think you’ll get over the weirdness when you taste how good this carrot cake is. Seriously, it’s the best I’ve ever had.”
“Curse Frankie and her delicious baking.” I’d had her carrot cake before and it was seriously orgasm worthy. “Just lift the platter to my face and I’ll eat it off there.”
“You are seriously the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Deacon admonished with a shake of his head. But at least he obeyed, placing the carrot cake back on the tray and lifting the whole thing toward my face.
I opened my mouth like a ravenous hyena, trying to curl forward over Simon while timing my rocking to swing forward and bite the piece of cake . . . but instead I just got cream cheese frosting on my nose and knocked the three dominos of bite-sized cakes over.
“Aw, man.” I groaned as Deacon laughed so hard his whole body shook.
He set the tray back down, swiped the dollop of frosting off my nose, and licked his finger. “Can I please just feed it to you now? It won’t be weird.”
“Go inside and get some chopsticks.”
“Dove,” he scolded. “My hands are clean and I promise you won’t catch my cooties.”
“Ugh, fine,” I lamented. “I want cake more than I loathe you.”
“You don’t loathe me,” Deacon said softly.
“I know, but it feels good to say,” I countered, and he grinned. I couldn’t keep on pretending. Too much had transpired between us now. Even as I’d tried to maintain the status quo, Deacon had become my friend again over the past few weeks.
He held the carrot cake up and I opened my mouth for him to feed it to me. My lips closed around his fingers, and for a split second I sucked before realizing what I was doing. I reared my head back, making Simon and I dramatically rock backward.
Deacon let out a soft, husky laugh as he licked the remaining frosting off his fingers—an act that felt incredibly intimate in the quiet night. I had just accidentally sucked Deacon Harrow’s fingers. What the hell? And then he’d licked said fingers afterwards! The thought made me press my thighs together and shudder.
“Are you cold?” Deacon asked, noticing the action instantly.
“No.” I drummed a little faster on Simon’s bum. “I’ve got my little hot water bottle. He seems happiest when we’re outside.”
Deacon grinned. “Well, he’s definitely a Lachlan then.”
“Definitely.” I smiled back. I took another deep inhale of his sweet baby scent. “God, he smells amazing.”
“You look like you’re huffing him.”
“It’s seriously baby crack,” I said. “For real. You’ve got to get in here and smell his head.”
Deacon’s eyes crinkled as he stood and leaned over to sniff Simon’s head, his cheek grazing across my own as he did. He let out a satisfied hum as he returned to his chair. “Oh boy. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he smells too good and now I’m going to want to have one of my own.”
I guffawed. “I think that is biology working its magic on you. You’re no match for baby pheromones.” I shook my head as he held my gaze. “I could see it though, for you, one day, being a dad. I think you’d be good at it.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe one day when life calms down, if I ever find the right person.”
“I’m sure there’s a bevy of supermodels who would line up to have your babies. You’d have to come up with some ridiculous celebrity baby name, though,” I joked. “Suitcase Harrow? Apostrophe Harrow?”
“You know, Apostrophe has a nice ring to it,” he teased. “No, I don’t think that’s for me. If I can’t have a cat with my lifestyle now, I definitely can’t have a baby. And just because there might be a few volunteers,” he added with a chuckle. “I guess I’m a traditional sap. I’d want to fall in love, get married, have a life together just the two of us first. It would be nice to put down roots somewhere—somewhere far from cities and paparazzi—and then maybe have a family.” He cleared his throat, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking out into the shadowed garden. “Is that . . . something you’d ever want? A family, I mean.”
My stomach flipped at the way he so delicately asked that question. “I think the bigger question is could I ever find someone who’d want to settle down with someone like me.”
“I can’t imagine that would be hard,” he mused, and I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious! You’re a catch. You’re funny and smart and beautiful—and terrifying,” he added, and we both laughed. “Although the dating pool must be awfully small on an island.”
I shrugged, trying not to think too hard about the way he’d called me funny, smart, and beautiful. Ever the charmer.
“Prickle Island just might be the world’s smallest dating pool,” I said with a huff. “But I don’t think I’m going to live here forever.”
Deacon stilled. “You’re not?”
“I mean, maybe I’d keep Prickle Island Zoo as a home base, but I want to travel and see the world and have jobs that take me to new places and do large scale conservation work, more than I can achieve here,” I said. “I don’t know. What I want my life to be and what I think it’s actually going to be are two very different things.”
Deacon nodded. “Now that I understand.”
I shot him a look. “How?”
“It’s the world’s tiniest violin, I know.” He let out a long sigh. “But sometimes I feel like I’m the ambassador for someone else’s dream.” I could feel the weariness in his words as he spoke. “I mean, I don’t want to complain. I have so much and?—”
“You’re allowed to complain with me,” I cut in. “I know I’m hard on you but?—”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“ But it’s just because I know who you really are. I guess I want to hold you to that standard,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have bad days. You can be real with me. Especially me.”
He looked at me, grateful. “I just feel like I’m being given all these opportunities and I have no choice but to take them because so many people work so hard their whole lives and never get this lucky.” He stared up at the starry night sky. “But I keep wondering, what now? I’ve achieved all of my career goals in the first quarter of my life. Like, am I meant to just keep grinding because I should always want more? Is there a bottomless pit I’m meant to be filling for the rest of my life? When do I get to step off this treadmill? When do I get to eat cake?”
“Whoa.” I blinked at him. “I didn’t realize you were feeling that way.”
“I sound like such a douchebag, I know.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful.”
“You don’t seem that way to me.”
“You thought I was a worthless waste of space a few weeks ago.”
My gut clenched. “Yeah, I should’ve never said that. I was just angry.”
“You were right,” he said with a shrug. “I have teams of people who are always trying to shift the blame off of me, who’ve taught me to never admit my faults. And sometimes I don’t think I like who I’ve become very much,” he admitted. “I don’t actually know if I really want things anymore or if I’ve just been told I should want them enough times that I’ve started believing it.”
“You can’t live your whole life based on other people’s expectations of you. There is no winning that game. They will move the goal posts every time you reach them.” He hummed in agreement. “Maybe it’s time to figure out what you’d want if no one was telling you what you should want,” I said, and his eyes hooked with mine. “Maybe it’s time to figure out who you want to be.”
Our gazes held, and I felt myself tumbling into his stare and knew in the pit of my stomach he was about to say something that would shift what existed between us forever. So like a coward, I quickly cut him off and said, “Now feed me another piece of cake.”
Spell snapped, Deacon laughed and grabbed another dessert from the tray.