Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Deacon
Dove’s cheek rose and fell against my chest, her body curved against mine. She toyed with the coin hanging from my neck, pulling apart and reattaching the magnetic clasp again and again. Every so often, she’d let out a satisfied, little hum. She probably didn’t even realize she was making it.
I’d never known such perfect bliss as this moment. Dove Lachlan’s naked body against mine, the smell of her lavender shampoo, the feel of her fingers tracing lines across my skin, and knowing that everything in the world suddenly felt right.
Dove started to roll away and my arm wrapped tighter around her waist.
She laughed. “As much as I’d love to stay, I need to go or I’ll miss my train.”
“Don’t take the train,” I grumbled, circling my fingers down her bare back.
“I need to get home. It’s all hands on deck at the zoo right now.” She let out a frustrated grumble. “Even as much as I wished I could freeze time and stay.”
That made me smile. She wanted to stay. She wanted this— us . A few weeks ago, I hadn’t dared to hope, and now it felt foolish I hadn’t seen it before. There had always been this buzzing energy between us. Whether we called it love or even sometimes hate, it had always been there. Inevitable. I should’ve known the second I’d taken her frantic phone call that this was where we’d end up.
“I’ll have my driver take us back,” I insisted.
Dove propped her head up in her hand to get a better look at me. I loved the way her eyes roved my face, her swollen lips and sated expression. “Us?”
My hand roamed lower to her hip and squeezed. “I’m not letting you ghost me this time,” I informed her, lifting my head to kiss her. “No running away. No slowly fizzling out. I don’t want to lose you again.”
“Deacon,” she admonished with a little grumble. “This was incredible, but we need to be realistic.”
“I am being realistic.”
“But—”
“No buts.” I kissed her pouting lips until she was smiling again.
“I’m not trying to run away, but I have to go home and you have a life that needs to keep rolling on without me.”
There were no two words I hated more than the way she said “without me.” I knew it was a lot to ask of her. I knew my life was a lot to take on. But if anyone could handle it, it was Dove Lachlan. I held her tighter, as if my arms were trying to prove to her that I wasn’t going to let her go.
“My life can wait right now,” I pushed. “Let’s focus on the zoo first. I’m coming with you.” Dove opened her mouth to protest, and I sat up fully. “Dove, I meant what I said last night. You and me. I’m all in.”
“But you have work,” she protested.
“I’ll cancel it.”
“Deacon!”
“Dove!” I mocked. “Let me take you home. I have nothing big going on this week. I’ll have Luca shift things around, and next Sunday we’ll make a game plan, okay?”
Finally, she relented, collapsing back down against me. “And you call me stubborn.” I grinned victoriously as her eyes drifted to the guitar in the corner of the room. “Do you ever still write?”
“Sometimes,” I hedged. “Not that I’ll do anything with the songs. It’s just a hobby now.”
Her bedroom eyes lifted to me. “Do you want it just to be a hobby now?”
“When it comes to my career, it doesn’t matter what I want.”
“Of course it does! It should matter more than anything,” she argued. “What do you want?”
I sighed. “I want to make movies that mean something to me, I guess,” I confessed. “And I want to start making music again. I want to spend less time working and more time on the things I love.”
“And what things do you love?”
“Searching for treasure on the beach, binge-watching episodes of Dimension 20 , texting my best friend that I saw someone that looked exactly like the grumpy petting zoo llama . . .”
“Garrett.”
“That’s the one.” I chuckled. “I want to do all the things I love with the person I love.”
Her lips curved. “And who is that person?”
“She’s a Russian supermodel,” I teased wistfully.
Dove’s wandering fingertips stalled. “Oh.”
“ That was a joke,” I said, recapturing her hand. “I realize now that was terrible timing. I was talking about you, if that wasn’t clear. I’ve been madly in love with you since I first saw you at ten years old. I’ve been in love with you longer than I’d known what love is, and I never stopped.”
“Well, I wish I could say the same,” she lamented, and my heart sunk for a second. “And I can because I’ve been madly in love with you since I was ten years old too.”
She let out a squeak as I rolled over until I was pinning her into the mattress, kissing her deeply. “We are just as bad as each other,” I said with a laugh. I lifted up to search her eyes, wanting to tumble into her gaze as I said, “I love you.”
“I love you,” she echoed, reaching up to pull me back into another kiss.
She loved me. And with that thought, everything in the world felt complete.