Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Deacon
I kept my hands tightly clasped beneath the desk to stop them from shaking. It took everything within me not to get up and go to her.
“Deacon,” she said breathlessly. “Wh-what are you doing here?”
Winning you back , I wanted desperately to say, but I knew she would just launch into all the reasons she couldn’t be with me again. It was time I gave her a choice. A real one.
“I had some paperwork for you to sign.” I pushed a stack of papers across the table.
“And you came all the way out here to have me sign it?”
I shrugged. “I was flying up to Boston.” It technically wasn’t a lie. “Figured I’d make a detour.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped in clear disappointment. “Right,” she said, wandering over and sitting across from me. “You’re dissolving the trust.”
“I am.” I balled my fists tighter. “I’m transferring the funds to other organizations. More established ones and a new one.”
Her brows furrowed. “A new one?”
“That is the other reason I came in person,” I said, nodding to the sheets of paper in front of her. The moment she read it, Dove let out a half gasp, half sob. I watched as her eyes scanned over and over the title of the document: The Simon Lachlan Conservation Fund.
“What is this?” she asked, eyes welling with tears.
“What it always should have been. Your dad worked so hard to protect wildlife. It should be in his name. The fund will be operated in conjunction with Prickle Island Zoo.” Dove wiped tears from her eyes. “It means you can still start that breeding program. It means you can fund a bunch of other breeding programs at other organizations too. It means the zoo will be protected for years to come.”
It means you can do your dream job without it being attached to me.
She wiped her sleeve under her eyes. “Thank you.”
“It’s what I should’ve done from the beginning,” I admitted. “I should’ve never made it about me. I surrounded myself with people who only wanted me to cover my own ass, who didn’t care if I was ever a good person, not like the way you made me a good person. And your father was a good person too,” I said, voice growing thick. “I wanted your family to have this.”
“It means a lot.” Her bottom lip trembled as she nodded.
“And there’s another thing I wanted to tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“All the proceeds from the film we shot here will be donated to the Simon Lachlan Conservation Fund.”
“I . . . Wow.” She could barely get the words out as her eyes welled more. “You have no idea how much this means to us.”
“I was thinking, maybe . . .,” I hedged. “Maybe you’d want to be my date to the premiere?”
“Deacon,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “I—we?—”
“It’s the last film premiere for a long time, I think,” I continued. “I got a call from Faith. I’ll be working on a new album with her. We’re going on tour next year. It’s already planned. Her band and Lucky Role doing all our old hits, and we’ll perform the new album together too.”
“You’re really doing it,” she praised, smiling. Smiling for me, happy for me, even through tears, and it made my heart hurt.
“Thanks to you,” I said.
She waved that away. “I just made a call.”
“Well, now you are the head of a new conservation fund. Congratulations, director.” I rose to a stand. “It’s not attached to me in any way, and you can run it without being reminded of me if that’s what you want.”
“Everything reminds me of you,” she confessed, and I felt it like a sucker punch. “The ocean, the animals, Eddie the toucan and Garret the llama. My music, my shows, my hand.”
She cried harder, and I couldn’t contain myself. I moved around to her chair and lifted her hand and kissed her scar, just like I had that day on the beach. I dropped to my knees in front of her, holding her hand to my lips, frozen in this moment where I wasn’t sure I could bear to ever let her go again.
“I came here to say goodbye,” I said, choking on my words. “I came here to give you a clean break from me.” My pleading eyes met hers. “But I can’t just let you go. There’s just no world where you and I weren’t meant to be together.” Dove opened her mouth to speak, but I pushed on. “I can protect your family. I can protect you. I want to disappear into my music and get out of the headlines and I want you to come with me.”
“Deacon . . .” She shook her head as I pulled my necklace out from under the neckline of my shirt and pulled the coin from the magnetic clasp. Dove looked at me through bleary eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Heads, you come with me,” I offered, brandishing the coin.
“What?”
“If it lands on heads, you come on tour with me,” I clarified. “You can work on the road. We can travel the world. You can be mine. Agreed?”
“You want to let a coin flip decide if we end up together?” she asked with a watery laugh.
I wiped her tear with my knuckle. “Agreed?”
She considered me for a long time before she finally said, “Fuck it. Heads and I come with you.”
I grinned and tossed the coin up with my thumb. Dove caught it in midair before it could even reach the apex of its flight. She held it tight in her palm as she met my gaze.
“It was heads,” she said, grabbing me by the back of the neck and pulling me into a burning kiss.