9. Charlie
Chapter 9
Charlie
I tugged on the soft pajama shorts Deacon brought me from the cabin. He kept his home pretty warm, so I wasn’t worried about being cold tonight.
I was worried about walking out of the bathroom half dressed.
From the moment he’d asked me to stay, it felt like something shifted between us. I knew nothing about this man, other than he used to be a firefighter in Charlotte and that he wasn’t a big fan of people. But some part of me knew there was so much more to him than that and I craved to sit by his side and listen to the deep tone of his voice tell me about the unseen parts of him. But that was likely a wish that would never come true.
“This will just have to do,” I murmured to myself in the mirror before I left Deacon’s bathroom and nearly walked smack into a very muscular chest.
“Oh!” I squeaked as I found myself staring at sun bronzed skin and tight pectoral muscles with a small dusting of black hair between them. Biting my lower lip, I let my gaze trail downward to Deacon’s abdomen and that’s when I noticed the burn scar that covered most of his right rib cage. The skin was tinged with angry shades of red and pink, probably from the heat of the shower he’d just gotten out of.
An image flashed in my mind of both of us on the ground, covered in burning rubble. His face was twisted in agony from the fire that burned his skin, but that didn’t stop him from reaching out to me. Telling me to stay with him. Telling me to keep my eyes on him.
Just like that day, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him and the scar that would bind us together forever.
My hand instinctively drifted to my side where I knew there was a scar, much like his. But I balled my palm into a fist and dropped it to my hip.
“Sorry,” he huffed, and my eyes shot upward to see him rake a hand over his short dark hair. “I thought you were going to be in there longer. I just came in here to grab some clothes.” He lifted his right hand that held a pair of briefs and black sweatpants.
“Right. Of course. It’s your room. I can just leave,” I stammered, fighting the desire to take in the body before me that was the definition of a beautifully rugged man.
“No.” His hand shot out, landing on the bathroom door frame. I was caged in, the smell of cedarwood and fresh soap hanging in the air between us.
“You happen to like that word a lot, don’t you?” I laughed, trying to distract myself from how good he smelled.
He didn’t say anything. So, I just stared at him. Finding myself lost in what I realized weren’t purely green eyes. There was a large fleck of golden brown in his right eye and swirls of pale blue melded into the green. I noticed as they flicked down to my lips. My breath caught in my throat as his head tilted to the side and he seemed to move closer to me.
Dizziness swarmed my senses, the background of his bedroom fading away as he grew closer still.
Kiss me . Please, kiss me , I silently urged him.
Heat licked up my spine as my entire body grew still under his spell. There was nothing I wanted more in that moment than for his lips to touch mine. To feel his warmth pressed against me as I explored the planes of his hard body with my hands.
Just as I thought he might have heard my hidden desires, his hand dropped from the frame, and he walked away–never looking back.
When he disappeared through the doorway of his room, I released the breath I’d been holding and spread my palm over my décolletage as the room stopped spinning and started coming back into focus.
It took me a few minutes to recover from whatever had just happened between us in his bedroom before I walked out and found him sitting on the couch with Casper curled into a tight ball by his feet. A glass of amber liquid was clutched between his fingers as he stared into the flames dancing in the hearth.
From where I stood in the hallway, I imagined what it would be like to paint him. I ran the pads of my fingertips together to ward off the need to grasp one of my brushes he’d packed away in his truck for me. I’d never been one to paint people. I could never get the proportions right and it had always frustrated me. I much preferred the wild landscapes of nature that called to be exposed. But there was a wildness in Deacon too.
Raw.
Unbridled.
Secretive.
Which is why I found myself drawing closer to him. Step after step, my feet carried me into the living room. I didn’t think I could stop moving toward him, even if I wanted to.
The reflection of the flames flickered in his eyes when he looked at me. His large body took up most of the section of the couch and that’s when it struck me.
Where am I going to sleep?
Deacon must have read my mind because he swirled the whiskey in his glass and then said, “I’ll sleep out here on the couch. You can have my bed.”
I glanced over my shoulder down the hallway. There were four doors, three of which I hadn’t been through, but I guessed they were bedrooms.
“I can sleep in one of the guest bedrooms,” I offered.
His gaze was piercing. “The only bed in this house is in my room. ”
I smiled. “You don’t get many visitors then?”
He downed the rest of the liquor from his glass and stood. “Nope.”
His strides were long as he walked toward me. “Let me just grab a blanket from my room and it’s all yours.”
Before he could pass me, I reached out for his arm and found my fingers curled into the side of his bicep. He stopped walking and I looked at where I’d grabbed him. His muscle dwarfed my small hand.
Heat curled in my stomach. “I can take the couch,” I said with a quiet laugh. “You barely fit on it as it is. It’ll be much more comfortable for me.”
His chin lowered and that heat in my core turned into molten lead. “And what kind of man would I be having a woman sleep on the couch when there’s a perfectly good bed for her to rest in?”
Not a very gentlemanly one by Southern standards.
“Sleep with me then.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized what I’d said.
The green in his eyes darkened. The muscle beneath my palm went rigid as I felt my eyes grow wide with embarrassment. There was no doubt my cheeks were a flaming red. Unable to hold his gaze any longer, I shook my head and stared at the wood panels of the floor.
“I meant that we can share the bed,” I gritted through my teeth. “I really don’t want you to be uncomfortable tonight.”
Rough fingers gripped the edge of my chin. I sucked in a breath as he tilted my head back so I was forced to look at him. “Is that really what you want? ”
All thoughts emptied from my mind with the exception of him . His words, the curt tone of his voice, the coarse feeling of his touch against my skin. There was a slight tilt of his lips, like he was battling between the man he showed me and the man he truly was.
An enigma.
That’s what Deacon Calhoun was.
And every single part of me wanted to discover the pieces that made him whole.
One resounding word came barreling through my otherwise empty mind. “Yes.”
Telling Deacon I wanted to sleep next to him in his bed and actually sleeping next to Deacon in his bed were two wildly different things. When we were in the hallway, there had been safety despite the touch he held as he’d grasped my chin between his fingers.
Now, there were mere inches between our bodies, and we were both wearing very little clothing. My arms were ramrod straight at my sides above the covers. His room hadn’t been nearly as hot when I’d taken a shower and changed into my pajamas earlier. Something had changed when I climbed into his king-sized bed and felt the mattress dip to my left when he joined me.
I brought the back of my hand to my forehead to see if I was sweating, but my skin was dry as a bone.
Unable to stay still for long, I peered through the darkness at each one of my fingers to analyze my cuticles. Having been brought up as a lady, each finger was perfectly manicured, despite them often being covered in paint. Before long, I found myself staring at the ceiling tricking my mind into thinking the skip trowel texture was shaped into different animals.
Even that didn’t work in keeping my attention for long as Deacon lay beside me. I’d tried avoiding looking at him for as long as I could, but curiosity won as I slowly shifted onto my left side, acting like I was just trying to get comfortable.
When my head settled back on the pillow, I stilled. Deacon was staring straight at me.
“You fidget a lot,” he commented as I watched the way his lips moved with each word. They were the only soft things about him and my mind wandered to places it shouldn’t have.
When I didn’t respond, he asked, “Are you uncomfortable?”
I thought about it for a moment and realized the mattress was the perfect combination between soft and firm. The sheets were cool to the touch, but the weight of the comforter warded off the cold that no doubt seeped in from the window next to me.
“No,” I finally said. Then, I realized he might not have been talking about the mattress at all. I slid my hands between my knees and brought them toward my chest.
“I can go onto the couch,” he offered quietly.
My hand jutted out to stop him from going anywhere, but halfway to his forearm I stopped myself and slid my hand back between my thighs. “Please stay.”
He didn’t move to leave. We laid there together; our gazes fixed on one another until I finally felt brave enough to do what I’d wanted to from the moment I saw him.
“Are we ever going to talk about it?”
His eyes lingered on me for a few more moments before his neck turned and I found him staring at the ceiling. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but it seemed like his jaw was clenched, his body more still than it had been before I asked the question.
A long exhale moved past his lips when he turned toward me again. “I’ve seen a lot of fucked up things in my life, Charlie. Some things that are so horrible, I can’t find the words to describe them. But going back to that place where I found you...” His voice cracked and my heart thundered in my chest. “I’d rather live through all the other horrors I’ve had to face than go back there again.”
Tears sprung to my eyes at his candor. It was the first real thing he’d said to me since I arrived. Not words that were trying to mask the hidden truth.
What he’d just told me…
The parts I remembered about that day were nightmarish. But that was a small fraction of what he’d probably endured that day. I’d been one of the lucky ones. There were many people who hadn’t made it out in time.
I was thankful for the blanket as it hid the shiver cascading down my body as I took in the man before me. The sheer size of him dwarfed his side of the bed, but the pain in his eyes told me that he was fragile under that tough exterior. Something about that day had shaken him to his core. And if this man, who’d apparently seen unspeakable things in life, couldn’t talk about what happened that day, then I had to respect that.
After the fire, my parents had me see a psychologist to make sure I had support following the trauma. She’d told me that my resilience was beautiful, but that not everyone was gifted with the same ability to simply…move forward. There was no known reason for my strength. I wasn’t special. But some part of me was able to find joy in life again without much effort after the fire.
Others, I knew, weren’t as fortunate.
Seeing Deacon like this made me thankful for whatever part of my brain made me capable of walking away unscathed.
“Okay,” I whispered. Even though I didn’t get the answers I was looking for, the answer he gave me helped me understand him a little more.
And knowing just that small piece of him was enough to calm the torment of my need to know him.
A pacifying quiet settled between us, and I found myself drifting off to sleep under the steadiness of his gaze.
That night I dreamt of swirling snowflakes and strong arms that held me close.