Chapter 13
Deacon could not believe it. He was looking at Jen, and not just in the hazy realm of memory or one of his nightly fever dreams, but right there, right now, live and in full color, like the universe had finally decided to hand him back the thing he’d wanted most. He had spent every day and most nights haunted by her, by the memory of her voice, the echo of her laugh, the impossible glow that filled the room when she entered.
He’d nursed the ache of her absence with a stubbornness bordering on masochism.
But there she was, in the flesh, the living, breathing answer to a question he’d been carrying in his chest since the last time he saw her.
She was real. She existed. He blinked. She didn’t vanish. She was close enough that, if he leaned forward, he could find out if her hair still smelled faintly of coconut.
For so long he was sure he must have built the mystery woman he’d spent the best night of his life with into something she wasn’t.
His memory of her was practically legend at this point.
Mythical. But he hadn’t. Not only had he not embellished her, she was more striking than his memory.
Or over the past year and a half, she’d become more beautiful.
It was strange, seeing her like this. Witnessing her as someone who existed outside the frame of their one night together.
The way she discreetly let the girl on the date at the table next to them know she had nacho cheese on her chin, the way she said “thank you” to Libby, the server, and meant it, and the way she listened with her whole body to Margo, who she asked about her husband’s surgery, chin in her hand, gaze unwavering.
It was exactly the same woman who’d knocked the wind out of him when he first saw her at Cillian’s bar, beautiful, glowing under the neon lights so calm and composed as she’d kneed an asshole frat boy in the balls with such precision that Deacon was both terrified and awed.
The same woman who, when her lying, cheating husband came to the bar and gaslit her, stared him down with a look that was all ice and pity.
The same woman who, nerves visible in every movement, rolled the dice and went home with a stranger, trusting Deacon with her body, and her story, then ran away before the sun came up, leaving him with a memory and a question mark.
He’d heard, of course, about a Jenna in Hope Falls.
Jenna, who owned The Beauty Spot. He didn’t listen to much of the town gossip—he avoided it, really, not out of principle but out of habit—but he’d heard she was a single mom, that she had a daughter in high school, Blake, that she was the kind of person you could call at 2 a.m. and she’d show up, no questions asked.
That was it. The sum total of what he knew about her, she was loved, she was a mother, and she was a business owner.
Now as he stood in front of her, the world condensed into the stretch of scarred tabletop and the space between two people who had once fit so perfectly together. The trivia was over, Niko and Tiana were gone, and they were left staring at one another, the kind of stare that felt like falling.
Deacon had a thousand things he wanted to say, and ten thousand more he wanted to ask, but none of them made it to his mouth.
It was as if every conversation they never had in the last year and a half was trying to crowd its way into this one moment, and he was stunned into silence.
Around them, the bar’s volume swelled, the music was up, balls were clacking on the pool table, people were talking at tables around them.
The chaos pressed in, but it only made the moment more acute, more private.
“Jenna,” he said her name softly, as if it could undo the time between them. It felt like a confession, or maybe a prayer.
Her eyes softened, and she shut them. Her lashes fluttered down, a kind of flinch, and behind her lids, he could see the ripple of something. It made him ache in all the places he’d worked so hard to numb. What had he done to her? What had he left her with?
He watched her. Studying her. Her cheeks flushed. Her lips parted. She took in a shaky breath. He remembered that flush. He remembered those lips. He remembered that shaky breath. Was she still affected by him?
When her eyes opened again, the softness was gone, replaced by the armored look of someone who’d already decided to protect herself. He saw the walls go up in real time, like storm shutters slamming closed.
She turned away. She gathered her coat, her purse, her dignity. She didn’t look back at him as she walked away from the table and headed for the door, moving fast, like if she paused, he’d have a chance to stop her.
“Fuck,” Deacon cursed, low and sharp, the word lost in the noise but satisfying nonetheless. He felt like he’d failed some cosmic test and wasn’t even sure what he’d gotten wrong.
He stood there for a moment, paralyzed by shock. The warmth she left behind was rapidly dissipating. Then, as if he’d been jolted by an electric shock, Deacon sprang into action. He wasn’t going to let her just walk away again. Not this time.
Out of habit, he grabbed his wallet and threw a hundred on the table.
He had no clue what was bought or paid for, he just hoped that would be enough for it.
He was out the door in five strides, the sticky-sweet warmth of the bar giving way to the sharp, pine-scented chill of the Hope Falls winter night.
His hands, steady in a fight, jammed his wallet back into his jacket as the heavy door thudded shut behind him.
The parking lot was a landscape of icy puddles and slushy tire tracks, halos of orange light from the overhead lamps shimmering on wet gravel.
He caught sight of Jenna immediately.
“Jenna, wait,” he called, voice echoing louder than he intended. He had no plan for what to say if she actually stopped, but he couldn’t let her walk away. Not again.
She didn’t break stride, just called back, “No.”
He jogged after her. “Can we talk? Just for a minute.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she shot back, a sharpness in her voice that both stung and thrilled him.
He’d worried his memory of her had morphed her spirit into something he’d created out of his fantasy. The fieriness of the woman who’d asked the kid if she could knee him in the balls before she’d done it. But there she was, radiating the same untamable energy and it was aimed at him.
“Seriously?” he said, coming up behind her but keeping a cautious two-pace buffer. “You really don’t think we have anything to talk about?”
She spun on her heel, her eyes flashing in the amber light. “Nope.”
“Okay, you don’t have to talk.” He tried a different angle. “Can you just listen to me for a second?”
She didn’t answer, but he caught the sharp inhale, the flare of her nostrils. Progress. Maybe?
She turned so her back was to him, unlocked her car from across the lot, the white Kia Sportage’s taillights blinked, a beacon directing her escape route.
She lengthened her stride, probably hoping he would give up once she made it to her car.
She didn’t know him well enough to realize he was a very creative, out-of-the-box thinker.
Desperate times. He cut down around the raised F150 and over. She was looking back over her shoulder when she walked into the aisle where her car was parked to get into the driver’s side door that he was standing in front of. He didn’t want to scare her, so he said, “Hi.”
She startled, her keys slipping from her hand and launching skyward like a cartoon banana peel.
Years of football drills and hand-eye coordination kicked in before he could think about it.
He snatched the keys from the air and held them out to her.
She hesitated, then snatched them back, her fingers grazing his for a nanosecond before she recoiled.
For a moment, she just stared at him. He saw the war in her expression, half of her wanted to get into the car and never look back, but the other half, maybe, possibly, really wanted to hear him out. He’d take those odds.
“Why can’t we talk?” he pressed.
“Because this is…” She crossed her arms in a defensive tangle. “It’s crazy. You lied.”
“I lied?” The accusation hit him square in the chest. “When did I lie?”
“Rental car?” She looked at him like he was the world’s biggest conman. “Comped room?”
He searched her eyes for any sign that this was a joke, some kind of test. He saw only pain and disappointment, and guilt twisted in his gut. “It was a rental car. The room was comped.”
“Your name was on the building. I don’t think you can say it’s a comped room when your name is literally on the hotel,” she said, every syllable as sharp and clean as a paper cut.
Deacon winced. “I know. Just, can we talk about it?”
“No,” Jenna replied, voice clipped and final, as if she could cleave their entire history in two with a single monosyllable.
He wasn’t sure what he expected, but he hadn’t prepared himself for this flat, practiced indifference. She was the same woman who’d let him see her heart, and let him past the sharp edges, and now she stood in front of him as if she’d never met him before in her life.
“Why?”
“Don’t you remember? No, it’s a complete sentence.” For a split second, her humor softened the moment, but then the wall went right back up.
Before she left, he just needed to know one thing. “Can you just tell me what happened? Did I do something? Why did you tell Martin you didn’t ever want to see me again?”
Jenna hesitated, her keys clutched in a death grip, the small plastic fob trembling between her fingers. Her gaze flicked away, then back, as if she was trying to assemble new rules for engagement on the fly.
“I said that?” she asked.
He nodded, uncertain whether he felt vindicated or destroyed. “Martin said when he asked—”