Chapter 13 #2
“Oh, I wasn’t listening to what he was saying,” she interrupted, almost incredulous, as if that detail should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain.
“You weren’t listening?” He repeated, incredulous himself.
“No.” She shook her head.
“What do you mean you weren’t listening?”
“I mean, he was saying stuff, and I was saying yeah and no.”
“All this time, I didn’t look for you because you told him you never wanted to see me again.”
She squinted up at him, then tucked her chin to her chest and bit her bottom lip as she stared at the pebbles in the gravel as if she was counting the stones. “I did?”
He could have laughed, but the laugh stuck in his throat because the months of uncertainty, the endless nights of replaying their time and wondering what he’d done to deserve that, weren’t funny at all. He ran his hands through his hair.
“He said he was joking, trying to lighten the mood because you seemed stressed,” Deacon explained, tiredly. “He said, ‘You’re acting like you don’t ever want to see the man again,’ and you said ‘Yeah, no.’ Then he said, ‘No you don’t?’ And you said ‘No.’”
Jenna looked at him, eyes wide with confusion or disbelief or maybe both. “Oh… I didn’t mean, I didn’t know he asked that.”
“All this time I’ve been killing myself trying to figure out what I did to make you run away like that. What did I do?”
“Nothing.” She glanced around, looking like she was hoping no one was witnessing the exchange. “You didn’t do anything. It wasn’t you.”
Was she ashamed that they knew each other? Or was it how they knew each other? It was clear she hadn’t wanted her friends to know that they had met before.
“I was just… I was having some, you know… I had a lot going on in my life that had nothing to do with you,” she snapped defensively. “I didn’t even know you. I don’t know you.”
It was obvious to him that she was trying to de-personalize what had occurred between them, to downplay it, but why? It wasn’t just a cheap one-night stand. They shared more than that. What they shared in that hotel— hell, even in that bar—was real.
“Shit,” she muttered, barely above a whisper, and Deacon watched her shoulders tense before she turned and started walking back towards the bar.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, not bothering to hide the edge in his voice.
“I forgot to cash out,” she said. Her voice caught on the last syllable like it physically pained her to admit a mistake.
“I took care of it.”
She halted so abruptly that the sole of her shoe slid on a patch of slick gravel, causing her to reach out and grab onto the side mirror on the truck beside. Once she steadied herself, she turned back around and walked back to him, stopping in front of him.
“What?” she asked, blinking as if he’d spoken in ancient Sumerian.
“I took care of it,” Deacon repeated. “I put a hundred down. Is that enough?”
He’d done it out of instinct. Maybe she’d appreciate the gesture. Or maybe she’d use it as ammunition to claim he was arrogant or trying to flaunt his money. He honestly had no clue.
“That’s… yeah, it’s more than enough, but you didn’t even—” She stopped, took a breath, and then continued with a calmer, less accusatory tone. “You didn’t even drink anything, or eat, or—”
“It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “We were leaving the table, and I wanted to make sure Libby didn’t get screwed.”
“Libby?” Jenna raised an eyebrow, arms crossing with slow deliberation. “Do you know her?”
Whoa. Did he detect jealousy? Surely not.
“No, but she had on a name tag.”
She stared at him for a beat longer, as if trying to decide whether to believe him or not, then looked away. The wind picked up, carrying with it the bitter tang of pine needles and the faintest crawl of smoke from a fireplace somewhere nearby.
Deacon wasn’t sure why they were talking about Libby or the check, he honestly didn’t give a shit about any of that. “So that’s it? You honestly don’t want to talk about us? What happened—”
“Nothing happened.” Her voice was blade-sharp, cutting through the air with surgical precision. She didn’t even blink.
“I didn’t think it was nothing. It wasn’t nothing to me.”
She blinked up at him, and he saw a tiny bit of the mask she wore slip away. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant it wasn’t the real world. We both had extraordinary circumstances that day, and we were an escape for each other. This is the real world. This is my real world.”
Her eyes were pleading for him to understand, and he wanted to, but what he thought she was telling him was that he wouldn’t fit into her world. The problem with that theory was he’d lived in that town for nearly six months, so he did fit in her world.
She shivered and pulled her jacket closer together, and he immediately stepped out away from the door. He watched as she reached for the handle, and as her fingers wrapped around it, he asked.
“Did you think about me? Even once?”
She paused but didn’t look up at him. Jenna’s breathing went shallow. He could see the pulse point at her neck fluttering like a trapped moth. Still, she gave him nothing.
“I’ve thought about you,” he confessed. He wasn’t sure why.
She could not be making it more clear she wanted nothing to do with him.
If anything, she seemed to be embarrassed by what they’d done.
That should be a red flag, but it wasn’t.
Or if it was a red flag, then he was a bull in a ring running straight at it.
“Every day. I’ve thought about you. Every.
Day,” he clarified, just in case she was confused about what the statement every day was referring to.
He heard her inhale a trembling breath, which made him hold his. Despite knowing it was physically impossible, he was sure his heart stopped beating and time stood still as he waited for what seemed like an eternity for her answer. But she never did. At least not verbally.
Without sparing him a glance or a word, she opened the door, climbed into her SUV, pulled out of the parking spot, and drove away.
As he watched her red taillights disappear into the cold, black, winter night, he tried to process what had just transpired. His dream woman was real. He hadn’t imagined her. For a year and a half he’d wanted to know her name, where she was, how she was, if she was okay.
Now he not only knew her name, he knew what town she lived in and where she worked. He knew she was… well, he wasn’t sure how she was, but he knew she wasn’t back with her ex, so that was good.
This morning when he was doing Tabby’s hair and she was grilling him about getting married, he’d been worried he was fundamentally broken.
He was scared he’d never be able to fall in love or to find someone he’d want to marry.
Now he knew the answers to all those questions, the second Niko introduced him to Jenna and he saw her blue eyes staring up at him again, all of those questions were answered in an instant.
There was just one problem, she wanted nothing to do with him. Now he just had to find out why. He couldn’t fix it if he didn’t know why.