Chapter 15
Three Days.
Jenna stood at her kitchen counter, attacking bell peppers with the kind of controlled violence that made her chef’s knife shudder.
The rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk, on the maple wood block was the only reliable proof she was still anchored to the present, that she hadn’t been blown away by the Deacon St. Claire hurricane that had ripped through her life and left it scattershot and raw. Everywhere she turned there was Deacon.
The way he looked at her, was not like a man checking out a woman but as if she were the only thing in the world worth watching. The memory of him rose up without warning, in the middle of the night, in the mirror as she fixed her hair for work, while she was working on a client.
Sometimes it was visual: the square edge of his jaw, the unnerving vulnerability in his eyes as he watched her work on his daughter’s hair, and his unreasonably distracting forearms and hands.
Sometimes it was auditory: the gravelly hum of his voice, the low laugh that made her stomach clench, the way he pronounced her name like it was a secret between them.
And sometimes it was physical. Not in the adolescent, heart-palpitating sense—though that, too, was inescapable—but on a molecular level.
Jenna never believed that tired cliché about feeling a person in your bones, but here she was, science failing her, logic be damned.
When Deacon spoke, she felt it in her DNA, in her spine, in the scar from the time she’d broken her pinky finger as a kid.
His words landed and vibrated and lingered, and no amount of self-chiding, cold showers, or screaming into her pillow at two a.m. could dislodge them.
How? How was that possible? How could someone feel a voice? How could it settle inside her, stirring up the sediment of trauma and memory and longing she’d spent most of her life trying to keep tamped down?
She’d gone to college and taken Psych 101. She’d gone to therapy and read self-help books on boundaries, self-care, and codependency. She’d built a life, brick by brick, with the mortar of routine and responsibility. And then one man can saunter along and blow it all up?
She fought it, of course, using her greatest weapon, denial.
Deny, deny, deny. She denied, mainly to herself, that she didn’t notice his hands were big enough to span her waist and pretended she was immune to the way he watched her with that searching, analytical intensity that made her feel naked and known at the same time.
It had taken superhuman effort to keep up the charade, to act like Deacon was just another customer, just another single dad looking to support his daughter.
It was exhausting, and she’d been losing ground by the second.
The worst part—the thing that actually made her want to cry or laugh or maybe do both at the same time—was how much she wanted to give in to it.
Not just the infatuation, which was embarrassing enough, but the weird, unshakable hope that maybe, just maybe, this was the thing she’d been waiting for.
Something good, something easy. After a lifetime of making everything work by sheer force of will, Jenna wanted something to just happen to her for once.
She wanted to be chosen. Not because she was the best candidate, or the most reliable, or the default option, but because she was Jenna, and he wanted her.
But desire was a luxury for people who hadn’t burned their hands on it before. She gambled on James and lost. Big time. And she’d dragged Blake along for the ride. She wouldn’t do that again.
Speaking of daughters.
Deacon’s daughter. His sweet, angelic, princess daughter.
Of course he’d have to raise the most precious baby girl whose halo glowed so blindingly innocent that it made her ashamed for even thinking a bitter thought in her presence.
A little girl who wanted to selflessly donate her hair for Locks of Love because sick kids didn’t have hair.
Deacon and Tabitha had no way of knowing that Jenna had a little brother, Blake, who died when he was two from leukemia.
She was only five, but she felt much older at the time.
That’s when her mom’s addictions got out of hand.
She was never the same after that. Jenna loved her baby brother so much.
She cared for him like he was her own. Not that her mom didn’t care for him, she tried to be good for him, but it was hard. He was sick.
She never told anyone about her baby brother Blake.
Not Asher, she loved him, but she never even thought to tell him.
Not Blake, her own daughter didn’t know she was named after her late uncle.
Not Bree, she met Bree a month after he died and never told her.
Not James. Jenna never spoke to another soul about him after he passed.
Her mom never talked about him, so who would Jenna talk to?
Then Deacon’s daughter comes in and says she wants to donate her hair to Locks of Love. Jenna felt like the wind got knocked out of her.
But the universe wasn’t done. It never simply turned up the volume, it maxed it out, then handed fate a megaphone.
So it totally tracked that Blake, who had always wanted a sibling—specifically, and with unambiguous precision, a baby sister—would come visit the salon at the very moment Deacon’s daughter sat in Jenna’s chair.
Blake had asked, begged, and bargained for years for Jenna to expand the family. It was the one thing, no matter how much Jenna loved her daughter, she just hadn’t been able to sacrifice to give her.
Jenna told herself the reason she couldn’t was because she was busy with the shop and then opening the second location.
But the truth was, if she’d wanted to, she could have made the time.
She never wanted to have a baby with James.
Something in her hadn’t trusted he’d be a good father.
Or maybe she’d just been tired. Tired of doing all the work, all the time.
“Weren’t you married?” Deacon’s voice sounded in her head.
That dinner they’d had together. He’d asked her that when she’d told him what the noise was in her head. Things she never even talked to Tiana about. Not because she couldn’t, she was sure Tiana would listen to her, just because she never talked about herself.
A highlight reel of moments flickered in her head, where she’d split herself open for him, told him things she’d never told anyone, and let herself be vulnerable in a way that was both mortifying and strangely addictive. Deacon asked, and he listened. And she hadn’t even known his name.
She hated herself for it, even as she replayed the night again and again. Even as she craved it, in that primal, animal way that had nothing to do with logic or restraint.
No. Stop. She had to stop thinking about him. Not just stop, Jenna needed to hit the eject button, blast herself out of her own head, find the nearest vacuum, and let it suck the Deacon St. Claire infestation right out of her.
He was Deacon St. Claire. That would be like Paris Hilton marrying Robbie. Well, not Robbie because he’s gay, but still. And not Paris Hilton because they only owned hotels.
Jenna slammed the knife down with a little too much force, slicing through the bell pepper and into the soft grain of the cutting board. She’d have to sand out the groove later, another thing on her list of endless chores.
Deacon was a natural disaster packaged as a human being, with a gravitational pull that warped every rational thought she had. The worst part was how much she wanted to be drawn in, to lose herself in the chaos for once instead of holding everything together.
But she couldn’t. She had a life to maintain, a schedule to keep, and a daughter to raise.
And the daughter’s schedule, as everyone in Hope Falls knew, could only be described as “Olympic-level.” Blake had cheer, debate club, soccer, her volunteering, and her newest obsession with French baking that left Jenna’s kitchen smelling like burnt butter and existential defeat every other weekend.
There was no room for distraction, let alone a distraction that made her hands shake and her chest feel like it was packed with helium balloons.
She forced herself to focus on the present, to compartmentalize, like she always did.
She pictured her mind as a series of tidy boxes stacked in a storage unit.
Work, motherhood, finances, Deacon. The Deacon box belonged way, way in the back, right behind the heavy crates labeled ‘single motherhood’ and ‘abandonment issues.’ She closed the lid, duct-taped it, and gave it an extra kick for good measure.
It had been three days since he’d walked into her salon.
Three days of relentless, bone-deep distraction.
Before, she’d thought the ache of missing him was bad.
Now she knew differently. This was a whole-body Hope Falls invasion syndrome.
Her symptoms: fatigue, loss of appetite, restlessness, and an alarming tendency to stare out the window as if Deacon were a migratory bird she could spot if only she timed it right.
But she had to get it together. She had a huge event to prep for—the charity gala.
The salon wasn’t just at capacity, thanks to a clerical, Robbie error, they were overbooked.
She had to hire a temp stylist, and they had fifty clients coming in that day.
Fifty appointments, fifty different people counting on her salon to make them look and feel like the most beautiful versions of themselves.
And she hadn’t slept more than two hours in a row since trivia night.
There was no margin for error, no room for emotional turbulence.
She had to be on point, laser-focused, the way she always was when the stakes were high.
She tried to recite her mental mantra, “You’re not special.”
Not in a derogatory way, but in the way her therapist described, no feeling was unique, every human impulse had a precedent.