Chapter 31 #2
“She did. I couldn’t believe it. This perfect creature blessed me with her presence.
I knew it was probably only because she had this asshole of a husband who she’d found out had cheated on her with her best friend, and he showed up talking shit, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I figured I’d be her shoulder to cry on, and then in a few months, maybe a year—”
“A year?” she repeated.
“Yeah, see I was talking to my friend Cillian on the phone the other day, and, uh, he’s married to Leanne, they have four girls—”
“Oh, she had a girl?” Jenna had wanted to know what they had, but Deacon was very distracting when he was around so she kept forgetting to ask.
“Oh, do you know Leanne?” he pointed at her and asked.
She tilted her head to the side and grinned.
“Anyway, Cillian’s a talker, he’s always had what people call the gift of gab.
But in third grade one day, right after the bell rang, the door opened, and a brown-haired girl in a red sweater and ponytails walked in, and his jaw dropped.
He didn’t speak for the rest of the day, not at recess, not at lunch, not at P.E.
Then on the bus ride home, he turned to me and said, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.
I’m going to marry Leanne Porter.’ I thought he was crazy, and I said, ‘How do you know?’ He said, ’Cause she’s the one.
’ I was talking to Cillian on the phone the other day, and he officially welcomed me into the She’s-the-One club.
I am a card-carrying member now, so yeah, I would have waited a year, or two, or ten, because see, that blonde at the bar, she’s the one. ”
Did he mean that? A lot of men had said a lot of things to Jenna in her life, but for some reason she believed that Deacon meant that.
“So yeah, I thought when she’d need some time to heal and then I’d ask her out on a date.”
“Is that what happened?” Jenna smiled.
“No.” Deacon shook his head, his eyes widened slightly. “It turned out Jen was a lady in the streets…” He leaned forward and whispered in a low, raspy voice, his lips brushing against the cusp of her ear, sending a shiver through her body “…and a freak in the sheets.”
Jenna smiled even as her entire body lit up with arousal.
He straightened back up. “I thought I hit the lottery. I fell asleep with her in my arms planning what we’d have for breakfast, for the next day and then the rest of our lives…
” He paused, dramatically. “But then, when I woke up, she was gone. No note, no thanks for the best sex of my life, no nothing. I thought I’d lost my one true love forever. ”
“Your one true love?”
Deacon pointed to the boat, which was named One True Love, a departure from the Dawson’s Creek boat True Love. She was going to have a permanent smile on her face like the Joker if he kept this up.
“But then fate intervened, and a year and a half later I was sitting at a bar in a small town. I got asked to be a part of a four person trivia team, and guess who my partner was?”
“Jen?”
“It was. I thought this is it. This is going to be the story we tell our grandkids—”
“Grandkids?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I have a daughter, Tabitha and, Jen’s already a mom to this incredible teenager named Blake, who pretty much surprises and impresses me on a daily basis.
But Jen did not see our reunion as a happy one.
In fact, she wanted nothing to do with me, which, and I know this is going to shock you, has not been an issue in my life, so I was at a loss of what to do.
I tried asking to talk, I tried over the top, I tried coming on strong and I even tried being her friend on the advice of a therapist who I found out earlier today turned out to be her ex-husband’s wife. ”
She cringed for him. “Sorry about that.”
“Hazards of living in a small town.” Deacon shrugged it off, not seeming to bother him. “After all my efforts had failed I figured that the best thing to do was to just put my cards on the table, well, that combined with a grand romantic gesture, and see if that would tip the scales in my favor.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“I’ll let you know in about sixty seconds.”
“Sixty seconds?” Jenna’s heart started racing even faster than it already was, and it felt like it was already going about a thousand miles a minute.
“So here are my cards, I love you. I want to mar—”
“You don’t know me,” Jenna finally blurted out, voicing the fear that had been eating at her this entire time.
“I know it looks like I have my shit together, but that’s an act.
I can get…obsessive about things. My mom was an addict.
My dad was an addict. I haven’t ever had a real problem, but one of the reasons I’ve tried to stay away from you is because you are addictive to me.
After the night we spent together, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
I went back to the bar and sat outside for—”
“Two weeks,” he cut her off. “I know.”
“How do you know?” Jenna put her hands over her face and spoke into her palms. “You were there?!”
“No, when I was talking to Cillian on the phone last week, he told me he saw you on the security cameras.”
“Oh my god, that’s worse!” She was humiliated.
“And I went and shared discreet, personal information with the ex-husband’s wife of the woman I want marry.
” He pulled her hands down from her face.
“And her ex-husband was in the back room and heard everything. I think we’re even on the humiliation front.
And Cillian knows you’re not a stalker, I told him you didn’t even know my name and were probably just waiting to see if I showed up. ”
“I was, that is exactly what I was doing,” she confirmed, still feeling the heat of embarrassment on her cheeks, neck, and chest.
“You do have your shit together, and lucky for you, I want you to be addicted to me because I want to marry you. Also, you are very good at following orders, so if there ever seems to be a problem, I’ll just give you very strict instructions to follow.
” He brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and a shiver raced down her spine.
Despite how amazing it felt, she wanted him to know this wasn’t a joke, not to her.
“I’m serious, Deacon. What if one day a switch flips in me and something, I don’t know what, I can’t keep whatever it is under control?
” As the words were coming out of her mouth, she heard how irrational they sounded.
She’d never heard them out loud before because she’d never voiced them, never even allowed herself to admit them in her own head.
Now that she had, it was almost like some of the power was gone.
He didn’t smile, just held her hand. “For the record, I don’t think that will happen.
But if it does, then we’ll deal with it.
Together. I want to marry you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
I want to raise our girls together, as sisters.
I want to have more babies with you, if you want, or not if you don’t.
I want you to be the last thing I see every night before I go to bed and the first thing I see every morning.
I want to spend every day thinking of new ways to make your life happier, easier, more fun, and more full.
“I want to sit on the couch, curl up, read books, binge Netflix shows, scroll through our phones, or just do nothing with you. I want to travel with you and the girls and explore the world together. I want to wake up one day, twenty years from now, and realize, somehow, someway, I love you even more than I do today, which at this moment I think is fucking impossible. I want to have the legal right to say that I am Jenna Thomas’s husband or Jenna St. Claire’s husband if you want to take my name, or hell I’ll be Mr. Deacon Thomas, I don’t care.
From the moment our eyes met, something inside me just… ”
Jenna waited, waited to hear if he’d be able to put into words what she’d not been able to describe. The phenomenon of what occurred when their eyes met.
“…saw you, really saw you, and you saw me. It was different than anything I’d ever felt.
And whatever life throws at us, whatever flips, whatever comes—we’ll face it together.
I’ll wait a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, whatever it takes, and if it takes my whole life waiting then it will be a life well spent because I love you, and there’s nothing that matters more than love. ”
Deacon pulled out a ring so beautiful it took Jenna’s breath away and started to get down on one knee. It was a solitaire stone on a platinum band. The fairy lights caused a prism to explode.
“Jenna Faline Thomas, will you marry me?”
Jenna felt herself going into fight or flight, and her instinct was to go with flight, but she had Yaya’s words in her head. When is love, don’t think, just yes.
“Yes,” she breathed. The single three letter word came out barely above a whisper.
“Okay, I understand. I will try ag—” He was already standing when he paused. “Wait, did you say yes?”
She nodded.
“You said yes?” he repeated, his face in shock.
She nodded to give him both visual and auditory confirmation. “Yes.”
He stood, cupped her face, and kissed her with a pent-up passion she didn’t even know existed.
The kiss was a wildfire, raw and uncontainable, igniting every nerve and fiber within her body as if setting off a cascade of fireworks, each explosion of sensation more intense and intoxicating than the last. It was a stormy sea, a symphony of harmonizing lips and tongues, a dance of unbridled desire that left them breathless and begging for more.
When he broke the kiss, she could barely breathe. “I can’t believe we are engaged. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Blake.”
Deacon rested his forehead on Jenna’s. “She’s gonna be bummed we didn’t get to do phases three through six.”
“What?” she asked.
“Oh, right, I should probably tell you, this was Blake’s idea. She and Noah showed up at my house today during their lunch.”
‘What? Oh, the text.” With everything that had happened, Jenna totally forgot it was Blake’s text that got her to come down here. “She told you to propose to me? That’s why you’re proposing?!”
“No, she asked me if I loved you and how I felt about marriage. She told me that you were not the take things slow type of person. She said if I gave you too much time, you’d overthink your way out of a good thing.
Shock and awe, was I think how she put it.
She said, and I quote, ‘trying to date you would be like trying to ice skate on a pool of Jell-O, destructive, messy, and pointless.’”
“She said that?”
Deacon nodded. “I told you surprises and impresses me every day. We both decided to incorporate Dawson’s Creek.
Her first idea was buying you a wall, which apparently is something Pacey does, but I remembered you pointing out the boat when we were at the restaurant, so I suggested this. She was on board, no pun intended.”
“And you just talked to her today at lunch.”
“Yes.”
“And you got this and this in eight hours?” She pointed at the boat and the ring.
He was quiet for a moment. “I got the boat in eight hours because it was docked in San Francisco.”
She looked at the ring. “Was this your late wife’s—”
“No,” he quickly corrected her. “No, but I didn’t get it today.”
She looked up at him. “When did you get it?”
“The day after we got back from Oregon,” he admitted, almost sheepishly. “Did you see the engraving?”
“No.” She slid it off her finger and she held it up to the light. All around the inner band the word “mine” was written. She counted seven times, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. A smile she couldn’t contain spread on her face. Any doubts she might have had instantly disappeared.