51. Deacon
Chapter fifty-one
Deacon
Our flight to Miami left Cleveland on Tuesday morning. It took some convincing to get Lyla to drive to her mom’s house, which was twenty minutes from the airport. She finally caved when I told her we’d have to leave Bowling Green at 5 a.m. to make the flight.
It bummed me out that I didn’t get to meet Jane in person. We arrived late Monday night, and when I asked Lyla if she wanted to wake her up to let her know we were leaving, she insisted we let her sleep. Jane was much more personable than Aaron Brooks, so I couldn’t understand why Lyla rushed us out of the house so quickly.
Maybe she didn’t want me to meet her mom since our relationship deadline was approaching. Or perhaps I freaked her the fuck out when I told her I wanted to take care of her. Because that was exactly what a fake boyfriend would say, right?
Fuck no.
Three weeks had passed since our Valentine’s Day outing, and while I was overthinking my comment, she acted like she hadn’t heard it. Nothing had changed between us, and I envied her ability to separate everything. Lyla didn’t do relationships, so it didn’t matter what was said or not said. We had off-screen moments that slipped in sometimes, but my emotions blurred the line between real and fake .
My plan no longer included Cassie. How could it?
Before Lyla, there were moments when the world felt heavy. I had been through pain and heartache that I wasn’t sure I could recover from. No matter what I did, my thoughts wouldn’t slow down. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus, and I couldn’t recognize who I was in the dark. Lyla Brooks became a light in my life, and she was my favorite thing I never planned.
It didn’t matter if I wasn’t supposed to fall—it was happening. Lyla didn’t need someone to take care of her, but she sure as hell deserved it. The more time I spent with her, the more I wanted to be that person. Regardless of how this ended, she’d always have me looking out for her from a distance. Love didn’t have to be a contract, and Lyla didn’t owe me anything for it.
The turbulence shook me back to the present, and a cheerful voice came over the loudspeaker. We’d touch down in Miami in twenty minutes, where the weather was a piping seventy-eight degrees.
“What did the guy say?” Lyla asked, leaning her head against my shoulder. She continued scrolling through one of her playlists, and I chuckled when another song by Nick Jonas belted against my eardrum.
“This guy again, huh? We just listened to the other brother.”
“The Jonas Brothers are no laughing matter,” Lyla said. “I was beside myself when they announced their breakup.”
“Along with all of the other women in America,” I mumbled, feeling a tiny slap against my chest.
Lyla turned down the music, and I knew one of her nosey questions was on deck. “Are you a jealous person? ”
“I’m jealous of time,” I admitted. “I love it when my girl gets attention, as long as she isn’t disrespected. If you’re giving someone else your time when I wish it were me, then yeah, I get a little jealous.”
“Have I ever made you jealous?”
I thought of Brady Blue Eyes and the nights she didn’t sleep in my bed after we went out. I hesitated to answer, but there was no reason to hide it. “Maybe a little.”
A silent exchange flowed between us. I couldn’t tell if she was shocked or reassured to hear my response. If the second option was even a possibility, maybe I wasn’t being as crazy as I thought.
“We don’t lie, Deacon Scott,” she reminded me with a playful grin.
“We don’t lie,” I echoed softly.
I rested my hand just above her knee, dragging my thumb across the warm fabric of her leggings. There was a slight pull in my groin, and I wasn’t sure if I should stop. I didn’t feel like arriving in Miami with a hard-on.
It was painfully refreshing, wanting someone this way. I always wanted Cassie when we were together, but the draw I felt to Lyla was different. There was a primal desire to fuck her the way she imagined me doing. I wanted to know what she pictured when she thought about it. I wanted to feel her coming undone beneath me with my chest against her back, her hands on a countertop or—
I pulled my hand away from her leg, pretending to have an itch on the back of my neck. I had an itch all right, but there was nothing I could do about it now.
“You haven’t mentioned Cassie since you met for lunch,” Lyla added. “Has she reached out to you? ”
I swore this girl had an alarm system for when I was thinking about her. Whenever I was close to exploding, she’d drop a bomb first and mention Cassie.
“We talk here and there, but not about anything important. I think she just wants to make sure her name stays at the top of my inbox. She used to say that to me as a joke, but even when Cassie and I were just hooking up, I never talked to anyone else. I’m just not programmed that way.”
“That’s good,” Lyla said and then quickly added, “about wanting your attention, I mean. But why does it sound like you don’t want hers?”
Hearing the words out loud felt like a shot to my chest.
“It’s because of what you talked about, isn’t it?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “About Dominic?”
I cleared my throat and waited for the stinging in my chest to subside. “Let’s not talk about that now. What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
Her lips curved into a grin at my compliment, but they fell just as fast as the wheels turned behind her green eyes. Her hands danced nervously in her lap. “I told my mom about Hunter. I’m not sure why I did it, but I looked him up on Instagram over break.”
“Did you want to talk about it?” I prompted gently.
As the wheels touched down on the runway, Lyla’s hand shot to my knee. She giggled at her reaction and hit pause on her playlist.
The captain’s voice echoed through the plane. “Welcome to Miami, folks. The temperature is seventy-eight degrees, and there’s no rainfall expected for the rest of the day.”
Lyla pulled the earbud from my ear and responded to my question. “One thing at a time. Let’s focus on Aaron Brooks first. ”
It didn’t take long to get off the plane since we flew first class. We followed the signs to the arrivals platform and caught a cab outside. I pulled the handle of Lyla’s suitcase from her hand and hoisted it into the trunk.
“Do you do things like that to take care of me?” she asked, eyeing me playfully as she rounded the car.
I slid into the backseat beside her and rested my arm above her head. “If putting your bags in the car is considered taking care of you, I’ll have to give you a checklist to take to Chicago for your next prospect.”
She laughed, leaning into my side. I was already creating a column of red flags for her in my head. Lyla had zero expectations of men, and why shouldn’t she? From everything she had told me, they either disappointed her or she predicted their true colors.
The hotel we arrived at was a gorgeous building that overlooked the ocean. It was hot, and my shirt clung to my chest when I stepped out of the car. The driver brought our bags to the side, and I tipped him.
Lyla glanced up at the building, putting on her sunglasses. “Tonya never disappoints.”
The hotel employees held open the double doors, and I tried not to look like a complete tourist as I marveled at the lobby. The chilly temperature contrasted with the muggy air outside, and I was glad Lyla wore my hoodie. She would have frozen in her tank top.
“Reservation for Lyla Brooks. It should be under Tonya,” Lyla said, and the concierge nodded.
“Who is Tonya?” I asked.
She glanced back at me with her lips pressed in a straight line. “Tonya is my dad’s secretary. I’ve never actually met the woman, but she basically runs his life behind the scenes. ”
She handed me the room keys, and there was a tiny flutter in my stomach as we entered the elevator. I was holding a room key , and while Lyla and I had spent more nights together than I could count, something about a hotel room felt dangerous. For the first time, we could hide away from the rest of the world and everyone we knew.
Our room was on the second-highest floor. I tried to have realistic expectations, but as the elevator kept rising, I knew that was out of the question. We stepped into the suite, and the room was bigger than my apartment in BG. There were floor-to-ceiling windows along the back wall. We had a beautiful view of the ocean from the private balcony, and it was hard to ignore the rose petals that trailed from the hot tub to the bed.
Fucking rose petals. I should’ve got on my knees right there and begged for a lifeline. It was times like these when I knew Dominic was snickering above me.
Lyla’s hand grazed my shoulder as she slipped past me. She dropped her luggage near the bed, stripped off my hoodie, and padded across the living room.
“See?” She smiled before taking in the view of the ocean below us. "I told you Tonya never disappoints.”
I admired how her tank top hugged her curves and mentally punched myself in the face. I wanted to test that bed. I wanted to lay her down and kiss up her neck, hear her soft moans as my hand slipped under her leggings.
“What?” She noticed me staring at the bed. “You better clean that mind up, Deacon Scott.”
I smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was trying to decide what shirt to wear to dinner tonight. ”
“Fuck I almost forgot why we were here.” She dragged her hands down her face and groaned. “I’m gonna hop in the shower now. He said we have to be there by six.”
“It’s only three, sweetheart.” I crossed the room, closing the space between us. I pulled her in for a hug, and she buried her face in my chest. It was one of those moments I knew she needed but wouldn’t ask for. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll go to dinner, remind him how amazing you are, and then we’ll go to the beach or something.”
She pulled away to look at me. “I’m still getting in the shower now.” On her way to the bathroom, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “And don’t follow me in there. I’ve seen that look on your face before.”
I was still biting my bottom lip when she closed the door. I ran my hands through my hair and walked onto the balcony. I needed some separation between me and the girl I wanted to explore every inch of in all the ways I didn’t do the first time.
The waves crashed in the distance, and the warm Florida air flooded my senses. Dominic always loved the ocean, and the smell of salt and sand took me back to our last family vacation at Myrtle Beach. I craved the memories I had when everyone was just present . There was a happiness we didn’t have to work for because we didn’t know what the future held.
The familiar sound of the Jonas Brothers came from the bathroom, and I gripped the railing. I smiled like an idiot as Lyla sang along and reminded myself, once again, how fucked I was. There was nothing clean about the thoughts I’d have over the next few days.