Deacon knew it wasn’t the time or place, but if it was up to him, he’d get down on one knee, declare his undying love for the woman in front of him, and ask her to marry him. Today had been hell, andshe’dbeenhisangel. This was his nightmare, and she was his peace. If that wasn’t love, if that wasn’t what he wanted forever, what the fuck was?
But since she was barely returning his texts, he doubted that his proposal would go over well.
“So now that we’ve established both our daughters are amazing, what’s this?” Jenna motioned to the paper he forgot he was still holding. “What was the deal with Poppy?”
Oh, right. How the fuck had he forgotten that, even for a second?
“AJ hired someone to look into me a while back, and this is the report.”
Jenna’s eyes widened. “Ohhh.”
He wasn’t even sure he could say the words. If he said the words, then they might be true. Did he want them to be true? If they were true, what did that mean about his entire life? What did that mean about his parents?
“Do you remember I told you my parents said my mom died a few days after giving birth to me?”
Jenna nodded, and he could see that she could see where this was going.
“Well, according to this, that is not the case. Her name is Selma Montez, she is alive and well and living in a small town on the Oregon coast called Valentine Bay.”
Her jaw dropped, literally, then it closed, then it dropped again, then it closed. Then she shook her head for several seconds before finally saying, “I don’t…I don’t…I can’t…I don’t…”
“Yeah,” he chuckled, “that was pretty much my reaction.”
Before he knew what was happening, she was up and out of her chair, and her arms were wrapped around him, she held him in the kind of embrace that said,I know.
Iknowthis is scary.
Iknowthis would change everything.
Iknowyou have no idea what this means.
Iknowevery part of you feels alone right now, but you’re not alone.
He didn’t know how she knew it was exactly what he needed, not words, just to be held. In that embrace she communicated, somehow, everything he needed to hear, to feel. He wrapped his arms around her and held her back sotight, he worried he might bruise her. He buried his face in her neck, wanting to inhale her essence, to breathe her in so deep she became part of his DNA.
Holding her anchored him in a way nothing else in his life ever had. The closest thing that had come was having Tabby, but he knew that Tabby was going to move away and have her own life, as she should. His role was to prepare her to do that.
This was different. Holding Jenna in his arms, being held in Jenna’s arms, was a feeling of grounding, of safety, of healing, of home.
When she let go and sat back down, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Go and see her, I guess. If I want answers, I have to.”
She nodded.
“Will you come with me?” Deacon never asked people for anything. Ever. Asking Jenna to do something so personal was a big risk for him, and then he remembered what Ava had said. “Just as a friend. I’m not asking for?—”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I can be your messed-up-mom-issues support friend.”
If that’s what she wanted to call herself, fine. But she was more than that. She was the love of his life, whether she liked it or he wanted to admit it or not.
24
Jenna wasn’tsure what she expected when they rounded the bend of the remote airstrip ten miles outside Hope Falls and the hangar appeared, floodlit and crisp against the powder-blue morning, but what she saw took her breath away.
The jet that waited on the apron with a posture that said it belonged everywhere and nowhere in particular, all swept wings and silvering fuselage, looked like a futuristic bird of prey poised to hunt the horizon. The captain—early forties, military jawline, eyes that missed nothing—stood beside the plane in full regalia, like a man with an entire day’s schedule mapped out to the minute. She felt like she was in a movie.
Deacon put the SUV in park but didn’t immediately kill the engine. Instead, he turned in the driver’s seat and locked eyes with her. The usual veneer of confidence was there, but it felt thinner, stretched taut over something urgent and unnameable.
