Page 58 of Deacon

When I finally opened my eyes again, Priest was still there, quiet and holding Blue’s sonogram pictures like they were a promise and a threat in equal measure.

I almost smiled.

Yeah.

I knew that feeling too.

15

Lila

I whispered his name as Jackson’s hands slid up my arms, his fingers pressing just enough to make me gasp. My heart raced as I looked up at him, lips parting before he kissed me hard, his tongue sweeping into my mouth with the faint taste of ketchup and beer still lingering from the party. I melted against him, my hands exploring the firm ridges of his stomach while my nails scraped lightly over his skin, and he guided me toward a soft patch of grass beside the water.

Jackson lowered me gently, moonlight reflecting in his eyes as he looked down at me with an intensity that made everything inside me tremble. “I've waited so long for you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

I nodded, breathless, and pulled my sundress over my head with shaking fingers. I had worn nothing beneath it except simple white panties, and the night air raised goose bumps across my bare skin while his gaze warmed every inch it touched. Jackson’s breath caught before he kicked off his shoes, opened his belt, and pushed his jeans and boxers down.

I couldn’t help staring.

“Jackson... I've never...” My voice faded, but he understood.

This moment, my first time, belonged to him. Somewhere inside me, it always had. Jackson knelt between my legs and slid my panties down with hands that were gentle despite the strength in them, leaving me exposed in a way that should have frightened me more than it did. The way he looked at me, as though I were something precious rather than merely something he wanted, made my heart ache.

“You're perfect,” he murmured before kissing my inner thigh.

His stubble rasped over sensitive skin, sending a shiver through me as my legs opened without being told. His mouth traveled higher, and when his tongue finally touched me, slow and deliberate, my back lifted from the grass.

“Oh God.” My fingers clenched around cool blades while my hips moved instinctively toward him, every sensation unfamiliar and overwhelming.

Jackson took his time until I was trembling beneath him, my breathing ragged and my thighs unsteady. Only then did he move over me, the heat of him pressing against my entrance as he held my gaze.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said, restraint roughening his voice.

I bit my lip and nodded. “I want this. I want you.”

I had wanted him for so long, the boy from the wrong side of town, my brother’s best friend, the one person who had eventually learned to see something beyond Matty’s little sister. Jackson pushed into me slowly, stretching me around him until the first sharp sting stole my breath. He stopped immediately and kissed me, one hand slipping between us to replace pain with something warmer.

“Breathe, baby,” he whispered.

I did, slowly relaxing beneath him until my body began accepting what my heart had already chosen.

Moonlight washed over us while water lapped softly against the shore, and I knew I would remember this night for the rest of my life. My first time with Jackson Hayes. The boy I had loved for what felt like forever, who had finally admitted he loved me too even though we both knew loving me could cost him everything.

Every detail returned with painful clarity. Cool grass against my skin. The weight of his gaze. The vulnerability of giving myself to him and trusting him to hold what I offered.

That one perfect night had lived inside me so long it still knew how to find me in my sleep.

I woke up gasping in the dark, sheets tangled around my legs and my heart pounding hard enough to make the bedroom feel smaller. Frustration followed almost immediately because that was the cruel part. However beautiful the night had been, Jackson still drove me home afterward, kissed me goodbye, and vanished from my life without a word.

Seventeen years.

I sat up and dragged both hands through my hair, furious that my own mind could still pull me backward into the arms of the boy who broke me open and disappeared before I understood what he had left behind. Jackson never knew I was pregnant. He never knew that night gave me Jade or that I built an entire life around the absence he carved through the middle of mine.

Now fate had thrown me straight back into his orbit with all the subtlety of a truck through a wall.

Except he wasn’t only Jackson anymore.

He was Deacon, vice president of a motorcycle club, rolled bloody and barely alive into my ER after an ambush. For days, I had lived with the fear that I might watch him die before either of us had a chance to speak about the past. Now he was alive, awake, and back in Wicker Falls, dangerously close to the daughter he had no idea existed.