Page 99 of Deacon

The question had been grinding through my head since Jackson admitted there were things he still couldn’t tell me. After seventeen years, he had finally given me part of the truth and somehow expected part to be enough.

I stood among half-open boxes in my new living room and watched him hold our daughter for the first time. Anger should have been easy while I looked at him. Instead, the expression on his face kept cutting through it.

He held Jade like he couldn’t quite believe she was real. The wonder there was so open it hurt to witness, because suddenly every year between then and now had weight. Birthdays and fevers, scraped knees and school projects, all the ordinary pieces of a childhood he had never known existed. I had spent years telling myself his absence mattered more than whatever he had missed because leaving had been his choice.

Watching him with her, I could no longer pretend the loss had belonged only to us.

Jade pulled away first, eyes still damp. Something tentative had softened her expression when she glanced at me. “I’m gonna head to my room and unpack a little,” she said. “Let you guys talk.”

My chest tightened, but she deserved the chance to step away from the wreckage the adults had made of her afternoon. I nodded. “Thank you, baby.”

She looked back at Jackson before heading down the hall. “We can talk more tomorrow?”

His face softened. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

The certainty in her answer landed on both of us. Then she disappeared into her room, leaving Jackson and me alone with seventeen years of unfinished business.

I folded my arms over myself, needing something between his explanations and the part of me that still remembered too much about him. “Is your explanation just gonna piss me off more, Jacks?” I asked. “Or is it going to make this situation worse? Will it actually answer any of my questions?”

He came close enough to settle his hands on my shoulders. The touch was warm, careful, and horribly familiar. “I don’t know if it’s gonna make you more pissed, Princess,” he said. “But it’ll be honest. Come sit.”

I let him steer me toward the couch because my legs felt less reliable than my temper. Jackson lowered himself onto one knee in front of me and immediately betrayed the pain he was trying to hide.

“Jacks, I forgot, dammit, you’re still healing. Get off the damn floor and sit on the couch.”

“Nah, Princess.” He stayed where he was, stubbornness apparently surviving gunshots intact. “Need you lookin’ me in the eyes when I tell you this. Need you to really see me. Now hush and listen.”

I glared at him. “Stubborn old jackass as usual.”

That crooked grin appeared for a heartbeat. “You know it, Princess.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Never.”

He said it as if the years between us had never happened, and my heart was stupid enough to remember how that name used to sound when I still believed he would always be there.

The humor left his face. “First and foremost,” he said, “what happened at the lake that night…”

His palm cupped my cheek, thumb moving once across my skin. The tenderness hurt more than I wanted it to.

“It was real. Every moment. Best night of my life. Most important night of my life. Every word I said to you, I meant.”

My throat closed around everything I could have thrown back at him.

“I had every intention of coming back to you the next day after I dropped you off. But after I left, I got a text from Tiny, one of the prospects. Said he needed my help with somethin’. So I headed over there.” His jaw tightened. “When I got there, I went lookin’ for him and walked past an office where I heard a conversation I had no business hearing. Heard information I should not have heard. Information that could’ve gotten me in a lot of trouble. Maybe killed.”

The details were thin enough to frustrate me, but the danger in his face wasn’t.

“And if you’d been caught bein’ with me, your world would’ve been destroyed.”

My hands curled together in my lap. He had built an entire life-changing decision around what might happen to me and never once let me into it.

“I knew you,” he said. “Knew you wouldn’t just accept ‘we can’t be together.’ Knew you’d fight me on it. So I did the only thing I knew would keep you safe from me.”

I already knew what came next. Hearing him say it still hurt.