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I shrugged. ‘Pretty sure they are.’

Levi paused his strumming, his expression pensive. ‘Where does that leave you both?

‘Better than we’ve been in years,’ I muttered. ‘We might have discussed getting back together.’

Both Reign and Angel whistled.

‘Way to go, boss,’ Bishop murmured.

‘However, she’s enforcing the timeline.’

Angel let out a short chuckle.

‘Enforcing, huh? You sound salty about it.’

‘I’m jonesing,’ I confessed.

Jude chuckled. ‘Smart woman, she’s tryna pace this shit, but you’re jumping for it, mate.’

‘It’s testing my limits,’ I admitted, staring down at the glistening cobblestones. ‘All I want is to be with her again. When we get back to the States after this leg, I’m planning to shoot my shot.’

Levi leaned forward and set his instrument aside.

‘Dropping your defenses with her hasn’t exactly your default setting, Deke. You ready for that?’

I shrugged.

‘It’s a massive risk in exercisin’ my vulnerability, but I have to be true to myself and the fact I’ve always been in love with her. Ana is the only woman who’s ever had a handle on my heart.’

Angel gave me a chin lift. ‘Respect, brother.’

‘I’m well aware she needs time to process the legal wreckage of her second marriage,’ I rumbled on. ‘But I haven’t seen her in weeks, and every single day apart feels like a decade. I want to be with her.’

It was the most I’d confessed in front of all my brothers, and I felt exposed, my soul bared.

‘The Real Deacon Vega emerges. Nice to meet you,’ Bishop teased.

‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘On the real, I’m unthawin’ my heart for her, and I think she’s doing the same for me.’

‘Regardless of walking out on you years ago and marrying the Italian Stallion?’ Reign drawled.

‘Now we’re more mature. I think we can handle shit. Besides, I don’t give a flying fuck where she’s been or what she got into during our years apart because the past is dead. It’s the profound grace she extends to me now, and the love we’re reconnecting on that’s helped me make up my mind.’

I set my empty bottle down on the stone ledge and gazed back at my bandmates.

‘Real talk, she knows me in and out; she calms me. She’s a freakin’ awesome mother. She understands what I’m thinking without me saying a word. I’m beyond the point of caution. I want us to be a family again.’

Angel stood up, stretched, and clapped me on the shoulder.

‘Then drive that juggernaut, brother, all the way to your happy ever after. No turning back.’

‘I intend to,’ I said, eyeing the mist drifting across the distant cathedral spires. ‘I’m finished playing pretend. She’s my world, and I’m just waiting for her green light to claim our future.’

A week and a half later, and an hour after arriving in Nashville at 11 p.m., I parked my Bronco in Ana’s driveway and killed the engine.

Smiling, I jogged up the stone walkway and steps to her house.

Exhausted and drained from the tour, only the thought of going home to her and Raff had kept me going these last few days.