I watched his eyes grin. “Okay, maybe it was after your rant about buyin’ me prime rib sandwiches, somethin’ I’ll note now, you have not done.”

Mental note to take care of that ASAP.

“That first time at Bubba’s, just wanted to tap your ass,” he finished.

“You barely looked at me,” I reminded him.

“Learned a long time ago not to look too long at somethin’ you wanted you couldn’t have. Served no purpose and only settled the shit in deeper that life was just mostly a lot of somethings you’d never have.”

“Life’s a lot more than that, honey.”

He slid his thumb along my lower lip, not, I sensed, to shut me up.

Just to touch me.

And when he replied, he did it with gentleness, but the words still dug deep. “That right there, baby, is shit people like you say to people like me when we know more than you because we lived that difference.”

It sucked, it sucked so huge it was impossible to process.

But I could not argue that.

“I don’t want…” The words came out choked so I cleared my throat. “I don’t want you to think you’re a different type of people than me.”

“Everyone’s different, Jussy. That don’t mean different is anything but that. Different. And I think we’re proving that. And just to say, in order to make this shit clear we’re talkin’ about right now, I hope what we’re proving keeps goin’. In other words, who we are might not fit but it can still work.”

More tears filled my eyes and I didn’t clear the hoarse from my voice when I said, “I hope that keeps going too.”

“I get that, Justice. You haven’t hidden you been into me from the start. Or, if you tried, you’re shit at it.”

That didn’t make me keep crying.

I jerked my head back, my eyes narrowing.

Deke let my neck go but only to use that hand to grab my beer, put it on the floor and then he hooked me behind the back of one knee with his arm, scooping up the other along the way. He lifted from the couch as he did, taking me with him. He then dumped me on my back on the couch with him on top of me.

When I had his weight on me, his face in my face, he said, “Teasin’ you, Jussy.”

I wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

I was in the mood to know for certain that Deke and I were where we needed to be.

Because I was falling in love with him.

And he’d given me indication that the same was happening for him with me and it was safe to say I loved that.

A whole lot.

But there were things unsettled, big things that might fuck up our future.

So now we had to get past that.

“So this talk you wanted to have boils down to something I already know, you like me,” I declared. “And although you have some serious baggage in your life, stuff you lived through that breaks my heart, you’re not letting it hold you back living that life. You do what you do and you want me to know when you get on with the part of doing that that puts your ass on the road, you want me with you.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Something you knew I’d do because you knew I was into you.”

“Yep.”

“So I was nervous for nothing.”

“Jussy, you’re all about settin’ up house. Can’t say I didn’t have a big fuckin’ clue how you lived your life with your dad, all good with makin’ home about him, that you get life on the road better than anybody. It still was not a given that you weren’t done with that and ready to lay roots.”

“So you were nervous too.”

He grinned. “There was that, but mostly I figured I was good because you’re really fuckin’ into me.”

“Sometimes your cocky is not hot,” I snapped.

His brows went up. “There’s times my cocky makes you hot?”

I didn’t answer that.

He was sure of himself.

But I wasn’t quite sure of us, what was happening in a future that I was hoping would be our future, and I really, really needed to be sure.

Or as close as I could get.

So I stated, “We’ve established you don’t like rich people and want nothing to do with me being famous. I’m down with the road. It’s part of my life and always has been. But, just to say, I didn’t buy a house so I can leave it empty all the time.”

“Settle in August, September, sometimes weather’s good, October, Jussy. Sometimes that road comes with my trailer hitched to my truck so home goes where I go. Most of it’s me on the back of my bike. Weather turns, most roots I got is me bein’ rooted to Carnal for a solid six months. Sometimes more.”

That was half a year.

I could totally do that.

“That’s acceptable.”

He grinned his cocky grin again.

“But you take me with you, Deke, just pointing out, the money, me being a Lonesome, that comes too.”

“I don’t have a crystal ball, gypsy. Cannot say however that hits me the first time it hits me I’m gonna know exactly how I’m gonna react. But I’m thirty-eight years old. I know the man I am. And this good we got keeps goin’, it won’t be about that. It’ll be about you.”

“That is me.”

He shook his head. “Steph’s chicken is you. Whatever went down with you and Krys in her Camaro is you. That isn’t you. You now know the baggage I got that you’ve gotta put up with. That’s the baggage you got I gotta put up with except part of it means you can lay down a load without blinking to buy a seventy-inch TV.”