Wherever.

Be that on the road with Deke.

Or Deke on the road with me.

Staring at our tangled clothing, something slithered over me, every inch of my skin, like a protective sheen.

This was the understanding that Deke had found the woman who could handle the road, the only place he could breathe easy.

But it was also something I hadn’t thought about.

This being that I had found the man who breathed easiest on the road, something that was in my blood, something that was a part of me, something that could mean something deeper again someday without me having to worry about where the man in my life would fit if I took to that road.

My choice.

I felt no anxiety around this train of thought, a train I hadn’t taken in a long time.

I felt only ease.

My choice.

I had that choice. I had it when I didn’t have Deke and that had not changed like it most likely would have with another man.

I still had it now that I had him.

So I didn’t think of it at all.

I just smiled at my awesome dress tangled in his kickass shirt, remembered how both pieces got where they were and kept walking to the bathroom.

Chapter Twenty

Root Myself in You

Justice

Standing in the chill outside by his SUV, I handed the clipboard with the paperwork that I’d just signed back to Max’s foreman, a guy named Deacon Gates.

He’d been around occasionally, helping out sometimes the week after I’d been attacked. But mostly, after the boys had come, he let Deke take care of managing them, showing only when inspectors came to sign off on things.

But now Deacon had just completed the final inspection, an inspection I’d trailed him through and just signed off on.

This was because my house was all done.

Done.

“Right,” Deacon’s rough voice came at me and I focused on him in the ample glow provided by the outside lights at the door to my house.

He was definitely of the gorgeous variety of mountain man.

But he was different.

The first time I’d met him my poet’s soul had started keening. Not like it did for Deke. It was something I’d never experienced.

Chace, I sensed, had been broken. Meeting Faye, I knew she was the one keeping him together. More, it felt like Chace would give his all to keep himself together…for Faye.

This man, Deacon Gates, had not been broken.

He’d been destroyed.

I saw it in the backs of his eyes. A deadness there that was chilling, heartbreaking, even frightening.

This would have worried me, even so far as obsessed me, driving me to my notebook to pen a dozen songs he’d never know were for him even if I wrote them in an effort to heal him.

Except I’d caught him catching a call.

He’d been removed from me so I couldn’t hear what he said and I didn’t know who he was talking to, but whoever it was, they wrought miracles. As he spoke on the phone, his entire demeanor changed. He morphed before my eyes from a standoffish, taciturn man who was well-mannered and respectful but didn’t invite friendliness, becoming an average, everyday hot guy who you wouldn’t hesitate to invite over to watch a game.

He’d fascinated me in the few times he’d been around, because it was the poet in me who saw this. Everyone else treated him like he was that everyday hot guy, maybe not exactly of the Bubba bent, but definitely like Deke. A good guy. One you’d want to be your friend. One who was open to being just that.

It was me who saw into his soul and I suspected he felt it. To protect himself from me learning more, he kept distant, this being one of the few times we’d spent any amount of time together. Mostly, he dealt with Deke.

“Max has a twelve-month guarantee,” he went on, cutting into my thoughts. “That may seem like a long time, Justice, but that time flies. You got a lotta house for just you. I advise you use it. Even the parts of it you won’t be in very often. Plug things in outlets. Flush toilets. Run faucets. Leave overhead lights on. Fire up that fireplace. Do a walkthrough if we get a big rain, make sure the roof is good. You find anything, you give me a call.”

He said his last reaching behind him to pull out his wallet. When he got hold of it, he extracted a business card and offered it to me between two long fingers.

I took it just as I noted flurries were starting to fall.

I tipped my head back and looked to the night sky.

The flurries were light but there they were.

My first snow in the mountains.

“Probably best to get those pumpkins in tonight,” Deacon stated and I looked back to him. “Mountain freeze this time of year can come with a thaw. And repeat. Those pumpkins could be goo in days.”

I turned my head and stared at the cornucopia of autumn delights I’d arranged up my front walk. Real pumpkins. Strings of kickass electronic luminarias. The awesomest Halloween decoration I’d ever seen that I’d found in a gift shop in town: a stuffed, cackling witch on a broomstick decorated with leaves and glittery twine that Deke had mounted on my door.

I turned back to Deacon. “I’ll take them in.”

He nodded and asked, “You got any questions?”

I shook my head.

He looked over that head to my house and muttered, “You got ’em, you got answers a lot easier than callin’ me.”

Deke was in my house so he was absolutely right.

“The guys were great. It looks phenomenal. Thanks so much,” I told him.

His attention came back to me. “Our job, Justice, but glad you like how it turned out.”