He shook his head, humor lighting his eyes, but then he sobered.

“What you need to take from that is, no one knows me as Deacon Gates. No one knows why I was in that world except Raid. Deacon Gates died with Jeannie and the men who brought her low. No one even knew me as Deacon, ’cept the folks I knew in my gut I could trust. They never disappointed. They won’t. They didn’t before because I picked the right people to trust. Now, they’ll have an added incentive not to do it ’cause they know if they do, it could harm you, and they’d wake up with their throats slit.”

“Deacon,” I breathed.

“Do not mistake me.” His voice was now firm but harsh. “That world does not touch you and I will do anything, Cassidy, to make sure it doesn’t.”

“Okay,” I said soothingly. Then, to change the subject, I asked, “People had to find you, know you, and call you something, so what were you known as?”

“Ghost.”

That was kind of cool.

“Because you were hard to get a handle on?” I asked.

“Because I was dead man walking.”

I stared.

Deacon kept going.

“I was a cold motherfucker, off the grid, no life, no home, no ties, no emotions, everyone knew it. Until I came back to some rundown cabins I’d been to before that were off the beaten path. Perfect place for the minimal downtime I let myself have. Quiet place. A place no one could find me. But when I came back, a beautiful woman with attitude, amazing eyes, and lips I wanted wrapped around my dick was fightin’ with her boyfriend. Lucky me, later, I found she was stubborn, ornery, funny, strong, spoke her mind, liked dogs, to be tied up, to come hard, take it up the ass, and give it as good as she gets.” He lifted his head from the chair so his face was an inch from mine. “And she resurrected me.”

God.

God.

Deacon’s brand of sweet, this time amplified beyond imagining.

I’d never get used to it.

Because I couldn’t hold it up anymore, I dropped my head so my face was in his neck.

I clutched the other side of his neck, pushing my face in, whispering, “Baby.”

“Tried to be dead again when I let you go, Cassie. Dead doesn’t hurt. Tried fuckin’ hard to find it. But I couldn’t find it. You lived in me.”

I closed my eyes tight, pushed closer, and held on.

Deacon gave me a squeeze of his arms and kept speaking.

“Thought my luck had run out. I finally pulled my head outta my ass, made my way back to wage beautiful war, and timed it so your girl was comin’ up the lane while I was drivin’ down it.”

I opened my eyes, lifted my head, and looked at him. “Really?”

“Fuckin’ Hollywood shit, she raced to me, thought she was gonna play chicken, ram right into me or force me off the lane. She cut the wheel at the last moment, cuttin’ me off, rolled out of her truck, and started shouting.”

I started giggling.

And then I got Deacon’s grooves, his crinkles, and I felt glee.

I’d missed that too.

“If I wasn’t shocked as shit she could pull that off without damage to either vehicle, and my head wasn’t filled with gettin’ to you, I woulda bust a gut laughing too, woman.”

“In retrospect,” I said, still giggling. “It’s pretty funny.”

He continued to give me the grooves and crinkles as he agreed, “Yeah.”

He removed one arm so he could curl his hand at my jaw, fingertips in my hair, and yes, I’d missed that too.

“She’s gone.”

His tone was back to serious so I got serious too.

“I know, Deacon,” I told him. “But Milagros is pretty confused, not in a good way, about—”

“I don’t mean her. Milagros, Manuel, the kids, I’ll make that good again. Bust my ass to do it. You need it. I need it. They’re part of you, a part of what you gave me that made me feel clean again. But that’s not what I mean. I mean Jeannie.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Cassidy, what I’m sayin’ is, you wanna make cookies, you make ’em for you and for me.”

Sheesh, he could so read me.

He kept going.

“She does not control me, not anymore. She sure as fuck doesn’t control you, not ever again. I let you go, let. I could have kept you but I let that shit happen. Raid told me when a man is burned by a woman, he gets over it and moves on. When he burns a good woman, he doesn’t. What I didn’t get is that I got burned, and not by a good woman, by a troubled one who I allowed to drag me down. And I had to find it in me to let her go because of that. Not you. It took a while for it to penetrate, but I finally figured out I would never be able to let you go because you weren’t what I wanted for a good life, like Jeannie. You were what I needed.”

Oh God.

He had to stop.

He didn’t stop.

“But I could let her go. I had that power. She was dead. It was me givin’ her the power to hold on. So I let her go. Now we live our lives. We live ’em good. We live ’em happy. She dragged me down for years.” His hand gave me a squeeze. “Now I’m back at the surface, baby. With you. And she’s gone.”

My smile was shaky, but happy, when I gave it to him, nodding.

He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Your folks pissed at me?”

My smile faded when I kept nodding.

“I’ll fix that too,” he muttered.

I believed him.

Totally.

“Can I ask you something?” I requested.

“Anything.”

Anything.

My smile came back as a small grin. Then I took a deep breath.

“The thirty-eight women…” I said, trailing off.

“Few before Jeannie, most of them after she died. Lookin’ back, I was subconsciously tryin’ to find my way back to clean. None of them did it for me. So, as you know, I quit lookin’.”

“I get that.”

“Good,” he murmured.

“And the non-PDA?” I went on.

“What?”

“You don’t touch me much in public, Deacon. You’re very affectionate but not when other people are around.”

“You want that?”

“Well…yeah. If it’s in you to give.”

“I’ll give it to you.”