Show Me How (13 page)

He waited until I was looking up at him to say, “I will never force you to talk to me in front of Keith. If you want to walk from me in front of him, then I'll let you walk—­even if you physically can't. But watching you go through that . . . damn it, Charlie. My fucking heart was breaking for you and I had no clue what was going on. I just had to stand there and watch because you pushed me away.”

My head shook slowly as he spoke. “This morning . . . I
cannot
handle this morning. It's been one thing after another, and it isn't even eight, Deacon.”

He arched a brow, and gently challenged, “So you're gonna push it away until it comes back up? Keith normally doesn't stop talking, and I couldn't get him to talk or even look at me after the question about the grassy place.”

I swallowed past the tightness in my throat, and whispered, “It's because he saw you kissing me.”

Deacon didn't say anything for a few seconds. And I knew he was thinking back over the last four days. His confusion was apparent when he spoke again. “He saw me kiss you the night you moved into that house. He was coming out of his room when I was leaving. He didn't care then.”

“He did. When I was putting him back in bed after you left, he asked if you were going to have to go to the grassy place. Then he asked me not to kiss you anymore.” I could see that the unknown half-­answers and vague responses were starting to overwhelm Deacon. Before he could ask, I hurried to explain. “Die, Deacon. He thinks you're going to die because I kissed you.”

Light brown eyes bored into mine, trying to uncover the meaning behind my words. “Why do I have a feeling that for once, what Keith was talking about had nothing to do with mutants or ladybugs?”

A startled laugh bubbled up from my chest, but quickly faded away to nothing. “No, Keith calls the cemetery the grassy place. He doesn't understand why or how Ben died; he just knows that his
daddy
is in the grassy place. The night he saw us kiss, he asked me if you were going to have to go to the grassy place since I'd kissed you. I nearly lost my mind when that question left his little lips, but I tried to stay calm and just told him I didn't understand.

“To Keith, only daddies kiss mommies, and since he saw you kiss me, he was making that connection. When I tried to explain to him that kissing didn't necessarily mean ­people were married, he said that he couldn't have a daddy because his daddies would always have to go to the grassy place.” I tried to steady the shaking in my voice when I continued, but knew from Deacon's expression that I didn't succeed. “Then he asked me not to kiss you anymore, because I'd already made ‘his Ben' go there, and he didn't want me to make you go to the grassy place too.”

“Charlie,” Deacon murmured, shock and pain for my son and me clear in that one word. “Shit, Charlie Girl, I'm sorry.”

“He doesn't understand what he's saying, but God, it hurts.”

Dozens of questions and emotions swirled through Deacon's eyes and passed over his face as my words hung heavily in the space between us. When he finally settled on one, he was looking at me like he'd never considered the possibility of whatever it was he was thinking.

“What?” I nearly begged.

“He really meant a lot to you too, didn't he?”

“Ben?”

But Deacon didn't respond, just continued watching me, waiting.

“He meant . . .” I trailed off; my head shook quickly. “I loved him the way Jagger loved Grey: deeply and wholly, silently and from a distance.”

Again, clearly something Deacon hadn't ever considered, and now, something else was mixing with the surprise and confusion. The corner of his mouth lifted and fell, and he exhaled quickly through his nose. “I never expected to be jealous of someone who wasn't alive.”

“Jealous of Be—­Deacon, why? He's been gone for four years.”

“Doesn't matter, Charlie. The way you reacted to what Keith asked, knowing now what it all meant . . .” He trailed off. “You were able to break my damn heart just by watching yours break, and it was over another guy.”

I shrugged weakly. “What do you want me to say? I won't lie to you about—­”

“No, Charlie, don't you get it?” His brown eyes warmed and lit with amusement. “I've never been jealous of a guy in my life. And now I've had to restrain myself daily from punching one of my best friends, and I hate that a guy who died four years ago touched you.”

I jerked my head back and flattened my body against the door. “Punch one of your best friends—­which one, and why?”

“Don't let Graham kiss you again,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed on my cheeks when blood quickly rushed to them, and a growl rumbled deep in his chest. “And don't do that when I mention him.”

I tried to stop my blushing, but I had no control over it. Considering Graham made me think of Stranger, and when there were thoughts of Stranger, there was never-­ending blush paired with a racing heart; I knew it was going to be impossible to get it to stop. Just like it was nearly impossible to stop thinking of Graham as Stranger when nearly every time I saw him, he said something that echoed Stranger's words.

But there were no romantic feelings between Graham and me. No fluttering stomach or racing heart. No heat racing through my veins or deep, secret ache.

Everything I felt in Deacon's presence, and the reason I only imagined the man sitting in front of me when I texted Stranger.

It didn't matter that I knew it wasn't Deacon; that wouldn't stop me from wishing that he could be the kind of guy to say those things to me.

Again, Grey was probably onto something: romance novels were ruining the way I viewed men and relationships.

“Deacon, Graham's done that forever. So has Knox. So did you until you started hating me.”

He leaned over the center console and gripped my chin in his fingers, and brought our faces so close that I was silently begging for him to close the rest of the distance between us. To press his mouth to mine and make me forget everything about this morning except the way he made me feel.

“For my sanity, and for the sake of our friendship, don't let Graham kiss you again.” He passed his lips across mine in a kiss so soft, I wasn't sure it happened at all. “Say ‘okay.' ”

“Okay.”

He smiled against my lips, and whispered, “You're late.” His deep laugh filled the car as I scrambled to get out of it, and his voice followed me out. “I'll be here when you get off.”

I paused from shutting the door; an ominous feeling slid through my veins like ice. I turned my head slowly to look back at him, and asked, “Promise?”

“Where else would I be, Charlie Girl?” Deacon shot me a look that seemed to stop everything. Time, sound, my heart.

My breath caught in my throat, and a chill spread over my skin like a lover's caress. I wanted to experience the feeling again and again.

Awareness came flooding back in with a rush, and I hurried to memorize the set of his eyes and his smile. Because I knew . . . I knew a look like that, I wanted to remember forever.

 

Chapter Fifteen

Charlie

June 24, 2016

I
WATCHED
K
EITH
from across the table at Bonfire, the grill in Thatch, my smile impossibly wide as he recounted his version of what had gone down today—­complete with use of the Force, since he was, of course, Darth Vader.

He couldn't go into the hearing unprotected against the ladybug judge, after all.

And I didn't care.

I didn't care if he wanted to be Darth Vader or Iron Man or Captain America or Wolverine. He could be whoever he wanted, fight whatever ladybugs he encountered.

Keith was officially mine.

The judge had barely asked more than a handful of questions, and had only glanced at the proof that I'd actually done all that he'd asked. He'd mostly relied on Grey and Jagger's word, and had talked to Keith without any of us in the room.

Again, I didn't care.

I had broken down outside the courthouse, tears of joy unlike anything I'd ever experienced streaming down my face, and hadn't let go of Keith until Jagger had forced me to stand up and walk to my car.

Even then I'd carried Keith, not willing to let him go yet.

Keith had smiled the cheesiest smile and patted my cheek. “Silly Mommy. You've always been my mommy!” he'd said after he'd climbed into his booster seat.

“See?” Grey had asked softly from behind me. “Some papers and a judge's signature never meant anything to him.”

I didn't know if anyone would be able to understand the significance of today for me, but that was okay, because it wasn't for them. It was for Keith and me.

As Jagger and Grey pointed out, I had mostly raised Keith. Something I would always be grateful for. But they still didn't know what I'd gone through. They didn't know the extent of what Mom had said to make me give up custody. They didn't know that my mom had often threatened me with taking Keith and running away.

Jagger had thought he was keeping our mother's true nature from me.

Grey thought she was keeping how evil our mother was from her children.

I'd thought I was keeping Mom's sick, twisted mind from Jagger.

She hadn't ever fooled any of us. She'd just fooled us into believing that each of us was the only one who knew what she really was.

After two years of living in fear for that I would wake up and my son would be gone, and knowing I wouldn't be able to do anything because he wasn't mine on paper, and then having a judge tell me that I wasn't fit to have custody transferred to me, the fear that he could disappear at any time never left.

It didn't matter that I knew Jagger and Grey would never do something like that to me . . . mothers have irrational thoughts when ­people try to keep them from their children.

But that was all over now.

Keith made a noise as if his lightsaber was powering down, and took an exaggerated breath. “Safe from the ladybugs.”

“Whew, buddy. I don't know if we would have made it out of there without you.”

He nodded seriously. “Good thing I'm Darf Vaber.”

“Yeah, good thing. If you would've woken up as Magneto, we might still be trapped.”

Keith gasped wildly, and my chest shook with my restrained laughter. “Mandeeto! Mommy! Ladybugs control metal! Mandeeto is a ladybug!”

I drew in a shocked breath and let my face fall as I glanced warily at the table. “Oh no,” I breathed, and slowly reached toward the spoon that lay forgotten next to his bowl of soupy ice cream. Lifting the spoon, I looked into Keith's worried eyes, and whispered, “We need to leave before the ladybugs come after us.”

He nodded vigorously, and I hurried to grab cash out of my wallet. As soon as I had it placed within the billfold, I took Keith's hand and helped him slide out of the booth, then pretended to run out of the restaurant with him.

I didn't care about the strange looks or laughs from the ­people inside—­this was the best day of my life.

I slowed Keith down when we got into the parking lot, then helped him get into my new car so we could head for Jagger's.

Yeah, I'd done that too.

After Deacon and his dad had done everything they could to get my car to run for more than a few minutes at a time, I'd let Deacon take me to look at cars earlier that week.

It was a mid-­size SUV that had great gas mileage and didn't make me want to die when I looked at the price. And most of all, Keith loved it and my mechanic had approved.

The only thing that had helped ease my fears through buying it was the knowledge that I didn't have Jagger or Grey's cars to rely on anymore. And now that my car was working less and less often, I needed something that was reliable for Keith, and figured the judge would probably have made it a requirement anyway.

He hadn't asked.

I pulled Keith's sleeping form out of the car once we got to the warehouse and carried him inside. But I froze when I was unexpectedly bombarded with screams as soon as I set foot in the door.

“Congratulations!”

Keith jerked awake from the unexpected noise, and scrambled out of my arms and toward the group of ­people standing in the main room of the warehouse.

Heat crept up my neck and into my cheeks as I looked from my brother and his wife to Grey's parents, and to Knox and Harlow.

The only person not watching me was Jagger, but that didn't surprise me. With the exception of a few clipped sentences during and after the court hearing, he hadn't spoken to me once that week. He and Grey had somehow already known about Deacon before they'd gotten back from Seattle, and every time I'd seen them that week, that calm silence that meant Jagger was well and truly pissed off had radiated from him.

“Uh,” I said on a breath, and let my head drop slightly.

Grey walked up to me, and pulled me into a hug. “I didn't think you'd be here yet.”

“I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be here,” I whispered, then moved so Grey was blocking me from view. The way everyone was still staring at me made me feel lightheaded.

“You are, crazy. I just thought you'd be another twenty minutes or so. Graham and Deacon are still on their way.” Her eyes narrowed on me when she realized what I was doing. “You'd think after working at Mama's, you'd be a little bit better with attention.”

“That's different. They look at me for a few seconds, then go back to talking to each other.”

She sighed slowly. “Well, just breathe. After they all tell you they're happy for you, they'll talk to each other. Okay?” She stepped away from me, then turned to push me forward.

I accepted hugs from Harlow and Knox, and tried not to show how uncomfortable I was with everyone else in the room still watching me as we talked.

Mrs. LaRue stepped up to hug me from behind, and said, “This is such a special day, honey. We're so happy for you. It's been a long time coming.”

I looked over my shoulder and sent her a shaky smile, and opened my mouth to thank her, but was cut off by Jagger.

“Probably would've been even longer if the judge had asked about your current
relationship
.”

My gaze snapped over to him in time to see him take a long swig of his beer. My brow furrowed. “What?”

“Jagger,” Grey hissed.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

Jagger gestured toward the door with his bottle, as if Deacon would be there. “You honestly think the judge wouldn't have hesitated if he knew about you and Deacon? For fuck's sake, Charlie, even Graham has been telling us that you two shouldn't be together. His
best friend
is warning us to get you away from him.”

Shock hit me like a punch to the chest at that piece of news, but I couldn't react to it. I couldn't believe Jagger was doing this, and most of all, I couldn't believe he was doing this in front of other ­people.

I eyed the bottle of beer in his hand, and wanted to snatch it away, but I couldn't move. Jagger never drank, and I knew he wouldn't be doing this to me now if he hadn't been then. I'd known that he was upset. But when Jagger got that angry with me, he waited until he was calm before he brought up what was bothering him. And we always had those conversations in private.

My breathing became shallow and rapid, and the lightheadedness increased as I became acutely aware of every pair of eyes on me in that moment.

“You're with a guy who sleeps with a different girl every night, and is just going to use you up the way he does them. You're with a guy who
hates
kids, and today we were at a hearing so you could try to get
custody of your son
. Yeah, I'm sure any judge would have thought that was a great choice of a guy for you to have around your son. Great role model.”

“Jagger, man, I think you should chill for a while,” Knox said firmly, and held his hand out for Jagger's drink, but Jagger didn't hand it over, and he wasn't finished talking.

“I've been telling you for so long to get a new car, and you've shot down my suggestion every time. You're with Deacon for a few days and let him talk you into it. Is this starting to sound familiar, Charlie?”

“Stop,” Grey pled, and managed to pull the bottle from his grasp.

A high-­pitched ringing started up in my ears, and my legs began shaking. I didn't know if I was still breathing too rapidly, or if I wasn't breathing at all anymore. I just knew that I didn't have long before it felt like I would faint.

“You always talk about not wanting to turn into Mom, but you're choosing the exact same guys she did. The same guys she constantly brought around, the same guys she married before they left her not long after.”

I'm not like her. I refuse to be her.

He ticked off each likeness on his fingers. “Hates kids, gets you to spend your money, fucks anything with tits.”

“Jagger!” Knox barked out.

“If you don't want to be her, stop making her mistakes! You already got the first kid, Charlie, should we be expecting the second soon?”

My palm connected with his face before I acknowledged that my arm was moving. Afterward, you could have heard a pin drop in the warehouse.

No one moved. No one breathed.

Deacon

June 24, 2016

G
RAHAM AND
I glanced at each other warily as we stepped up to the door of the warehouse. The voices were muffled, words indistinguishable, but the last thing I'd expected when we'd gotten there was yelling.

I hurried to open the door, and stepped inside with Graham right behind me.

I only had a split second to take in the scene and absorb that Jagger was screaming . . .

At Charlie.

Knox, Harlow, Grey, and her parents were all gathered around with looks that ranged from shock to anger as they watched Jagger get in Charlie's face. She stood with her back to me, but even from where I stood fifteen feet away, I could see that she was shaking.

Jagger's hand was in Charlie's face as he continued to yell, “ . . . kid, Charlie, should we be expecting the second soon?”

Charlie slapped Jagger's face so quickly that if it weren't for the sound of flesh connecting with flesh and the stunned look on Jagger's face, I wouldn't have been sure it happened.

Silence filled the open space of the warehouse.

Everyone standing in the middle of it was either staring at Charlie or Jagger, none of them had even noticed Graham and me coming in.

“What the hell did we miss?” Graham asked quietly.

Instead of responding, I took a step toward the group of ­people, at the same time Charlie took a shaky step back and then stumbled back another two.

I rushed forward and reached out as if I could have helped her from where I was, but she paused to steady herself.

Just as I got to her, she turned and started off in the direction of the hallway. I reached out to grab her arm, but the second my fingers touched her skin she yanked her arm from my grasp and hurried away.

I watched her until she was gone, then started to turn toward the group, when I caught a pair of blue, watery eyes looking at me from where he hid on the couch.

I didn't know what I'd just missed. But I knew Charlie had never slapped me, and I'd deserved that and more. If she'd hit her brother, then it had to be bad. And he'd done it front of everyone. He'd done it in front of her son.

Forcing myself not to speak, I let my eyes say more than my words could as my glare met Jagger's, and walked over to where Keith was hiding.

My face fell into something neutral and less menacing when I rounded the couch, and I dropped into a squat so I was eye level with Keith. “Hey, kid. Who are you today?”

He sniffled a few times, and with each one his shoulders jerked up from the force. “I don—­I donno. I fink—­can I be Keith?”

“You can always be Keith.”

“Deaton, are we mad at Uncle J?”

I hesitated, not knowing what to say. I knew I sure as shit was, and I still didn't know what had happened. “I don't know, kid. Are we?”

Keith's eyes looked everywhere but at me for a few seconds. When they finally settled on me again, he looked sheepish as he nodded. “I fink so.”

“All right. Well, I need to talk to your uncle J. So can you do me a favor and go find your mom, and stay with her?” I waited until he nodded, and then helped him from the couch. “I'll be back there in a little bit.”

As soon as he was running toward the hall, I looked back up at Jagger, my jaw clenched, and gestured toward the kid running away. “Nice. Who wants to tell me what happened?”

Knox shook his head slowly, both in response and disappointment.

“Knox?”

His eyes darted to me before looking away. “I don't want to struggle to pull you off Jagger so you won't kill him. And I have no doubt that's what we'll be doing.”