“Need to get a new car,” I finished for him, then let loose my own sigh. “I know. You and Jagger keep reminding me.”

He wiped his hands on a rag, and pulled me close with one arm. His lifted my chin with his knuckles to press his mouth first to my jaw and then my lips.

I felt his mouth spread into a slow grin when I shuddered from the warmth that moved down my spine at the contact.

After four days, I still wasn’t used to it. To this.

If it would always feel like this, if it would always leave me breathless and weak, then I wasn’t sure that I ever wanted to get used to it.

“Speaking of Jagger, what do you think he’s going to say?”

My eyebrows rose in question, and Deacon’s smile grew.

“About us, Charlie Girl. About the fact that I can’t stop kissing you and don’t know how to let you go.”

I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth when he pressed me tighter to his large, muscular frame. And as I had the last few days, embraced the way my heart beat wildly in my chest. One of these times it was going to break free, and I wasn’t going to attempt to stop it.

All of this was happening fast, I knew. But I had a feeling that all those years I’d felt betrayed by my irrational heart around Deacon had been leading up to this. When I would be ready to trust someone with my heart again. When Deacon would be the one to take it.

“Does it matter?”

Deacon looked at me with open disbelief.

“If what Jagger said really mattered to you, then you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have been here yesterday, or the night before . . .” I trailed off, and lifted one of my shoulders. “You would’ve never come after me.”

I knew from Deacon’s expression that he couldn’t deny what I’d said. “Still, it’s going to matter to you, and that will matter to me.”

“He doesn’t always know what’s best for me.” I trailed my fingers over his lips, then pushed up on my toes to press my mouth to his. “Besides, they won’t be back from Seattle until late tomorrow night. I still have until Monday morning to prepare for whatever he’ll say.”

The corner of his mouth slowly lifted in a mischievous smirk. “Guy isn’t going to know what hit him if you’ve been preparing your comeback all this time.”

I laughed and pushed at his chest, but he just pulled me back in for another searing kiss that made my head spin before he released me.

Deacon stepped back to push down the hood of my car when I started toward my house, and continued to stare at it for a few seconds before following me. “Tell me what’s stopping you from getting a new car. I know from talking to Grey and Jagger over the years that you have money from your grandparents, so why?”

The daze that Deacon’s nearness and his kisses had put me in abruptly disappeared. My blissful smile fell, my stomach dropped, and my palms suddenly felt clammy.

I’m not like her. I refuse to be her. I’m not like her. I refuse to be her, I chanted over and over again as a tremor of unease slid through me.

“Um.” I swallowed thickly and studied the ground for a second before taking a step back. “I need to go. I have to wake up Keith and get him over to the babysitter’s, then get to work,” I mumbled, then took another two steps back.

Deacon’s brow furrowed, and in one step, he closed the distance I’d managed to put between us. “Charlie—”

I turned and hurried toward the front door, calling over my shoulder as I walked. “Thanks for coming over so early.”

“Charlie, damn it, stop,” he demanded, and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his chest. “Why do I have to hold you still to get you to talk to me?”

“Why don’t you understand that when I walk away, I’m not ready to talk?”

“That’s not how this works. Not with us. Not with you.” His large hand pressed firmly against my stomach, his fingers spread so wide that his thumb brushed the underside of my breast with each breath that I took. “I may not have been paying attention to you all these years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know you. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re doing when you walk away from me. It’s just another form of hiding for you.”

His hold loosened. His hands went to my arms, and slowly slid down. The tips of his fingers teased my own before he released me completely and took a step back. He was giving me every opportunity to try to leave, only now I couldn’t move.

“You’ve spent so long trying to be invisible, but I told you, I can’t stop seeing you. Stop trying to hide from me. Stop walking. Talk to—”

“I don’t want to be her.” The confession tumbled from my mouth like a dirty secret. Fast, soft, and full of shame.

“Who?” Deacon asked after a few seconds.

I turned to look at him, shaking my head as I did. “My mom blew through all of her money. If it weren’t for our grandparents, we would have starved. If it weren’t for Jagger, we wouldn’t have made it. If she had a dollar, then she spent five. I don’t want to be her, and I’m so terrified of turning into her. I have to think of Keith, always.”

“Charlie, buying a car isn’t going to turn you into your mom.”

One of my eyebrows arched, and a sad laugh sounded in my chest. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s like you said, I’ve already pawned my son off on my brother. I already took a huge step toward being like her.”

Deacon’s shoulders sagged as I threw his words back at him. As he finally understood why I didn’t want to have this conversation with him. His face tightened with regret and pain. “Fuck . . . Charlie. No, that—you can’t . . .” He trailed off and scrubbed his hands over his face. “God damn it.”

I tilted my head back toward the house. “Sometimes, when I’m walking away, you should let me walk. I can forgive you and try to forget things that you’ve said or done, but that trying becomes so hard when your words fueled lifelong fears.”

“I don’t expect you to forget what I said that day, but you have to know that I was wrong. All of it, everything was wrong.” He gestured to me, his eyes pleading with me. “Clearly. I was mad when I didn’t have the right to be. When I only had a fraction of the story. I get that now. But, Charlie, turning into your mom? That won’t happen. In the last three weeks alone, anyone could see that that won’t happen.”