Page 140 of Deacon

I met his stare. “He’s a cop with Wicker Falls PD.”

That changed his face. The job itself wasn’t the problem. Everything tied to Wicker Falls law enforcement was.

“And Matty knows about this?” he asked. “Or your dad?”

Blue answered before I could. “Her dad would probably be thrilled, seeing as he’s been trying to set them up for years.”

Jackson turned toward her. “He what?”

Blue’s smile widened. “He wanted Lila with a good stable man. He figured Crude Jude fit the mold.”

Jackson blinked. “Crude Jude?”

Blue laughed softly. “Your daughter’s nickname for him.”

That finally dragged a smirk out of him. “Smart girl.”

It disappeared almost immediately. “Somethin’ ain’t right. Somebody needs to talk to Matty.”

I folded my arms tighter, because there it was. The part I had known was coming. “I do not need you handling things for me or my brother handling things. I have taken care of myself for the last seventeen years, and I can continue doing so just fine.”

Jackson looked at Ink, then Blue, then back at me. Whatever decision he made happened without consulting the person most likely to object.

His jaw set. “Excuse us a minute.”

I barely got out, “Absolutely not,” before he crossed the room, hooked an arm around my waist, and lifted me clean off my feet.

I twisted in his hold, fury flashing hot. “Jackson Hayes!”

Blue choked on a laugh. Ink outright smirked.

I kicked uselessly behind him. “You put me down right now!”

I pounded a fist against Jackson’s back as he threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the hall like a caveman with excellent shoulders and a serious control problem. Framed flash and exposed brick passed upside down while Blue’s and Ink’s laughter faded behind us.

The back door opened, and cool air hit my skin. Jackson kept going until we were behind the shop, where the noise from inside dulled against the brick. Then he slid me down the front of his body until my boots hit the ground.

Before I could get away, he turned me and pressed me against the wall. One hand braced beside my head, the other settled at my hip, his body close enough to make anger and awareness collide in ways I did not appreciate.

“Listen here,” he said, voice low. “And listen good.”

I opened my mouth, but he shook his head once. “No. You’re gonna hear me first.”

That should not have landed the way it did.

His eyes held mine with too much intensity for simple anger. “I understand completely that you’ve taken care of yourself for the last seventeen years,” he said. “And you’ve done a fanfuckingtastic job of it. You took care of our daughter. Raised her into somebody smart and sharp and fuckin’ incredible. I know damn well you can keep takin’ care of yourself.”

Some of the fight shifted in me because he wasn’t dismissing what I had done. He was naming it.

His hand tightened at my hip as he stepped closer. “But you don’t have to do it alone anymore.”

My breath caught, and he kept going before I could turn that into an answer. “You won’t do it alone anymore,” he went on, voice rougher, “because now that we’re in each other’s lives again, I’m incapable of lettin’ you.”

I swallowed against the pressure building in my throat. He was too close, too warm, too certain, and every part of me remembered what that certainty used to feel like before it hurt.

“I fucked up,” he said. “I know that. Christ, Lila, I know that. But damn it, I love you so fuckin’ much and it’s killin’ me that we’re not together. That we lost so many years because I couldn’t see a better way. Because I was a dumb kid who didn’t know how to fix a problem and the only solution I saw was to run.” His expression broke open in a way he rarely allowed. “I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you. I was tryin’ to keep you safe because I loved you so damn much.”

My throat tightened until it hurt. Love did not erase seventeen years. It did not hand back the choices he had made for me, or repair the time neither of us could recover. I knew all of that.