The trust factor, p.22
The Trust Factor, page 22
I drained the rest of my coffee. “Did you want more coffee?”
He smirked at the change in subject. “I’m good.”
I took our empty mugs to the kitchen and stopped when I saw Georgia leaning over the sink. She held a stocking to her chest and stared out the window. Her eyes were glossy, and like Deacon’s did so often, they focused on the cloudy sky.
I placed the mugs on the counter to announce my presence. Georgia looked over her shoulder and swiped at her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“It’s okay!” She assured me, glancing down at the memory she was holding. “It happens sometimes, and I just need a moment.”
She squeezed my shoulder as she passed, and I held it together until she rounded the corner. I didn’t have to guess the name on the stocking she was holding, and I didn’t know how to stop the tears from gathering in the corners of my eyes. I imagined Georgia pulling out the stockings, only for her to remember that there was one she wouldn’t be filling.
As cheerful as the holidays were, they didn’t pause for grief. They served as a yearly reminder that a loved one should be here and that the world didn’t care what kind of person you were. Life took what it wanted, and we were left to figure out the aftermath.
Howard and Georgia Scott would do anything to get one more day, fuck, one more hour with Dominic.
Meanwhile, I had a dad who didn’t care what I was doing as long as I wasn’t disrupting his image. The only reason I played into his toxic ways was because I needed something from him. The money he set aside for me would provide a life for me and my mom; the default parent who wasted away her twenties because she got stuck with me. I was a lot, and I kept adding layers to the life my mom didn’t ask for. If I couldn’t give her the chance to chase her dreams, then she had no reason to stick around. I’d have two parents who saw me as a burden. I’d never be enough on my own.
I borrowed Georgia’s spot by the window and looked up. I understood why Deacon felt angry because it didn’t make any sense. I gave myself two minutes to feel, then returned to the living room.
Drew and Deacon’s parents were nowhere to be found, and the afterglow of gift giving had faded. Deacon sat on the couch with a pained expression. Tears were in his eyes, and he didn’t have to say anything. I knew by the scattered present wrappings and the empty room plastered with memories from the past.
The corner of his mouth lifted into a small smile when he saw me, and I climbed onto his lap. All I wanted was to take his pain away—help him carry a handful if the world allowed it. I settled naturally into him and kissed him on his cheek. Before I could pull back, he cupped my chin and brought my mouth to his. The hunger and excitement of last night was no longer there, and the slow and sweet tempo of whatever this was assured me that one thing was clear.
It didn’t matter if it was Cassie, me, or any other woman on this planet. No one deserved a guy as downright delightful as Deacon Scott.
Chapter forty-seven
Deacon
When Cassie asked if I wanted to go to lunch when we returned for the spring semester, I didn’t think she meant the first day back on campus. My last class ended at two, so I told Cassie we could meet for a quick lunch somewhere on campus. I wanted to be at Lyla’s by four so I could have some time alone with her before we started a game of Monopoly with her roommates. I hadn’t seen Lyla since Christmas, and it was pathetic how much I missed her.
I took a deep breath as I entered Mr. Spots, once again making shit complicated when it didn’t need to be. So what if I missed Lyla? In technical terms, Lyla was my girlfriend, and sleeping with your girlfriend didn’t warrant itself as a red flag. The only red flag in my current line of vision was that I was having lunch with my ex-girlfriend while missing my fake girlfriend—who I promised not to fall in love with.
“Don’t say that,” I groaned.
Who the fuck are you talking to, Deacon?
I liked to think Dominic was weighing in with his opinions when I thought out loud. He would tell me to stop overthinking and do something more exciting with my time. I imagined it had to be painful, watching the people you loved act like idiotic characters from The Sims that you had no control over.
I knew that analogy would’ve made Dominic laugh. “See, now that’s a good one.”
“Did you say something?”
I felt a hand on my elbow and saw Cassie standing beside me. Her blonde hair was down around her shoulders, and a green fluffy beanie sat on her head.
She smiled. “Hi, there.”
“Hey, Cass,” I said, gesturing for her to walk in front of me.
She led us to a table in the back and took the seat against the wall. I sat across from her and removed my hat.
“Haircut?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle, running my hand over my head. “I had to get it cut by Barry one more time before I came back.”
Cassie’s eyes lingered on my mouth, and I pretended not to notice. “I always loved your hair short. Especially when you trimmed your facial hair to match it.”
I leaned forward on my elbows. “Are you saying I had a scraggly beard at one point?”
“No!” she exclaimed with a giggle, and the sound of it made me smile. I was always a sucker for Cassie’s laugh. “I always thought you looked good.”
“Well, your hair is long. It was never this long when we were together.”
Cassie shrugged. “You always liked it shorter, so I tried to get it cut every now and then.”
“You got it cut back in April. So, what, it’s been—”
“Nine months,” she answered quickly. “Nine because May was eight.”
I knew time had gone by, but eight months? I attempted to change the subject. “Do you wanna order some food?”
“I’m sorry, Deacon,” Cassie whispered. Her voice was so low I almost had to ask her to repeat herself, but the look on her face told me that I had heard her correctly. “I’m sorry about the way it happened. You deserved better than that, and I’m—” Her lip began to tremble, and I instinctively reached across the table for her hand.
“Hey.” I prompted her to look at me, offering her a sympathetic grin. “It’s okay.”
“I was s-so afraid that you hated me,” she stammered through a nervous breath. She wiped a tear from her cheek and shrugged. “And then I saw you with Lyla, and I wasn’t sure if you were dating her just to make me mad or—”
“Why would I date Lyla to make you mad?”
Cassie rolled her eyes. “Come on, Deacon. When we were together, you never wanted to go out. You never wanted to do anything outside our usual routine, and I always felt like the bad guy for asking you to. Then you go and date the girl I saw riding up and down on a stripper pole in some video?”
I covered my mouth so she couldn’t see my smile. It was my first memory of Lyla; the morning I called her Stripper Pole Girl and the moment she found out she was on the internet. I wondered if she still had that yellow dress—
“It’s not funny!” Cassie exclaimed.
“It kind of is funny, Cass. First, let me say that I don’t hate you. If I hated you, I wouldn’t be sitting across from you right now. But Cassie—you broke up with me. What was I supposed to do? Wait around for you to decide if there was someone else who was better than me?”
Cassie closed her eyes, and I recognized the tired look on her face. “After Dominic passed, Deacon—”
“Please stop.” I pushed my chair back and stood up.
“Deacon, hold on—”
“I don’t want to hold on, Cassie,” I said, trying to stay calm. “I don’t want to hear about how I wasn’t the same person I was when you met me. You met me when I was a freshman. Of course, I wanted to party and have fun and study when it was convenient instead of making it a priority. I wanted to go out and close down the bars with you and wake up the next morning just to do it all over again.”
When I returned to my seat, Cassie’s blue eyes were glossy. I wasn’t prepared to have the conversation we should’ve had back in May. I showed up for that conversation, and instead, she picked up the phone.
“My entire world fell apart,” I whispered angrily, my voice growing louder. “It fucking fell apart, and when I came back to school, yeah, I was different. I didn’t want to party, and I didn’t want to be around people. I focused on school and on making you happy. I did everything I could in the only ways I knew how. That might not have included parties and late nights, but I tried Cassie.”
She shook her head and wiped more tears from her cheeks. “I never knew how to help you.”
My shoulders relaxed, and I felt the heat simmering in my chest. I focused on my breathing, ensuring I was calm before speaking again. “You never asked. I felt like you kept waiting for me to snap out of it. Like it was a phase I’d eventually grow out of, and I’d suddenly just get back to normal.”
Cassie stared at the table, and I knew this conversation was over. I didn’t feel like staying for food, and I didn’t mean to snap at her. It wasn’t my intention to make her upset.
“What was the point of this today, Cass?” I prompted gently. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
She shook her head. “I just wanted to see you. I wanted to see if you were still happy.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, hesitating to say what else was on her mind. “And I wanted to see if you were still with Lyla. I was surprised to see she went home with you for Christmas.”
Still with Lyla.
“I am happy, Cassie, and I am still with Lyla.”
Her blank stare made it obvious she didn’t want to hear that. I couldn’t sort through my thoughts with Cassie in front of me. I needed time to clear my head and figure out how to move forward. I still had a few months left with Lyla, and I wouldn’t lead Cassie on if I no longer had plans to get back together with her.
“Can we do this some other time?” I suggested.
She didn’t look upset when I proposed a raincheck. We needed a clean slate, and too many items from our past marked up the conversation.
When we left Mr. Spots, we went in separate directions. I had no idea where she was going, but I knew exactly where I wanted to be.
Chapter forty-eight
Lyla
I had watched Michelle and Keira clean our apartment at least one hundred times since Charlie and I signed our lease. They took cleaning to a whole new level. They vacuumed the outside of the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the inside of the dishwasher. I was grateful for their attention to detail, but no one would ever catch me wiping the outside of a Pledge can—which was exactly what Michelle was doing.
Charlie rolled her eyes and flipped through her playlist on YouTube. “It’s just Deacon coming over. Why do you guys care if the apartment is clean?”
“Especially since I don’t care,” I added. I sat beside Charlie on the couch, reading my new book and enjoying a White Claw.
“I always clean when we get back from a break,” Keira said. “I just want things to look nice.”
Michelle sighed when Keira opened the vacuum's canister too early, allowing debris to settle along the side of the trash can.
“I’ll help,” I offered, stealing a chip from Charlie’s bag of Doritos.
There was a knock on the door, and I immediately shifted my focus to that task instead. The debris would have to wait. I knew who was at the door, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see him.
Deacon stood in the hall with a smile and a—backward hat? He’d never worn one before and chose moving day to try out the new style.
Fuck me. Why did I tell Deacon we couldn’t sleep together again? I couldn’t renege on rule number six, not with the guy trying to get his ex-girlfriend back. He had his entire future mapped out, and this friendship was just a stepping stone to his life with Cassie.
Deacon stepped inside and pulled me in for a kiss. His lips lingered on mine a little longer than I anticipated, but I wasn’t mad about it. He smelled like his usual cedarwood and lavender, and a warmth settled in my chest. It was like wrapping myself in my favorite blanket. It had been three weeks since I’d seen Deacon Scott, and I missed the hell out of him.
“I missed you, Brooks.” His tone was so casual that it might as well have been a statement about the weather. I had to hand it to Deacon. He was moving past our Christmas Bone much better than I thought he would.
I tightened my grip around his waist and smiled. “I missed you too, Scott.”
The right side of his mouth had a slight curve, and I tugged on his hand when he tried to walk to the living room. “Where’s your stuff?”
“Right.” His shoulders slumped, and his smile vanished. “It’s in my car.”
“I’ll come with you.”
I followed him down to the car, and before he opened his trunk, I forced him to look at me. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.” He guided me out of the way so he could get his bags.
His tongue grazed the center of his top lip, and I knew there was more. “Deacon.”
He smiled. “Just because we’re top-tier boyfriend-girlfriend now doesn't mean you know me.”
“Uhm, we were always top tier, and I know you pretty well. Now, what’s up? What happened?”
He dropped his bag and took a seat on the curb. “I met with Cassie before coming here.”
I followed his lead and sat beside him, ignoring the dip in my gut. “And?”
“And I just . . . honestly, I don’t fucking know. She wanted to meet for lunch, so we did, and then she apologized for how we broke up. But then she brought up Dominic and how everything—I changed, and I just couldn’t hear it. It’s like I looked back on our relationship and couldn’t remember being happy.”
I touched his shoulder and slid my fingers across his upper back. “That’s a lot, Deac. I’m sorry.” Another moment of silence passed between us, and I realized there was a question I needed to hear the answer to. “Do you still love her?”
“I think part of me always will. I just . . . I don’t know.” His tired expression told me he had been thinking about it since he saw her this afternoon.
It was time to channel the best friend who knew him better than either of us wanted to admit. I sat up and cleared my throat. “Can I say something, maybe a little out of line? I feel like I’ve earned that level with you, you know, since you’ve been inside me and all.”
“Jesus, Brooks.” He chuckled, and it was nice to see a smile back on his pretty face.
“Sorry. Okay, so you’re dating for a year, and at twenty-one years old, your boyfriend’s world completely shatters overnight. I don’t know—” I struggled to find the words because the last thing I wanted to do was invalidate feelings I couldn’t imagine having to bear. “I can’t say there was right and wrong because I don’t know everything that happened between you guys, but does anyone really know how to help someone after they have gone through the unimaginable? I’m not making excuses for anything she did or didn’t do. But there isn’t a manual that tells us how to help someone, Deacon, and I’ve known you for . . .”
I began counting on my fingers. For someone who usually ran their sex life as a calendar, I certainly sucked at—
“Five months,” Deacon said.
I smiled at his quick answer. “Five months. And in those five months, you’ve never asked me for help. You’ve offered me a proposition that benefits us both, but that doesn’t count.”
He covered his mouth with his hand so I couldn’t see the sexy smirk he was hiding underneath it. “It’s never been easy for me to ask for help.”
“I know,” I prompted gently. “But sometimes we need to ask for it, and that’s okay. Because of you, I’ve actually thought about therapy. I mentioned it to my mom over break, and a few months ago, I never would’ve done that. None of what you went through . . . what you’re continuing to go through, is easy.”
Deacon’s features relaxed, and I knew he was fighting against whatever dark thoughts surfaced. I pulled him closer so my head rested against his shoulder.
“I guess Cassie didn’t have it easy either, huh?” he mumbled.
I exhaled slowly, leaving a light kiss on his temple. “No. I couldn’t imagine watching you go through what you went through when it first happened. It’s hard watching you going through it now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I emphasized, leaning back to get some air. I wanted to kiss him, pull him from every dark moment he had to relive. “You don’t ever have to be sorry for being real, Deacon. Not with me. We don’t lie.”
“We don’t lie,” he echoed in a raspy voice.
Deacon stood up and offered me his hand. I grabbed his book bag off the ground and led us back upstairs where Deacon officially unpacked into part of my closet, two dresser drawers, and half of my desk. It was a small space, but I wasn’t worried. I was more concerned about the fact that I wasn’t worried. In just five short months, I went from Lyla Brooks, the girl who got physically ill over the thought of getting close to anyone, to whoever this version of me was. I couldn’t even label this version because I was still trying to understand her.
Deacon had the trust factor—something I had given out a handful of times only to have it thrown back in my face. I’d known for a while that Deacon was different. I kept searching my reader’s brain for a better word to describe him, but every time I tried, it was like I had never picked up a book.
The first night Deacon slept in my room as an official roommate, his duffle sat unpacked on my futon, and his fully clothed body took up the right side of my bed. He hugged me against him, and we fell asleep quickly, both tired from returning to a new semester on campus.
The next morning, Deacon woke up around eight and was out the door in twenty minutes to get to his first class. He did his best not to wake me, but after spending so many nights with him next to me, it was hard not to feel the empty spot on the mattress when he left.
