Page 59 of Deacon

Gray morning pressed against the edges of my curtains while I paced barefoot across my bedroom with my arms folded over my middle. I had spent almost two decades protecting the life I built and the girl at the center of it, while protecting the version of myself that learned to survive without answers. Now every question I had buried was waiting for me inside a hospital room behind dark eyes that still knew exactly where to find every weak spot.

Did I tell him about Jade? Could I trust the man who broke my heart and vanished without explanation? Had he really loved me, and if he had, what could have made him leave anyway?

My shift started in a few hours. Soon I would have to face Jackson again, no longer a ghost or an unconscious body caught somewhere between life and death, but a man capable of looking back at me.

That was the dangerous part.

Because whenever Jackson Hayes looked at me, some piece of my heart still remembered exactly what it felt like to be eighteen and foolish enough to give him everything beneath the moonlight.

Somewhere between home and the hospital, I convinced myself the visit was practical.

A quick check before my shift. Nothing more. I had arrived early enough that Jackson might still be asleep and hopefully before one of his brothers appeared, sparing me the added pleasure of pretending I wasn’t already raw enough without an audience.

The plan fell apart the second I stepped onto the floor.

His door stood cracked open. No voices came from inside, so I let myself breathe once before pushing it wider and walking in with coffee in one hand and my composure hanging by a thread.

Jackson was awake.

Of course he was.

His bed had been raised farther than yesterday, one arm resting across the blanket while his eyes stayed fixed on the door as though he had been waiting to see who came through it. The second he realized it was me, something changed in his face, subtle enough that I might have missed it on anyone else and strong enough that I felt it from across the room.

“Well,” he said, his voice still rough from sleep and healing, “if it isn’t my favorite nurse.”

I stopped inside the doorway and gave him a flat look. “You’ve been awake for what, ten minutes, and you’re already obnoxious?”

The corner of his mouth pulled. “Missed you too, princess.”

There it was.

That old name slid beneath my ribs with surgical precision.

I set my coffee on the counter harder than necessary and turned toward the monitor so I had something to look at besides him. “You know we’re going to need to talk about it at some point, Jacks.”

The playfulness eased from his expression, set aside rather than gone, and I felt his attention settle fully on me while I pretended to study numbers I already knew were fine. “You owe me an explanation,” I continued. “Why you left without a word. Where you’ve been. Not just me, either. Matty was just as crushed as I was when you were gone.”

The silence changed between us, growing thicker and more honest than anything we had shared since he woke.

“I know,” he said finally. “I...”

His gaze shifted away, and whatever came next seemed unwilling to leave him while he was still weak and trapped in a hospital bed. Before he could force it, I spared both of us.

“Matty doesn’t know you’re back yet.”

Jackson’s head turned toward me. “You didn’t tell him?”

I folded my arms and released a breath through my nose. “Wasn’t my place. And besides, the way you returned wasn’t exactly the best way to tell my cop brother you were back, you know?”

A small smirk appeared, familiar enough to warm something it had no business touching. “So he became a cop after all,” he said. “Huh. Always knew he would.”

His gaze lingered on mine before he asked, almost casually, “How are your mom and dad?”

The room tilted.

The change inside me was probably invisible to anyone who hadn’t once known me well, but Jackson had. The smirk disappeared before I even found the words.

“Dad’s retired,” I said. “Been retired about ten years now.” My throat tightened anyway. “Mom...”