Forever Promised (3 page)

Drew nodded and smiled, and he looked like the weight of the world had fallen from his sturdy shoulders. He pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers, and she smiled into his eyes.

“I really love you,” she said softly, thinking that it was true, and her heart felt so swollen in her chest it hurt. “You know that, right?”

“I love you too, Bernice.”

“Oh hell, Drew. I’ll take it all back if you don’t stop calling me that.”

He laughed and closed his mouth over hers, and she relaxed into his kiss.

And it might have stayed there. She might not have taken that next step in her thinking, or in what she asked of Drew, or what she wanted to give Deacon, if her stupid brother hadn’t had a weak spell with his injured leg and needed to be driven back home. She was going to offer to do it for him, and get her stuff to stay the night at Drew’s if that was okay, but she needed to find Deacon first and tell him. Besides, Crick would need help walking across the grounds and the cattle gate to get into the truck, and nobody could do that but Deacon.

She looked around the clearing—it was later in the day, and Collin and Jeff were sitting on a couple of folding chairs, talking to anybody who wanted to talk.

“The flowers?” Jeff asked, gesturing to the assortment of wildflowers in glass decanters that Benny had helped him scavenge from yard sales
everywhere.
“Pinterest, girlfriend! I know, they look totally rustic, like you’d think that’d be easy, but omigod! Tracking them down was a
night
mare, and Benny and I rubbed our fingers raw tying off the little burlap bows!”

“I was not allowed to help,” Collin said, pulling his lean lips into a Kewpie doll moue.

“Hel
lo,
you’d get
grease
on them!”

“Because rustic is only cool when it involves dust,” Collin said dryly, and Jeff nodded his head in complete seriousness.

“Of course! If the wedding was in your garage,
then
you could have gotten grease on the burlap!”

Everybody
wanted to talk, and although Collin mostly sat back quietly and let his new husband tell the stories with flamboyant gestures and razor-lightning quickness, he was good for a snarktastic quip or two. Jeff’s job was pausing to let him get those in too, and together they could entertain at their own party like nobody else.

Amy, dressed in a pale-green summer dress, sat at the sandy beach of the creek, holding her youngest by the hands so he could dangle his feet in the water.

“Heya, Jon-Jon,” she murmured, and the baby—a tow-headed, brown-eyed version of his blue-eyed father—giggled. His little baby three-piece suit (his father’s idea of a joke, since Jon only wore a suit to officiate at weddings, even when he was in court) lay neatly folded in the diaper bag over Amy’s shoulder, and the royal crowned King of Promise Rock was wearing a diaper and a smile.

Lila Lisa, Amy and Jon’s little girl, crouched with Parry Angel; they were looking to see if any minnows flitted in the sandy part of the shore. The little girls wore matching lavender sundresses, because that’s why you
had
girls, so you could put them in frilly things that made them smile. Of course, the skirts of both dresses were now tucked, wadded, and otherwise fixed firmly between their legs so they didn’t get the hems wet, but since Lila was so short, her bottom was dragging in the water anyway.

Benny stopped for a moment to bend down and kiss Parry on her curly little head, and then turned to Amy—pretty, dark-haired, dark-eyed Amy, the only girl Benny knew who was tinier than Benny herself—and smiled. “Have you seen Deacon?”

To her surprise, Amy looked troubled and a little sad. “Yeah. I think he and Jon are off talking on the man’s side of the rock.”

Benny snickered. “There’s a man’s side of the rock?”

Amy had a piquant little face and adorable little chipmunk cheeks, but she could manage a look of total disgust if it suited her. “Yeah, the other side of the rock, the side without shade. It’s where they go to talk when they’re pretty sure the rest of us plebeians with tits don’t want to sweat and won’t follow them over.”

“Is that what we are?” Kimmy asked, walking over to the creek. She was looking at the children wistfully, and Amy smiled at her and hefted Jon-Jon up so Kimmy could grab him and blow tummy bubbles. Kimmy was a beautiful woman in her thirties, with brown hair that hung unbound to her waist, in spite of the heat, and a serene oval-shaped face with brown eyes exactly like her twin brother’s. She blew the tummy bubbles and Jon-Jon giggled loudly.

“Kimmy!”

“Heya, Puppy. Have you had any cake yet?”

Jon-Jon’s eyes got big and round. “Cake?”

“Kimmy, you snot!” Amy complained. “You know he wears it more than eats it!”

“That’s all right,” Kimmy said warmly. “I’ll wash him off when we’re done.” She hefted the toddler over to the table, and Amy stood up from the bank, keeping a careful eye on the two girls.

“Are you going to hang around, Benny?” she asked.

Benny looked over to where Crick sat, looking embarrassed. He tried, while she was watching, to stand up completely, but his leg gave out, and he gritted his teeth. He’d been putting a lot of stress on his leg and his arm, trying to get ready for this event, and he’d overdone it. Pretty much the only person he’d let help him when he was like this was Deacon.

“Crick needs to go home,” Benny said quietly. “He’s going to need Deacon’s help to get in the truck.”

Amy looked up and frowned. “God—I
knew
he shouldn’t have been helping load chairs yesterday! He said he was fine, but—”

Benny shrugged. “He’s stubborn,” she said, because it was true. But it was also true he pushed himself, like he
hadn’t
almost gotten himself blown halfway to hell, and he didn’t
like people to know he wasn’t just as fit as anyone else. But then, part of that was Crick’s reluctance to give up even one iota of the job of taking care of Deacon.

“I’ll go find Deacon,” Benny decided, because hey! How bad could a conversation with Jon be?

“Hey, Benny—” Amy called behind her, but Benny was already halfway to the tree, and Lila picked that moment to fall into the surprisingly cold water and shriek loud enough to break the plastic glasses for the sparkling cider. Amy didn’t try to get her attention again, and Benny didn’t look back.

She rounded the corner of Promise Rock quietly, expecting to have to wait until the boys were done talking to get Deacon’s attention, and what she heard in Deacon’s voice made her pause.

“Damn, Jon! That’s a hell of an opportunity!”

Jon’s reply, when it came, was rough and shaky, and she stayed quiet in the shade of the oak tree while Deacon and Jon stood facing the sun, their backs to the rock and to her. “It would mean leaving you.”

“Yeah, well, that would suck,” Deacon said, clapping Jon on the shoulder. Jon made a strangled laugh sound, and Deacon settled back against the rock again.

“I love it here!” Jon protested, and his voice sounded weak to Benny, and probably weak to Deacon as well. “My family loves it here. We grew up here, and my kids love it here—”

“Jon, let’s get one thing straight.
Nobody
loves Levee Oaks that much, not even the founding fathers, whoever the hell they might have been. You love
us.
Now, when I was going to uproot this place four years ago, you were going to move with me, so I know you can do this—”

“Okay, so this place sucks, but
Deacon—
!”

“Jon, do you realize what you’ve been asked to do?”

“Yeah—wear a fucking suit!”

“No! You’ve been asked to go to Washington and work for a
cause
! Do you
get
that? All this bullshit Crick and me, and Shane and Mickey and all those kids in Promise House, have been through—hell, Jeff and Collin’s medicine and treatment—
all
of that bullshit,
all
of that difficulty, has been given the stamp of approval by the powers that fucking be. You got asked to go change all that, Jon!
Jesus
,
do you know how huge that is!”

Benny clapped her hand over her mouth, because for once in her life, she needed to keep it shut. Oh hell. Hell, this was enormous.
Jon
? Jon was Deacon’s
rock.
Crick was passionate, wound up, and high maintenance—Jon was Deacon’s one chance at sanity, and he was
going
?

“I know,” Jon said quietly. “I do. And Amy would love to help, and that’s big too, because as much as she loves the kids, she didn’t get her law degree for nothing either. And we got hired on as a team—I mean, who
does
that? And it’s a chance to… I don’t know….”

“Change history? Make your mark? Do something important with your life?”

“I thought I
was
doing that by practicing here!”

Deacon laughed a little and ran his hand through his thick dark-blond hair. “Yeah, well, as great as it’s been having our own pet lawyer in our pockets, Jon, you really were made for more. I mean, how do you think you got noticed in the first place?”

“You sent my name in to that website,” Jon said flatly, and Benny had to try hard not to cackle hysterically when Deacon shrugged.

“It was Crick’s idea. They were asking for community members who’d made a difference. That’s you, big guy—can’t fight it!”

“Jesus, Deacon did you have any idea—”

“That you’d get enough attention to get put in that magazine? No. That the lobbyists in DC would want to come sweep you away? Not a fucking clue. But Jon….” Deacon took two steps out and turned back around, and Benny looked hungrily at his face for some clue as to how he really felt about this. Anybody who loved Deacon knew what he said, even the inflection of his voice, was not a real barometer. Deacon was a master at putting the things he wanted on hold for the people he loved.

But his eyes….

Benny had learned to look at the way his eyes crinkled in the corners, or the skin tightened over his cheekbones, to know what he was really thinking.

The night her stupid brother called him to say he’d cheated while in the service, Deacon’s eyes had been wide and earnest when he told Benny he’d be okay. But the crinkles in the corners of his green eyes had been bunched together, like his jaw was clenched too tight to let them get as wide as they
should
be.

They looked just like that now.

“You and Amy were always meant for bigger things than me or this town anyway,” Deacon said gruffly. “I’ll miss you—God, we’ll
all
miss you. But telling you not to go because we’d miss you is pure selfishness.”

“And God forbid you be selfish, right, Deacon?” Jon said bitterly, and Deacon swallowed.

“You know, asshole, me and Crick managed to keep together for two years of writing actual letters and tweets. We got two face-to-face chats on satellite phone in two years, and we did just fine. We’ve got Skype and we’ve got texting and I’m pretty damned sure I’m not going to wither and die because you left me behind.”

Jon shook his head bitterly. “Yeah, Deacon, I remember ‘just fine’. Remember the DTs? ’Cause I do, and if I
ever
have to even
know
that you took a drink again, I will come back here and beat you dead.”

Deacon rolled his eyes. “Jon, you know damned well that pacemaker or not, if I ever had to do that again, no one would have to beat me to see me dead.”

Jon took a swing at him.

Benny might have cried out if it had landed, but Deacon was quick, and he’d been taking
very
good care of his body since his heart attack. He dodged sideways, grabbed Jon’s arm, and pulled, and Jon’s forward momentum brought him straight into Deacon’s arms.

Jon struggled for a moment and then gave it up and returned the hug full force. “We’ll miss you,” he muttered.

“God, I hope so,” Deacon said back, and he’d turned enough for Benny to see his face over Jon’s shoulder.

Drew found her ten minutes later, huddled in the little hidden spot where the sun and shade met. Deacon and Jon had gone round the other side, back to the reception, and Benny was pretty sure he was giving Crick a ride home.

Which was good, because she hadn’t been able to stop crying, and she wouldn’t have wanted to confess to Deacon why.

“Benny?” Drew asked, crouching down by where she was dragging the hem of her new dress in the dust. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Benny wiped her eyes with her palm, boy style, and wanted to swear because her carefully applied makeup was now smeared all over her eyes and it stung like a sonuvabitch.

Drew was prepared, though—he pulled out a little package of tissues and handed them over, and she spent a few moments getting the mascara off her cheeks while she pulled herself together.

“Drew?” she said tentatively, hating that she was going to ask him this but not able to change it.

“Yeah?”

“We need to give him something,” she whispered. “Something that he can keep. Something that will make his family always here.”

Drew’s questioning look was hard to face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bernice.”

It took her a while to explain it to him, and when she was done, it took a week to make it right between them. But in the end, he saw that she was right, that it was a perfect solution. In the end, even Drew saw that if they wanted to leave Deacon, it would sit right with both of them if they promised him forever first.