The tree house was long gone, age and weather having turned it into a dilapidated wreck. Most of the wood had rotted and fallen away, leaving behind a skeleton of what it used to be. I remembered thinking it was glorious as a child, a hidden treasure Deacon and I had built with our own two hands. I hadn’t thought about our tree house in years, but for whatever reason, I found myself drawn to our secret hideout when I left work earlier that day.

I sat on an old fallen tree, staring up at the remaining pile of rubble for hours. The clothes I’d picked for work earlier that morning weren’t suited for hanging in the woods behind Deacon’s childhood home in the middle of winter, but at least there wasn’t any rain. I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my wool coat around them for warmth as I tried hard not to think about the fact that countless people now knew exactly what my breasts…and other parts of me looked like.

The crunch of leaves and the snapping of twigs alerted me to someone’s presence, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Deacon coming my way when I turned to look over my shoulder. Sometimes I wondered if he knew me better than I knew myself.

“Hey,” I said, my quiet voice resonating in the silence of the woods.

“Hey, baby. Had a feeling I’d find you out here. Also had a feeling that you wouldn’t be properly dressed to be hanging outside, so I brought you this.” He held up the huge fleece blanket he’d been carrying under his arm, and I could’ve cried with relief. I’d lost feeling in my legs too long ago to recall.

“Thanks,” I muttered as he sat on the log beside me, pulled me flush against his side, and wrapped the blanket around the both of us. “So I’m taking it you heard?”

Because this day couldn’t possibly get any worse.

Deacon nodded in confirmation. “Your dad called me when he couldn’t get ahold of you. In his defense, he wanted you to be the one to tell me. I kind of forced it out of him.”

I managed a small smile in spite of everything. “Why am I not surprised,” I said as I laid my head against his shoulder. He held me to him and I did my best to absorb the warmth and safety I always felt whenever he was close.

After several minutes of silent contemplation, he asked, “You want to talk about it?”

I heaved a sigh, and instead of answering, I asked, “Do you ever think about this place?”

I felt his chin shift my hair, and as he spoke, his lips brushed against the top of my head. “You mean the tree house?”

“Yeah.” I continued to talk on a whisper. “Our special secret hideout. Do you ever think about it?”

“Yes.” He spoke just as softly. “I used to think about it all the time. After you and Grayson….” He stopped and I felt him swallow. “After I lost you, I used to come out here and sit just like you were when I found you. No matter what was going on between us, when I came out here I felt like I still had a piece of you with me.”

I pulled back to face him, tears stinging my eyes as I said, “You always had me, Deacon. Even when you wanted nothing to do with me, you always had me.”

Deacon’s hand came up and stroked my cheekbone. “Yeah. Just maybe not in the way I wanted back then.”

Squeezing my eyes closed, I turned away while pain lanced through my heart. “After everything happened, when I left the office, this was the first place I thought of. It was like instinct brought me here. I remembered feeling safe every time I climbed into that tree house because I knew you’d eventually show up.”

Deacon’s quiet laughter shook my body. “That’s ironic since the damn thing was a death trap. If it was such a safe place, you never would’ve broken your arm.”

I thought back to that day, and it wasn’t the pain I remembered. It was Deacon carrying me back to his house and taking care of me like he always did. I swallowed down the swell of emotion clogging my throat. “I think I loved you, even back then. I was just too young and stupid to realize it.”

His eyebrows drew together in a concerned frown. “Baby, you don’t need to say stuff like that. We agreed that the past was the past. Nothing that happened before matters. We’re together now.”

Shaking my head, I pressed more of my weight against his side. “I’m not saying that to try and make up for the past. I’ve been sitting out here for hours, and that’s a lot of time alone to think. I came here because this place holds memories of you. Every good childhood memory I have is because of you. Even when you weren’t in my life, if something happened, you were always the first person I wanted to call. You’re right. That damn tree house should’ve been condemned the moment we finished it, but I’ll only ever remember loving it because it was ours. I know we said the past is the past, but I was in love with you back then, Deacon, and I never stopped. It was always you. No matter what, it’s always been you. I just hate that I didn’t realize it sooner. We could’ve had so much more time togeth—”

He silenced me with a kiss so brutal my lips felt bruised when he pulled away and cupped my jaw. “The time wasn’t right for us back then, sweetheart, but it’s the right time now, and that’s all that matters.”

“But—”

His thumb rested against my lips to cut off my words. “And when we have our kids, we get to tell them how Mommy and Daddy grew up as best friends before that grew into something even better. How many people get to say that?”

I released a watery laugh, one tear breaking free. “You’re being awesome again. I’m going to need you to stop. I’ve already bawled my eyes out like five times today.”

Deacon smiled, and for the first time in hours I felt like everything might be okay. “Can’t make any promises, sweetheart. I’m just an awesome guy.”

A giggle erupted from deep within my chest. Feeling lighter than I had since that morning, I laid my head back on his shoulder and looked at the ramshackle tree house.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that before I finally got the nerve to talk about what had happened earlier. “I think I know who stole my phone,” I said, admitting it out loud for the first time. Deacon’s entire body grew tight but he didn’t say a word, giving me a chance to continue uninterrupted. “The day I lost my phone, Todd had come into my office. He crossed a line and I kind of lost it on him. He got pissed.” The shiver that worked its way up my spine had nothing to do with the temperature. “Like seriously pissed. We exchanged some words, and things got kind of ugly. I kicked him out of my office after he called me a cock-tease. I don’t remember seeing my phone again after that until it turned up back on my desk the next morning.”

Anger radiated from every pore, every molecule of Deacon’s body. “He called you what?” he snarled so ferociously that it scared me a little.

“Deacon—”

He roared over me. “That motherfucker called you a cock-tease? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I… no.” I don’t think I’d ever seen Deacon so angry in all my life. If I didn’t know him so well, I’d have been terrified.

“What happened before that?”

“Deac, it doesn’t—”

“Swear to fuckin’ Christ, Fiona, if you tell me it doesn’t matter, I’m going to lose my goddamn mind. Now what happened. Before. That?” he clipped.

“He came in acting like himself at first, trying to be charming. But then he… well, he grabbed me by my hips and—”

Deacon shot off the log so fast I nearly fell backward. “I’m going to fuckin’ kill that asshole!”

All of a sudden I was terrified for an altogether different reason.

“You are not!” I shouted, jumping to my feet, the blanket around my shoulders keeping me warm all but forgotten. “Deacon, you’re not going near that guy. Especially not when you’re this upset.”

“Upset? Got news for you, baby. I’m not upset. I’m fucking pissed!”

“Exactly! And if you do something like oh, I don’t know, beat the shit out of him, you’ll be the one who ends up in trouble. I know this guy, Deac. He’s a snake. You lay a finger on him and he’ll press charges.”

His jaw ticked furiously as he growled, “It’ll be worth it.”

“And what about me?” I cried. “What am I supposed to do while you’re locked up for assault?” I started to grow more and more frantic as I ranted. “I only just got you, Deacon! I’m not going to lose you after all this time!”

As if sensing I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the rage seeped from his muscles. What he said next shocked the hell out of me. “Okay, baby, okay. Just calm down. I’m not going to do anything that could take me away from you.”

That wasn’t quite good enough, so I demanded, “Promise me.”

His arms shot out and wrapped around me, pulling me into an embrace. “I promise.”

Those two words were all I needed to hear to relax, because I knew, to my soul, that Deacon would never break a promise to me. My forehead fell to his chest and I sighed, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” When I tried to pull back to look at his face, his arms tightened around me like steel bands, keeping me in place. “I promise I won’t do anything that could take me away from you, but I don’t promise to sit back and do nothing. As soon as I get you home, I’m going to your office to talk to Calvin.”

My entire body drooped in defeat. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of getting involved?”

I could hear the humor clear as day in his voice as he answered, “Not a chance in hell.”

But I wasn’t done trying. I still had one card to play. “Not even for a blowjob?”

“Not even for that,” he laughed.

Putting as much attitude in my voice as I could muster, I threatened, “Then I guess you can kiss your blowjobs goodbye.”

His fingertips stroked up and down along my spine in a soothing gesture. “Sweetheart, you can lie to me all you want. With how soaked you get every damn time, I know you love sucking me off almost as much as I love having those pretty plump lips of yours wrapped around my cock.”

Damn it.

He was such a pain in the ass sometimes.