Page 121 of The Promise Of Rain

He carried me up the outside steps to my apartment and didn’t stop until we stood in my bathroom.

Sniffing, I stripped off the dress I bought for Deacon and dropped it on the floor.

Taking my hand, Deacon helped me into the shower where I stood under the hot, healing, spray of water.

“Very pretty dress, baby,” he said as he picked it up off the floor.“I’m sorry things didn’t go the way we planned.”

I shook my head, grabbed my loofah, and slathered it with body wash before taking it to my neck.That dress was going in the garbage.

“No, baby,” he took the loofah from my hands.“Nothing about you is dirty, not a single thing.You’re in here because you got cold.You deserve to be warm and safe, and I’m going to ensure you are both.”

I turned my head slightly, seeing him out of the corner of my eye.“You’re getting wet.”

“I’m fine,” he murmured.“I have a bag with me, and I’ll run out to get it as soon as you’re dry.”

He handed me out of the shower and wrapped me in my giant, fluffy towel.Then, with a smaller towel, he proceeded to dry my hair, tugging my head this way and that.

I began to laugh.

His eyebrows crunched together as he dipped his head to peer at me under the towel.“Are you okay?”

I laughed harder.“I’m not hysterical.”

Or maybe I was.

The corner of his mouth quirked.“Why are you laughing?”

I peered through the tangle of hair hanging over my face due to his ministrations and pointed to the towel on my head.“You’ll never make it as a hairdresser.”

He grinned back at me, that sweet dimple flashing.The relief in his eyes shone bright as he dropped the towel and smoothed my hair off my face.

Voice low and amused, he added, “Probably wouldn’t make it as a Hairy Larry exterminator either.”

“Never!”I chuckled again, feeling light and happy.

Was I hysterical?

My mood swung from one extreme to the other, but all I could see was Deacon’s beauty.The boy I’d loved had turned into a man, but I could see him there still.

And he’d protected me.

Even if it was with his fists.

I shuddered to think how bad it might have been if he’d arrived ten minutes later.

“Are we okay?”he asked, his voice soft.

Adam deserved it.

I didn’t deserve it the few times I got in between my mother and one of her losers.

She didn’t either.

But Adam did.

“We’re okay,” I murmured.“Go get your bag.”

I wound my hair into a messy bun and secured it to the top of my head.