Page 151 of The Promise Of Rain

Checking the security cameras Deacon had installed in the stairwell and the bakery to assure myself both were clear, I ran downstairs and retrieved the sourdough I’d prepared only the day before.

So much had changed since then.

I brought them upstairs and lined them up on the counter.I would fill my apartment with Ansel.

As I worked through the steps I knew by heart, my heart worked through the events of the past twenty-four hours.

The past eighteen years.

Ansel had been my rock for exactly half my life.The only one I’d ever had.The one person in the world who had never let me down.

His death brought clarity.

Because while it wasn’t the same type of love, Deacon loved me with the same devotion.

I saw it.I felt it.I knew it though I struggled to trust what I saw, felt, and understood to be true.

I wanted him in my corner.

I wanted to give myself over to him, trust his love for me the way I trusted Ansel.

Deacon would protect the soft life I built.

He would weather the storms by my side, and he would ensure I lived soft without hiding and shrinking and keeping my head down.

No, he would secure it even as I wore pretty dresses, spoke my mind, and stood tall.

Everybody needed a buffer from the harsher realities of the world.

He was mine.

And I would be his.

We would be our own family.A small one.But ours.

I touched the raindrop on my chest.

The promise of rain.

I would be his promise, too.

All I had to do was take that final leap.

Could I do it?

I covered the dough and left it to rise while I retreated to the couch where every moment of the past two weeks ran through my mind.

I should have seen that Ansel was weakening.

Known he was near the end.

But he’d bounced back from that virus and seemed to be as strong as ever.

Still.I should have known.

Did he spare me the pain of watching him slip away?

The doorbell rang, yanking me from my thoughts.It was barely ten o’clock in the morning, but whoever it was, wasn’t interested in waiting because they almost immediately knocked.