Page 5 of The Promise Of Rain

He didn’t even look like the man who showed up at my bakery a few short hours ago.

I wouldn’t have agreed to meet if he’d been in such a mood.Butterflies, not the good kind, took flight in my stomach.My peace was important to me.Not even unloading the truth was worth giving up a mere ounce of it.

I swallowed my trepidation.Voice husky, I asked, “Is something wrong?”

Looming over me, one large hand braced on the table between us, I realized just how much he’d filled out in the years we’d been apart, and I shrank back further.

Thickly muscled where he used to be whip-lean, he was also broader across the shoulders, deeper through the chest, and had the heavily muscled thighs of a soldier instead of the runner he used to be.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he slid his large frame into the chair.

It was short-lived.

He levelled me with a hard, emotionless stare that pressed against my battered heart like a thumb into a bruise.“I shouldn’t be wasting my time here,” he stated.

I shrugged, my cheeks heating.“Then leave.”

The mask dropped, his lip curling as he snarled, “If fucking only.”

The tiny flame of hope he had ignited in my heart when he showed up at Buns and Biscuits sputtered out.

I fought the well of tears building up in my eyes as the anxiety that forever danced on the periphery of my world flared to life.“Why are you here, Deacon?”

I stumbled over the syllables of his name; I hadn’t spoken it aloud since he left me.

“Because I’ve never been able to get you out of my head,” he stated bluntly, his face once more impassive and his deep voice even despite his harsh words.“You’re like a fucking poison in my veins.”

I moved to stand, my hands shaking as my shattered heart quaked.“I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Fuck,” he snapped, rising with me.He closed his eyes for a second, then reached out a hand to block my exit.“I’m sorry.I told myself I’d hear you out if you agreed to talk to me.”His chest rumbled.“I need to put the past to rest.”

We faced off against one another until he dropped his arm.

He rubbed a calloused hand over the heavy shadow covering his sharp jaw.

I moved to grab my coat just as my old crew filled the doorway, blocking my exit.

I stepped back abruptly.This was another possibility I should have taken into account when I agreed to meet here.

Instead of walking out like I desperately wanted to, I dropped back into my seat and ducked my head as Miller, Eric, John, and their respective wives barreled through and grabbed a table.When, so wrapped up in their laughter, we escaped their notice, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Seeing you this afternoon brought it all back,” he admitted.

My gaze skittered frantically over the table in front of me as I wracked my brain for an escape route.Thank God Baxter wasn’t with them.My eyes widened at the thought.That was a confrontation I didn’t need tonight.

Or ever.

“Jenny?”

I blew out a slow breath, my heart racing faster at the sound of my name on his lips.“You’re not the only one who was hurt,” I stated quietly, shifting my chair to the right to use his large body as a visual barricade.“But I’m the only one who didn’t do anything wrong.”

His eyebrows crashed together at my words.

He snorted and opened his mouth to retort but at that moment, the waitress stopped at our table to take our order.

His mouth snapped shut, the muscle in his jaw feathering.

As if he hadn’t been about to flay the skin from my bones, he glanced up at me and casually asked, “The usual?”