Forever Promised (46 page)

“Where’d they go?” she asked, and it wasn’t until
then
that Crick actually thought to call them.

The news that Deacon was in the hospital getting stitches seriously pissed him off.

“Put Deacon on the phone,” Crick growled, and Drew hadn’t laughed at all.

“No, sir. That would violate a direct order from the boss.”

“A direct order from the boss? Who does he think is cooking for him, goddammit! The man who runs the kitchen rules the world! Drew? Drew? He hung up on me!” Crick said, looking at his sister in outrage.

Benny shrugged. “I don’t blame him,” she said reasonably. “You’ve been a total asshole since you went….” She grimaced.

Since the aborted shopping trip with Missy. Wonderful.

Missy had been busy working for the past week—Kimmy said that of all the things, her work ethic had improved, and so far her employers hadn’t complained once—and Crick hadn’t had a chance to see her again. Deacon had proposed they do the baby rooms this weekend, and Benny had been surprisingly eager to assist.

It had been a pretty decent day too. Until Drew hung up on him.

“I have
not
been a total asshole!” he snapped, and if Benny’s skeptical eyebrow hadn’t told him that he’d
just
been a total asshole, Parry’s snicker did it for her. “Okay. Maybe I’ve been a partial asshole. Does he really need to run away from me?”

“Well,” Benny said slowly, “maybe he’s worried too—you ever think of that?”

Crick regarded her blankly. “I’m more than a total asshole. I’m like
six
total assholes all rolled into one.
God
,
Benny—how could I forget that… that… he’s
Deacon
?”

Deacon, who knew
everything—Sweetie, Missy, Crick’s fears about being a parent, Benny’s fears about giving up the baby—but who didn’t
talk
about his own problems. Seven years ago, Crick had worried his ass off—and for good reason—about Deacon’s propensity for keeping things close to the vest. Three years ago, it had almost killed him. Deacon was doing better in that department, but same as anyone else, he did not get better almost overnight.

So Crick had been troubled, a total asshole sunk in his own head, snarling at everyone unless he was painting, and Deacon had just… been Deacon. Making shit go, keeping it all together, and not letting anyone worry about him.

Until a horse practically maimed him with one careless step.

Or that’s what it looked like when he hobbled in, his jeans ripped off at the knee, a big swathing bandage wrapped around his calf.

“You have got to be shitting me,” Crick said, rushing up to him, and Deacon waved him off.

“It looks worse than it is,” he said easily. “The doctor said inside activity, nothing too big. We had lunch on the way home—put me to work now, or the painkillers will kick my ass to the couch!”

Crick stood there, getting ready to rip Deacon raw with his temper, when some of that newfound-daddy maturity kicked in, and he took a better look at the way Deacon was holding his jaw.

He was in pain, painkillers or no, and he wanted a way to stay useful. Crick nodded. “Can you put together the crib?” he asked. “It arrived when you were gone.”

So Deacon didn’t say much for the rest of the day, but he had by God gotten shit done.

Crick tried not to resent the hell out of him for it.

Deacon went to bed early that night, after taking a pill from
both
of the bottles Drew had filled for him. He’d had to ask Crick for help with the bandage, though, because the other one had gotten torn and displaced during his workout. Crick needed to help Deacon put a plastic bag over his shin, and Deacon hadn’t met his eyes the entire time.

“Have I really been so awful?” Crick asked quietly, remembering everything he’d done—snapping at Parry; throwing the ball over the house so the big furry donkey just sat there and stared at the roof of the house for an hour, waiting for it back; drinking Benny’s orange juice and telling her to suck it up. Well, that last one had been mostly brotherly pique, but still.

“You’ve been mad,” Deacon said. “And thoughtful. You didn’t need
me
spilling crazy all over your freshly painted room.”

Crick grunted. “So you had me spill paint in it instead. Very clever, Machiavelli—did you ever think that
your
crazy distracts me from
my
crazy? Or that maybe if I saw
your crazy, my
crazy wouldn’t sound so bad? I mean, hello, that thing is fricking spazzing out in her stomach 24/7, and pretty soon it’s going to be living in our house
.
Maybe I’d like to know that’s freaking you out too, right? Maybe it would be just
fucking swell
if you’d cop to a few real human feelings like being scared out of your goddamned mind!”

Deacon’s short, sharp laugh did not reassure. “Carrick, you’ve seen me living in fear for most of my life. I’m not sure if you could tell the difference.”

Crick stopped short in the act of wrapping tape around Deacon’s ankle to hold the plastic bag in place. “That’s not true,” he said quietly. “That’s not—”

“Afraid of crowds, afraid of the people I
can
stand leaving me alone, afraid of losing you in Iraq, afraid of losing our home—Jesus, I don’t know when you
haven’t
seen me afraid.”

“Which just makes you one of the fucking bravest men I’ve ever known,” Crick snapped, “because you deal with all of that, and now we all look to
you
!”

Deacon was sitting sideways on the toilet seat, one arm propped up on the back of the toilet. He leaned his head against his palm and smiled, one of those tired, still-fighting smiles Crick could remember almost from the beginning, when Deacon was recovering from mono and still working out the horses every day.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he murmured. “Can I strip now and shower?”

Crick shook his head. The stitches were extensive, and he knew Deacon’s whole body would be sensitive to things like hugs until the pain meds kicked in.

“Promise me you’ll… I don’t know. You won’t just keep all this shit to yourself again? Didn’t we promise that? Something like that? Wasn’t it in our wedding vows or something?”

“Nope,” Deacon said, holding back a smirk. “I would have rewritten that bullshit—if you all had given me a chance.”

Crick found a grin creeping out at the memory of their surprise wedding. “Could you promise anyway?” he asked nakedly, and Deacon reached out and grabbed his hand.

“Crick?”

“Yeah?”

“I promise that we can feed that baby. I promise that we can change it, we can clothe it, we can keep it clean. I’ve done that part before—it’s a challenge, don’t mistake me, but I promise it can be done. I cannot promise nothing bad will happen. You’ve heard Collin’s story—his dad passed away in an instant. His mom—you’ve met her. Sweetest goddamned woman in history. And Collin? He is the first person to confess that he was a class-A fuckup right up until he tested positive. All we can do is love this kid. It is
literally
all we have. That, and the hope that the people around us will keep us from fucking up when things get hairy. We’ve got people around us who will do that. And we’ve got each other. If, God forbid, I go tits up before this little fish is fully grown, you will
still
have me, because you’ve
had
me since you were a little kid. I won’t go away in your head or your heart. I’ll still be there, just like Collin’s dad was in half the stuff Natalie did to try to keep that idiot alive until he came to his senses. Just like my mom haunted this goddamned house when Parrish couldn’t remember to talk more than once a goddamned day. It’s the only promise I can give you, okay? You and me, we can love this baby.”

Crick felt the smile stretching his cheeks for no good goddamned reason. “So you just
had
all that fucking wisdom and you kept it to yourself? What an asshole!”

Deacon laughed, but his eyes were closing and the pain meds were obviously kicking in.

“C’mon, let’s get you in the shower.” They’d kept the shower chair from Crick’s worst days back home after he’d been wounded, and Crick had moved it in so Deacon could just sit and get pounded by the warm water.

He came back with a dry towel and some briefs and sweats and a shirt, and Deacon generally let himself be attended to—although Crick could tell by the long-suffering expression on his face that it was mostly for Crick’s benefit, not his own.

By the time Crick was done with his own shower, Deacon was mostly asleep, and Crick took a moment to look at him before he turned off the light.

“Deacon?” he asked quietly as he hit the switch.

“Mmm?”

“Why didn’t you at least tell me you were going to the doctor?”

“’Cause you were finally painting the nursery. Didn’t wanna fuck that up. Looks real nice, Carrick—go to sleep.”

Crick sighed. Not perfect. He was
not
perfect. He was an irritating, close-to-the-vest, insecure martyr. Crick was damned sure the one thing that had made him survive Iraq was the thought of Deacon in this world without Crick to take care of him.

Their kid?
That
was going to be an interesting person right there.

Crick couldn’t wait to meet it.

And here Benny was, whispering to him in the middle of the night to look at her stomach. He pulled himself mostly awake and felt it first.

He felt it, and the movement was familiar by now, the smooth glide of muscle and bone, making itself comfortable inside her body. “So. Fucking. Cool. Turn on the light, Benny, I wanna see.”

Benny did, and Crick stared at his sister’s larger body with interest.

She was wearing drawstring pants tied under her stomach and one of Drew’s old T-shirts over it. She stood up and hauled the shirt above her stomach and tucked it under her boobs.

“Classy, Benny,” he muttered, and she smacked his head.

“Yeah, I’m classy. Now feel me up before I have to pee.”

Crick put his hand on her stomach again, and sure enough, the thing inside pushed back. Hard
.

“It’s fighting
me!” he said, startled.

Benny giggled. “He doesn’t do that for Deacon—”

“He?”

“She, it, whatever.
It
doesn’t do that for Deacon.”

“Well, why is it fighting me?” he asked, pushing back at the little demon spawn.

His sister’s giggle yanked him right back to their childhood, when he would come home and tell her jokes he’d heard in the fourth grade, and Benny, at barely four, understood them. “Because it knows
you,” she said, still giggling. “C’mon, Crick—you don’t think this baby’s going to get into fights with Deacon, do you?”

Crick looked at her belly then, saw the skin move like the surface of a flesh lake while a big predator pushed up inside.

He stared at it, enthralled. “Jesus, Benny, that
can’t
be comfortable!” he said, and she shrugged.

“It’s actually….” Her piquant little face scrunched up, and her chipmunk cheeks popped, and she smiled so tightly her eyes got squished between her cheeks and her brows. “It’s sort of magical,” she confided, her voice hushed, like a little girl telling a parent about fairies.

Crick found himself smiling too. He looked up at his little sister in the dim light of the bedside lamp and suddenly saw her all the ways he’d ever seen her. As a smart little kid. As a precocious and angry adolescent. As the pregnant teenager who had helped save Deacon when he hadn’t been there. As the competent housemate who had balanced the raging emotions when he’d returned.

As a brilliant young woman with a mind of her own.

He stood up then and hugged her, smooshing her big pregnant belly between them.

“Thanks,” he said into her hair. “This thing you’re doing… this thing you’re
giving
. Deacon tried to warn me how hard it was going to be on you. He did. It was one of his big reasons for not doing it. I don’t know what you said to convince him, but thank you.”

Benny turned her body a little sideways so her belly swung outward and she could hug him back harder. “You’re welcome. Thanks yourself. I know this thing with Missy hurts, but you… I mean, you’ll always be my big stupid useless brother”—she was sniffling, and he smiled because that was Benny—“but you were a
really great
mom.”

She went back to sleep on the couch a few minutes after that, still sniffling, and he crawled back in next to Deacon. Deacon was warm and safe, and he grasped Crick’s hand automatically as Crick circled his waist.

“Did you finally see it?” Deacon mumbled.

“Magic? Life? Redemption?” Crick said into the back of his neck, and he was reassured when Deacon breathed out a sleepy laugh.

“Yeah, sure. All of it.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it like?”

“Like the first time I saw you,” Crick murmured. “Like proof that God exists.”

“Oh Jesus—”

“Shut up and go to sleep. I love you.”

“Love you too. Night.”

A good moment. A happy, glowy moment. The next morning Shane called them and told them that if they wished, they would have an excuse to see Missy again after all.