Somehow, my eyes drift away from my now ex-wife to her best friend. Time has been good to her, and the two-and-a-half years since I last saw her sneering face have changed her from the teen queen she thought she was to the woman she has always pretended to be. Gorgeous, thick in all the right places, the face of an angel with a heart as black as midnight. She’s finally gotten what she wanted, but when her eyes meet mine, there’s a shimmer of sadness in her eyes, a hint that maybe she feels sorry for me, and that’s worse than her animosity.
I don’t need pity, and certainly not from a woman who has spent the entirety of her adult life trying to rip a hole in my relationship with Dani. Knowing that she’s finally succeeded, I look away just completely done with the entire day.
The heartbreak I felt in the courtroom waiting for Dani to show hardens. The grief washing over me as we signed the paperwork all the while she refused to look me in the eye dissipates, and by the time I climb into my truck and pull away, I’m a changed man.
I’m impenetrable, untouchable, my heart caged in concrete, wrapped in chains, and tossed into the depths of the ocean never to feel the warmth of the sun again.Chapter 1Deacon
“Casing the joint?”
A smile is on my face before I can even turn around.
“Nothing around here worth stealing.” Facing Jake Lincoln fully, it only takes a few heartbeats before his arms are wrapped around me.
I clap him on the back twice, but he seems more reluctant than usual to let me go.
“Never stopped you before.” He grins wide, the corners of his eyes and laugh lines on his face deepening. The man is always smiling, always happy, always the first one to step up to help someone out. It was like that the day I met him at fifteen and it still rings true today.
“One time.” I hold up a finger for emphasis. “I stole something once.”
He doesn’t need the reminder since he brings up our very first meeting each and every damn time I see him.
“You stole a gun, Deacon.” His brow furrows, face growing serious, much the same way it did seventeen years ago. Only today he’s not in the familiar uniform I’ve seen him wear more times than I can count. There’s no holster belt on his lean hips, no badge pinned to his proud chest. Today he’s dressed to the max in a navy suit and a tie.
I grin back at him when it’s clear he’s struggling with taking the serious route. “It was an airsoft gun. You make it sound like I broke into a car and jacked a drug dealer’s arsenal.”
“That would’ve happened a few days later if I hadn’t stepped in.”
We both pause for a moment, letting reality sink in. He’s probably correct in his assumptions. At fifteen, I was wild and rebellious, ready to prove to myself and everyone around me that I was a badass, that I was street smart and could survive in any situation.
It didn’t matter that I grew up with two loving parents in a nice middle-class neighborhood. It didn’t matter that I laid my head down at night on clean sheets with a full belly when most of my friends didn’t have those luxuries. None of that mattered. I’d started down a dark road, and if Jake hadn’t been called when I was caught red-handed with a stolen toy gun at a local retailer, my life could’ve been dramatically different.
“You’re right,” I finally agree, smiling wistfully with the memories of just how hard I thought I was back then. It doesn’t even come close to the way I am now, but life experiences make things different. They set you on a path no one could’ve predicted.
I’m now officially a badass, at least those around me say that I am. Only I’m on the right side of the law, mostly anyway.
“How’s your mom and dad?”
People swarm around us, interrupting to shake Jake’s hand and tell him congratulations on his retirement as we talk, but it’s always like this around Jake. He’s the sort that draws people in. Without even knowing why, people gravitate to him, much the same way I did all those years ago when he offered me something different, something I never thought I’d long for. He offered safety in his mentorship, safety to be around friends who didn’t judge and more importantly didn’t tempt me into doing all the wrong things. Positive peer pressure changed my life and kept me from making mistakes that would eventually be too hard or impossible to correct.
And he did this with numerous young men and women. Many of those people from my teen years are the ones walking up and greeting him like family, most all of them successful in their own right.