I got it. I liked it. Even if it was slightly scary, it was also kind of sweet.

“Yes,” I answered.

He said nothing further but I decided it was time to get down to it.

That said, I didn’t particularly want to get down to it, but it was time.

So I asked (though I did it cautiously), “Are you a criminal?”

He didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“I don’t pay taxes.”

I felt my head give a slight jerk at this informatively uninformative (but still scary) response.

“Sorry?”

“I have work. I make money. I get paid in cash. And the government does not know I exist.”

Yep. I didn’t want to get down to it.

Still, we were here and he was answering so I kept at it.

“And is what you do for cash illegal?”

He kept his eyes to the road even as he reached for his coffee. I watched him take a sip, return it to the cup holder, and then he again spoke.

This time his tone was gentle even if the words were not.

“I’ll tell you this, if you knew from start to now about what I do, how it began, why I do it, and you had a problem with it, I’d think straight up you’re a judgmental bitch. Then I’d walk out the door and you’d never see me again.”

At that, I did a slow blink.

But he wasn’t finished.

“I’m good at what I do. There’s a reason I do it. I believe in that reason. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a part of a world that will never—if I become a part of your life in a way that’s lasting, it’s important you hear this, woman—it will not ever touch you.”

“I’m not sure any of that makes sense,” I said softly, saying that instead of saying that he was speaking but he wasn’t really giving me anything.

“It does to me and that’s all you need to know.”

That was not gentle, but firm and unyielding.

In other words, he didn’t intend to give me anything.

“That’s the part that makes the least sense,” I returned, still talking quietly.

“That’s the part where you have to take a leap of faith with this, believe in what you felt when you made your choice yesterday, that bein’ believin’ in me.”

“I barely know you,” I pointed out.

“You barely knew me and you brought me pie,” he returned.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

Again with the pie.

Man, seriously. It sucked that he knew the significance of that pie.

“You barely knew me and you got naked on that table for me,” he kept going.

I looked back through the windshield, and before taking another sip, muttered, “You’ve made your point, Deacon.”

“Not sure I have.”

Now he was talking quietly, his tone so changed, my gaze went back to him.

He must have felt my eyes because he kept going.

“All of this is your choice.”

“I know it is,” I replied.

“Any time, you can go back on that choice.”

I sucked my lips between my teeth, not liking that idea and finding that I kind of wanted Deacon to go back to nonverbal communication.

Or silence.

“You change your mind,” he carried on, “I won’t like it, but I’ll submit to it.”

“That feels sweet at the same time not so much,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” he muttered to the windshield, again speaking like he was talking to himself. “Your world, a man gets hold of you, he’s a fool, he lets go.”

His words made me pull in a soft breath.

He looked to me and finished, “I don’t live in your world.” Then his eyes went back to the road.

I knew this but having it confirmed, waking up tucked to his back, being in his Suburban, it hit me with a clarity it never had before because I’d accepted him in my life. A man who existed most of his time in a world I’d never share, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t want to, but even if I did, he wouldn’t let me (which made me know I was right about that feeling).

And that clarity was what that would mean to me, not just right then, but if it happened that he became a bigger part of my life, my world, like he’d mentioned frequently.

If he became my man.

If, when he was with me, he was at my side.

If he met my friends. My family.

If the time came where life needed to be lived.

Commitment.

Babies.

This made me ask, “Forever and ever?”

“No, baby,” he said instantly, his hand moving to curl around my thigh, a gesture of affection and connection that he was spare in giving when we were not in bed, making each one he gave more meaningful. But at that moment I was glad he gave it because it was what I really needed. “You do not live in that world forever. You find your way in it while that way is healthy and then you get the fuck out.”

That made me feel better.

“So, when—?”

“I don’t know,” he cut me off to answer my unasked question. “I just know for the first time in ten years, I got an incentive to find the door outta that world and use it.”

There was a lot there even when there weren’t that many words.

Most of it was good, that part being it was clear I was his incentive.

The ten years, though, that was intriguing.

“Bein’ in that world, Cassie,” he went on, “you gotta know, even when I find that door, in some ways, it’ll always be with me.”

“It’s with you now,” I noted. “And I’m with you now knowing it. So why would I care if it stays with you?”

His fingers squeezed hard at my thigh but he didn’t say anything.

Back to nonverbal communication.

I drew in a breath and released it.

Then I asked, “Ten years?”

His hand left my thigh and went to his coffee. He took a sip, put it back in the holder, and put his hand back to the wheel.

Okay, that one he wasn’t going to answer.

I looked to the road and took my own sip of coffee.

No music, no words, we sat there in silence. I didn’t know what he was thinking. I was wondering if I was crazy at the same time knowing I totally was and not caring even a little bit.

This, of course, making me crazier.

“Magnificent.”

Deacon said this on a mutter, breaking the silence.

I looked at him again. “Sorry?”

“The way you laid it out for that punk-ass bitch before you stomped outta that cabin. Fuck, so goddamned magnificent, if I wasn’t fightin’ the urge to rip five teenage fuckwads’ throats out, I would have clapped. “