“Not so…hard.” She touched his fuller bottom lip. “Not so cold.”
He rested one hand on her waist, drawing circles over her hip bone with one lazy finger. “It only happens when I’m around you.”
The gruff confession brought a spark of gratification. “I guess that makes me pretty special.”
“More than you’ll ever know.”
Their gazes locked, and then, as if pulled by a magnet, they both looked down at her belly again.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” he asked, the concern in his voice making her heart do a little flip.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she assured him. “Or the baby.”
To her disappointment, the softness in his eyes dimmed at the mention of their child. Her throat tightened as a crushing realization pressed against her chest.
“You’re not planning on being in this baby’s life, are you?”
His shuttered expression was all the answer she needed.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because I can’t.”
“Why?” She knew she sounded like a two-year-old tossing “whys” at her parents, but she truly couldn’t make sense of any of this. “We got away, Deacon. Nobody has to know you were ever involved in the abduction. We could—” Her voice cracked. “We could raise this baby together.”
Pure torture reflected in his eyes. “I’ll know, Lana. I’ll always know that I was responsible for keeping you hostage. And I can’t live with that. I can’t be with you knowing how much pain I caused.”
His words settled between them like an impassable mountain. She knew then that no matter how much she argued, how much she tried to show him otherwise, she might never be able to break through that obstacle. His guilt. His shame.
“I’m going to get you back to your family,” he went on, his voice husky, “and then I’ll disappear from your life. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but—”
“What happened after your parents died?” she cut in.
He flinched, as if the question caused physical pain.
“Tell me,” she pressed.
“I…survived.”
Those three little syllables told her so much more than he’d probably intended to reveal. “How?” she asked.
He shifted, his pecs flexing from the movement. “However I could. I ran drugs for a couple of guys in South Boston. Did some enforcer work for the Southie mafia.”
“Enforcer work?”
“I beat up lowlifes who owed them money,” he said flatly.
A short silence fell. Lana suspected that was all she’d get from him, but to her surprise, he continued. His expression never changed, but the pain in his tone hung in the air.
“We were wealthy. Did I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, it’s true. Disgustingly wealthy, in fact. My father owned a shipping company, he inherited it from his father, who inherited it from his father. The family business was worth billions.”
Lana blinked in shock. She was no stranger to family money, but somehow she couldn’t picture Deacon growing up with such affluence.
“Mom was a renowned ballerina in her time,” he went on, a faraway note entering his voice. “She was so beautiful, unbelievably graceful. She retired after she had me, but she still kept a dance studio on the top floor of our house. I used to sit there and watch her dance for hours.”
“And your dad?”
“He wasn’t as gentle as my mother. He… I guess you could call him abusive.”
“He hit her?”
“No. He didn’t use fists, he used words. He wanted so much from everyone, from her, from me, and we always came up short. We always disappointed him, and he never hesitated to tell us that, especially her. And then one day, he just snapped.” Deacon’s voice thickened with pain. “I don’t know why. I have no clue what led to it, what she might have said or done to trigger him. I hired a PI about fifteen years ago, trying to piece it together, but he came up with nothing. Mom wasn’t cheating, hadn’t planned on leaving, hadn’t done anything. My father just…”
He stopped abruptly. Lana knew what came next, a tragic murder-suicide that had shattered Deacon’s entire world. Rather than focus on that horrifying snippet of history, she said, “After they died, what happened to the money?”
“My uncle happened.” Bitterness dripped from the admission. “I was only fifteen, so he became my guardian. He would run the business until I came of age, but what he did was run it into the ground. He also threw me out.”
She sucked in a breath. “Why would he do that?”
“Greed,” Deacon said emphatically. “He was always so envious of my father. Their father had favored his eldest, and my uncle James was the son who got hand-me-downs and leftovers. James was bitter. He also had a massive gambling problem and piss-poor business sense. He got rid of me, and then managed to lose every last penny his ancestors had worked so hard to earn.”