A choked cry forced from my chest before I could stop it. I didn’t know if I was nodding or shaking my head, only that it was moving. “Yes, that’s okay. I won’t, baby. I swear I won’t.”

I stood on weak, shaking legs, and avoided Deacon’s questioning stare as I left to go help Keith change clothes.

A few minutes later, when I approached the front door he was holding open, I glanced up and forced a smile that he didn’t return. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He nodded slowly. His face was guarded, but his eyes were searching, begging, questioning everything he’d just seen and heard.

I couldn’t give him an answer to any of the questions he had. Instead, I grabbed Keith’s hand and walked to my car.

. . . which was now no longer working again.

Deacon didn’t say anything about my needing a new car, or say anything at all. He just waited silently as I got Keith’s booster seat into his car, and kept quiet during the drive. By the time we got to Mama’s, I was ready to run from the awkward silence of Deacon’s car, but he gripped my hand in his as soon as he pulled into a parking spot.

He waited until I was looking up at him to say, “I will never force you to talk to me in front of Keith. If you want to walk from me in front of him, then I’ll let you walk—even if you physically can’t. But watching you go through that . . . damn it, Charlie. My fucking heart was breaking for you and I had no clue what was going on. I just had to stand there and watch because you pushed me away.”

My head shook slowly as he spoke. “This morning . . . I cannot handle this morning. It’s been one thing after another, and it isn’t even eight, Deacon.”

He arched a brow, and gently challenged, “So you’re gonna push it away until it comes back up? Keith normally doesn’t stop talking, and I couldn’t get him to talk or even look at me after the question about the grassy place.”

I swallowed past the tightness in my throat, and whispered, “It’s because he saw you kissing me.”

Deacon didn’t say anything for a few seconds. And I knew he was thinking back over the last four days. His confusion was apparent when he spoke again. “He saw me kiss you the night you moved into that house. He was coming out of his room when I was leaving. He didn’t care then.”

“He did. When I was putting him back in bed after you left, he asked if you were going to have to go to the grassy place. Then he asked me not to kiss you anymore.” I could see that the unknown half-answers and vague responses were starting to overwhelm Deacon. Before he could ask, I hurried to explain. “Die, Deacon. He thinks you’re going to die because I kissed you.”

Light brown eyes bored into mine, trying to uncover the meaning behind my words. “Why do I have a feeling that for once, what Keith was talking about had nothing to do with mutants or ladybugs?”

A startled laugh bubbled up from my chest, but quickly faded away to nothing. “No, Keith calls the cemetery the grassy place. He doesn’t understand why or how Ben died; he just knows that his daddy is in the grassy place. The night he saw us kiss, he asked me if you were going to have to go to the grassy place since I’d kissed you. I nearly lost my mind when that question left his little lips, but I tried to stay calm and just told him I didn’t understand.

“To Keith, only daddies kiss mommies, and since he saw you kiss me, he was making that connection. When I tried to explain to him that kissing didn’t necessarily mean people were married, he said that he couldn’t have a daddy because his daddies would always have to go to the grassy place.” I tried to steady the shaking in my voice when I continued, but knew from Deacon’s expression that I didn’t succeed. “Then he asked me not to kiss you anymore, because I’d already made ‘his Ben’ go there, and he didn’t want me to make you go to the grassy place too.”

“Charlie,” Deacon murmured, shock and pain for my son and me clear in that one word. “Shit, Charlie Girl, I’m sorry.”

“He doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but God, it hurts.”

Dozens of questions and emotions swirled through Deacon’s eyes and passed over his face as my words hung heavily in the space between us. When he finally settled on one, he was looking at me like he’d never considered the possibility of whatever it was he was thinking.

“What?” I nearly begged.

“He really meant a lot to you too, didn’t he?”

“Ben?”

But Deacon didn’t respond, just continued watching me, waiting.

“He meant . . .” I trailed off; my head shook quickly. “I loved him the way Jagger loved Grey: deeply and wholly, silently and from a distance.”

Again, clearly something Deacon hadn’t ever considered, and now, something else was mixing with the surprise and confusion. The corner of his mouth lifted and fell, and he exhaled quickly through his nose. “I never expected to be jealous of someone who wasn’t alive.”

“Jealous of Be—Deacon, why? He’s been gone for four years.”

“Doesn’t matter, Charlie. The way you reacted to what Keith asked, knowing now what it all meant . . .” He trailed off. “You were able to break my damn heart just by watching yours break, and it was over another guy.”

I shrugged weakly. “What do you want me to say? I won’t lie to you about—”

“No, Charlie, don’t you get it?” His brown eyes warmed and lit with amusement. “I’ve never been jealous of a guy in my life. And now I’ve had to restrain myself daily from punching one of my best friends, and I hate that a guy who died four years ago touched you.”

I jerked my head back and flattened my body against the door. “Punch one of your best friends—which one, and why?”

“Don’t let Graham kiss you again,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed on my cheeks when blood quickly rushed to them, and a growl rumbled deep in his chest. “And don’t do that when I mention him.”

I tried to stop my blushing, but I had no control over it. Considering Graham made me think of Stranger, and when there were thoughts of Stranger, there was never-ending blush paired with a racing heart; I knew it was going to be impossible to get it to stop. Just like it was nearly impossible to stop thinking of Graham as Stranger when nearly every time I saw him, he said something that echoed Stranger’s words.