Bounty (Colorado Mountain 7)

He studied me a beat after I gave him those words before he opened his mouth to speak.

“Right, then, gypsy, you gotta know, it is not the fact that I drove up to work at the house of a woman who was the finest I’d met and saw police cruisers that put us here right now. It was the fact I wanted you before that and wouldn’t let myself have you. And the reasons for that were not just because you’re the woman you are, you got what you got, though, straight up, babe, that was part of it. It’s because I’m the man I am and that’s not gonna change either, and in my head, you’re right. I was thinking we did not fit.”

It was my turn not to have anything to say but it felt like something was crushing my heart.

“Then I saw those cruisers,” he went on, “and I do not want your money. I also don’t want the hassle that’s sure to come from your fame. Not sayin’ that to be a dick, sayin’ it to be real but also sayin’ it because I don’t wanna have to watch you deal with the hassle that’s sure to come from that. But seeing those cruisers got my head outta my ass about wanting you.”

“Deke, this isn’t really helping,” I shared, no longer slightly nervous, I was downright anxious because he said this wasn’t going to be bad.

But outside the him wanting me part—which I already knew, I just didn’t know when that began—the rest just sounded bad.

And he was being weird, blunt, distant, and it was scaring me.

“My life, babe,” he shook his head, “until I was about twenty, it was not good.”

“Okay,” I prompted carefully, not liking that.

“And because a’ that, I got a way I gotta be and that’s a way that’s not gonna change.”

“Okay,” I repeated equally carefully.

“And Justice, bein’ with you, bein’ with any woman, but especially you, was likely gonna put the pressure on to change that.”

“I don’t want to change you either, Deke.”

“I got no roots. I’ve never had any roots. And I do not fuckin’ want any roots,” he declared.

I just stared at him.

“And I do not like rich people. I do not wanna go to fancy restaurants, unless their menu is predominantly steak, more steak and a choice of sauce you can put on a steak, not that I’d ruin a steak with sauce. And I can go there not havin’ to wear a suit, somethin’ I don’t own and never will.”

“Right,” I said just because he stopped talking but also because I couldn’t say more since he declared he didn’t like rich people and I was a rich person.

“No one has power over me,” he went on. “And no one ever will.”

I had nothing to say to that because I had no idea why he said it because I’d given him no reason to think I wanted that from him.

It was then he announced, “When I was fifteen, my mom and I were living on the streets.”

At this news, my body turned to stone in order to conserve all its energy to battle desperate, miserable, soul-demolishing thoughts of the magnificence Deke and the mom he clearly loved a great deal, homeless, and I again just stared at him.

“That was on me. I fucked us up. I did somethin’ seriously fuckin’ stupid that got her fired and blackballed so she couldn’t get another job. We didn’t have a lot because she got paid shit at the job she had. She got paid shit, she ate shit and her life was shit until it turned shittier when I pulled my shit and our lives that were actually just garbage turned to full-on shit.”

I kept staring at him but I did it feeling the wet hit my eyes.

“We got into a shelter, which was warmer than the streets, they had food so we weren’t hungry all the fuckin’ time, but the place still sucked. And she worked her ass off to get us out of there. She worked her ass off before we were in there and she kept doin’ it every day of her life until workin’ that hard killed her. Dead of a heart attack before she’d even reached sixty.”

I could not believe this.

Hell, I didn’t want to believe this.

But he was giving it to me, what Lauren had warned me I’d have to brace for, and she’d been right.

That said, it was no gift.

It was heartbreaking.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek.

Deke didn’t quit talking.

“That was her life. My life, I started workin’ at fifteen and I did everything I fuckin’ could to take care of my ma. But when I knew she was set, decent place to live, job that was steady, money in the bank for a rainy day, I had to go. I had to get out and go somewhere where I wasn’t covered with the shit of life and I could breathe easy. Between then and now, been a lot of places and there’s only one place that happens. That’s the road, Jussy. Only place I breathe easy.”

“I understand that,” I told him softly.

He nodded his head, his eyes on my wet cheeks but he didn’t touch me outside the hand he still had tucked behind my knee.

He kept distant and he kept speaking.

“I know. You’re my gypsy princess and you’re a true rock ‘n’ roll gypsy. But what you understand, what made you a part of the road is not what made me.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said quickly.

“Tears in your eyes, Jussy, I get that you get me.”

“I hate that happened to you and your mom,” I whispered.

“Tears in your eyes, I get that too,” he whispered back. “But it happened, baby, and that never changes. The road, it’s in my blood not like you, born to it like you were. It’s who I was driven to be. And it’s that in a way it’ll never stop.”