39. London
Chapter 39
London
T he five days following my embarrassing gesture to Archer are filled with mostly self-loathing and ignoring my responsibilities. I call out of work, using the excuse that I'm still recovering from the gunshot wound, some aches and pains lingering that prevent me from going in. Grace doesn't buy it. She shows up anyway, and despite my best efforts, she forces herself into my apartment with the key I gave her and pokes around.
"You can't live like this," she says while turning up her nose. "This place is a disaster." Grace uses a pair of tongs from the kitchen to pick up a shirt hanging on the back of a chair. "Where's your hamper?"
"I don't have a hamper." I plop onto the couch, not caring at all that she's disrespecting my personal space. With Grace, those things don't matter, and I don't exactly have it in me to put up a fight.
"You're going to shower." Grace goes over to the bathroom, turns the faucet on, and then goes into my room. "Don't you have any clean clothes? Ah, there we go." She has a pile of my belongings in her grasp as she goes back into the bathroom, returning a minute later to drag me from the couch. "I'm going to order Chinese food, and you're going to wash your ass. When I get back, we're going to make a plan, an actionable one. A how-to of sorts."
She shoves me into the bathroom but I just stand there as it fills up with steam.
Grace groans and comes inside, reaching for the hem of my shirt.
I smack her hand. "I can undress myself, Grace, I'm not completely helpless."
"Could have fooled me." She makes her way to the door, turning around to face me. "I'll be back in half an hour. I've let you mope enough. This ends today." Grace shuts me in and I know if I don't do exactly as she says, she'll bathe me herself and never let me live it down.
So I strip out of my clothes, tossing them into the pile heaped on the floor, and step into the piping hot water. Closing my eyes, I'm grateful my tears have a place to escape as they're washed down the drain. I wash my hair, breaking momentarily here or there to sob, my back against the wall. I do what I can to clean my body well, not wanting to leave it to Grace to verify I followed through. Once I'm done, I sink onto the shower floor and bring my knees to my chest, hugging my body tightly. The hot water spills onto me and I lower my head, considering what it would take to accidentally waterboard myself to death. It's not that I want to die, I just don't exactly want to be alive, not when everything reminds me of the life I gave up when I finally had it all. I was an idiot for thinking what I was risking was worth it, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. Too late for me, for Archer, for us.
A loud knock fills my bathroom, but I don't move. If it's Grace, she'll use her key, and if it's anyone else, I can't be bothered to find out what they want. The only person I want to hear from wants nothing to do with me, and I can't even blame him. I lectured Archer about telling me the truth and then I went behind his back to put his entire family in danger. He has every right to hate me, and honestly, I'm surprised he didn't kill me just to make sure it never happens again. I can't get the image of him out of my head, shutting the door on us forever after baring myself to him in a way I never had with anyone ever. I've relived that moment over and over, and reworked that speech a million different ways, but each one ends with the same outcome—Archer shutting me out.
Why couldn't I make him change his mind? Why couldn't I fix what I had broken?Why couldn't I just make him love me?
But Grace is right, I have to move on from what can't be changed, because if I continue to sit in this state of misery, I'm going to go completely mad.
I wipe away my tears and climb out of the shower, towel-drying and throwing on the clothes that she had picked out for me—nothing special, a pair of jeans I bought the first week I lived with Archer and a fitted black top. I slide my palm across the steamed-up mirror and take a look at myself, my eyes red and puffy, my hair in wet ringlets on my shoulders.
A booming sound rattles my walls and my first instinct is to reach for my phone, to call Archer, but those days are behind me, and I have to figure out how to move on without him in my life, even if I'd prefer nothing less.Not to mention I haven't gotten a phone since I left mine at his place and I haven't had it in me to figure out where to even do that. I'm sure Grace would help me, but I don't want to, not yet, not when I'd have to step out into a hallway that we share, walk down steps we walked together, exist in the world without him.
What we had was temporary but it was the first real thing I'd felt in my entire life and I let it go up in smoke because I was too afraid it would consume me like everything else had up until that point.
I follow the rattling that fills my apartment, stepping out of my bathroom with caution, another blast crackling loudly. The hung pictures shake and the glassware rattles in my kitchen cabinets. Is this an earthquake? We had plenty of those on the West Coast but none of them were quite like this. Maybe this is how they are in New York, something else I'm going to have to get used to if I'm going to be living here.
I guess I hadn't thought too much past getting free of Joe. Now that I regained my name, I could return home to California and be London Gardella once again, that name feeling so foreign despite spending my entire life living as that person.
Another bang shakes me to my core and I gasp as a piece of drywall goes flying, the wall separating my apartment from Archer's quite literally being torn to shreds. With my hand to my chest, I gawk at the sight unfolding in front of me, a sledgehammer blasting the wall apart and Archer stepping through in a cloud of dust particles.
With my eyes wide, I take him in, his chest heaving, his tattooed muscles bulging his shirt more than they ever have.
"What the fuck, Archer?" I blurt out because that's the only thing I can think of. I didn't exactly pay it, but I won't be getting the security deposit back on this place anytime soon.
"You," Archer says as he catches his breath. "You didn't answer the door."
I blink a few times and process what he just said. "I didn't answer so you busted the wall down?" I point at my wet hair. "I was in the shower."
He nods and shrugs. "Right, yeah, that makes sense."
"What if I wasn't home?"
"I, uh, I guess I would have waited until you came back."
"Waited for what? You told me you never wanted to see me ever again." Even saying it out loud reopens the wound I keep trying to mend. "What is this about?"
"I need to talk to you." His eyes frantically roam my body and suddenly I'm exposed and vulnerable, even more so than when I was holding that stupid fucking boom box over my head and confessing my feelings for him.
"You couldn't have called? You had to break the?—"
Archer cuts me off. "Will you please shut up, for one minute?"
"Fine, sorry, by all means, the floor is yours." I sigh at the mess he made but realize I've done far worse and yet he's still here, standing in front of me, a beautiful ghost from my recent past. My heart aches and I'm not sure how much more I can take of his rejection.
"I have been in that apartment rotting every single day since I last saw you, and every day before. I can't tell you the last time I slept, not deeply, and when I have, I dreamt of you, waking up in a cold sweat because it wasn't real. I have thought of and played things over and over in my head. I have theorized what happened, and I have done everything I can to shut it off, to shut you off. I stare at this fucking wall, and at this point, it's like it's been talking to me, taunting me, daring me to tear it down."
Archer pauses to loosen a breath and I take one with him like I had been holding it that entire time.
"I don't know what else to do. I can't keep this up. My work is suffering. My family is suffering. I am suffering."
He takes a cautious step, barely moving at all.
"I hate you, London. I hate your father, I hate what he did to you, what he did to me. I hate everything you stand for. I hate how you never shut up and how you leave destruction in your wake everywhere you go. I hate that your hair is all over my apartment, tangled in my laundry and clogging up my drain. I hate how the scent of you no longer remains on my sheets. I hate how you fight with me over everything and I hate how you think you're always right. I hate that you never listen to me, and you're so fucking hardheaded. I hate how independent you are and that you never really needed me. I hate that I have no idea what you're doing, or who you're with, and I hate that you've been living this close to me. I hate that I don't trust you, and I hate that despite hating you, you consume every single one of my thoughts. And I think the thing I hate the most is that I don't hate you at all."
Archer drops the sledgehammer in his hands and it thuds against the floor.
My heart stutters and I freeze, unable, unsure, unwilling to move.
"What I'm trying to say, my little tornado, is that I love you." Archer comes closer. "I can't stand another second without you in it. I don't know how to fix what's been broken, but I refuse to waste another moment not trying to figure out how."
He bridges almost every shred of distance between us and looks down at me. "Say something," Archer whispers. "Say anything."
I stare up at him, my heart pounding and settling all at once, everything I hoped and wished and prayed for coming to fruition in this very moment. "What took you so long?" My eyes well and I grow tired of the tears that won't seem to stop now that they've begun.
But this time, I have Archer to wipe them from my cheeks, his hands cupping them, his thumbs rubbing gently. "I'm so sorry, London. For the things I said, for the way I treated you, I'm sorry."
I shake my head. "You could have done worse and it would have been justified. I was the one who messed up, Archer. It's me who should be apologizing."
"You already did," he reminds me. "With a boom box."
I pinch my eyes shut, hating the memory that follows—him shutting his door and breaking my heart one final, but well-deserved, time.
"For the record," he adds. "It was the single most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me." Archer presses his lips to my nose, kissing me gently. "I wish I would have reacted differently. I wish I would have realized then how much you mean to me."
I open my eyes and stare up at him, my heart beating evenly in my chest, all this feeling so fucking right, despite how hard it was to get here.
"You can wreck my life anytime, my little tornado."
"Shut up and kiss me, big guy."
Archer grins before doing exactly that, his mouth meeting mine, something so drastically different in the way he touches me, the way our bodies melt into each other’s, the way I want nothing more than to get closer to him, not out of the undeniable chemistry we've always shared, but because of something much deeper this time, something that I can only assume is love.
He backs me straight into the wall, my body hitting it with a thud. Archer's arm wraps around my waist and my hands slide up his neck and into his hair. He lifts me from the ground, his body pinning me there, the heat of us becoming one. We stay that way for a few minutes, not quite getting enough of each other, until the door to my apartment opens and the sound of it shutting pulls me away from the sexy man grinding into me.
With Archer still holding on to me, I settle my sights on Grace, who is holding a brown sack of food in her hand, her eyes wide.
"Well," she says. "Um. I see that I'm interrupting something here." Grace walks farther into the apartment and drops the bag on the counter. "I'm just going to leave this here, for when you two are finished ." She puts her thumb and pinkie finger to her face, mimicking a phone, and mouths, "Call me later," and slowly backs away, slipping out the door she entered through, not even waiting for an explanation.
I laugh into Archer's neck and sigh, taking him in. "Oops."
His dark eyes meet mine. "You hungry?"
"Not for what's in that bag."
Archer swallows and asks me, "What are you hungry for?"
"You," I tell him, not a second pause from his question to my answer. "We've spent more time apart than we have together and I don't want to waste another moment. I missed you, Archer. So fucking badly."
"Do you remember your safe word?"
"Bagels," I confirm.
"Good." His gaze scans my face. "Do I have permission to make love to you?"
I inhale and consider his words carefully. The last time we hooked up I told him not to, but it wasn't because that isn't what I wanted, it's because I was afraid of what things would turn into if we got too deep. But here we are, surviving the worst, finally showing up authentically for each other.
"I give you my permission," I mutter finally, no longer afraid of my feelings for him.
Archer's cheeks turn up as if he was afraid I might have a different response, and he continues holding me as he carries me into the bedroom and sets me on the edge of the bed. He kneels in front of me and unbuttons my jeans, guiding them over my ass and off my legs. He trails his hands up my now exposed skin, up my thighs. "You're so fucking beautiful, London." Archer shakes his head. "I can't believe you're mine."
I press my foot to his chest, stopping him. "Your what?"
His brows bunch together.
"Ask me, big guy."
Archer sighs dramatically but then clears his throat, standing completely up, holding my foot in his hands. "London, will you grant me the immense honor of being your boyfriend?"
"Hmm." I squint my eyes. "I mean…I guess so."
"You guess so?" Archer narrows his gaze. "You're really out here trying to break my heart, aren't you?"
"Archer," I say, no longer wanting to tease him, at least not like this. "Be my boyfriend."
He winks at me. "If you say so, girlfriend ."
I release my leg and pull my shirt up over my head, tossing it onto the floor, no doubt driving him insane by my lack of tidiness. I reach for his waist, undoing his pants as he takes his shirt off to reveal his tattooed, chiseled stomach. My nipples perk at the sheer sight of him and I skim my hands up his chest, feeling the ridges of his abs, going all the way down to grip his cock. I take him into my fists and lick his tip, looking up at him. Swirling the edge of him over my lips, I spread them and guide him into my mouth, moaning when he hardens against me.
Archer holds on to my head, his tattooed fingers in my hair, sliding me along his growing shaft. He takes a big breath and bucks his hips before saying, "Lay back on the bed."
I scoot on my elbows, my eyes never leaving his as he climbs onto the mattress with me and skims his fingers up my thigh and to my core.
"You're already so wet for me." He positions himself beside me and slips his fingers into my soaked hole, rubbing his thumb on my clit.
I turn toward him, keeping my legs apart and grabbing hold of his cock to take him into my mouth again. I moan onto him and revel in his thickness, and the way his hand rocks waves of pleasure over me. Hungrily, I suck every inch of him I can and whimper, my hips moving, my pussy clenching.
"That's it, baby. Fuck my fingers." Archer curves them upward and it's my undoing, my climax coming hard and fast and out of nowhere.
I stop sucking, his cock still in my mouth, and focus on my orgasm as it consumes me whole.
Archer moves away to climb between my legs, grabbing them with his tattooed arms and lowering his head to my center. With my body still shaking, he licks my pussy, his tongue dipping into my hole and trailing to my aching clit. He pinches it between his lips and releases, dragging his tongue all over it until I accidentally orgasm again, the second one beginning where the first one ended, with almost no break in between. He smiles against me and blows on my throbbing center before finishing his journey up my body.
"Fuck," I blurt out with my entire body quivering.
"Yeah?" Archer lines his cock up with my hole, sliding the tip of him around and pushing into me, slowly at first, and then all at once."You were made for me, little tornado." His voice is thick and gravelly and I want nothing more than to hear him tell me all the ways I was made for him.
"Keep talking," I pant and reach for his face.
He kisses me, his tongue darting into my mouth, one of his hands holding him up and the other braced on the side of my face. Archer breaks away. "You like hearing someone other than yourself talk for a change?" He rocks his hips, in and out, slow and steady, the buildup painfully decadent.
"Mmhm," I moan.
"Your body is mine, baby. Your mouth." Archer plants his lips on mine. "Your skin." He kisses my cheek. "Your tight little pussy." He groans and pumps into me. "Your every breath." He grabs my right leg with his left arm and spreads me wide. "Every fucking whimper, every moan, every desire, every dirty little thought, I want them all." His brown eyes bore into mine. "For as long as you'll have me, London. You are mine, and I am yours." He thrusts into me. "Do you hear me? Do you understand me?"
I nod and bite my lip, my fingers dragging down his chest.
"Say it," he all but growls.
"I'm yours," I say breathlessly. "I'm yours. All of me, I'm yours."
"God, I missed this." He looks down to watch his cock penetrate me. "I missed you." Archer turns his attention back to me and lets go of my leg. He grabs a pillow and positions it under my ass, pivoting me up toward him and leaning closer.
"Fuck, Archer, you feel so fucking good. I'm not going to last." I drag him toward me and dig my nails into his back.
"Then don't." He maintains his slow pace, almost slowing down even more, giving me a chance to truly feel every inch of him as he makes sweet fucking love to me, my heart just as full as my lustful pussy. "Come for me, little tornado. Come with me." Archer moans and crashes his mouth onto mine, desperately eating up every noise that escapes me as I pull him into me, his cock growing even harder as it spreads me open, the sensation both pain and endless pleasure.
Archer thrusts deeper, his cock spilling into me and my pussy clenching around him, our orgasms hitting us in tandem. I cry out into his mouth, and he moans loudly, his heavenly sounds making my orgasm somehow more intense.
I tremble under him and he pumps his hips slower and slower, until we're left there, glistening with each other’s sweat and struggling to catch our breaths.
Archer rests his forehead against mine and kisses my nose. "I love you."
I tilt my head up, forcing him to look at me, my gaze darting back and forth between his eyes. "I love you, Archer Sin. I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life. I love you."
I don't know what the future holds for us, I don't know if we can ever truly repair the damage that has been done, but I do know one thing for certain. As long as my heart continues to beat in my chest, it will belong to this beautifully grumpy man.