Chapter Fourteen Archer
Chapter Fourteen
Archer
Fuck.
Fuck.
My brain could do a lot of things—read a defense in seconds, adjust a route when a lineman was barreling down on me, memorize a playbook week after week—but in moments like this, when an emotional tsunami held me by the scruff of my neck, my cognitive function sputtered to an ungodly slow crawl.
Maybe if my heart wouldn’t clench painfully every time she looked at me, I’d have the ability to speak.
But standing in her driveway, the setting sun catching on those wild red strands of hair that always seemed to fall around her face, it was very much like she’d reached her fist inside me and was squeezing my throat until it closed.
“I—” My voice was dry and rusty when I tried to say something, anything, and her eyes flickered with a look I couldn’t define. I cleared my throat, staring at a point just over her shoulder to see if that helped. “I—”
Then she took a step closer, and when a breeze picked up behind her, hitting me straight in the face, God, I could smell her.
Remi didn’t smell like perfume or a bed of wildflowers. It was a light, clean scent that made my mouth water. She made my mouth water.
Even as I tried to avoid eye contact, she refused to let me, adjusting her stance so that she was in front of me again. Her eyes looked bluer tonight. Less green. How?
“Was she driving the car?” she asked again.
My jaw clenched tight, and I gave her a pleading look. “Remi,” I warned. “Please . . .”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, her hands covering her mouth for a moment. “She was.”
“Please,” I begged. Maybe Evanses didn’t humble themselves, but I’d beg this woman without a second thought. For many things, probably. But right now, I’d beg for her silence. And hopefully, I’d get her understanding. “You cannot tell anyone.”
“Archer, you could’ve gone to jail!” It seemed that her processing skills had slowed as well, because she blinked rapidly as she stared up into my face, seemingly unaware that the space between us had shrunk to almost nothing.
“Everyone thinks you . . . you were drunk and behind the wheel. Why would you let them think that? Was she drinking?”
“No.”
The gruff answer landed like a slap, and she straightened, swallowing quickly. “Okay. So why . . . why?”
I slicked my tongue over my teeth as I finally dragged my gaze back to hers. With the way she was staring up at me, something inside me softened. Unwillingly, too, which made it even worse.
I didn’t want to soften for her. For anyone.
“It’s a long story.”
“Tough shit. Try shortening it.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
I didn’t laugh very often, but this particular one cracked something open inside me that had been pressed closed for a long time.
Remi’s brows furrowed briefly, then she seemed to soften too. Her arms dropped from where they’d been tightly crossed over her stomach, and the hard line of her mouth curled in a smile.
“Why is that funny?” she asked.
“Because I get the feeling you always get your way in the end, don’t you?” I asked, fondness creeping into my tone before I could stop it.
“Oh, buddy, if that were true, I’d have a functioning dishwasher and someone to put away the laundry for me.”
“Maybe you just always get your way with me, then,” I added.
Her gaze snapped to mine, and for a breathless moment, nothing else happened.
Pretty pink flushed the tops of her cheekbones before she broke the eye contact and stared down at the ground.
I blew out a hard breath. “Okay. It’s not a very exciting story. ”
“I don’t mind.”
As I scrubbed a hand over the line of my jaw, I checked the house, but neither Gavin nor my sister seemed to be paying us any attention.
“We went out for dinner. I try to take her out at least twice a week during the offseason. She wasn’t supposed to be out that night—he was upset about a test. Her tutors report to him, and he felt like she needed to study more than she already had.
But he was gone at an event. She took her car out because she needed a breather, even though she hates driving. ”
I yanked my hat off, just for something to do, and she watched quietly, waiting for me to continue at my own pace. “We met at the restaurant. It should’ve been easy for her to get back home before him.”
“It’s that bad with your dad?”
I nodded. “She stays at my house sometimes too. I try to give her a break when I can. They don’t . . . they don’t get along.”
“Analise told me that,” Remi said. Our eyes met and held. “Before you got here.”
“What’d she say?”
“That they’re like oil and water.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Something like that.”
“But you get along with him?”
A simple question with a complicated answer, and again, I struggled to find the words. “I know how to handle him,” I answered carefully. “I’ve had ten more years of experience than she does. And when I was her age, I was far more pliable.”
Far easier to manipulate. And I’d developed a protective shell that my sister hadn’t managed yet.
God, I hoped she never needed to. Thinking about Analise being anything like me .
. . it fucking hurt. My biggest problem was that I didn’t know when it was time to put that shell off to the side, and that armor bled into everything.
“Why did you cover for her? I still don’t understand that part, especially if she wasn’t drinking.”
It took a moment to release the tension in my jaw.
“My father expects perfection, excellence, in everything. Less than perfection is failure. There’s no shades of gray in his house.
” Her eyes were sad, her sweet mouth turning into a tiny frown.
“I don’t want Analise to lose the parts of herself that he’ll crush, given the chance.
The shit he crushed in me when I was too young to know what was happening.
Anything sweet and kind in that girl is in spite of him, and I don’t give a fuck what happens to me if I can help her keep that side of herself intact. ”
Remi’s eyes were glossy, like she was trying not to cry. “And the accident . . . ?”
I smiled wryly. “I already told you.”
Her brow furrowed. “You did not tell me this.”
“The animal we saw—Bandit,” I said pointedly, and her eyes fell shut for a moment.
“The wet streets from the rain. I’d had a few beers at dinner, so she said she’d drive me home.
” I laughed under my breath. “That’s the fucking irony, Remi.
She offered to drive me home because neither one of us wanted the risk of me getting behind the wheel.
I was going to get my truck the next morning.
She’d be home before my dad. No harm done. ”
Remi covered her cheeks with her hands, shaking her head slightly. “Archer, you have to tell someone.”
“No, I don’t. And neither do you.” Her mouth fell open, but I took another step closer, enough that she had to tilt her chin to look up at me.
The proximity made my stomach muscles clench, because I could have touched her so easily if she’d let me.
God, I wanted to touch her again. “She wasn’t supposed to be out with me that night.
He thought she was studying for a test in her room.
Instead, she wrecked the car he bought her, even though she didn’t want one. ”
“What would have happened if he knew it was her?”
“He’s always threatening to send her away.
” I held her gaze. “I’m completely convinced she’s got ADHD, if he’d care enough to get some testing done, get her support and tools and medicine if she needs it.
But he won’t because he thinks it’s bullshit.
An excuse. Instead, he thinks he can discipline her enough that she’ll change.
He’ll send her off if . . . if she doesn’t get her grades up.
If she doesn’t start paying attention in school.
If she’s not better, if she isn’t perfect, if she doesn’t pretend to be exactly what he wants, he hangs it over her head like a weapon.
A school for girls on the West Coast that can ‘handle problems like her,’” I repeated dully.
“I will not let him do that. It’s a hidey-hole for rich assholes to send the kids who can’t get in line, and it would destroy her to be treated the way they treat those girls. ”
Her chest rose and fell as she listened to me talk. “How long until she turns eighteen?”
“She just turned seventeen.” Analise’s face appeared in the front window, her happy smile turning a crank underneath my ribs. I raised my hand in a short wave. “When she turns eighteen, she’s coming to live with me.”
“Does your father know that?”
“No, and I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes he can’t use her as a weapon against me anymore. I’ll be the source of his anger every fucking day of the week if it means he ignores her. It’s when he notices her too much that things get bad for Analise.”
My fists clenched at my sides, and Remi noticed. I wanted to tell her that I hated him. That my hatred made me more like him than I wanted to admit. Now that I’d unlocked my words, I wanted to give all of them to her.
Slowly, she reached forward and slid her palm down my forearm, holding my clenched fist with her cool, slim fingers.
My pulse raced at the simple touch, and she seemed oblivious, staring down at our hands until my fingers relaxed.
She didn’t wind them together, instead wrapping her fingers around my palm and setting her other hand on top of mine.
“You’re a good man, Archer Evans.” Her gaze was so direct, so forthright, that it almost took me to my knees. She almost took me to my knees, and I wondered if she had any idea. “You’re determined to hide that, though, aren’t you?”
I pulled my hand from hers, wishing I could slow the frantic pounding of my heart. “I don’t need anyone to know what happened that night.”
Remi tilted her head. “I won’t tell anyone about the accident,” she promised. “But I wish you would. Someday, at least.”
There was no point, but it didn’t feel like the right moment to tell her that. Athletes had overcome far worse scandals than this one, and I’d do the same.
Even kids like Gavin, sweet and impressionable and kindhearted, would forgive me eventually, as long as my performance on the field was impressive enough. It was a double-edged sword, being a celebrity in the world of sports. We were forgiven probably far more easily than we should have been.
The sky had gotten darker as we stood and talked, and a slight chill in the air made her shiver.
“You’re cold. We can go inside.”
She breathed out a laugh. “Family room before date six,” she said under her breath. “Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Remi smiled. Not a forced one, not tight or uncomfortable, but an amused, secretive smile that made me want to kiss her soundly on the lips. “Yeah, we can go inside.”
The sound of the front door opening made us both turn toward the house. Analise was pulling her bag over her shoulder. “We need to go, Archer.” She gave me a meaningful look, and the worry in her eyes was enough to make me stand up straighter. “Dad’s on his way home.”
“Ah.”
Gavin was behind Analise, wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a shirt with a sleeping moose on it.
“So you can’t see my room?” he asked. I swear, the way that kid looked at me gutted me in an entirely different way than his mother. Scooped hollow. Scraped raw by both members of the Sinclair family.
Remi and I traded a look, and she slid her hand over Gavin’s back. “They have to go home, bud. And you need to get to bed anyway. It’s a school night.”
The disappointment in his face broke my fucking heart. I found myself crouching in front of him again, like I had when I’d arrived. “Will you show it to me the next time I come over?”
His eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re coming back?”
Even though my sister was watching and Remi’s eyes were wide with shock, I looked at Gavin, then up at his mother and held her gaze. Her breath caught audibly in her throat. If she could hear my heart, it was the unsteady thrumming that would’ve given me away.
“Yeah, I’ll be coming back.”