Chapter Twenty-Three Remi #2
Archer chose to sit on one of the stools at the island, which put us nearly eye to eye when I approached.
His body language was relaxed despite the tension of the last hour, his legs spread to accommodate me.
He kept his hands on his thighs, eyes tracking every move I made with sharp focus.
This was power, too, in a very different way, and mishandled, it would cause ancillary damage I wasn’t prepared for.
When I laid my hand on his jaw to angle his head, his skin was warm. As gently as I could, I dabbed the wet towel around the angry-looking skin, trying my best to clean off the blood without pulling at the wound.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
His eyes stayed on mine. “Of the things that man has done, this doesn’t even rate in the top ten.”
My hand lowered. “Did he hit you when you were younger?”
“No.” He lifted his chin, motioning me to continue. “Words were his preferred way to cause pain. I can guarantee this will heal faster.”
With even, steady strokes, I got the last of the dried blood off his skin. My heart beat hard and fast at the way he watched me as I opened an antiseptic wipe, and Archer’s eyes tracked my every move.
“This might sting,” I warned him, but he didn’t so much as flinch when I dabbed at the cut high on his cheekbone. As I finished wiping the area around it to make sure it was clean, I said, “I’m not sure I’d want to hear what’s on the top ten list.”
“No? What if it made you feel terribly sorry for me and you felt bad leaving me alone tonight?”
My hand paused, and I arched an eyebrow slowly. “You’re not alone. Your sister is here.”
His grin was quick and fierce, appearing like a lightning strike and fading just as fast. “Touché, firefly.”
Oof. That was an entirely different sort of powerful, one I didn’t particularly want him to know about.
“Tell me one,” I said, quite against my better judgment. “Just for reference.”
Archer’s palms slid up and down the tops of his thighs, like the motion helped him think. His eyes were unfocused, no doubt riffling through memories that weren’t so pleasant.
“I made my father the happiest when I was in college. Did everything he wanted of me. I played well enough to get drafted when I finished my undergrad, but he thought getting my master’s would play well with the media, and I had the grades to warrant it.
Plus, I’d gain more experience, get drafted higher, which was what he wanted.
My entire life, all I heard was that he relied on me to bring pride to our name. ”
The blood was gone, but he didn’t know that, so I picked up the damp paper towel again, gently gripped his chin, and tilted his face like I needed a different angle.
The stubble along his jaw was prickly against my fingertips, and his eyes closed briefly when I let them drag over it as I dropped my hand from his face.
“Did you?”
His eyes opened, and again, I was struck speechless by the intensity of that blue.
“I was a finalist for the Heisman my last year. Broke school records for passing yards and touchdowns in a single season. Went to Buffalo in the first round as a hometown boy who’d return glory to the franchise. Thirteenth pick.”
My hands lowered, but I didn’t move back. He shifted on his stool, the insides of his knees brushing along the outside of my thighs. Carefully, his fingers reached forward to play with the strings dangling from my denim shorts.
The air between us pulsed with unspent electricity, only made worse by the almost-touches of his hands a fraction of an inch away from my skin.
“I remember walking off the stage with my first NFL jersey in my hands, and the sight of Evans on the back made me feel ten feet tall.” A wrinkle formed in his brow, and I wanted to smooth it out with my fingertips.
“I’d fucking done it. All the practices and drills and studying and years of my life that I sacrificed to make our name proud, all culminated in this.
And I thought . . . he’s going to be so proud of me. ”
A sick foreboding twisted my stomach as I continued to listen quietly.
“When I came offstage, he was waiting for me.” His eyes were hypnotic, and I found it hard to breathe. “The first thing he said was, ‘You should’ve been drafted higher. I expected top ten.’”
I didn’t want my heart to break for this man. He probably didn’t want that either.
But it broke all the same.
For years, as long as I could remember, I’d denied myself the things I wanted because money was tight, or Gavin needed something more, or the devil on my shoulder wasn’t quite persuasive enough.
But I wanted to show him that his pain mattered. That he mattered to me.
The minutes and hours and days I’d spent resisting Archer—resisting his hold on me—were dust. Rubble.
Nothing outside this mattered.
I stepped closer in the space between his legs and wound my arms around his neck, wrapping him in a tight embrace. In the next breath, his arms banded around my back, anchored around my waist as his frame sank against mine.
I was hugging the past version of Archer, the one I couldn’t be there for. And I was hugging the man I knew now, who was trying to be better, no matter how his upbringing was stacked against him.
He let out a deep exhale, burying his face into my hair. I did something similar against the side of his neck, breathing through the wave of panic that I’d done something stupid. That I’d done something irreversible.
No. It wasn’t stupid. I refused to believe that.
Showing compassion to someone who’d just allowed you to see their pain was never an action that would end in regret.
Archer wasn’t someone on a pedestal, cold and untouchable, impossible to hurt.
He was so very human, and as I knew from tonight, he bled just as easily as the rest of us, no matter how much money was in his bank account.
It’s easy to dismiss people’s pain when their lives seem less difficult than ours. But pain doesn’t discriminate, and there’s no concrete scale for whose wounds caused more damage. No barometer that labeled someone’s grief or loss or hardship as worse or easier or better.
It was still grief and loss and hardship. Archer had to grieve something he’d never had—parents who loved and supported him unconditionally.
Without Pops, I would’ve had to grieve that too.
“He’s wrong,” I said firmly, keeping a tight hold on the wide expanse of his shoulders, my fingers curling into the material of his shirt. “You did something he could never do.”
His fingers spread wide on my back, moving up and down, the heat of his palm seeping through the thin layer of cotton. The intention behind it, no doubt, was meant to be soothing. But I was not soothed.
“I like having you in my house,” he said, voice muffled because of how tightly he held me.
I smiled, turning my face toward his neck. The edge of my mouth brushed his skin, and his arms tightened, the thick bands of muscles stealing my breath.
“I like that room off the kitchen,” I told him. It was a much safer admission than I like being in your arms.
“Why are you whispering?”
I laughed under my breath. “I don’t know. It feels like a secret I shouldn’t be saying out loud.”
“You can tell me.”
I set my chin on his shoulder, leaning my head against his, and stared at the room in question as I felt a bittersweet tug down the center line of my chest. “It’s a perfect place to read. Even in the summer, I’d want a fire in the fireplace. A big fuzzy blanket over my lap.”
“Yeah?” His voice was rough, and I shivered, burrowing deeper into his embrace. “What else would you want?”
I licked my lips, shifting on my feet enough that it brought my hips closer to his.
His hands tightened over my ribs. “I’d put a Christmas tree in the corner during the holidays.
That way, when you’re in the kitchen, you can see it.
Family ornaments, maybe. The homemade ones that don’t match and aren’t perfect, but you keep them anyway because they’re the favorites. ”
“I don’t have any of those,” he admitted in a gruff whisper.
Wisdom was shoved into the back of my mind because it was the last thing I needed as I pulled away just far enough to look into his perfectly handsome, perfectly rugged face. I cradled his jaw with my palm, heart expanding as his eyes closed and he leaned into the touch.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Archer Evans.”
He didn’t open his eyes right away. His response came after a few moments, and only after he’d pressed his palm over the top of my hand, silently begging to keep my touch just for a little bit longer.
When he did open his eyes, there was a twinkle of humor there. “I have a feeling you won’t like any of my suggestions.”
“Try me,” I whispered.
His chest rose and fell. “No, I need to let you decide what happens next, firefly.”
Power.
There was no doubting that in this moment, with this man, it was entirely mine.
The question was, what did I want to do with it?
“You have been a mystery since the night I met you.”
He turned his face, pressing a kiss into the center of my palm. My fingers curled helplessly against his cheek. “I’m easy to figure out.”
“No, you’re not. Knowing what you want isn’t the same as knowing you.” My gaze lingered over his face. “The first is very simple. The second? Not simple at all.”
Archer’s hands slid along my waist, down along my hips, and I let my hand rest on the side of his neck, my thumb over the skin where his pulse raced.
“You’ve come as close as anyone has,” he admitted with a dazed shake of his head, like he couldn’t believe we were here, we were having this conversation.
“Does that scare you?”
“Not anymore.” His gaze was direct and unflinching. “Does it scare you?”
I couldn’t hold the eye contact because my heart constricted with a dangerous tightening, so I focused on his mouth instead. “Yes,” I admitted in a whisper.
Power.
It rolled through my veins as I leaned forward, ignoring my own response to the question, ignoring the logic telling me to back away, and gently kissed him.
Once.
He held perfectly still, not even seeming to breathe, but his eyes were open and locked on me.
Twice. A little longer, lingering over his bottom lip. His eyes closed. So did mine.
His lips were soft and dry, and his restraint to let me have this moment was the sexiest thing a man had ever done for me. That was probably why I did it. Not the only reason why—I wanted it too badly to pretend that was true.
I kissed him because my heart was screaming that if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
I kissed him a third time, lingering longer now, my fingers twining into his thick hair.
His hands tightened on my waist, firmly enough to make it difficult to breathe, and when my tongue slipped out to brush along the inside of his top lip, Archer groaned, standing from the stool in a sudden movement to take my face in his hands.
My power was gone. It was his now.
I gave it over gladly as he slanted his mouth over mine.