Chapter Twenty-Five Archer #2
“Holy fuck.” I let out a sharp exhale and tried the face-up-to-the-sun thing. Not surprisingly, it didn’t have the slightest effect on my blood pressure or my mood. “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?” She attempted a small smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Throw dog shit?”
I stared hard at her profile. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Remi turned to the side, leveling me with her knowing gaze. “You know why. I’m not trying to send you any more mixed signals after the other night, and asking you to come save me at the slightest inconvenience seems pretty mixed to me.”
I pushed off the truck and shoved my hands through my hair.
“Fucking hell, Remi, do you think I care about signals? You had assholes here with cameras in your face, likely tipped off by my father because he’s trying to remind me that he’s not going away quietly.
You’ve never had to deal with that before, and even when you’re used to it, it’s not easy. ”
“It wasn’t easy. It was horrible,” she said, unflinchingly honest. “My hands were shaking so bad, I could hardly pull open the door when I tried to go back into the lobby. I could feel them staring at me the entire way, and I don’t know how anyone ever gets used to that level of invasion of their privacy. ”
“You don’t,” I said gruffly. “You don’t. But when you love the thing you do, it’s a trade-off that you accept.”
When you love someone who does what I do, it’s a trade-off you accept.
I couldn’t say it, because we weren’t there.
She wasn’t there. But God, I wanted her to be.
I wanted to press Remi against the side of the truck and kiss her the way I’d kissed her the night at my house.
Wanted to feel her curves against my body and swallow those sweet little sounds she made.
More than that, though, I wanted to absorb the pieces of this situation that caused her stress and worry, that she couldn’t see a way past. Everything inside me was screaming to do something, to take something, to find an outlet for everything I was feeling but couldn’t speak out loud.
The unspent tension made the blood pump furiously through my veins, seeking an outlet that was no longer there. My emotions were sharp and focused, so bright that they hurt, like trying to stare directly at the sun.
“I wanted to call you,” she admitted quietly in a defeated tone. Her shoulders were slumped, her demeanor sad. “I went into my office and picked up my phone. And just before I hit the button, I thought, This isn’t fair. I can’t do this to him.”
“Do what?”
Her eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “Tell you one thing and then do another.” She shook her head, staring down at the ground again for a moment. “Even before I got here, and even though I shouldn’t have been, I couldn’t stop thinking about our kiss and how it felt being with you.”
“God, me too,” I said, desire giving my voice a rough edge. “I can’t get it out of my fucking head.” I let out a short laugh. “I was a little sad I didn’t have to come do hours today.”
Remi sucked in a quick breath, then pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her back pocket, holding it out to me with a decisive set to her jaw. “About that . . .”
“What’s this?”
She waited quietly while I unfolded the paper and skimmed the lines, until I got to the bottom and saw her signature next to the tally of hours. “I didn’t finish yet. Why does this say I did?”
“I decided to count the hours you helped me move Pops. You did it at my request, and even though it wasn’t at the shelter, you were helping me, so I made an executive decision.
” She smiled, but it was bittersweet, and the sight of it tore through my fucking ribs.
“Congratulations. You’re officially done with your community service. ”
Not trusting myself to speak right away, I stared down at the paper for a few more moments while someone tore my sternum open to the size of the Grand Canyon.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing I did was ever good enough. For anyone.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much my decisions improved, I couldn’t break through that last barrier.
“You trying to get rid of me, firefly?” Remi’s sharp inhale was enough of an answer, and I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She stepped forward, resting her hand on my arm. “No. I’m giving you credit for time spent helping, and—” Her voice wobbled. “And I’m taking this out from over our heads.”
My gaze locked on hers. “What?”
“This.” She pointed back to the shelter. “I cannot process any clear way forward while we’re in this position.”
“Do you regret kissing me?” I asked. Her eyes flashed with something, and I didn’t like whatever it was. Because after that flash was a pause. “Do you?”
Remi sucked in a shaky breath. “Archer, I—”
“Do you regret it?” I asked again. My voice tore through each syllable like someone ripped them from my throat.
She licked her lips, closing her eyes and sucking in a fortifying breath. “Your dad was right. It looks like the worst kind of cliché if something happens between us right now.”
“I don’t give a fuck what it looks like to other people.”
“I do,” she yelled. When my head reared back, she closed her eyes and softened her tone.
“I do. I have a job that I depend on, and I have a son who is looking to me to learn lessons about how a person conducts themselves with integrity. I have already messed up in so many ways when it comes to you, Archer. I told him not to judge people by their mistakes, and that’s exactly what I did.
I punished you when it wasn’t my job. I let you in when I kept reminding myself that I needed to keep you at arm’s length.
” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I kissed you. I kissed you knowing that it meant something, and knowing that I shouldn’t. ”
A fat tear slid down her cheek, and my chest caved in at the sight of it.
“I have to draw a line somewhere around . . . whatever this is. And I care how it looks to the world when I will be the one at their mercy, without a multimillion-dollar paycheck to get me through, and a son who will have to live with the consequences of their judgment. Who will have to live with the consequences of a choice he had no part in making.”
Rage—useless, cold, helpless rage—coursed through me, and I tipped my head back and gritted my teeth. I wanted to scream obscenities at the sky, just to let something out, but I didn’t.
I hated every fucking word, but I couldn’t argue with a single one.
Knowing she was right spun a tight web of anger deep in my belly, the intricate strings tangled up in everything so thoroughly that instead of trying to tear them out, I let myself get stuck dead center.
That anger loosened my tongue.
“But you can’t tell me you don’t want me.” The words landed like a blow, and Remi sucked in a shocked breath. “Can you tell me that?”
Her bottom lip trembled. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”
“Why? Because you can’t give me a clear answer?” I stepped forward, frustration heating my skin, clawing just under the surface and desperate for air. “You can’t even tell me what you feel right now, Remi, and it’s not that fucking hard.”
“Yes, it is.” Her eyes blazed, and it made me realize I might not be the only one on the cusp of boiling over. What would she be like in her anger? I’d seen it once. And fuck if I didn’t want to see it again. “The second we start doing that, it ups the stakes, and they are already high enough.”
I took a step closer. “Tell me you don’t want me.”
“Archer, please,” she whispered.
“I want you.” I held her gaze, even though my ribs squeezed against my lungs and I could hardly take in a breath. Even though it was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. “I want you, more than all the complications and the doubts. And I want to know if you feel the same.”
It didn’t have the intended result. This wasn’t a movie where I could push and push and push until her only course of action was to submit to a kiss that would change nothing, would heal nothing, only serving to make us feel good for a fleeting moment.
Of the two of us, Remi had a better handle on what all this meant in the bigger picture.
No, her anger didn’t flare like mine. She didn’t match me step for step. All I could see was a broken heart.
She cried quietly, closing her eyes and pressing her hand to her chest. The anger had drained out of her and, with the sound of her tears, out of me too. This roller coaster we’d built, out of stolen moments and untapped tension, finally seemed to have taken the fight out of both of us.
Taken the fight out of me.
“What if I was normal?” I said raggedly.
“What?” she whispered.
“What if I was normal?” I held her gaze and took a step closer. “What if I was average and worked at a fucking . . . bank or something? Could I walk away from this and have a chance with you?”
“Archer.” Another tear fell. “Stop.”
“What if I was just . . . Archer?” I stepped closer again, my heart hammering wildly in my chest. As gently as I could manage with the screaming emotions I could hardly control, I cupped her face in my hands, wiping her tears away with the edges of my thumbs.
“What if I walked away from all of it? Would you have me then?”
Remi let out a choked sob, eyes falling closed as I held her face. “I don’t want you to be something you’re not,” she said. “I like who you are. I—”
I stepped back, my hands falling limply by my sides. “Stop, God, please don’t say anything else.”
She respected the terse request, covering her mouth with trembling fingers.