Chapter 23 Harper #2
“Not simple?” I scoffed. “It doesn’t matter what’s fucking simple. Archer… he’s gone now. Because of him. He needs to be held accountable for what he did.”
Bull nodded, taking a moment to think before he spoke again. “What can you do? Hmm? You can change the police’s mind? You can give them money and say go arrest this man who has an alibi because I say he is guilty?”
Heat pushed to the surface of my skin, prickling like needles as it was exposed to cold reality. “We have to do something. It’s not fair.”
Bull sighed again. “I know this. But Henrik is smart, and he does not care about what is right, or wrong, or fair. Just what his father wants.”
“You think Andor told him to do it?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “What I think does not matter.”
“But—”
“What you think does not matter. There are some things that you just cannot change.”
“I didn’t know you were such a defeatist.”
He shrugged again.
“Maybe if we tell the others and—”
“No,” he interrupted firmly. “You cannot have them trying to take on my family. It is safer for them if you keep it to yourself.”
“But Archer…”
“Archer will be okay. He is a fighter, and much stronger than he thinks.”
“It’s not fair,” I sniffed. I was being vulnerable again, and I hated myself for it. Bull clearly didn’t know what to do with me, and I didn’t blame him. He was right about one thing, though: Archer was a fighter. He’d been fighting his whole life just to exist.
“I’ll come back when Dex is awake,” I said, dismissing myself.
“He is awake.”
I exhaled slowly. “Then I’ll go see him.”
“Do not release him,” Bull said as he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. I had no idea what he meant by that.
Bryce and the other man weren’t in the hallway anymore, and when I entered the guest room, I found the guy sitting in a chair next to the bed.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness of the room, and once I did, there was a lot to take in.
The first thing I noticed was Dex’s hair.
The long dark-blond locks were all gone, and his head was shaved.
He was wearing only sweat shorts and the bandages that covered his torso, shoulder, forearm, and thigh.
I also saw what Bull had meant when he’d told me not to release Dex.
A thick cuff was padlocked around his ankle, with a chain that connected to the base of the bed.
He was awake, but he didn’t seem present, as he leaned against a stack of pillows and stared vacantly at nothing. The room smelled faintly of sweat and antiseptic.
“You have a visitor,” the gruff man said in a low voice.
Dex’s brow furrowed as he turned to look at me, staring for a long moment before he spoke in a raspy voice. “Get this fucking thing off my ankle.”
“Not happenin’, son,” said the man. Dex’s lip curled up in annoyance as he shot him a glare.
“Get out,” he snapped.
The man sighed, turning his attention to me instead. “I’m Roy.”
“Why is he shackled to the bed?” I asked, instead of introducing myself.
“’Cause he can’t be trusted not to make a run for it.” Roy turned to look at Dex with tired fondness. “He needs to stay right here until he’s healed up a little better.”
“I need a smartphone.” Dex snapped his attention to me.
“Okay. I’ll get you one.” I responded.
Roy sighed. “It ain’t good for you to fixate right now. Your focus needs to be on mendin’ yourself.”
Dex rolled his eyes and then winced as the action caused him pain.
“Can I talk to him alone.” I phrased it like a question, but it was a demand.
Roy looked me up and down, deciding if I was to be trusted, before he nodded. He groaned softly as he pushed up to his feet again. “I’ll be right outside.”
“I don’t care,” Dex mumbled.
Once Roy had left the room, I closed the door and took the recently occupied seat.
“The phone,” Dex started, not turning to look at me.
“I’ll get it.”
He nodded.
“Does it have to do with that tracker you asked me for?”
He nodded again.
“Does it have to do with what happened to you?”
He didn’t nod. He didn’t speak. Just stared off into nothing.
“Who are you tracking, Devil?”
Silence for a long moment, and then in a quiet voice, “My rabbit.”
I’d known Dex a few years now. He was an antagonizer. Always teasing, always smirking. He’d always seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t let anyone or anything get to him. But right now, he was broken. Wounded. A ghost of the man I’d always seen him as.
“Your… rabbit… they hurt you?”
“He didn’t mean it!” Dex snapped his head toward me, eyes struggling to focus.
“It was an accident. He saved me. I need to… to…” He trailed off, brow furrowing as he tried to focus again.
His lips parted without speaking, his words escaping him, and he was no more capable of capturing them again than he was his rabbit.
“He still hurt you, Dex. Really badly. When Cupid called me, he didn’t think you’d make it through the first night.”
He huffed. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters! He hurt you, intentionally or not. If he’s running away, it’s because he saw that and didn’t want to hurt you anymore. You think it’s easy?” My throat tightened. “It isn’t easy. Running away hurts too. But sometimes it’s for the best. So no one else gets hurt.”
I knew I wasn’t talking about Dex and his rabbit anymore.
I knew my situation and his were entirely different.
But were they really? One person hurting the other, then running away.
If this guy had hurt Dex and run off, it didn’t show that he didn’t care, it showed how much he did.
“Leaving is harder than staying, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You should let him go.”
“Never.” He turned to look at me again, jaw clenched and pale eyes full of fury. “I will never let him go. He’s mine. I don’t care if it hurts.”
Dex glared at me, and I glared right back.
He wasn’t being logical. He wouldn’t listen to reason.
I hated myself for wanting that. Craving it.
Dex was ready to take on all of us to the point he’d had to be chained to his sickbed.
He cared so much about getting his lover back that he didn’t care he was badly injured, didn’t care that the guy clearly wanted to stay away.
What would it be like to have someone fight for me that hard?
What would it be like to have someone fight for me at all?
I stood. “I’ll get you the phone.” I pulled out my wallet and found the business card I’d come here to give him. I flicked it onto the bed beside him. He didn’t take his eyes off me to look at it. “It’s a physiotherapist. Best in Harborview. I’ve paid for your sessions.”
He looked away. “I don’t want physiotherapy. I want Jonah.”
I sighed. “Then go to physiotherapy, and afterward—only afterward—I’ll help you get him back.”
Pale blue flicked back to me. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
Dex looked at the card, reaching for it with the hand that wasn’t bandaged up. He looked it over, then nodded softly. “I need to sleep.”
“Okay. If you need anything besides the phone, get someone to text me.”
He nodded, and I left, passing Roy as he paced just outside the door. He went right back in, presumably to take his place at Dex’s side again. I’d think he was a worried father if I didn’t already know that Dex’s dad had died.
Then I went downstairs. To find Bryce, and to have tea.