Chapter Seventeen
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Archie
“When Millie found out about what we do here, she threw up. A lot. Like, everywhere.”
Sarelia’s nose crinkles.
“In my defense!” Millie interjects. “I didn’t just ‘find out’. He shot a man in front of me. There was blood all over the place. Then Rosie showed me that guy’s file. Anybody would have thrown up.”
When Sarelia looks like she might agree, I add, “She also went basically catatonic for a few days. Rosie only showed her the file to bring her out of it. Girlie was losing it.” My mouth stretches into a grin, which I aim at Stryker.
“Not my girl, though. My girl snogged me, let me show her my project, worked on my project with me, then walked to family dinner on her own two feet.”
“Is this really appropriate dinner talk?” Rosie asks, rubbing her temple.
“At my first family dinner, Archie, Stryker, and Sal were debating which brand of pliers was best for pulling out teeth and toenails,” Millie replies with an eye roll. “That wasn’t even relevant conversation. At least this is current events.”
Rosie sighs the sigh of a woman who raised an assassin herself, then waves a hand at us. “Oh, carry on.”
I blow her a kiss across the table that Stryker and Basil set up in her fairytale back garden, then wink.
She huffs, shaking her head, but she can’t quite hide the smile toying at her lips.
“I didn’t have that much of a reaction either,” Heidi says. “I mean, I needed a minute, but I got over it pretty quickly.”
“Stryker agreed to pay her more,” I clarify. “She’s a greedy little witch, and don’t let her convince you otherwise.”
“Do you know what dealing with Stryker’s laundry is like?” Heidi asks. “I deserve every penny I make.” She points at her boss and friend. “And more!”
Stryker’s eyebrow rises at that. “You just got a raise.”
“It’s never too early to think about the next one,” she returns.
Basil shoves a bite of mashed potatoes in her maw before she can push her luck too far.
“I didn’t know we were getting raises,” I comment, straightening in my seat.
“You aren’t,” Stryker replies.
“Is this because of the silly string?” I ask, just so I can watch his eye twitch.
“You know good and well it’s because of the silly string, the facepaint, and the slime,” he growls.
Sarelia valiantly holds her smile between tightly pressed lips.
“It was an invigorating night,” I tell her. “Fun for all!”
“‘All’ is generous,” Millie grumps.
“Sal and I had fun,” I reply. “And really, isn’t that all that matters?”
“No,” Stryker deadpans. “It is not.”
Sal snorts, then turns to Sarelia, grinning. “How are you enjoying your first family dinner?”
“It’s amazing,” my sweet angel princess answers. “I can see where Archie gets all his chaos from.”
“You can see where he practices it, you mean,” Heidi corrects. “The rest of us are chill. It’s him who adds the layer of nonsense.”
Sarelia blinks, decidedly not looking at Millie and Stryker, who believe they are pulling one over on all of us as Stryker slyly eats off of his wife’s plate while she drools over the chocolate cake in the center of the table like a cartoon character.
Super secret agent missions are, after all, not nonsense.
“We didn’t think you guys would come,” Sal says. “On account of Archie sending out a compound-wide email telling us that we wouldn’t be seeing either of you for the next six months to a year.”
Sarelia smiles. “We were too tired to cook,” she says, so innocently, as if we were not tired from copious amounts of kissing. “Plus, I’ve been hearing about Rosie’s cooking for years. I didn’t want to wait another one to try it, and Archie was sweet enough to adjust his honeymoon plans for me.”
Silence and disbelieving faces meet this statement. Millie even puts a pause on her drooling to furrow her eyebrows at her new sister. “Archie?” she asks. “Sweet?”
I throw my head back with a pitiful whine, resting my hand over my forehead.
“What have I done to deserve such disdain?” I wonder.
“What actions have earned me this painful attack on my character?” I drop my hand and my head to appeal to Stryker.
“My brother! Your soulmate, she wounds me. You would let her do such a thing here, at our sacred time together? Please, my liege, assist me!”
Stryker grunts. “You’re a pest.”
Rosie tuts at him. “Stryker, be nice.” She faces me. “You’re a very sweet boy, Archie. Of course you are. We simply don’t get to bear witness to it very often.” Her attention slides to Sarelia, softening. “We’re very happy that you get that side of him more often than we do.”
Sarelia’s hand slips into mine under the table, and she laces her fingers through my own. “Archie has always been sweet,” she says. “It’s one of the first things I noticed about him.”
I rest my elbow on the table as Millie and Rosie’s “aww”s fill the air, accompanied by Heidi faux gagging.
“Go on,” I request, laying my chin in my hand. “Sing my praises, love.” I flutter my eyelashes at her, then bask in the warmth of her resulting giggles.
“Can’t you guys have your gush fest at home?” Stryker asks. “Not in Rosie’s backyard over the bowl of mashed potatoes?”
Sarelia’s giggles settle, but her mirth does not. It sparkles at me through hazel eyes as she pokes the potatoes to Stryker’s side of the table.
Basil snorts.
Expression soft enough to put me on edge, Sarelia directs her slaying words to me.
“The first video I ever saw of you was a charity livestream. It was for sick little kids living in hospitals, to get them gaming systems so that they could have a bit of bright and normal in their often dark and always abnormal lives. They were interviewing someone else—one of the older CubeCraft players—and you were in the background. There was this little girl in a dress with sunflowers all over it, and you were putting a daisy-chain crown on her. I don’t know where you would have even gotten the flowers from, but I saw clips online later of you weaving it together in the background of different player’s streams. You were never purposefully on camera with it, and I never got the vibe that you would have been happy to know that the moment was captured for everyone to see, but watching the little girl’s face light up when you set her crown on her head sparked something for me.
I wanted to know who the sweet man was that could make a sick princess smile like that. ”
Heat suffuses my skin as blood rushes like lightning beneath it. Sarelia’s eyes shimmer with earnestness, and my fingers all but crush hers as I fight for control of my body and mind, both of which scream at me to Kiss her. Worship her. Praise her.
I just decide that self-denial and the glorious inner struggle that it brings could never be as delicious as Saralia’s mouth on mine when a sniffle across the table reels me back to Earth.
“Okay, well, maybe that is kind of sweet,” Millie hiccups.
Sarelia starts, eyes darting to our tablemates.
Ah, so I am not the only one who forgot we aren’t alone.
“Her name was Clementine,” I offer, voice gruff. “She had a brain tumor, so I told her I was making it pretty.” Sarelia’s free hand lands on top of our laced fingers, and I entangle it in the fold as well.
“She was very pretty,” she says. “Prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
I nod. She was undoubtedly the prettiest girl anyone had ever seen.
“She didn’t make it?” Basil asks, scowling at the table.
My nostrils flare. “She did not.”
The air thickens with the weight of grief for a girl that none of them ever met, and my eyes wet as I’m reminded not for the first time of why I settled here—why I stay settled here.
These are good people.
“Her parents set up a foundation in her name,” Sarelia says. “They raise a lot of money, and it all goes toward research and financial aid for other sick children.” She clears her throat, cheeks warm. “Archie donates to it every year, and I do, too. I guess now we will donate.”
My family offers to add their donations to ours, and I snort. “You’ve all already been donating,” I tell them. “Don’t worry.”
They are, quite suddenly and with no explanation whatsoever, no longer interested in donating to the cause.
“I think if none of us noticed tens of thousands of dollars being funneled out of our accounts every year, we probably can’t complain too much about Archie taking matters into his own hands,” Sal speaks reason into the cacophony of complaints.
“And I’m especially not going to complain about him throwing it at sick babies.
You want the satisfaction of throwing money at sick babies yourself?
Then pay better attention to your finances. ”
I grin at Sal, my favorite not-uncle.
He grins back, his unfortunate case of crazy eyes looking particularly wild in the light of the setting sun.
“Stop hacking into my systems,” Stryker orders despite Sal’s unshakeable logic. “I’m sick of telling you this.”
I roll my eyes his way. “And yet, your firewalls do not improve.”
His glare would maybe be scary if I were not a recently married man. “You’re not going to give a man a black eye on his honeymoon, are you?” I ask. “Because Sarelia has barely had any time to enjoy my face up close like this. You wouldn’t want to ruin her post-wedding glow, would you?”
He doesn’t answer me, but he doesn’t punch me either, and that is kind of an answer in and of itself.
“Can we have cake now?” Millie asks. “Surely after Archie and Sarelia bring down the mood, we can take a beeline to the cake. Rosie?”
Rosie sighs.
Heidi’s jaw drops. “That was a yes!” she sputters, head swinging to address Millie. “She said yes!”
Millie’s eyes widen, and she turns to Sarelia. “You aren’t allowed to skip any dinners,” she says. “And I require that you bring up something depressing at all of them, okay? The more depressing, the better. Maybe we can get her to let us have cake first!”
Rosie’s head shakes, and Millie bounces in her seat. “That’s not a no!”
Heidi gapes at Sarelia. “You’re magic,” she says. “Magic.”
“Or,” Rosie interjects dryly, “maybe I’m just happy that all of my children are happy now, hm?”
Barely recovered from memories of Clementine, I’m unprepared for the direct hit or how devastating the wound it leaves feels.
It is rather quite difficult to speak when a chasm has just opened in your chest, and even more difficult to breathe when that chasm is being rapidly stitched up by the one who made it.
Of course, I know that we’re family. I think of everyone here as my sister, my brother, my uncle, my mother.
However.
I did not quite know that any of them felt even remotely the same way.
As I told Sarelia, people like us love differently than everyone else.
Our love comes with a passion that, once ignited, spreads beyond the usual thresholds of a relationship, and that zealousness does not confine itself to romantic relationships alone.
If I have a sister, she is my sister. The limit of things I would do for her does not exist, and the list of things I would not do for her has never written itself. The same for my brother, my uncle, my mother.
I love with a love that is big, intense, and—often—overbearing.
In an effort not to be too overbearing, I try to keep my feelings for my family here locked tight within me. It is enough that I know how much I love them. For them to know and be unable to reciprocate in the way that I would desire if I let myself…
Well, it’s better not to disappoint myself, I’d say.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—not opening up communication about our love for one another has created a situation where I now am confronted quite unexpectedly with the news that my family thinks of me as their family, too.
I’m not so sure my heart can take it.
“Don’t be stupid,” Heidi snaps, poking me in the side as I sniffle. “You don’t do the found family trope and then act surprised when that family acts like family. You’re smarter than this.”
“Intelligence has nothing to do with emotion, you brat,” I huff. “Let me enjoy being Rosie’s son in peace.”
“You can enjoy it in peace any time you want to,” she retorts.
“You’ve had six years of being her son, and you’ll have many more to come.
All I’m asking is that you don’t be a total moron in your enjoyment.
It’s insulting to Rosie, as your mother, and Sal, as your uncle, and the rest of us, as your siblings.
I know you distance yourself from the group in many ways, but you’re not actually set apart from us, Archie—no matter how many hours you spend in that basement tinkering with your tech and your projects. We love you.”
Hmph. “I know you all love me, idiot. It’s still nice to hear how much. And I don’t ‘separate’ myself from anyone. I visit you every week.” A mild lie, but I’m sure that’s fine. Brothers can’t be expected to be honest all the time.
She scowls. “We tell you we love you constantly. And if you think seeing your family who you live literally across the street from once a week is an adequate amount, you’ve lost it.”
“He never had it,” Millie mutters around a massive bite of chocolate cake. “Clearly.”
Oh, Millie. Even amidst familial revelations, the girl holds tight to her priorities—food.
Stryker slices a monster-size piece of the mother cake and passes it to Sarelia, who squeezes my hand and flashes me a sweet smile as she thanks Stryker.
I squeeze back, grateful for the silent support.
Heidi opens her mouth to throw more loving sass at me, but Basil covers it with his hand.
He gives me a sharp flick of his chin, indicating I should drop my emotions and focus on my food.
Big, bad assassin doesn’t want me realizing everyone wants me around more often, lest I show up at his house uninvited.
I snort.
Figures.
And yet…
“Mooooom,” I whine, “Basil doesn’t want me to come play with them more often!”
“See?” Millie says, pointing at me with her fork. “Never had it.”
“This cake is incredible,” Sarelia exclaims, star-studded eyes adopting Millie’s hero worship for Rosie’s cake. An hour together and they already look like sisters.
“Mmmhm,” Millie agrees. “Ish guuuu!”
I heave in a breath, then, louder than last time, I whine, “Mooooom! Millie’s talking with her mouth full!”
“You’re so annoying,” Heidi says, but she can’t quite hide her laugh.
Sal joins her, then Rosie, and even Stryker and Basil quirk their lips a little.
Sarelia and Millie ignore me completely, opting to focus on what really matters in life—not laughing around a table in the back garden with your family, but cake.
I sigh, accepting my own slice as Stryker passes it across the table to me.
And when I take my first bite, I think that maybe—maybe—it really does taste just as sweet as a family’s love.