Archer
ARCHER
I move through our apartment door just two feet behind Minka, the clock on the wall reading an ugly number that, no matter which time zone we’re in, is cruel, while outside our window, the city is dark.
Cato turns on the couch, awake when he shouldn’t be, and opens his mouth to speak, but it takes only one look at me, and then another to an almost blue Minka, for his lips to snap closed and his eyes to narrow in thought.
“I’m going for a shower.” Minka doesn’t look my way. She allows her head to droop, and she sure as fuck remained silent for the entire drive home. But she dumps her phone and keys on the kitchen counter before limping away, willpower and straight up obstinacy the only things keeping her on her feet.
And fuck, I just want to hold her. I want to go with her.
With everything in my soul, I want to put her in that warm shower and defrost the body she insisted on freezing.
So why do I hesitate?
“What the hell happened to you two?” Cato mutes the television and frowns when Minka steps into the bathroom, the door shutting with a pitiful snick. “You walked in, and it’s like the temperature dropped fifty degrees.”
“She slept with that detective from New York.”
Stunned, his eyes swing toward the hall. “Today?”
“No, dickhead.” Years ago. But hell, I couldn’t even say when. “In the past.” I turn to the things she left on the counter and pick up her phone, dead from the sheer number of calls she ignored this afternoon. From the bleats of her texts and emails. From her complete refusal to acknowledge anyone else in the world except her and her shovel. Shaking my head, I plug it into the charger and drag mine out of my pocket next.
The pipes knock and rattle in the walls as she flips the shower on, hot water working its way up four flights. But I ignore her. I try to set aside the knowledge she’s in there right now, naked and alone. Worse, freezing and heading toward complete fucking dissociation and what may eventually lead her to setting us on fire.
Are we already on fire?
Am I supposed to be the foam that puts us out, or the gasoline that makes our pain burn hotter?
“I don’t even know what’s happening.” Placing my hands on the edge of the counter, I bend and stretch my shoulders, extending my back and focusing on anything except my fraying temper. “I think we’re fighting because she didn’t tell me she’d slept with Gilbert. But we haven’t actually argued about it yet. She tuned Aubs up because Aubs snitched to me, and then she spent the better part of eighteen hours digging through human remains in the rain. Now she’s…” I draw a deep breath and hold it in, expanding my lungs and testing my regulatory system. “Now she’s in there, mad at me, maybe. And I’m mad at her. Maybe. I don’t fucking know, and I’m too tired to figure it out.”
“She lied to you about the dude?” Pushing up from the couch and crossing the living area, he comes around to lean against the counter, his long build casting shadows in my peripherals. “Did she lie?”
“No. She just…” I inhale again. “She didn’t volunteer the information.”
“Should she have?”
“I don’t know!” I shove away from the counter, if only to get space, and unbutton my shirt. I’m freezing, too, and the fabric sticks to my skin like it was stapled on. “Are we supposed to declare every person we’ve ever known? Is it lying if we’re not writing a list and having it notarized before the wedding vows?”
“No.” He folds his arms and crosses one ankle over the other. “I don’t even know all of mine to make a list. I doubt you know all yours.”
“Makes us disgusting.” I peel my shirt off and drop it to the floor, the fabric landing with a wet slap. “I know she had a life before me. But she’s on the phone with this dude, and he’s not even hitting on her or anything. But Aubree spilled the beans, so now it feels like Mayet and I are fighting, even if, technically, we’re not. She’s allowed to not tell me everything, especially if it happened before us and has nothing to do with our future.”
“So…” He brings a hand up and rolls his bottom lip between his fingers. “Remind me what the issue is?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I unsnap my jeans and push the zipper down. “It’s all twisted up and tense, and I guess she’s mad at me, too, and I’m not sure I know why. So now we’re both angry about shit completely irrelevant to who we are. This motherfucker has stepped into my marriage and put a wedge where there never used to be one, and she’s in that bathroom blue. She’s fucking blue!” I choke out my words and hope they release the coiling dread that squeezes my heart. “She could barely walk up the stairs, Cato. Because she was weak. The only reason she didn’t crawl was because I was right there, and she was too stubborn to die while I watched.”
“I know I joked about divorce and all that…” He steps around until our eyes meet. “But there is no world if there’s no Minka and . It’s not Minka and that dude. Or Minka and Cato. Or Minka, cold and alone and sad while you’re close enough to fucking fix it.” His fiery gaze shifts to the hall, then back to me. “So fix it.”
“Fix what ? She hasn’t said a damn word to me since her spat with Aubree. She’s not telling me why she’s mad, and I’m not even entirely sure that I’m mad. I just know this fucking hurts, and I don’t know how to make it better.”
“Yes, you do.” He starts back to the couch. “It’s three in the morning, Malone, and you know exactly what you need to do. You’re the only person on the planet who knows her heart. Figure that shit out before you lose the best thing you’ve got.”
“So it’s on me, then?” Why am I such an asshole? “She’s the one who withheld information, got caught out, and now she’s throwing a fit. Why’s it on me to patch that up?”
“Because you love her.” He un-mutes the television and focuses entirely on that. “If you love, then you love always. Not just when you’re in a good mood. And if you can’t do that, then you didn’t deserve her in the first place.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I bend and scoop up my wet clothes, moving into the hall and kicking my shoes off as I go. I peel my socks away and bundle those with my shirt. I should probably knock. Give her privacy. She’s not just my wife. She’s a whole, independent woman, too, who deserves to be in the bathroom without an audience. But I shove the door open anyway, only to be slammed with a wall of steam that almost knocks me on my ass. Anger roars in my veins as I toss my things to the floor and open my mouth to spit out hurtful words, but as the steam clears and my eyes adjust, I find her curled on the floor instead, bundled into the corner of the shower with her legs folded and her arms wrapped around them.
Still, she shivers. Tears stream from her eyes, and blue lips quiver in the silence. She’s shattered—body, heart, and soul—so whatever shitty retort I came in here with dies before it’s given life.
“Baby.” I kick the bathroom door shut and hurry into the shower, jeans on, and scoop her into my arms. “You’re still cold.”
“I’m sorry for not telling you about Pax.” Weak, she crawls into my lap and burrows in tight, sobbing against my chest. “It wasn’t supposed to be a huge thing, and he’s not important. He’s nobody.”
“I trust you.” I press my back to the wall and pull her closer, crushing her in my arms and holding on tight because her entire body shivers with a violence I’ve never experienced before. A vicious tremor I’m not sure she’ll ever escape. “I trust you, Minka. You could sleep in the same fuckin’ apartment as that dude, same room, and I’d trust you. I wouldn’t like it.” I feather a gentle kiss to her temple. “And I’d want to pull you out and set the apartment on fire. But I won’t question your integrity.”
“The way you looked at me…” She sobs, vibrating with the cold and gr oaning because I know it hurts her. “My dad used to look at my mom like that. Because he knew what she did, but he was too selfless to send her away. She cheated, . But I didn’t cheat?—”
“I know.” Another kiss. “I know you didn’t cheat.”
“And I didn’t even lie,” she whimpers. “I just… I didn’t want to bring that into our home, and it was so long ago, and it wasn’t important. So I didn’t?—”
“It’s okay.”
“He’s just a guy,” she cries. “There was no love. There wasn’t even a relationship. It was just two human beings who sometimes spent time together and?—”
“Please, God,” I choke out, almost managing a laugh and rubbing her thigh, if only to give her more warmth. “Don’t spell it out for me. I’m begging you not to put that picture in my head. You had a past, and now it’s done.”
“We both have a past. And neither of us like that about each other. But it happened. Now it’s us.”
“It’s just us,” I repeat. “Me and you.”
“And sometimes I’m going to have to talk to these people. For work.” Shakily, she pushes back and searches my eyes. “The same way you sometimes had to talk to that bitch reporter. But we don’t cheat. And we don’t lie.”
“I know?—”
“And we don’t stare at the other like they’ve done something wrong when they haven’t. I feel like a giant, lying slut, . Like I’ve gone out and danced on another man’s lap and should be punished for it. But I didn’t actually do anything wrong.”
“No.” Like a child, she needs reinforcement. She needs love. Fuck, she needs acceptance. “You did nothing wrong. I’m sorry for not just talking it out from the start. We’re better than that.”
“And I’m sorry for trying to have you ejected from your own crime scene,” she cries and laughs in one. Pathetic and desperate and devastated. “All so I didn’t have to look into your eyes and feel like shit. That’s on me, and I’m so, so sorry I chose avoidance.”
“Today was hard.” She’s still freezing. Her limbs, her skin, her entire fucking being is cold to touch despite the pounding hot water. “Today was one for the record books in our marriage. But we’re still here, right?” I take her chin in my fingers and gently tilt her head back. “We still come home to each other. We’ll still go to bed together. Sometimes the outside world is gonna kick our asses and shatter our souls, but as long as we meet up again at the end…”
“Aubree thinks, with the re-emergence of the Body-In-The-Bag guy, that I’m incapable of separating the person I was in New York from the person I am now.” Tears mingle with water, pooling in her lashes and streaming over her cheeks. “She thinks it’s a trauma thing, and if I’m not careful, I’ll regress into who I was back then. The person I was back then used to sometimes spend an evening with Detective Gilbert.”
“Well…” I hate that my stomach drops. That my heart aches, and my lungs restrict the amount of air I can take in. “She sometimes has a knack for that sort of stuff.” Please God, don’t let her be right. “W-what do you think?”
“I think I’m a grown woman who makes her own choices, and, oops, I regressed and cheated on you, is a complete fucking cop-out.” She gulps and searches my eyes, still trembling in my arms. “I’m not my mother, , and I’m very much in love with my husband. I don’t buy into the ‘ well, she suffered this trauma, so she’s allowed to do whatever she wants and blame it on the past. ’ If you’re worried that I’ll jump into bed with another man, then maybe we’re not as strong as we think we are.”
“I said I trust you.” I rub her leg, warming the icy skin. “I said I wouldn’t fucking like it, but you could be alone with him for however long, no matter the circumstances, and I would still trust you.”
“So let me work this case.” Fresh tears well up in her eyes, spilling onto her cheeks and mingling with shower water on her quivering lips. “Let me put Diane’s killer behind bars, and stop internalizing anger and resentment and ‘ does she like him more than she likes me?’ Every time my phone rings, I feel guilty. And it’s not fair that I’m made to feel like an asshole when all I’m doing is my job.”
“You’re right.” I swallow and allow her to see the change in my psyche. The way everything shifts in my heart and makes way for this new arrangement. “I’ve watched my brothers flirt with you for a year and said nothing, because I never felt threatened. But then you talk to Gilbert for a matter of days, and I completely lose my mind. I was jealous and resentful and mean.”
“He’s not a threat to us.” She drags her bottom lip between her teeth and suckles the water away. “No one is a threat to us because cheating is a choice. Love,” she insists, “is a choice. And I choose to love you.”
“I choose to love you, too.” I bring her closer and set a gentle kiss on her shaking lips. “Kinda lost my way for a minute this week, huh?”
“And I did, too. I never should have withheld that information about Pax. I was insecure and worried about what you would think. If I’d been upfront from the start?—”
“I would’ve lost my shit sooner.” I rub her leg harder, faster, to bring her warmth. “You’re so fucking cold, Minnnka. You should’ve warmed up by now.”
“I hardly even feel it anymore.” Listlessly, she glances down and frowns. “I should have let you help me dig.”
“Ya think?” I shake my head and bundle her in closer. “I put your phone on the charger in the kitchen. When it rings and that asshole is on the other end, I promise I’m not gonna get pissy about it.”
“I’m sorry for being a bitch today.” Her long lashes flicker open as she sluggishly brings her gaze up. “I felt attacked and belittled, though they were my own thoughts, my own insecurities hurting me. You didn’t deserve to be treated badly for it.”
“And you didn’t deserve to feel guilty for doing your job and communicating with someone you used to know. None of this would have happened if I talked to you. I chose jealousy and pigheadedness instead.”
She chokes out a soft laugh, curling in and resting her ear on my chest. “I’m proud of us. This discussion is way less toxic than we are.”
“A licensed therapist would probably call this growth.” I tease. “Healing. Maturity might even be muttered.”
“God.” She burrows closer and shivers violently. “I’m so friggin’ sore, . It hurts to even laugh.”
“Because you’re a stubborn brat who would rather kill herself than ask for help.” I swipe the tears from her puffy cheeks and cup her neck until she looks up. “You scared me today, Minka. In more than one way. I watched you work yourself nearly to death, even knowing you’re already fighting sickness, and I had way too much time to sit back and imagine you with another man. You weren’t talking it out, and I wasn’t asking the right questions, so my imagination took over and showed me things I never want to see again. It’s like I put a fucking camera in the room with you and him, and then I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t look away.”
“You hurt your own feelings.” Fresh tears roll onto her cheeks and race toward her jawline. “You imagined things that probably never happened. You broke your own heart and tortured yourself with all the what-ifs , and I didn’t save you from that when I had the power to because I was caught up in my own hurt feelings, imagining that you hated me the way my father probably should have hated my mother. I was living and reliving fights in my mind, fights we hadn’t even had yet, where you said horrible things, even though you’ve never said those things in real life.”
“It’s like we’ve lived a thousand arguments today, but without the benefit of actually speaking to each other.”
“Makes us both idiots.” Shakily, she reaches up and wipes her cheek. “We scarred each other for no reason.”
“That’s usually how it goes.” She grows heavier in my lap. Lazier now that we’re okay. But she’s still cold, and she hasn’t eaten in… fuck knows. Way too long. “You need dinner and then to go to sleep.”
“Sleep first.” She draws a long breath until her chest expands, then exhales again with a tired groan. “I’m not hungry.”
“Babe—”
“If I eat, I’ll puke.” But she forces her eyes open and slowly crawls out of my lap. “You need to take your pants off and have a proper shower. You’re always so busy taking care of me, you forget you have needs too.” Stiffly, she sets her feet on the floor and releases a pained hiss as she slowly rises. “I’ll get you something to eat. Then we can go to bed and try human-ing again tomorrow.”
“Today, actually.” But I stand, too, and hold her hips when she sways. “If you fall over and smack your pretty head on the tile, you’re gonna end up in the ER. And your feet are still fucking blue, so if you give me even the smallest opening to have you admitted, I’ll take it. It’ll keep you from the New York case, and they’ll strap you to an IV pole anyway, which’ll keep you down while you fight this cold coming on. ”
“I don’t have a cold coming on.” But she sniffles and stares down at the floor. “I’m naked, and we’re not having sex.”
“See how mature we can be?” I push my jeans down and kick them to the corner with a muddy splat, then I step under the hot spray and allow it to fight the goosebumps covering me from top to toe. I’m freezing, too, and need just a minute to warm up. But I keep Minka’s hips in my hands. Her trembling body in my sight. In under sixty seconds, I flip the taps off and grab a couple of towels. “Let’s go to bed. It’s nearly four in the damn morning.”
“Really?” Sad, she looks up with big, round eyes. “Almost four?”
“Mmhm. Which means you’re not gonna be at the office in time for nine o’clock rounds.”
“I need to sort through the bones we recovered tonight. There’s a lot and?—”
“After we sleep.” I wrap a towel around her torso and tuck it in between her breasts, then I do the same for myself, circling my hips with the thick cotton and tucking it in so I can walk hands-free. “No food then, since you’re basically already asleep. Aspirating your dinner isn’t on our bingo card for tonight.”
“Look at you go.” She sniggers, the sound coming out an almost delirious slurring. “Using your medical words like a real-life doctor.”
“Married to the best, learning on the side.” Opening the door and turning her right, though her feet angle left, I force her into our room and lead her straight to bed. “Get in.” I don’t attempt to dress her. I don’t even take her towel. I don’t dry her hair, though I probably should. I merely pull the blankets down and nudge her onto the mattress, then I tug the covers up again and go in search of more from the closet until she’s trapped under twelve inches of duck feathers and thick wool.
She’ll wake tomorrow in a world of pain and with a stomach screaming to be filled. But her eyes already flicker closed. Her cheeks are still pink from the burn of freezing wind and rain, and her lips are paler than they should be. Her very fucking existence terrifies me; her mortality, a dozen steps closer to death than the average woman.
Add in the fear of losing her to a cop on the other side of the country, and my soul aches at the battering it’s taken in the last twenty-four hours .
I lean closer and press a kiss to her temple—still cold—and sigh. But then I step away and switch the lights out.
“Stay with me.” Her voice is just a whisper in the dark. Her plea, a balm over the emotional burns I’m still nursing. “Please don’t leave.”
“I’m staying.” I move to my side of the bed and drop my towel, then I slide under the covers and drape my arm around her hip, yanking her back until our bodies touch from head to toe. Until her ass nestles in my lap and my lips rest against her shoulder blade. Best of all, her towel unravels, and my hand makes its way between her breasts until finally, I can be assured her core temperature is recovering and her heart beats against my palm. “I’m never leaving, okay?” I curl my legs up until we’re yin and yin, perfectly curled as one. “And I’m always gonna choose to love you.”
She sniffles.
I hear it in the otherwise silence. But it’s her tears I feel in the air.
I don’t have to see them to know they exist, nor do I have to feel them on my skin to prove they’re there. Her heart aches tonight, and though I know I’m not completely to blame for what went down, and neither is she, I know, collectively, we fucked up and lost a day we’ll never get back.
Right now, while we’re still young and healthy, a day seems inconsequential.
But in fifty years, or sixty, when the end is drawing near, and I would kill for just another, I know I’ll regret what we wasted.
“I love you,” she whispers tearfully, curling closer and hugging my hand to her chest. “I choose you.”
“Forever.” I close my eyes and wish for a happier tomorrow. “Visit me in my dreams, Minnnnka. I’ll be waiting for you.”