Chapter 22 #4
“I knew,” he insists. “And I was terrified of what that meant, so I spent the whole evening steering you in opposite directions, when what I really should’ve done was dunk his fuckin’ head in the fryers and get right back to dancing with my wife.
” He shifts closer, taking nine inches of space from between us and leaving just four.
“You’re honest and brave and so fucking incapable of hiding your true feelings when men like Agosti exist. It was my own fault for plugging my ears and pretending not to see what was right in front of me.
I was scared.” His eyes flicker between mine, twin emeralds that sparkle brighter than the diamonds bouncing from the pool.
“I got scared of what could happen if I lost you, which is ironic, because that thing I’m so fucking terrified of?
” He licks his lips, drawing my eyes down to his swiping tongue.
“I’m the reason we experienced that this week. ”
I blink, blink, blink, squeezing fresh tears onto my cheeks.
“I’m so sorry for every single second you believed you were unwanted.” He closes the final four inches between us and presses a chaste kiss to my cheek. “I’m sorry I told you not to come home.”
A soft, pathetic sob rolls along my throat.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust us to get through this together.” He kisses my other cheek. “I’m sorry for taking Cordoza’s word and letting fear rule my decisions.” He kisses my temple. “I’m sorry for being a Malone.”
“Don’t do that.” I twine my fingers with his and sniffle. “You are a Malone.”
He scoffs. “Exactly.”
“There are four more just like you. Four amazing, selfless, generous Malone brothers who love you exactly how you are. Your mothers sacrificed their lives for you. They carried you in their bodies and brought you into this world, and we know some of their goodness carried through. But there’s something there in the Malone genes, too.
There has to be.” I swallow the croak in my voice.
The ache and prickle in the back of my throat.
“To have five brothers, so different, and yet, so similar in a lot of ways…” I search his eyes.
“Don’t discount hundreds of years of Malone blood, just because Timothy the First and Second were pricks.
Ronald and Maureen deserve better than that. ”
His stare sparkles with humor. “You mean Ronan and Maeve? The original lovebirds?”
“Mm.” I kiss his wrist and thrill in the way his pulse speeds purely because of my touch. “Ronald and Marigold. That’s what I said.”
He chuckles, the sound watery and weak as his lungs shudder. “Will you come to Jamaica with me, Minnnka?”
“Now?” I glance around the patio. The pool.
The back door, and Aubree’s intensely staring face plastered to the window.
I bring my focus back to Archer’s and lift a brow.
“You want to climb aboard a big dumb superyacht right now, while Cordoza’s being a bitch and Felix is probably gonna start a war when he finds out I cried? ”
Grinning, he drags his feet from the water and pushes up to stand, then he changes the grip of our hands and pulls me up with him.
“Yes. Right now.” He drapes his arm over my shoulders and turns me, not toward the house, but toward the garden.
Across spongy grass and around guards who pretend they’re one with nature.
He leads me away from our onlookers and under weeping branches, and a few minutes after we began, we come upon the rushing sound of falling water and, in the dirt, a single set of tire tracks.
We put those there.
“The waterfalls.” I release a shaky breath and step out from under his arm, tiptoeing toward the edge of the world and watching my step, physically and emotionally.
Because if I’m not careful, I might stumble back into the grief I’ve carried all week long.
“I wondered if I would ever see this place again.” I turn back and startle, beguiled by his bare chest, muscular and rippling as he peels his shirt up and drops it on the ground.
But my fascination turns to agony as my brain processes the dark purple bruise that spreads from his clavicle to his lowest rib. “Oh, Archer…”
“It’s so weird you forgot the till death do we part portion of our wedding vows.
” He unsnaps his jeans and shucks the denim down to reveal black boxer shorts.
“I was coming back for you, Minnnka. And if I got myself killed in the process, then I was gonna haunt you in the afterlife.” He drags his jeans over already bare feet and shoots a heated, unrelenting stare toward my legs.
“Take them off, Chief. We’re toxic and dysfunctional as fuck, remember? ”
I watch him straighten out, powerful and magnetic, his cock rock hard and the tip pointing directly at me.
“When I’m stressed, I search for solace buried in you.”
I fold my arms and stare at his hips, the delicious V of his abdominal muscles diving into his shorts.
“This week, I needed you the most.” He stalks forward, trapping me between the edge of the world and…
him. “But I didn’t have you. I couldn’t come to you.
” He slips his hands beneath my shirt—his shirt—and drags his calloused palms over my hips.
His touch sends my heart into a fluttering cacophony and my core into a tingling mess, especially as he leans in and nibbles on my bottom lip, but it’s the goosebumps sprinting all the way to my toes that leave me almost faint-headed.
“I haven’t slept right since Monday,” he rasps.
“So I’m gonna need you to rejoin me in this unhealthy, symbiotic, maladjusted marriage, and since we said I do twice, I figure you wouldn’t mind my weakness. ”
“Y-your weakness?”
“You.” He drags my shirt clear over my head, revealing nothing beneath—no bra, no tank—just me and my skin. Scooping me up with fast hands, he chuckles at my nervous squeal.
I frantically wrap my legs around his hips, my arms around his shoulders. “Don’t drop me.” I crush our chests together, my cheek to his cheek. “Please don’t drop me, Archer.”
“Close your eyes if you wanna.” He digs his hands into my shorts, cupping my ass with his palms, skin to skin. “We’re gonna jump.”
“Oh God.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh God, Archer. Did you forget I’m afraid of heights?”
“I enjoyed slitting Mihalis’ throat last night.”
Stunned, my eyes spring open again.
“He was bragging about this chick he apparently had on the hook. Delicious piece of ass, he said. Cute dimples in her cheeks, and a smile to die for.” He flashes a devious, verging on deranged, smile of his own, then he steps to the very ledge and holds my weight over the abyss. “And so he died.”
Oh God.
“Now we’re in Jamaica.”
He plops a kiss on my cheek and throws us into the void.