Chapter 23
ARCHER
“Ilook like a drowned rat.” Minka snuggles into my shirt, her shorts dripping wet and her hair lying flat against her scalp.
As we make our way back to the house, hours after we left, she curls into me most important of all, her arm lashed across my back and her hand anchored to my hip.
For the first time in almost a full week, her heart pounds against my side and makes it possible for our breaths to sync. “They’ll know we—”
“Went swimming?” I drag her impossibly close and rest my lips against her temple.
I have days of this to catch up on. Four nights where I didn’t get to sleep by her side.
“We’re married, Minnnka. We’re husband and wife.
No one inside that house will bat an eye when they realize we went to the waterfalls together. ”
“You know it’s not the swimming I’m talking about.”
I drag her to a stop just fifteen feet from the back door, pulling her around and tugging her in until our bellies touch and her neck folds back, allowing me to see into her beautiful chocolate gaze.
Her nerves grow with every step we take closer to civilization. Warmth fills her cheeks, and insecurity beats in her eyes.
We hurt each other this week, and her hurt digs deeper than anyone else’s.
The woman who appears to feel nothing, feels everything.
I cup her face, stroking the heated flesh with the pads of my thumbs.
“They lost sleep worrying about you this week.” Leaning closer, I pepper a gentle kiss against her lips.
“They hurt for us. For you most of all.” I drop a second kiss, aiming for the very corner of her lips, only to be rewarded by her sharp exhalation of air.
“They deserve to see you exactly like this.”
“Messy?”
“Whole.” Another kiss. “Still raw,” I rasp, “and still coming around to the things I’m saying. But they deserve to see you right here with me, because fuck, Minka, with me is where you belong.”
“But—”
“You’re gonna push me away until you can be sure this week won’t ever happen again.” And yet, I hold her tighter. Nearer. “You’re gonna retreat into that woman I first met, the one who doesn’t need anybody, the one who refused to show emotion or weakness.”
“Archer—”
“I’m gonna get a version of you typically reserved for random strangers in the street.
Polite detachment, professional indifference.
If I let up for even a second, you’re going to shove more and more space between us, because this week reminded you vulnerability is sometimes repaid with absolute fucking agony, and the fear of experiencing it again is almost too much to bear. It’s terrifying.”
Her eyes dance with unshed tears, glittering under the summer sun. “Did you read a psych book in your spare time this week?”
I choke out a pathetic, watery laugh. “No. But I study you every chance I can get. I know it hurt, baby, and I know that pain doesn’t disappear just because we’re back in the same space again.
I know your body remembers, and your nervous system is shot to shit.
I know we can swim and kiss and hug and everything can appear to be back to normal, but inside, your brain will still torment you. ”
She blinks, blinks, blinks, squeezing a fresh, heartbreaking tear onto her cheek. “I don’t know how to turn it off.”
“You can’t.” I inch forward and collect her fallen tear on the tip of my tongue. “That’s gonna be my job.”
Her breath comes out in a shuddering exhale.
“You thought I was obsessed with you before?” I wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, tilting my head to the side and studying her beautiful eyes, even behind the gloss of tears she tries so hard to hold back.
“That’s nothing compared to how I’m gonna be from now on. You wanna sit? You’ll sit on my lap.”
She chokes out a sobbing snicker.
“You wanna eat? I’ll feed you.”
“Archer—”
“You wanna fucking breathe? I’ll be right there, inhaling your secondhand oxygen. I’m gonna be around so much, you’ll wish for space again.”
“So you double down on my addiction?” She sniffles, swiping her nose with the side of her hand. “Then the next time we have a problem, I won’t even survive it.”
“Next time we have problems, I’ll allow you a little space to cool down.
But, like…” I flash a taunting smile. “You get two feet and two minutes, then I’m taking your ass back to Jamaica, and we’re staying there till we fix us again.
” I drag my palms over her cheeks. “We’re two very grown, very stubborn people.
We come from extremely different worlds, with totally different upbringings, and that means we’re gonna have different opinions sometimes.
It’s inevitable those opinions will lead to arguments—’cos we’re stubborn, remember?
—but we’re gonna work through them. Together. ”
“And when you grow tired of us?” Her jaw trembles, wobbling and devastating on such a proud, strong woman’s face. “When my opinion and your opinion just can’t find a compromise? When you’re set on your perspective, and I’m set on mine, and a decision must be made?”
“There’s nothing in this world I want more than I want you. So if we’re arguing and shit’s getting heated, I’ll choose your happiness every time.”
“So you’ll sacrifice your own?” she whimpers. “That leads to resentment.”
I draw her to her toes and swallow her breath. “I’m not sacrificing my happiness, silly. You are my happiness. The rest is just noise.”
“Arch?” Tim stands in the doorway, his eyes flickering between mine and Minka’s. There’s no relief in his expression, no comfort in seeing us together again.
Just a flattening of his lips.
“What?” I swing my eyes around the yard. “What’s wrong?”
“We need you inside.” He takes a step back, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s Soph. She wants to talk.”
“Come on.” I twine our fingers and lock us in, then I drag her forward as adrenaline floods my veins and fear, new, but the fucking same, crushes my heart.
Striding through the door and into the kitchen, I’m met with Aubree’s stare and Cato’s glower.
Mary and Steve are nowhere to be seen, but Tim’s phone rests on the counter, screen-side up, with a call on speaker. “What’s happening?”
“I’m here, too,” Felix growls down the line. “And Micah.”
“And me, too,” Tiia adds. “Thought maybe I could help.”
“Everything good in Jamaica?” Soph asks seriously. “Resolved?”
Minka’s eyes go straight to her bare feet, her cheeks paling.
I lead her all the way to the counter and perch my ass on an open stool, and like I promised, I pull her down and force her onto my lap. “Everything’s okay,” I murmur. “Healing. What do you wanna tell us, Soph?”
“Estefan Cordoza.”
And there it is. That fucking ache in the pit of my stomach, swelling and festering, because going to war against Cordoza brings me right back to the paralyzing fear that I’ll lose my wife anyway.
I wrap my arm around her stomach and rest my chin on her shoulder. Drawing a long, chest-stretching breath to prepare myself, I release it again and nod. “Alright. Drop it on us quick, Solomon. I’m too fucking tired to drag this out.”
“I actually don’t have as much as you think I do.
This has been a family in pieces ever since the wedding, with broken communication, hidden motivations, and blind faith in a man we all thought we could trust. Estefan is powerful and ruthless—it would do us well not to forget that—but we have real-world experience with the man, too, and he’s only ever treated my sister with kindness. Minka, also. He’s…”
“I can’t figure it out,” Minka rasps, sinking into my lap. “I’m tired, so maybe my brain isn’t working, but he could have asked me to take care of Agosti, and I would have. Why the big production?”
“He can’t ask without answering to the city,” Tim rumbles. “Hiring a hit is the same as committing the hit himself; the rules forbade him from doing that.”
“So he placed each of us in position and laid the foundations that led us here,” Soph continues.
“He successfully ended another New York family without ever formally asking for it, and then he made a bunch of noise about autopsying the body and finding COD. To anyone looking from the outside, he’s done his job, and you, Chief, ruled it a suicide.
The documentation supports what he wanted it to support. ”
“But how can her documentation stand while, simultaneously, word is out that she was the one who did it?” Aubree questions.
“Well, that’s just it,” Soph counters. “I’m not hearing a single peep from anyone, anywhere, at all. Her name is on no one’s tongue.”
“We’ve heard nothing either,” Tiia inserts.
“Roscoe’s still working with the bureau, his ear is to the ground, and before anyone loses their shit,” she adds quickly, somehow knowing how my blood roars, or how Felix snaps his teeth.
“No matter the price or consequences, family comes first for me and Roscoe. You don’t have to worry about him. ”
“He’s a federal agent,” I snarl. “And he gets this feral glint in his eyes every time he’s included in any conversation that could lead to an arrest and a fat promotion.”
“Family first, Detective.” She says the words plainly. No anger. No pressure. No rush. Then, “I can only conclude word of Minka’s involvement in Anthony Agosti’s death has not spread further than the people on this call, and Cordoza himself.”
“So he fuckin’ lied.” Fury bubbles and burns in my veins, forcing my arm to tighten around Minka’s belly and my hand to clutch her thigh. “He said the whispers were loud and expanding, and the best course of action was to place distance between us until he could get a handle on it.”
Minka glances over her shoulder, searching my eyes. “He specifically wanted us apart this week. Why?”
“I haven’t figured that bit out yet,” Soph answers. “And the man is extremely careful regarding the conversations he conducts, even in his own home where privacy is implied.”
Implied. But not given.