Archer
The heat is still woeful. The sun, still beating down on Copeland despite it being dinnertime.
In the winter, it would be pitch black already, and our faces would hurt from the freezing wind.
But in summer, the road hoards the heat and bounces it back at a man, trapping him between bad and worse as brick building after brick building provides nothing but a lid on the oven we’re stuck inside.
But Minka and I walk home anyway, braving the single block and naively hoping that the fact it’s nearly seven o’clock would provide us a modicum of relief.
Not so lucky.
I peek across at her curvier-than-usual hips.
It’s not like she has a wide stomach normally, but the dress cinches her in and shaves off at least an inch on each side.
“You’ve tried the dress on, rescued a couple of people, terrorized an emergency room, and almost-interrogated a seventeen-year-old and her parents, all while wearing the outside-ribcage. I’m proud of you.”
“There’s no way I was alive two hundred years ago when these things were the norm. And if I were, there’s no way I wasn’t burned for being a witch.”
I snort. “Ya don’t think?”
“They expected good, submissive wives back then, and beat them when they didn’t comply.” She looks up at me, squinting under the sun’s brutal attack. “I couldn’t imagine a world where I’m quiet or you’re whipping me for disobeying your orders.”
“Sometimes I wanna.” I take her hand and tangle our fingers together. “I can’t go a day without your smartass comebacks and blatant defiance. Stokes my temper, for sure.”
“Mmhm.” She walks closer, laying her head against the ball of my shoulder. “You might wanna smack my ass, but you would never do it. Not in the context we’re discussing.”
My lips curl higher, and my cock stirs in my pants. Not in this context, no. But it happens.
“If reincarnation is a real thing, and if I was alive before modern plumbing, then I know I didn’t have a good time of it.
But then again, Patek and Taylor had not yet discovered anti-hemophilic factor two hundred years ago.
So, going by that theory, I would have been one of the countless babies dying soon after birth, anyway, for reasons the practitioners of the time wouldn’t have been able to understand.
Dumb baby,” she snickers. “I would have been stuck on a loop, born and deceased. Born and deceased. Round and round and round I went until the nineteen-thirties.”
“Guess the earlier versions of yourself never had hemophilia.” I drag our hands up and press a kiss to her knuckles.
“Because if reincarnation is real, then I would’ve found you, even then.
And seeing as how I was four when you were born, my dumb four-year-old self was probably still filling his diaper and walking around clueless to the fact you existed. ”
She snuggles into my side, giggling.
“We knew each other in our past lives, Minnnka. I refuse to believe otherwise.”
“You’re feeling especially romantic today, huh?
” She wraps herself around my arm, dropping the ends of her gown so the fabric becomes a tripping hazard, and the heat of our bodies pressed together only makes the summer sun all the worse.
But she nuzzles against my shoulder the way our cat does at night. “Do you believe in that stuff?”
“I dunno.” I bury my nose in her hair. Just to get a whiff. Just for a moment. “Maybe. The idea of a redo sounds nice, considering some of us are born into shitty circumstances. I’d like to believe that if I saw your witchy self on trial in Salem, I would’ve stepped in and saved you.”
“You might’ve thrown rocks at me. Cato would have, for sure.” Pulling back, she peers up at me with eyes glittering with mischief. “We had words today.”
“You and Cato? I know. I saved his life, remember?”
“After that. I called him after I last spoke to you and told him to check on Steve.”
“Okay…” Her phone is still dead, tucked away in my back pocket. Dark and deactivated, silent when it so often isn’t. “You blasted him again for the coffee thing?”
“I blasted him because he answered mid-relations with some random chick inside our apartment.”
I come to a sharp stop, my feet skidding on the hot concrete and my heart thumping with a bad mood. “He what?”
“On our couch. Probably.”
My lips peel back into a sneer. “He spoke to you while he was doing that?” Furious, I start walking again. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“I already verbally killed him,” she groans. “I was a total bitch. And then I demanded he go downstairs and do the damn thing I asked of him. As in, check on Steve.”
“I’m gonna kick his ass out and send him to Tim’s for the night. I told him he wasn’t allowed to do that in our apartment. I fuckin’ told him not to disrespect—”
“I was already mean.” Minka tightens her grip on my hand and drags me back to a slower pace, forcing me to simmer instead of bubble over. “He called me out on it.”
“He called you out for calling him out for fucking in our apartment? He had the audacity to flip that back on you?”
“He called me out for being a bitch. Which,” she exhales. “I absolutely was. I feel bad, even if I can’t remember half the shit I said anymore, since my brain got busy with the other stuff.”
“Minka—”
“He was right to bite back,” she concedes. “I’ve been especially short lately. Harsh. And even if I’d admit it to you, like I did earlier in the shower, I never admitted it to him.”
“He’s fucking in our apartment! While on the phone with you!” The latter burns hotter, like poison in my veins and a battle the Malone in me wants to fight. “That’s the New York in him, Minka. That’s Tim the Second. And it’s not appropriate. You don’t have to tolerate it in your own fucking home.”
“The kid is cracked,” she smirks, tugging me back and forcing me to move slower still. “He’s a Malone, through and through. But I think he probably had decent intentions when he answered my call.”
“Decent? No! He wanted to whack off with your voice in his ear, babe. He had a body to come inside, and you in his mind. It was win-win—”
“He wanted to make sure I was okay, and he knew not answering would be bad. Felix raised him, so we need to factor that in before we tear him to shreds.”
“You’re defending him!?”
She snorts, tucking loose locks of hair behind her ear.
“No one is more surprised than I am. I guess it’s just…
despite how depraved he is, he’s actually really good, too.
He would do anything for me. He would do anything for you.
” She searches my eyes, her lips crinkling in the corners.
“He’s weird, but he loves deeply. And I don’t know if you know, but I’ve thought the same thing about you a time or two.
” She drags me to a stop and pushes up to the tips of her toes, and when that’s still not enough, she grabs my face and forces me down.
“He’s weird because he was raised within weird, with a side of freakin’ crazy.
But his heart is pure, and his protection is second to none.
He’s a good guy, Archer. But I’ve made a habit of chewing him out. ”
My heart thrums, quick, skittering movements in the middle of my chest. “Are you falling in love with my little brother, Minka Mayet? Because I’m prepared to end his life and tell Lix we woke up and he was gone. I’d even forge a farewell letter if needed.”
She pulls me closer and settles a soft, barely there kiss to the center of my lips. “Absolutely not. But it occurred to me that half of my personality is wrapped around giving him a hard time, and he makes it kinda fun, since he bites back and never seems to take it to heart.”
“And… what? You don’t like that game anymore?”
“I realized that maybe he does take it to heart.” Genuine sadness shimmers in her eyes.
Regret. “He carries it well, and I’m often too busy to slow down and really pay attention to how my words affect him.
But I think I really hurt his feelings today, and then the accident happened, so I had to hang up before I could say sorry.
” She releases me and lowers back onto flat feet, but she takes my hand and continues toward home.
“It’s too hot to stay out here longer than necessary. ”
“You rushing home to see your little boyfriend?” I roll my eyes, copping a gentle smack to my stomach in response. “He got to fuck while talking to you today, which is basically everything he ever wanted. Yet, somehow, you’re the one who plans to apologize?”
She snickers.
“What kind of parallel universe did I stumble into? Is it the heat?” I glance up at the sky, closing one eye and squinting through the other. “Am I lying somewhere, unconscious ‘cos I got shot?”
“I sure hope not.” She wraps her arm across my back, hooking her hand on my opposite hip. “If I find out you’ve been shot again, I’m gonna lose my mind. I’m sick of worrying about you every time you walk out the door.”
“Says the chick who ended up in the hospital today.” I bring my focus down again.
Just half a block left until… we step inside a building with no power and no air conditioning.
Fuck. “We’re not staying at the apartment tonight, Mayet.
It’s too damn hot to spend the night in a hotbox with no cooling. ”
“You want to stay at Aubree’s, too?” Her lips wrinkle with distaste. “I’m not really the slumber party type. I’m still recovering from the last one we had.”
“We have our own house, too.” I rest my lips on her hair, but even that is hot to touch.
Her dark locks draw the sun’s rays in and warm her brain.
No wonder she has a headache. “We could go to the Waterfalls. It’s been cleaned out a bit, since Rory and Detective Banks stayed there that time, so it’s not just dust and bullshit anymore. ”
“You want to sleep in your old house?” Her eyes flicker with surprise, while her free hand comes up and fans her face to combat the stifling heat. “Won’t it feel weird?”
“Weird is better than melting into my mattress. I already did that this week—multiple times. For as long as the power stays out down here, I’m taking you somewhere better.”
“Makes you privileged.” She drops her arm and bumps her hip against mine.
Just fifteen more feet until our building front door.
“Most people don’t have the luxury of another home to escape to, Detective Malone.
Everyone else has to stay down here in the city, sweltering and catching a case of heat stroke. ”
“Guess I’m privileged then. It’s about time I benefited from my father being a piece of shit.” I flash a teasing smile and snag the door handle just two steps ahead of her. “We’re going in, getting some clothes and the cat, then we’re leaving—”
“Minka, help!” Cato’s terrified voice brings me around, the sweat pouring off his brow, and his body folded over Steve on the floor.
He pumps his hands with a frenzy only a nineteen-year-old athlete could possess.
“He went down, like, two minutes ago. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.
” He bends lower and clamps his lips over Steve’s, exhaling hot air into the man’s lungs. “I don’t know if I’m doing it right.”
“Shit!” Minka shoves past me and slams to her knees, busting her stitches wide open and frantically feeling the man’s neck for a pulse.
“I knew this was going to happen! Dammit, Steve.” She pushes Cato aside and replaces his hands with her own, and throwing all her weight into her compressions, she pumps his heart because he can’t do it himself.
“You don’t get to die, you old bastard. You don’t get to quit on me when I told you to be careful.
Call an ambulance, Archer!” She pinches Steve’s nose and breathes into his mouth, filling his lungs and expanding his chest. “Call Cleary if you have to. I’m not letting him die like this. ”