19. Archer
CHAPTER 19
Archer
It’s the middle of the night and I’m pounding my fist on my brother’s door.
After Tinsley told me what happened the night she left ten years ago and when she came back a year later, I couldn’t sleep. The details I’ve been missing all these years played over and over in mind, keeping me up for hours after she’d fallen asleep. Finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I gently untangled her from me and slipped out of bed, grabbing a pair of athletic shorts and a t-shirt from the dresser before I crept out of our room and dressed on the stairs, hellbent on getting the rest of the fucking answers I’m owed from Hunter, beginning with what the hell did he do with the rest of the letter she wrote the night she ran.
She said it was several pages long, not the ripped portion I woke up to. That she told me about finding the engagement ring in my nightstand and how she was spooked because suddenly her life wasn’t what she’d been working towards and her priorities and dreams were shifting and the fear of regret terrified her—a damn self fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one. In it, she said she knew I’d be hurt and angry by what she did but hoped with space I would call her when I was ready, that she'd wait to hear from me for however long it took. She’d left details and solutions to how we could do the long distance for that first year while I finished school. Had sworn to me that unless I told her otherwise, she would come back the first chance she got. And she did.
For ten months she waited for a phone call that never came, and when she was finally able to come back here, she was met with Hunter and his loathing for her. When she told me what he said to her, I was ready to punch a wall. It was exactly what she parroted back and accused me of thinking about her on the lake four weeks ago. Still, my girl wasn’t cowed by him, not until he relented and started to bring her up to the house.
I hadn’t immediately been able to recall who Tinsley was talking about when she said she saw a redhead come up and kiss me. Hearing it was absurd. It was several years before I even went on a date with someone else, so I sure as hell wasn’t kissing anyone ten months after losing her.
But as she talked about shoving past Hunter, who shrugged and said, “Told you; you’re not wanted here,” and getting in her car and later throwing her phone into the lake, it clicked. She’d seen me with Ashley Morgan—Hunter’s whatever she was to him who hadn’t been able to tell us apart if her life depended on it. Ashley had come out of the house tipsy on Shiner from the barbecue we were having and had thrown herself at me thinking I was my twin. Getting her the hell off me had been a nightmare, and I was wracked with guilt over having felt like I’d just cheated on Tinsley for weeks afterward.
Whether I’d been right in thinking the tabloids were making things up about her and her tourmate or I was wrong, I didn’t care. In my heart, I was still a man in love and was faithful to my girl. Ashley kissing me had shredded what was left and drove me the closest I’d come since Tinsley ran to chasing after her. I’d gotten in my truck and on the road at least a dozen times, ready to meet her at the next tour stop and do whatever I had to in order to see her. I needed to kiss her and hold her again and beg her to tell me what to do to fix us because being without her was slowly killing me and I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Jesus, what the fuck?” Hunter yells from the other side of the door as he wrenches it open. He’s in his boxers, eyes squinting with sleep, as he dumbly checks, “Archer?”
I’m not a violent person and haven’t been in a fight since high school when Mason Hucksley thought it was his job to uphold the stereotype of jocks versus nerds, always shoving Ames against the lockers, knocking his books or lunch out of his hands, and all sorts of general dickish behavior. I had the Hayes name and money as well as my brothers who played football with him keeping me off his radar. Ames, who literally grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, had none of that, and there was no way I was letting him suffer alone. If you went after Ames, you went after me, and along with me came Ryder and Hunter.
However, the moment I see my twin, my fist is rearing back and punching him in the face. His eyes immediately water and blood spurts from his nose.
“What the fuck?” he yells, stumbling back and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Where the fuck is it?”
“I don’t?—”
“Wrong answer!” I yell, shoving him the rest of the way into his house and slamming the door closed behind me. I have him pinned against the wall and my breath is ragged as I seethe, “What did you do with it?”
“She told you.”
I grab him by his shoulders, jerking him forward before slamming him back into the wall. His head bounces with the impact and I let him go, stepping back. I can’t control myself this close to him.
Tearing through his house, I start turning on lights. There’s nothing in his living room that could hide the letter, so I move on to his kitchen. Ripping out drawers and opening cabinets and the pantry, I turn the room upside down before moving on.
I charge up the stairs, taking them two at a time yelling, “For your sake Hunter, you better not have fuckin’ thrown it out!”
“What does it matter?” he yells back, coming after me. At the top of the stairs, he tackles me and we grapple for dominance before he’s slamming me down into the hardwood, the hit rattling my teeth. “She left you, Archer. She fuckin’ left you without so much as a thought for what it’d do to you. Packed her shit in the middle of the night and wrote you a goddamn Dear John letter.”
“It wasn’t your choice!”
“SHE LEFT YOU!” he roars, spit hitting my face.
“SHE WAS COMIN’ BACK!”
I wrap one hand over the other and bring them down on his back. Hunter grunts and rolls off of me, and while the kick isn’t hard, I don’t quell the urge to jab my sneakered foot into his ribs when I stand up.
He groans at the ceiling before crunching up, arms over his knees as he wipes blood from his face.
“Yeah, she did,” he concedes far too easily. “But only after she was done spreadin’ those pretty little thighs for that guy she was on tour with and fuck knows who else, all while you were a fuckin’ pussy whipped little bitch pinin’ away for her.”
My fists curl at my side and I suck in my next inhale through my teeth. It doesn’t do anything to help me, though, and I’m whirling around to punch Hunter again.
“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Fuckin’ Christ!” he swears, spitting blood onto his hardwood floors. “Are we seriously gonna fight over a woman? Because here’s the thing, Arch, your girl didn’t fuckin’ deny it!”
“Two things,” I hiss, holding up my fingers to count them off. “One, I wouldn’t have given a shit if she had been with anyone else.
“And two, would you’ve even believed her if she had?” When he doesn’t answer, I nod, “Exactly,” yanking open a bedroom door to continue searching.
Hunter hangs in the doorframe, holding his ribs. “It wouldn’t have worked. It only works now because you’re both here. What do ya think was gonna happen once she was in L.A. and you were here?”
“I would have gone with her.”
“Fine, say you did. Hell, say you do; how does that look, Arch?”
Coming up empty in the room, I shove past him when he won’t let me through to move on. I shrug off his arm and demand, “Where is it?”
“Answer the question and I’ll tell you.”
“You answer mine!” I rage. “How the fuck have you been able to lie to my goddamn face for years? Years , Hunter! Not only to me, to her!
“She had every reason not to come back when I didn’t call her for ten months, but she still came. And you told her I didn’t want her anymore. What was the point? I was still in love with her and you knew that! Why lie to her? Why let her believe your girlfriend was mine ?
“Shit, Hunt. Tinsley saw her kiss me and it broke her fuckin’ heart! And you… you just let the love of my life leave thinking I had moved on and thrown her away. So why?”
“Because you’re not cut out for her life, Archer!” he yells, scrubbing his hands over his face. Tonelessly, he repeats, “You’re not cut out for it. You weren’t then and you aren’t now.”
He goes back to the stairs and sits down, head bent as he tugs at his hair and lets out a short laugh.
“Do you remember how you were right after you met her? I’d never seen you act that way over a girl and you hadn’t even gone on a date with her yet.”
I do. After we left Berry Station and I walked Tinsley to her car so she could go to her condo and get ready, I called Hunter from my truck and told him Dad hadn’t been lying when he talked about how fast he fell for Mom.
A Hayes man knows when he’s met the woman he’s going to love for the rest of his life. There’s no way to reason it, no preparing for it, no fighting it. It’s swift and irrevocable. From one heartbeat to the next, she becomes the center of his universe, the reason he exists, the very air he breathes.
Defying all logic, all reason, from the moment we collided, I was Tinsley’s just as he’d predicted.
When I don’t answer—merely coming to reluctantly sit beside him—he lets out a short laugh. “Of course you remember. What you don’t remember, because you don’t know, is I followed you that night. I sat three tables away, watching the two of you in that little booth all night.”
At that, I turn my head, my brow pulling to the center in question.
“Yep,” Hunter confirms, popping the p. “You were never like Ryder and I, letting your dick lead you around. You were so indifferent to girls in high school, hardly seemed to even notice them.
“Actually, for a while I thought maybe you and Ames… you know, which would’ve been cool ‘cause he’s a chill dude,” he shrugs. “But there wasn’t anything there either, and eventually I realized you’re just… different. Which is also cool, and you know Ryder and I would’ve fucked anyone’s shit up if they said anythin’ about you being gay or just, you.
“Anyway, it wasn’t normal to see you actin’ the way you were over some random girl you’d just met, and I didn’t trust it, so I followed you. Wanted to see her, get a feel for her, make sure there wasn’t anythin’ goin’ on there that would be concernin’ like those books with the shirtless dudes Mom reads where the guy is like tryin’ to seduce the woman for her family’s fortune or whatever.”
“Read a lot of Mom’s books do you?” I chuckle.
“Shut up.”
For a minute, things are normal and we laugh. However, it doesn’t last, and a thick, somber layer falls over us again, reminding me why I’m here in the middle of the night.
Hunter clears his throat and says, “You’re gonna get mad-der but I tested her. When she got up to use the restroom, I followed her. You know people can never tell us apart, and you weren’t wearing your glasses so I knew it would be easy.
“She barely spared me a second glance when she came out. Just murmured an apology for almost running into me and went on her way back to you. It was like she didn’t even realize we were twins.”
“She’s always said you were the ugly one.”
“Which is ridiculous!” he cries. “We’re identical . If I’m ugly, then so are you.”
“Not to her.”
“Whatever,” he dismisses. “Anyway, I still didn’t trust her. I mean why would she be?—”
He cuts himself off, and I roll my eyes and guess, “Why would she be interested in me? Go ahead, Hunter. We both know it’s true, I’m not exactly the twin or Hayes brother anyone was ever actually interested in growin’ up and Tinsley… God is she stunning and so damn captivating. Lightyears outta my league.
“I couldn’t believe she didn’t have a boyfriend or that she was interested in me. I still can’t. She could have anyone she wanted wrapped around her finger—even more so now—and she chose me.”
“I don’t know, Arch, I was skeptical… maybe jealous. Not that she was with you, but that you were with her. I held out as long as I could while she had Mom and Ryder both falling in love with her, but she fuckin’ won me over.
“When she talked about going to L.A. to record her album at the end of the summer, I wasn’t concerned. Stuff like that falls through all the time. I thought for sure she’d fail to achieve her dreams simply because the odds of it happening are like one percent.”
“Less than,” I correct. “There isn’t even a one percent chance amongst developing artists that they’ll reach her level of fame and success.”
“Exactly. But then I heard her sing for the first time and I knew she was gonna make it. She was going to make it and you, you were going to be left behind, either for some Hollywood whatever or because you aren’t meant for that kind of life. I know it, and whether you want to admit it or not, you know it too.”
Hunter shifts on the step and he’s a near mirror to me when we look at each other—our height and the scarcest difference in the pattern of our irises being all there is to differentiate us when my tattoo is covered and I’m wearing my contacts.
“When I came home and saw that she was leavin’, I tried to get her to stay. I begged—promised that if she just came back into the house, I would forget the whole thing. I tried, Arch, you gotta believe me; I tried. Tinsley just kept going on and on about regrets and y’all being ruined while saying how much she loved you but how could that be true? She was fuckin’ leavin’ you. You were getting plans drawn up for a house and shifting your classes to do it online and had just asked Mom for the family’s engagement ring and Tinsley… she was leaving you.
“I failed to keep her here for you at least until the morning so you two could talk about it, and as she drove away, I swore I wouldn’t let her have the chance to do it to you again. So yeah, I went inside and I found the letter in y’all’s room and I took it. I didn’t want you holdin’ onto false hope or goin’ after her only to be right back where we were about to be in a few months.”
I could almost understand why he did it. A part of me even wants to. But he lied to my face for months. He manipulated me and talked me out of what Ryder and our mom spent weeks trying to get me to do, which was not wait and go find her. Day after day, while my entire world faded out, he was there keeping secret the answers to things I couldn’t figure out. He had the truth of what was going on and refused to let me have it.
And instead of owning up to it and admitting he was wrong about her, he took an opportunity to shatter her heart and faith in me and ran with it for nine fucking years.
Shaking my head, I stand up. I can’t and don’t want to deal with this any longer. I have my answers, now I just want what I came for.
“Where is it?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
And just like that, I punch him again. “I don’t have to fuckin’ answer shit, Hunter! But you want to know what it looks like for us? It looks like me spending the rest of my fuckin’ life attoning for the sins you committed, because she should have never spent a single goddamn minute questioning if I ever loved her. Not when she’s all I’ve thought about and wanted for ten years.”
I’m in the doorway of the next bedroom ready to cut the mattress open if I have to when he says, “It’s at Ryder’s. I was gonna burn it but I couldn’t, so I put it in the false bottom of Dad’s desk where he used to keep his gun. I never moved it.”
I don’t say anything else; there’s nothing to say. At least nothing I might one day wish I could take back.
I trot down the stairs, open and close the door with a silent finality, and get in my truck to head over to Ryder’s house. I don’t need to know what was in the letter, not really because I have my Tinsley back and that’s all that matters at the end of it all, but I need that piece of her. She gave it to me along with every other piece of her heart and her love, and I’ve never even laid eyes on it.
“Archer?”
“Shh… go back to sleep, baby,” I whisper.
The sheets rustle as I get into bed and curl along Tinsley’s back. I wrap an arm around her torso, reaching to rest my hand between her thighs. The other I slip under her pillow, and I nestle my face into her hair. I breathe in her strawberry scent mixed with the lake and me, then murmur, "I love you,” leaving a kiss behind before tucking my chin over her head.
Sleepily, she hums, “I love you too,” shimming back so we’re flush and burrowing deeper into the blankets. As she settles in, she tugs on my arm beneath her pillow and brings it over her breasts, kissing my knuckles.
I know the moment she realizes my knuckles are split. She tries to sit up, but I tighten my arms around her, reaching up to rest my fingers on her throat, feeling her heartbeat.
“Baby, what happened to your hands?”
Since she’s more awake, I begin to nudge her hair out of my way with my nose and dot her bare skin with open mouth kisses.
“Just had to handle some stuff.”
She blindly pats around for her phone that spends more time showing a red battery in the corner than being used. “Archer, it’s three in the morning.”
I ignore the time and instead cup her between her thighs, petting and playing with her pussy and clit. With each touch between her puffy lips, she grows wetter for me, sending her ass into my cock. Her questions fade into moans as she squirms and writhes for more of my touch.
I’m too desperate to be home to tease her for long, and as soon as I’m able, I’m lifting her thigh over mine to open her up for me. Easing myself inside her, I swear, “I won’t let anyone come between us again, Tinsley,” loving her and silently apologizing for my own shortcomings until the sunrise.