Chapter 12
ARCHIE
Ididn’t realize I was smiling until my cheeks started to ache.
My thumb dragged along the rim of the coffee mug in front of me, following the same path over and over, something to keep my hands busy while everything else felt… charged.
My lips still burned with the imprint of his.
Shifting in the booth, I pressed my knee into the underside of the table just to ground myself, but it barely made a difference.
Didn’t help that I could still feel him.
All of him.
My fingers stilled against the mug.
Are we…
Are we boyfriends now?
A quiet, disbelieving breath slipped out of me, something halfway between a laugh and a full-body what the hell.
My lips pressed together, and the smile came back anyway, a little helpless around the edges.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered under my breath, rubbing a hand across my jaw.
I still felt him there, too.
“Why do you look like you just got laid or possessed?” Rhys dropped into the seat across from me, eyes narrowing as he took me in. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for either option before coffee.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t look like anything.”
“You do,” he hummed, pointing his finger at me. “Your face is doing a thing.”
“What thing?”
He reached across the table, fingers closing around my mug and pulling it out of my hand like I’d lost the right to it. “A weird, floaty, I’ve-left-my-body-and-I’m-not-coming-back expression.”
He lifted it to his lips, a smug little curve still sitting there as he took a long, confident swig.
It died on impact.
His face seized mid-swallow—eyes pinching and mouth warping around the sip like it had turned on him.
Rhys jerked the mug away, shoulders curling in as a strangled sound punched out of his throat. He forced it down anyway, blinking hard like he needed a second to recover from the betrayal.
“Jesus Christ, Arch,” he muttered, shoving it back toward me. “Did you order coffee or melted dessert?”
“I like it sugary,” I defended.
“This is a crime,” he said flatly. “Somewhere in Sweden, my ancestors just felt that.”
I bit down on my lip, failing miserably to hold it back as a laugh slipped out anyway.
“I need a fucking espresso.”
“We’re in a diner in small-town Connecticut, babe.” I lifted my mug to him. “Good luck with that.”
“Well, at least a coffee that isn’t actively trying to rot my teeth out.”
He snatched up the menu like it had disappointed him too, flipping it open with a frown that deepened the longer he scanned it.
“I want pancakes,” he decided, like this was a revelation.
“They’re coming.”
His head snapped up. “What?”
“I ordered for you already.” I took another sip, watching him over the rim. “Eggs, hash browns, bacon. And coffee so black it’ll clear your bad mood right up.”
Rhys stared at me. Suspiciously.
“…You ordered for me,” he repeated.
“You always get the same thing.”
“That’s not the point,” he said, setting the menu down like he didn’t trust it anymore. “You anticipated my needs. That’s unsettling. I don’t like what that says about you right now.”
A smile tugged at my mouth again.
“Oh.” His eyes narrowed further. “Something happened.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You’re a terrible fucking liar.”
My hand dragged along my jaw again, trying to wipe the expression off before it gave me away completely. “I’m not—”
“Archibald.” He leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. “You look like you’ve been electrocuted. Which is concerning, because the last time I saw you was last night when you shuffled to your room after a long afternoon with Rothwe—ohmygod.”
I groaned.
Rhys’s mouth dropped open. “No.”
My fingers lifted before I could stop them, brushing over my mouth like I was checking if it had actually happened—like I might still find him there if I pressed hard enough.
Rhys tracked it. Of course he did.
“No, no, no.” Blue eyes sparked with something feral. “Don’t you dare touch your lips like that unless you have something to confess.”
“I kissed him.”
Rhys’s shoulders locked mid-shift, the motion cutting off so abruptly the booth creaked under him. His fingers stilled where they’d been drumming against the table, curling slowly like his body needed a second to catch up with what he’d just heard.
“Oh, I knew it,” he breathed, dragging it out like he’d been waiting his whole life for this exact moment. “I told you so. Oh my God, I’m never letting you forget this.”
“Please don’t make it a whole thing.”
“It’s already a whole thing,” he shot back. “You are glowing. You look like you just discovered serotonin for the first time.”
I huffed out another laugh, shaking my head, but the smile wouldn’t go away. It kept pulling at my mouth.
“It wasn’t—” I started, then stopped, because there wasn’t a version of this that didn’t sound insane. “It wasn’t just a kiss.”
Rhys leaned in immediately. “Oh, I know it wasn’t just a kiss. That man does not strike me as a ‘just a kiss’ kind of guy.”
No.
Not even close.
My thighs pressed together under the table before I could stop, doing nothing to take the edge off. It only sharpened it, dragged the memory tighter through my body.
My gaze dropped, thumb tracing a worn groove in the table as everything replayed.
“My phone kept going off. I just… shoved it in my bag and forgot about it. We were supposed to be working.” I cleared my throat. “We did work. For hours.”
The desk was full of drafts and notes—his handwriting cutting through the margins while mine followed behind, guided from one point to the next like everything was exactly as it should be.
Like he hadn’t just kissed me.
Like his hands weren’t still settling on me whenever I drifted too far from where he wanted me.
His hands acted as a steady correction whenever I drifted too far.
Just a brief press at the back of my neck when my thoughts started to scatter. Fingers brushing my shoulder when I leaned too far over the desk.
“He ordered dinner,” I said. “Sat there and watched until I ate every bite.”
Rhys let out a low huff. “Good.”
“He didn’t let me disappear. Not once.”
Silence stretched across the table. When I looked up, the edge of Rhys’s expression had shifted, something more careful settling in where the teasing had been.
“You really like him.”
“He makes me feel safe,” I said. “In a way I don’t think I ever have.”
Rhys cocked his head. “So why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re waiting for it to go wrong.”
“Because…” My breath stalled, chest pulling tight around it. “Because I know better.”
His brows drew together.
“Safe doesn’t stay. It feels real while it’s happening, and then something shifts, or breaks, or disappears, and you’re left trying to figure out what you missed.”
My gaze flicked up briefly, meeting his.
“And I’m really good at missing things.”
“Arch.” Rhys held my gaze for a second longer, something tightening through his shoulders before he leaned back, dragging a hand down his face like he was deciding how hard to push. “No.”
I blinked. “No?”
“No. We’re not doing that. Not today.”
My fingers caught on a napkin, worrying the corner until it split, the tear running uneven.
“What happened to Abel was not your fault.”
My mouth opened, instinct already kicking in, ready to argue it, twist it, make it mine and—
“You were nine,” he stressed. “Nine, Arch. Not some criminal mastermind who orchestrated a disappearance in under a minute. You were a kid with a popsicle and bad luck.”
My jaw locked, teeth pressing together hard enough to feel it behind my eyes.
“Hell. I was probably eating dirt at nine. Like, recreationally. For fun.
A breath broke out of me before I could stop it.
“Exactly,” he said, stabbing a finger at me. “That’s the level of decision-making we’re working with here.”
The napkin gave way completely.
“You didn’t miss something. Something was taken.
Those are not the same thing, and you don’t get to blur them together just because it’s easier to blame yourself.
And your dad—” he went on, refusing to back off, “—that wasn’t something you could fix either.
Neither was your mom deciding to stop living her life. ”
“Rhys—”
“You’ve been carrying all of it like it’s your job to make sense of it. Like if you just think hard enough, you’ll find the moment where you could’ve changed it. But that’s not how it works, Arch.”
I wished it did.
I wished there was a version of this where everything came down to one moment I could isolate, study, and pull apart until it made sense. Something I could trace back and fix if I just looked hard enough.
That part of me existed. It was the one that read too much, that picked things apart, that understood how grief moved through people and how memory warped under pressure. I’d sat with it long enough to know what it was supposed to look like.
My brain had already sorted it.
It wasn’t my fault.
But that didn’t change the other part—the one that didn’t care about logic or patterns or what should be true. The one that still circled the same fifty-eight seconds like it could wear them down into something different if it just didn’t stop.
That part didn’t listen.
“And this?” His hand came out of nowhere, closing over mine just long enough to pull the shredded napkin free and drop it to the side. “This thing you’ve got going on where someone actually sees you and doesn’t let you disappear—”
“Rhys, I—”
“That’s not a trap. It’s not some illusion waiting to screw you over. It’s a gift.” He squeezed my hand. “And you don’t have to tear it apart just because the rest of your life taught you to expect the worst.”
“I know that. I do. It’s just… hard.”
“But you’re allowed to want him.” One corner of his mouth pulled up. “And for the record? He’s terrifying. Which, honestly, works in your favor.”
My fingers shifted under his, pressing back for a second before I pulled away.
“He is.”
But not to me. Not anymore.