Chapter 11
ELEVEN
ARCHER
“Why the hell would you knock?” Harrison asked, opening his front door.
Curly blond hair peeked out from beneath the signature baseball cap he always wore, even though he was inside, and his brown eyes stared at me skeptically from behind black-framed glasses.
The guy was damn near blind, but he somehow made the glasses look trendy instead of like the necessity they were.
It’d been about three weeks since I cancelled grabbing drinks with Harrison as a result of a certain coffee-haired, hazel-eyed, female powerhouse dropping her life-changing news on me.
It wasn’t until my conversation with the chief last week that I realized I’d never filled Harrison in on everything.
When I texted him cancelling our plans, he’d been concerned.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’d cancelled on him, and every single time it was because of him, and Harrison knew that.
But this time, it had nothing to do with my father, or at least, not directly anyway.
I shrugged and walked past him into his house. “I don’t know. You’ve got a girlfriend now. Seems like the days of walking in unannounced should maybe be over?”
“You want to know what? That’s fair.” He got lost in thought for a minute, closing the door behind us. “Yeah, you know what? Definitely don’t just walk in anymore.”
I shook my head, smirking, as I made my way to his living room.
It was clear a woman had started living here.
Harrison had never been a messy guy, but he was .
. . a guy. Meaning his go-to color palette for decorating consisted of grays, blacks, and navy blues, which is how his living room had previously been decorated.
Now, cream curtains hung in front of the windows—a serious upgrade from the sans-blinds design he had going on before Sophie’s influence.
The charcoal gray sectional he’d had before had been replaced by a much lighter gray couch and matching loveseat, both of which were adorned with cream and forest green throw pillows.
There was the addition of some photos of the two of them, and a couple of decorative figurines in the bookshelves of the entertainment center, and I had to admit, it looked good.
I could’ve done with six or so less pillows considering I had to move some to be able to sit down, but visually, it was nice.
Harrison booted up the Xbox. “You want something to drink? I’ve got beers.”
“Actually, you got any seltzer water?”
“Making me drink alone? I see how it is,” he teased, but didn’t press, and returned with a seltzer in hand.
Collapsing next to me, he passed me the can and knocked a pillow off the couch as he queued the game up. “So, what happened the other week?”
I took a sip before answering. “You remember me telling you about Darcy Adler?” At his blank expression I elaborated. “The girl from The Crooked Quill that night back at the end of the summer?” Still nothing, and I groaned in frustration. “The one I had the bathroom encounter with?”
He nodded, finally remembering. “Ahh yes! That one. What about her?”
“She’s pregnant,” I said, not sure why I felt like a kid telling his parent he screwed up. Harrison would never judge me like that.
He puffed out a deep breath. “Holy shit. And it’s yours?”
I shook my head. “She said it might be, but it’s not.”
“How do you know it’s not?”
Looking down at the can in my hands, I picked at the metal tab. “It can’t be mine.” I kept my voice steady despite the fact that talking about it still put me on the edge of a panic attack.
His face softened with understanding. “I know what you’re saying, Arch, but it still could be.” He lightly tapped me on the arm with the back of his hand to get my attention. “Are you going to take a paternity test?”
I shook my head. “No. I think it’s best if neither one of them is ever linked to me.”
He looked at me quizzically. “That’s not like you to leave business unfinished.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t left unfinished.” I tried to spin the conversation for joke territory, but one look at Harrison told me he wasn’t having it at the moment.
I exhaled sharply, resigning myself to this discussion.
“I was an ass. She called me a coward. It seems pretty finished from where I’m standing.
And it’s better this way; you and I both know that. ”
My thoughts ran back to that night. I wasn’t proud of how I’d reacted at the bar with her.
Any time I thought about it—which was quite frequently given the circumstances—I was filled with an overwhelming sense of guilt and embarrassment.
But while I felt awful for how I behaved, and how I walked out on her, I couldn’t bring myself to track her down and apologize.
Every time I found myself entertaining ideas of getting involved, I’d have another one of my nightmares, and it’d convince me all over again that my staying away was necessary.
She, and that baby, were better off without me.
But Darcy’s coward comment bothered me more with each passing day.
I wasn’t a coward. My walking away wasn’t about an inability to take responsibility for my actions, but had everything to do with my past and keeping her as far away from it as possible, not that she’d know that.
We didn’t know each other, at least not really.
Any semblance of knowledge about the other was nearly a decade old and generated from a high school rumor mill.
I wasn’t a coward, and I don’t know why her believing that about me pissed me off so much.
What did it matter if that’s what she thought? Why did I care?
For the second time, his features smoothed, and a gentleness filled his eyes. “You’re not your dad, Arch. You know that. So don’t leave things the way he would have. Own up to your shit.”
Ouch.
I didn’t say anything, but I nodded. There was no use arguing with him.
Maybe I wasn’t my dad now, but what if I turned into him?
What if the baby was mine, I let myself get close to him or her—to Darcy—and then my true colors started to show?
It wasn’t a chance I was willing to take.
Both of them deserved so much better than me and the shit I carried around with me.
He let the topic go for the moment, instead starting a game of Call of Duty.
I zoned out as we raced through the desert, shooting at the computer targets, and screaming profanities like we were teenagers again.
It was oddly therapeutic, which was a little concerning.
My skills were rusty, since I only ever played when I hung out with Harrison, and we lost the game embarrassingly quickly.
“Okay, so what’s this other news you had to tell me?”
“I might be up for a promotion.”
His eyes widened and he flashed me an open-mouth grin. “No way. That’s awesome! Congratulations!”
I shook my head, trying and failing to keep my own smile off my face. “Nah, not yet. I might be, but Chief has reservations.”
“What the hell does that mean? Reservations.” He said the last word like it was dirty, a scowl pinching his eyebrows together.
Sighing, I gave him the rundown of the whole conversation with Chief Abrams. It didn’t take long because, as comfortable as I was with him, I still wasn’t a big talker. By the end, Harrison was laughing hysterically.
“So, he pretty much told you to get a life and stop being a hermit? That’s great!”
I looked away from my friend, something similar to embarrassment gnawing at the edges of my mood. “Ha ha ha, yeah, laugh it up. It’s not funny. My whole career is staked on me . . . what? Getting a hobby? Adopting a dog? Making more friends?”
He leaned back against the couch, casually swinging his ankle up to rest on his knee. “Sounds like it.”
I groaned. “I’m a grown-ass man. Since when do jobs dictate your personal life?”
“Look, it’s a little odd, I’ll give you that, but he has a point.
” With the glasses and his suddenly serious tone, he gave off professor vibes, and I was about to get lectured.
“Lieutenant is a big deal—it’s not just a position of leadership.
If you want those guys to run after you into a burning building, then they need to trust you, and trust, as you are well aware, doesn’t come easily.
It has to be earned. And right now, they see a thirty-something-year-old bachelor with a fire kink. ”
“I don’t have a fire kink.”
He leveled me with a look that said he didn’t believe me for a second, and then in a blink it was replaced by a grin. “You could get a girlfriend. That’s the definition of responsible and stable.”
“I don’t date.” I took a large gulp of seltzer, the bubbles making my eyes water slightly. Harrison tipped back the rest of his beer, and not wanting to sit there under his scrutiny, I wordlessly volunteered to get him another one.
“Yeah, I know, you only do the whole one-night stand thing, but I’m serious! Having someone is kind of nice!” he called to me over his shoulder.
Walking back into the room, I shoved his beer at him. “I’m serious too. I don’t date.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay! Fine. Stay single and alone forever.”
“Thank you, I will,” I grumbled.
We sat not speaking for a handful of seconds, me waiting for him to queue up another game, and him, apparently thinking, when he burst out laughing.
“Why don’t you do that thing they do in movies and fake having a girlfriend.”
That got my attention. “What?”
“Yeah, just fake date someone until you get your promotion. Then you could still be all alone in that big, cold bed of yours, but with a fancier title to further inflate your ego,” he mocked, clearly having too much fun with this. I couldn’t even be mad because the suggestion was funny.
I chuckled and played along with his joke. “Yeah, okay. I’m sure plenty of women would just love that idea. I’d definitely have no problem finding a willing participant.” I threw a sarcastic look in Harrison’s direction.
“Hey! I just told you they do it all the time in movies! I’m fairly certain it’s also a plot point in some of Sophie’s books.”
“And do you know what both of those things have in common?” I asked, then answered while launching a throw pillow at him. “They’re fictional.”
Harrison held his beer out to steady it against the onslaught of down-feather-stuffed decor, and sniggered. “I was only kidding!” He righted himself, adjusting to accommodate the newly-acquired pillow. “It honestly probably wouldn’t work anyway. It’s too overdone.”
I scoffed. “Yeah. That’s why it wouldn’t work.”
“No, you’re right. It wouldn’t work because you’re a cowardly ass,” he fired back, and if he were anyone else, I’d lose my shit on him.
“Shut up and start the game before I leave you here to suffocate in your throw pillows.”
He snorted, but did what I said, and seconds later we were back to gaming as if he hadn’t just thrown out the stupidest idea I’d ever heard.
After about an hour, Harrison got fed up with trying to play video games with me, and I couldn’t blame him—I was truly atrocious.
Sophie was due back from work soon, and they were still new enough where I absolutely did not want to be around for their reunion after being separated for eight hours.
I told him I’d keep him updated on the promotion front, then hopped on my bike, and started it up.
Twisting the throttle back slightly, I took off, giving it more gas once I got to the main roads.
When I hit a red light, I stopped, but my mind kept going.
You’re a coward, Archer! A fucking coward!
My teeth ground against each other, my foot bouncing against the pavement.
The mental war raged on inside my head as I glanced around the street.
People were going about their day-to-day lives without a care in the world, yet here I was, caring a great deal about what one particular brunette thought about me.
The light turned green and I made a split-second decision, gunning it in the opposite direction of my house.
I should’ve slowed down, but slowing down might’ve given me time to talk myself out of what I was about to do.
Turning up the radio and trying to let that, and the hum of my motorcycle drown out all other thoughts, I headed for the police station.
“Archer Mack! What can I do for you?” Paul, the dispatcher on duty, asked as I approached his desk.
“Wallis owes me a favor, and I need an address.” I spit the words out before I could stop myself.