Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Leo
Kissing Archie is all I can think about.
I’ve got lots of important meetings today, but instead of thinking about the due diligence report I’m supposed to be finalizing for a client, or the call I have in twenty minutes to speak with a CEO about his company’s acquisition proposal, I’m thinking about the kiss with Archie.
When we pulled apart, we’d discovered Elizabeth had returned from the restroom and was watching us with a smirk.
I couldn’t interpret her look to know if the kiss convinced her or not.
But I do know it convinced me.
Fuck. I’ve never been someone who obsesses over guys or girls. I’ve enjoyed sex with hookups and friends-with-benefits relationships.
I’ve had good sex. Great sex even.
But I haven’t replayed even my best sexual encounters as much as I’ve replayed that single kiss with Archie.
How soft his lips were. How good he tasted. The way our kiss changed from a battle of dominance to something softer and sweeter.
Archie kicked back into his normal jokey self afterward, and we didn’t say much to each other for the rest of the evening.
And as soon as we got home, we went to our separate rooms.
I don’t know if he was also reeling from that kiss.
I thought having some space from him today would help to clear my head, but it hasn’t.
If anything, it’s made things worse. I keep checking the time, calculating how many hours until I’ll be back at the apartment and can see Archie again.
Until I’ll have to figure out how to act normal around someone whose mouth I’m still remembering against mine.
I’ve never wanted someone as much as I want him.
He’s Vaughn Mansley’s brother. The only reason I met him is because I injured him in an attempt to get revenge on his brother.
I try to remind myself of those facts, but they keep getting eclipsed by memories of Archie’s lips.
But when I get back to the apartment that evening, the first sign my life is about to get significantly worse is the Louis Vuitton suitcase in the hallway.
The second sign is how Archie greets me.
“Leo! Darling! You’re home!” He sounds like a 1950s housewife welcoming their husband. “Come and say hello to Elizabeth. She’s staying with us for a few days. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Wonderful is not the word I would choose.
“Hotel trouble,” Elizabeth explains from the armchair, where she’s sipping tea with the air of a queen surveying her kingdom. “Some ghastly mix-up with the booking. Archie insisted I take the spare room.”
The spare room. Where I sleep. Where all my belongings currently are.
Or were, I should say, because when I glance at Archie, he gives me a tiny nod that communicates he’s handled it.
Which means all my possessions are now in his bedroom.
Apparently, I’m going to be sleeping approximately three feet away from the man whose kiss has been playing on repeat in my brain for the past eighteen hours.
Wonderful indeed.
“I’m so glad you could stay,” I say to Elizabeth.
“Archie’s been telling me all about your routines,” Elizabeth says. “It sounds very sweet. The Sunday morning pancakes you make him. The little notes you leave each other.”
I look at Archie. He stares back at me with the serene innocence of a man who has fabricated a lot of things in the past few hours.
“Leo’s notes are the best,” Archie says. “So romantic. He hid one in my sock drawer last week.”
I have never written a romantic note in my life. I communicate exclusively through messages, calendar invites, and pointed silences.
“That’s me,” I say. “Romantically hiding notes in sock drawers like every normal person does.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrow almost imperceptibly.
The moment she excuses herself to freshen up, Archie grabs my arm and yanks me into the kitchen.
“She knows something’s off,” he whispers. “I think the hotel story is made up. She’s here to check us out.”
“And your solution is to invent a romantic history involving sock-drawer notes?”
“I panicked. She asked about romantic gestures, and my brain went blank.”
I raise an eyebrow. “And once it had recovered from the blankness, your brain went to secret notes mixed with hosiery?”
Archie waves his hand dismissively. “The point is, we need to up our game. She’s going to be watching everything, so we need to be completely, disgustingly, nauseatingly in love.”
I think about how I’m going to have to play “disgustingly in love” with him for the evening and then go to bed and lie next to him in the dark.
I swallow hard.
“Fine,” I say. “What’s the plan?”
“Okay, so, first things first, I should warn you about the pet names.”
“What pet names?” Suspicion laces my words.
“The ones I told Elizabeth we use.” He has the decency to look slightly sheepish. “She asked what we call each other when we’re alone, and I may have…improvised.”
My stomach drops. “What did you tell her?”
“I said I call you babe or darling. Very normal. Very vanilla. You’re welcome.”
“And what do I call you?”
Archie’s sheepish expression transforms into something far more dangerous and mischievous. “My little chaos gremlin.”
“No.”
“It’s already done, Leo. She knows. She thought it was adorable.”
“I’m not calling you a chaos gremlin.”
“You have to. It’s canon now.”
“It’s not— That’s not how—” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Why? Why would you tell her that?”
“Because she put me on the spot! And it just came out.” He tilts his head. “Besides, it’s accurate. I am chaotic. I am gremlin-adjacent. It works.”
“You’re five-foot-ten.”
“Gremlin is a state of mind, Leo.”
Elizabeth’s footsteps sound in the hallway. Archie immediately plasters himself against my side, gazing up at me adoringly.
“I missed you today, babe,” he says loudly.
I put my arm around him. My hand settles on his hip like it belongs there, which is a thought I’m not going to examine.
“I missed you too,” I say. And then, because I’ve apparently lost all control of my life, “My little chaos gremlin.”
Archie’s eyes light up with unholy glee. I can’t help myself. I brush a kiss on his forehead because he’s this close and I can’t resist that look on his face. Archie’s eyes widen and he just stares at me.
Elizabeth appears in the doorway, and we both snap our gaze to her. She’s surveying us with an expression I can’t read.
“How sweet,” she says. “Chaos gremlin. How…unusual.”
“Leo’s very creative,” Archie says. “You should hear what he calls me in the bedroom.”
I am going to kill him. I am going to kill him right now and plead justifiable homicide. I’m fairly certain any jury would acquit me once they learned the actual circumstances.
But I don’t kill him. Instead, I smile at Elizabeth because that’s what fake boyfriends do. They smile. They endure. They silently compose their victim impact statements while their fake partner grins at them.
And so begins an evening where every casual touch is a landmine.
Archie’s hand on my knee under the dinner table. My arm around his shoulders on the sofa. The way he leans into me when Elizabeth tells a story, his weight warm against my side, his hair brushing my jaw. Each point of contact is just a performance, but my body didn’t get that memo.
The worst part is that Archie seems completely unbothered. He touches me with the easy confidence of someone who’s simply playing a role, while I’m busy recalculating the structural integrity of my self-control every time his fingers graze my thigh.
Later—much later, after dinner and conversation and an exhausting evening of performing couplehood—I finally escape to what is now officially Archie’s and my bedroom.
Archie has integrated my belongings with his.
My suits hang in the closet. Archie has placed the unicorn onesie front and center beside them, which feels like a statement I’m choosing not to interpret.
My shoes are lined up next to his. On the nightstand, he’s placed my phone charger, my book, and a glass of water.
The bed is a queen. Which definitely doesn’t seem like a large enough bed to share with this man.
I’m calculating exactly how much space I can maintain between us—six inches? Eight if I don’t breathe?—when Archie hobbles into the bedroom on his crutches.
He’s in plaid pajamas, his hair still damp from the shower. With his face freshly washed and slightly pink, he looks younger and softer. The kind of soft that makes me want to do something stupid like reach out and brush that one curl off his forehead.
“Bathroom’s free,” he says. “I put your stuff on the left side of the sink. I figured you’re a left-side-of-the-sink person.”
“How would you possibly know that?”
“Because you’re left-handed. Left-handed people like things on the left. It’s not rocket science, Leo.”
I head into the bathroom, mildly unsettled by how much attention Archie pays to things like my side-of-the-sink preferences.
I’m even more unsettled when I see the tube of toothpaste sitting on the left side of the basin. It’s the brand I always use.
I’ve been rationing the remnants of my last tube like it’s the apocalypse, squeezing until it’s practically concave, brushing at lightning speed to conserve every last molecule.
But here’s a new, unopened one sitting on the counter next to my razor, like it was conjured up by the toothpaste gods.
I didn’t mention I was running out to Archie. But he apparently noticed.
Archie, who’s been dealing with a broken ankle and a suspicious godmother, somehow noticed I was out of toothpaste and did something about it.
I brush my teeth and then head back to the bedroom.
Archie’s sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through his phone.
“Why did you get me new toothpaste?” I ask.
He shrugs, not lifting his gaze from his phone. “You were running out.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it comes out more sincere than most of the interactions between Archie and me.
Archie looks up at me then, and something shifts in his expression. There’s something softer beneath the usual mischief.
“It’s just toothpaste,” he says quietly.
We just stare at each other for a few heartbeats.
“I’m not used to having someone take care of me,” I say bluntly. “I’m normally the one who has to take care of everyone else.”
My words hang in the air between us. I don’t know why I said that.
Archie’s quiet for a moment.
“I know what it’s like to have to play a defined role with no room to be someone different,” he says finally.
Fuck. Our gazes are still locked onto each other. But what’s floating between us now isn’t the usual charged tension of attraction, although that’s there too, simmering underneath. This is something deeper.
Then Archie seems to give himself a little shake.
“Anyway, buying you toothpaste was really for my own benefit. If I’m going to be in close proximity to you, I want you to have optimal dental hygiene.” He gives me a charming grin.
This is what Archie does, I’m beginning to realize. Whenever we skate close to any kind of emotional truth, he flits away.
But I’m not letting him off the hook so easily this time.
“What defined role did you have to play?” I ask.
The expression that flickers across his face is there and gone so fast I almost miss it. A flinch behind the smile.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” He waggles his eyebrows. “A man of mystery has to maintain some mystique. Speaking of mystery, which side of the bed do you drool on? I need to position myself accordingly.”
“I don’t drool.”
“Everyone drools. It’s biology. I’m just trying to protect my pillows from your nocturnal secretions.”
“Please never say ‘nocturnal secretions’ again.”
“Would you prefer ‘nighttime mouth leakage’?”
“I would prefer silence.”
“Tough luck. Silence isn’t included in the fake-boyfriend package.” He shuffles over, making a grand show of claiming the right side of the bed and getting under the covers. He places his phone on the nightstand, then grins at me.
“Come on then. Stop hovering like a vampire waiting to be invited in.”
I have such an urge to kiss that smile of his.
How can one person inspire this mix of homicidal, protective instincts and lust inside me? How is that even possible?
I climb into bed.
I can handle this. I can handle being this close to Archie when he looks so soft and touchable.
The bed is even smaller than it looked. Or maybe Archie is just taking up more than his fair share?
I switch off the main light, leaving only the bedside lamp glowing.
When I glance over at Archie, and he’s lying on his side, facing me.
“First time sharing a bed?” he asks sweetly. “You look nervous.”
“It’s not my first time sharing a bed. But it’s been a while since my last relationship.”
His eyebrows lift. “How long is a while?”
“About two years.”
“Why did it end?”
I shrug. “I find that people generally want more than I’m prepared to give.”
He blinks. “That’s very honest.”
“You asked. What about you? Do you have any past significant relationships?”
He’s quiet for a beat too long, and when he speaks, the brightness in his voice has dimmed. “Not anything significant. I’m the opposite. People can’t cope with how much I have to give.”
Oh god. The urge to touch him slams into me so hard that I have to grip the sheets to keep my hands still. I want to smooth away that shadow on his face.
Archie seems to read my expression and blanches.
He laughs, although it sounds slightly hollow.
“This seems like slightly too intense pillow talk for two people who haven’t even established a safeword.”
He shifts on the mattress until he’s on his back, staring at the ceiling, his face weirdly blank.
What’s going through his mind? I’ve never had a craving to read someone’s brain like I do with Archie.
“Anyway,” he says, his voice finding its usual teasing register, “since we’re going to be bed buddies, I should warn you that I have certain nocturnal requirements.”
“Requirements?”
“Mm-hmm.” He stretches languidly, turning his head and giving me an impish smile. “I have trouble sleeping without the aid of my good friend.”
He licks his lips, and they’re all I can see, his pink and shiny lips. Fuck. I already know how good he tastes.
“What friend?” I ask suspiciously.
“My bedtime buddy.” He sighs dreamily. “We have a very special relationship. He never lets me down. Never disappoints. Always there when I need him.”
“Are you talking about a stuffed animal?”
“I’m talking about my most trusted companion.” He turns over and reaches for the nightstand drawer. “Although I suppose formal introductions aren’t required, given you’ve already had the pleasure of transporting him across London.”
Alarm pulses through me. “Archie—”
“Reunion time.” He triumphantly brings out his purple dildo.
I stop breathing.