25. The Very Big Decision #2
“I know.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m glad you’re fine. That you were okay. But after everything you told me yesterday…” He goes quiet when I pull my hand away. He looks at it there on the table, then scoops it up again, holding on gently. “I don’t like what it’s doing to you.”
“You don’t know what it’s doing to me.” The defensiveness in my tone surprises even me.
He diffuses it with, “I know it’s trying to hurt you, and I don’t want it to.” The arched fingers of his spare hand press into the table, and he looks deep into my eyes. “This is nice. Breakfast with you. This is something I can see myself doing again and again, if you’d like that.”
My stupid ping-pong heart smacks back up.
He continues, “So I’m actually not going to let you go up there today and either get yourself killed or go through another hallucination.”
“Then how are you going to get rid of it? Because the way I see it…” I also press my fingers to the table, a mirror to his. “This doesn’t keep happening if you’re in danger. If you’re too worried to have me over. Or if I get fired by Gerald for not finishing this job.”
Archer assesses me a moment longer, like he’s playing over something in the back of his mind, then he picks his fork back up. “I’m going to call Gerald today and tell him you finished the job.”
He’s already made up his mind. And that thing, crouching in his attic, or whatever it’s doing, but I imagine it crouching, is going to… what? “Then how will you get rid of it?”
“I don’t know.”
The casual way he’s carrying on is driving me crazy. Maybe that’s why my tone turns so sharp. “I’m not letting you go up there without me.”
“Liam.” His cutlery drops. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I’m pretty sure I do.” I laugh out a nervous, frustrated laugh.
“You’re living in a haunted house. And I know you’re sitting here telling me all these ghosts aren’t as bad as people think they are, and maybe in the case of Helena you’re right, possibly in the case of Simon, though I’m still not convinced, but this…
” A flash of my brother, dead on the floor, blood everywhere.
And it’s not just horror that hits me. It’s anger.
The same anger that hit me last night, knowing that creature thinks this is funny.
That it thinks this is okay to do to people.
“You know, if you don’t stop it, it will do this to other people too? ”
Archer’s eyes flash. He says nothing, but I can tell I’ve hit a sore spot.
“I’ve had a lot of time to adjust to what happened,” I argue with him, though it feels a bit like talking to a brick wall. “And it still hurts, what it showed me, but can you even imagine what it could do to someone with a fresher wound? Someone with deep trauma?”
“I’m not disputing that,” he replies softly.
“You hired me for this job. This is my entire purpose in being here. Listen, I know I haven’t filled you with confidence so far—”
“I have complete confidence in you.”
“Then let me do this. Let me do it without…” Then it hits me. He’s always been protective of me, since day one. And maybe now… now it’s just a different way he’s showing it. Because we got close. “If I hadn’t kissed you last night, would we be having this conversation?”
“No.” He shakes his head on the word. I’m just about to make some ridiculous comment that I’m just as capable as I was before he saw me as a sex object, or that I have no interest in being with a controlling man, which it seems he switched to the second he got a foot in the sex door, but Archer talks first. “I tried to fire you last night. I thought I had fired you last night. And then all of that happened and… I didn’t have the heart to tell you not to come back this morning. ”
My breath catches at the confession. It’s like the room spins away from me. “Have the heart?” He was breaking it off. Whatever we had—whatever I thought we had… “Is this like… a guilty breakfast?”
“What?” Finally his eyes show the emotion I’ve missed from him for the last few arduous minutes of this conversation. “Liam, no, it’s not like that.”
“The breakfast of shame or something?”
“No! I’m not ashamed. I just—”
“You didn’t want that…” The full horror of the situation hits me, the background fear I’ve had all night that I came on too strong. “Oh my god. You weren’t even into me… I thought—”
“Liam, stop.” He’s got my hand now, tight, wrapped up in both of his.
“I wanted to kiss you last night. I wanted that to happen. I just also wanted to fire you. The two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
” I pull back a little, but he holds onto me.
“It’s okay for me to want to keep you safe. ”
“Then it must be okay for me to want to keep you safe.” His lips draw tight, so I press him a little further.
“I have skin in this, okay? I know it’s your ghost, and your house, and your job, and you’re the one paying Gerald.
But I can’t just stop now. You can’t stop me.
I’ll go upstairs, and I’ll do this thing on my own time.
It’s done, all right? I’m fired. Now I’m just a man who needs to do this.
Please don’t make me leave. Please just let me finish this. ”
His eyes sharpen on me, some darkness in the depths of them that’s new. “Listen to me carefully. This situation is worse than you think. It’s worse than you know.”
“How can you know that?” That same old mistrust flares, warring with the warmth I thought I understood in him when I walked in the door this morning. “Why do you keep saying things like that, like you’re not telling me everything?”
And now it’s straight back to that averted, scrambling look. “It’s just an instinct.”
“Is it? Is that really all it is?”