Chapter 26
Archer
I’m only half listening to Torin when he says, “Juniper doesn’t believe me about Wilkes.”
With my phone against my ear, my eyes track the dark blue Nissan slowing down as it heads toward me. The driver parks outside the hardware store, cuts the engine, and climbs out, slamming the door behind him.
“I’ll call you back,” I tell Torin and hang up on him mid-sentence. Whatever he’s talking about can wait. I have someone to deal with.
Unsnapping my seatbelt, I climb out of my car and shut the door, hurrying to catch the man before he can finish unlocking the hardware store. I grab the door before he can close it.
Jumping, he turns to face me. “We’re not open yet.”
“I’m not here to buy anything.” I shove him into the store, and as he stumbles backward, I shut the door and lock it.
Ever since Juniper hugged him, I’ve wanted to kill him.
Callum stopped me before. He’s meeting with his dad to warn him away from Juniper. Torin is hanging out near Juniper’s apartment, hoping to convince her that Wilkes Booth isn’t who he says he is. Which leaves me to make it clear to the hardware store owner that Juniper is ours.
The beta backs up. “Look, man, I don’t have any cash if you’re here to rob the place.”
I prowl toward him. “I’m not here for money.”
His shoulders lose a little of their tension, but his green eyes are still wary. “Then why are you here?”
I spot the baseball bat propped against the wall near the cash register at the same time his eyes flick toward it. He angles his body in a way that can only mean one thing.
“Don’t,” I warn him before he can go for it.
His gaze returns to me. “What do you want?”
I lean into him. “What I want is for you to stay away from Juniper. She is not for you.”
He stares at me for a beat, then lets out a sigh. “Ah. You.”
I raise my eyebrow. “You?”
It’s not the response I was expecting. Truth be told, I’m not sure what was.
He meets my gaze steadily. He does a good job of hiding his anger, but I see it. “You’re the one who hurt her.”
I stifle the urge to slam my fist against his jaw, because he’s right. I did hurt Juniper.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl.
He steps around me.
I drag him back. “This conversation isn’t over.”
“Get out of my shop,” he says tiredly and shrugs my hand off his shoulder. He walks away. Not toward the baseball bat. Past it, and into a small room in the back.
Bristling, I follow. “I’ll go once you promise you’ll stay away from Juniper.”
I find him sitting behind a desk, having shrugged out of his coat, and busy flipping through a pile of papers. “No.”
“No?”
He glances at me. “So you get to hurt her all you like and demand no one else does?”
My lips flatten.
He refocuses on the papers on his desk. “I don’t know how you could hurt someone as sweet as June, but frankly, you don’t deserve her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
After setting the papers down, he walks over to me. He doesn’t stop until inches separate us. He was scared of me before. Enough that he’d been going for a baseball bat for protection. There’s no hint of that fear now.
“What I know is that on one of my lowest days, I lashed out at her for the innocent mistake of wandering into my shop and needing help, yet she was the one to apologize to me. She should have turned around and walked out. Instead, she thanked me for the shit job of helping her I’d done, and then offered to clean this shop when I pulled my head out of my ass.
I wouldn’t deserve her.” He looks me up and down, face twisted with disapproval.
“After the things I read in the papers, you absolutely don’t deserve her. ”
He walks back to his desk and sinks into the seat.
I watch him, not eager to leave, but in no hurry to stay either. I could have punched him in the face, but the thing is, he’s right. About everything.
Instead, I cross my arms and lean against the doorframe. “You’re not sleeping with Juniper.”
She must trust him for him to be calling her June. They’re friends then. Not lovers, or she wouldn’t have been going on the date with Wilkes Booth.
I’d seen them hug, and I couldn’t get the thought of them fucking out of my head. Now I look at this guy, sitting in front of a stack of invoices on his desk, and nothing about him gives the impression of him being loved-up. He just looks tired and fed up.
“Was that a question or a statement?” he asks, shuffling through the papers.
There is a whole fucking stack of them, and he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to open the shop even though it’s nearly nine.
“A statement.”
He shoots me a rapid glance. “Then why are you looking at me as if you’re waiting for an answer?”
“I’d like to know why you were hugging my mate.”
He finds the paper he’s looking for, places it on top, and then gets to his feet. “She’s not your mate.”
I clench my jaw. “She’ll always be my mate.”
“In this case, no. And stalking is a crime.”
“I wasn’t stalking. I was watching out for her.”
He moves to leave the room. I block him. “What were you talking about?”
“You don’t have a right to that information.”
My hand slashes up, fingers wrapped around his throat. But loose. I don’t squeeze yet. “She’s mine.”
He lifts his chin, eyes challenging me. “She was yours until you broke her heart. If this was the way you treated her, I understand why she’d nearly kill herself getting away from you.”
Hating myself, I drop my arm, and he steps around me.
I trail him, watching him open up the shop.
His day has just started, yet he moves slowly, as if it’s the end of a long day rather than the beginning. I don’t know why I’m not killing this guy. Alphas are possessive, especially over omegas. I should be choking this guy out, not feeling sorry for him.
Finally, I ask the one question I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself was the driving force of this visit. “How is she?”
“Hurting. Trying to hide it.” He glances at me. “It’s hard for her to move on with you inserting yourself back into her life. And she needs to move on. You put her through enough.”
Guilt is a spiked ball in my belly. “You know nothing.”
“I read the papers and watch the news just like everyone else. Apparently, you abandoned her at a party, and there were rumors of cheating. Since June turned her back on everything to start over, I’m going to assume you did more to her than cheat.
” He flips the sign on the door from closed to open.
“It would take a lot for an omega to reject her scent match, least of all three of them. Did you put your hands on her?”
“No,” I snarl. “And we didn’t cheat.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me. Given that the first thing I did was put my hands on him, maybe he’s right not to believe me. I look away. “I didn’t put my hands on her. I was not kind or even nice to her. We have enemies, and we thought she was one of them.”
When he doesn’t respond, I look at him.
He’s staring at me, incredulous. “Are you telling me that in the entire year where it sounds like you did everything to make her unwelcome none of you thought to actually confirm she was one of your enemies?”
I don’t say a word.
With every word that comes out of his mouth, he makes me feel like a bigger fool for not seeing what was right in front of my face. This guy couldn’t have known June for that long, yet he seems to know her better than we ever did, and we’re her scent matches.
“Three grown men and not a single brain cell between you,” he mutters, and I watch his estimation of me sink even lower. “Get out of my shop,” he says on his way to the counter.
I want to ask more about Juniper but I face an uphill battle. He has no interest in telling me anything about her new life, and I can’t say I blame him. I was an idiot in more ways than one. If she’s found a friend in this guy, I can’t hate him for that.
I consider leaving him my number in case Juniper ever gets into trouble, but I figure the first place that note would end up is the nearest trash.
I leave his shop. On my way to my car, parked a few feet away, I stop, staring into space as I think about a few things. I take my phone and send a quick text. After it vibrates with a reply, I put my phone away and walk back to the hardware store.