CHAPTER 25 Archer Bradley
Sunrise Yoga and Breakfast
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I can’t escape them since I couldn’t escape her when I allowed myself out of my cage, either.
As we walk one of the paths through the tropical trees and ponds this resort offers, I see a silhouette of a couple walking ahead of us.
I’d recognize both Tatum’s and my brother’s gait anywhere.
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Millie whispers beside me.
I shake my head. I feel like I should face all of this head-on, and you know what? This was my fucking resort first. I won’t be made to feel like I can’t walk around just because they’re here.
They stop, and Ford bends down to press a kiss to her lips.
And somehow…it doesn’t hurt the way I thought seeing them kiss would hurt.
She laughs, and he straightens, and they resume walking together. He slips his arm around her, and she leans into him. It’s as if they were made for each other…something I don’t think I ever noticed or acknowledged until this very moment.
Millie squeezes my hand. “You okay?”
I draw in a deep breath of the sea salt air. “You know what? Yeah. I am.” I glance down at her, and she’s looking up at me with these big, brown eyes filled with concern.
And for the first time, it sort of feels like I have someone on my side.
I bend down and press a soft kiss to her lips—similar to what my brother and my ex just shared several paces in front of us.
But I put those two out of my mind as I feel Millie’s arms wrap around my waist. I pull her more tightly against me as I open my mouth to hers and deepen the connection we’re forging.
It feels like more than just a vacation hookup, though that could be my inexperience talking. It feels like she actually cares about me. Like she wouldn’t mind if we weren’t faking this and she actually was the person who could call herself my girlfriend.
We don’t know each other that well, but she’s really the first person I’ve opened up to about what it’s like being a detached part of the Bradley family.
She’s the first person I’ve confided in about how it hurt to see my brother marry my ex.
She’s the first person who I’ve even considered allowing in since… well, probably since Tatum.
I’m starting to let her see the real me, or I’m trying to, anyway, and she isn’t running.
I’m not sure how long we kiss there on the sidewalk, tongues tangling languidly, bodies pressed together, hands moving and exploring, albeit in a semi-family-friendly way since we’re in public.
But this feels good. And being with Millie is the first time I’ve felt good in a long, long time.
Eventually, I walk her back to her room.
“Do you want to come in?” she asks when I lean on the doorframe.
“I do, but I also want to take it slow.”
She nods. “I understand. So we take it slow.”
It feels like a relief that she understands. If I go in, we’ll have sex, and it will be amazing. But it will also be clouded by everything that went down tonight, and I want Millie to be my sole focus when I’m fucking her—just like she was the other times we were together.
She leans forward and kisses me. “See you on the beach for sunrise yoga!”
She closes her door before I can protest, and I can’t help but walk away with a smile on my face at her antics.
I’m not sure what comes over me, but I head down to grab one more drink from the bar. It’s as I’m walking through the lobby that I hear my name.
“Archer!”
I turn around, and I see my brother calling me. He’s alone, and he’s striding across the space toward me.
“Where’s your wife?” I ask once he’s close enough to hear me.
“She turned in early. I was hoping I’d run into you. I’ve been trying to call your room, but your phone seems to be disconnected. I tried texting you, but you never answer. How the hell is a guy supposed to check in with his brother when his brother falls off the grid?”
“I came here to fall off the grid, man,” I admit.
“Why?”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I ask.
“My ex married my brother five minutes after we broke up. My father manipulated me into signing paperwork that made me an accomplice to his illegal activities. The league suspended me forty games because of it. I needed to get the hell away from all of it.”
“You have every right to be angry with me for the part I played in that, but I swear to you, Archer, this wasn’t how I ever saw any of this going down,” he says. “I told you why we got married.”
“And I told you I just wanted her to be happy. Is she happy?”
His eyes turn toward the ground when he answers. “Yes. We both are. And I’m sorry you’re hurting because of it. You’re my brother, and I hate all of this. I hate the distance between us, and I wish we could find some way to get past all this.”
Truth be told, I put the distance there long before I broke it off with Tatum. The distance with my family has nothing to do with her at all.
He draws in a breath. “All I’m saying is that we haven’t dealt with it, and we should.”
I try to stand outside the situation and look in.
Is it shitty that my brother married the only woman I ever loved?
Yes. But they had their reasons, reasons that had less to do with love and more to do with money.
At first. It’s clear there’s something there now, something that was maybe always simmering and I chose to ignore.
Something that grew into what was meant to be as Tatum and I grew apart.
And as someone who supposedly has a new girlfriend, I’m being forced to play the part, no matter how it might feel in the moment. “You loved her as long as I did. Maybe longer. She ended up where she needed to, and I’ve moved on. Things are good with Millie,” I lie.
He studies me, and he presses his lips together. He’s looking for a crack. A reason not to believe my words. He’s probably been punishing himself worse than anything I’d ever do.
But I’ve perfected the act. I stand there in left field, my face devoid of emotion. It’s a skill I learned long ago. If nobody can read me, if nobody knows me, it’s easier in the end.
He seems emotional as he steps forward and gives me a quick hug with a fist pound to my back. He clears his throat as he pulls back. “Answer your goddamn phone when your siblings call. Okay?”
I offer a small smile. “Not a chance.”
* * *
It’s too early, and I’m more than a little grumpy that I’m up before the sun when this is supposed to be a vacation.
But I head down to the beach anyway, possibly in part because Millie had mentioned sunrise yoga yesterday, and I don’t want her to be there without me in the event Ford and Tatum show up to check it out.
They don’t, and honestly, I’m glad. It gives me time to put my full attention on Millie.
And this time, we actually enjoy sunrise yoga together as we partner up and put our focus on our bodies and each other.
When we’re done with yoga, we take a walk on the beach and agree on a place for breakfast, which we walk to next.
We’re sweating and laughing about the yoga pose where my face was practically in her ass as we’re seated, and we must be on the same goddamn timetable as my brother and his wife, because there they are, already seated in the booth behind us and just sipping their orange juice as they wait for their meals.
“Hi again,” Millie says enthusiastically, trying to break up the tension.
“Hey,” Tatum says.
“Do you want to join us?” Ford asks.
Millie glances at me, her eyes wide as she waits to see what I’m going to do here.
“Sure,” I say, much to my own complete and utter shock. Tatum looks shocked, too, and Ford looks a little green.
What could go wrong?
“Unless we’re too sweaty,” Millie says. “We just came from sunrise yoga.”
“Doesn’t bother me,” Ford says as he gets up and slides into the booth beside his wife.
Tatum nods across the table as if telling us to sit, and we do.
“How was yoga?” Tatum asks.
“So fun,” Millie gushes. “It’s our second time doing the couples one together.”
“The first time was a disaster,” I add. “But this time we got our rhythm down early.”
“Sounds great,” Tatum says.
A beat of awkward silence follows, and Millie and I stare at the menus as we both pretend to be studying them.
“So what do you do, Millie?” Ford asks.
I tap her foot with mine, trying to get across that I don’t want her to talk about her blog.
I know it’s what she does, but what I don’t need is Ford warning me off some girl he thinks is only with me because of my status. Not when we’re faking it. I’m not going to defend what I’m doing to someone who married my ex, regardless of what I said last night. He has zero right to interfere.
She clears her throat. “I’m a bartender.”
“Oh yeah? Quick, what’s in an Old Fashioned?” Ford asks.
“Whiskey, sugar, bitters, and orange peel. Give me a challenge, at least.”
“Sex on the beach,” Tatum challenges.
“Just need Archer for that,” she quips, elbowing me in the ribs, and both Ford and Tatum look a little dazed as I offer a hearty laugh that’s probably a little over the top for me. “Oh, you meant the drink. Vodka, peach schnapps, OJ, and cran.”
“What’s your favorite drink?” Tatum asks.
“To make or to drink?” Millie asks.
“Either.”
She shrugs. “Can’t go wrong with a classic marg.”
“Margarita?” she asks, and Millie nods. “Hell yeah!” She holds up her orange juice, and Millie holds up her water glass. They clink in the middle, already bonding over something.
I’m not sure I like it, but at least it helps diminish the awkwardness.
I watch the little things between Ford and Tatum. Was their connection always there, lying beneath the surface, and I just…never saw it?
It’s not as hard to watch as I thought it would be—not that I ever imagined I’d run into them at this resort.
But as I observe the two of them, and even back at my mother’s funeral when I saw them together, they have this sort of natural intimacy I wasn’t expecting.
They fit together in a way I’m not sure Tatum and I ever did.
And when it comes down to it, I think that is the core of why I never proposed to her.
I didn’t come to this resort expecting to do all this deep work on myself, but here we are.
Realizations keep plowing into me. Maybe when Troy told me to lay low, he had some instinct that told him this was exactly what I needed to be able to move forward with my life.
Because I’ve been stuck in the same place since Tatum chose my brother, and I was stuck for a lot of years before that, too. And suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m starting to feel free.