Archer
Chapter Four
I sighed, knees in the dirt, fingernails caked with dark soil. Maybe I should’ve gone to school like Justice to become some kind of super cyber security…whatever the hell he did.
The midmorning sun beat down on my face while I tended to the budding tomatoes. Big Boys along with grape and cherry varieties. Cantaloupes flourished already.
Turned out, I was good at growing things.
And tending animals. And cooking. Not the way I imagined life would be when I was a kid, but I’d never wanted big things.
Trauma did that to people. I didn’t dream of mansions and fancy cars and vacations.
I dreamed of a stable home. Food on the table.
Smiles shared. A family that didn’t die too early at the hands of a murderer.
With the weeds picked, I turned up the little radio I picked up at the thrift store and listened to the local station while I was moving from animal to animal, making sure they were as well taken care of as we were.
Who knew how much cows ate? Not me. Not when I started, at least. The goats did a great job of handling the grass and even out-of-control brush surrounding our home. Every six to eight weeks, I’d lead them to a new bit of land. We never had to mow the grass even once.
Archer did all the incubating and baby chicken stuff in the morning and took care of the chickens in the afternoons, but the feeding and watering was on me.
I’d already fed and watered them once but, with the temperatures rising by the day and the little shits always knocking the water over, I had to stay on top of it.
My stomach grumbled once I was done and I turned off the radio and stood there, hands on my hips.
On days like this, I needed an excursion. Just a little bit of time away from the house.
“Justice,” I called out, a bit nervous. When the man worked, he was laser-focused; once, he didn’t hear me when I was standing right next to him and his laptop.
“Yeah?” he called from, surprisingly, the kitchen.
His hair was mussed and he had on his black-rimmed glasses that he wore only when his eyes were sore or twitching.
We didn’t really know what he did for work exactly.
Only that it required the fastest Wi-Fi and working long hours, into the wee hours of the morning.
We didn’t ask.
One time, he tried to explain it. It was a shit show.
Something we didn’t talk about, like the fact that we were an omega-less sleuth. Three alpha bears. No omega. No mate. No one.
Just each other.
“Wanna go to town for lunch?”
He scoffed. “I went into town yesterday, Archer.” He turned around and leaned on the counter, shoveling the last of the apple strudel into his mouth.
“That’s not lunch.” I often had to bring plates to the office when he didn’t come out for a meal. I was the mother none of us had. Weird, but true.
“It’s kind of lunch.”
“We could pick Dallas up and get burgers.”
Justice loved burgers. It was the most normal thing about him. Burgers. Fries. Chocolate milkshakes. Tons of ketchup.
The first meal we had together after Justice and Dallas picked me up from the group home on my eighteenth birthday.
“Or, we could hit up that new Chinese buffet. It opened this week.”
“That sounds even better. I need to shower and change.”
Justice nodded. “Same. Meet back in ten minutes.”
The shower was quick, but I got the dirt out from under my fingernails. When I came down, Justice was already waiting by the front door, keys in hand.
We were silent for most of the ride. Not a surprise. Justice only spoke if there was something to say, and I was used to that, but there were days when I wanted to have a conversation with someone other than the chickens and goats.
It took an hour or so to get to the shop. There were no cars parked out front, but that didn’t mean anything. First, there were only a few spaces and, second, most people parked on main street and then walked to the different places in town.
Dallas had brought my baked goods in that morning, along with eggs from the regular chickens. I hoped they sold. I knew he worried more than he should about money. Not for us but for our omega.
Wherever she was.
We got out of the truck and, in the distance, I saw a family with their cub. Not a cub but a young human.
As I grew up, I thought the memory of my parents would fade, and some of them did, but peak moments I would never forget came up when I saw others with their kids or at the most random times.
My parents were killed when I was only a toddler, but my most prominent memory was my mother, singing and cooking in the kitchen while I sat on the corner of the counter where I was safe.
I tore my gaze from the family and refocused on my sleuth.