Authors: Jay Crownover
“She’s mad you’re late. We both
know she could care less if I was there or not.” My fingers moved faster and
faster as she wheeled the car into a gated community and past rows and rows of
cookie cutter mini mansions that were built back into the mountains.
“That’s not true and you know it,
Rule. I do not suffer through these car rides every weekend, subject myself to
the delight of your morning after nastiness because your parents want me to
have eggs and pancakes every Sunday. I do it because they want to see you,
want to try and have a relationship with you no matter how many times you hurt
them or push them away. I owe it to your parents and more importantly I owe it
to Remy to try and make you act right even though lord knows that’s almost a
full time job.”
I sucked in a breath as the
blinding pain that always came when someone mentioned Remy’s name barreled
through my chest. My fingers involuntarily opened and closed around the coffee
cup and I whipped my head around to glare at her.
“Remy wouldn’t be all over my ass
to try and be something to them I’m not. I was never good enough for them, and
never will be. He understood that better than anyone and worked overtime to
try and be everything to them I never could be.”
She sighed and pulled the car to a
stop in the driveway behind my dad’s SUV. “The only difference between you and
Remy was that he let people love him and you,” she yanked open the driver’s
door and glared at me across the space that separated us. “You have always
been determined to make everyone that cares about you prove it beyond a shadow
of a doubt. You’ve never wanted to be easy to love Rule and you make damn sure
that nobody can ever forget it.” She slammed the door with enough force that
it rattled my back teeth and made my head start to throb again.
It had been three years. Three
lonely, three empty, three sorrow filled years since the Archer brothers went
from a trifecta to a duo. I was close to Rome, he was awesome and had always
been my role model when it came to being a badass, but Remy was my other half,
both figuratively and literally. He was my identical twin, the light to my
dark, the easy to my hard, the joy to my angst, the perfect to my oh so totally
fucked up and without him I was only half the person I would ever be. It had
been three years since I had called him in the middle of the night to come pick
me up from some lame ass party because I was too drunk to drive. It had been
three years since he had left the apartment we shared to come get me with zero
questions asked because that’s just what he did. It had been three years
since he had lost control of his car on a rainy and slick I-25 and slammed into
the back of a semi-truck going well over eighty. It had been three years since
we had put my twin in the ground and my mother had looked at me with tears in
her eyes and stated point blank, “It should have been you,” as they lowered
Remy into the ground. It had been three years and his name alone was enough to
drop me to my knees, especially coming from the one person in the world Remy
had loved as much as he loved me.
Remy was everything I wasn’t, clean
cut, well dressed, interested in education and building a secure future and the
only person on the planet that was good enough and classy enough to match all
the magnificence that he possessed it was Shaw Landon. The two of them had
been inseparable since the first time he brought her home when she was thirteen
and trying to escape the fortress of the Landon compound. He insisted they
were just friends, that he loved Shaw like a sister, that he just wanted to
protect her from her awful, sterile family but the way he was with her was full
of reverence and care. I knew he loved her and since Remy could do no wrong
Shaw had quickly become an honorary member of my family and as much as it
galled me she was the only one that really, truly understood the depth of my
pain when it came to losing him.
I had to take a few extra minutes
to get my feet back under me so I sucked back the rest of the coffee and shoved
open the door. I wasn’t surprised to see a tall figure coming around the SUV
as I labored out of the sports car. My brother was an inch or so taller than
me and built more along the lines of a warrior. His dark brown hair was buzzed
in a typical military cut and his pale blue eyes, the same exact icy shade as
mine looked tired as he forced a smile at me. I let out a whistle because his
left arm was in a cast and sling, he had a walking boot on one foot and there
was a nasty line of black stiches running through one of his eyebrows and
across the top of his forehead. The weed whacker that had attacked my hair had
clearly gotten a good shot at my big bro too.
“Looking good solider.”
He pulled me to him in a one armed
hug and I winced for him when I felt the taped up side of his body clearly
indicating some busted or bruised ribs. “I look about as good as I feel. You
look like a clown getting out of that car.”
“I look like a clown no matter what
when I’m around that girl.” He barked out a laugh and rubbed a rough hand
through my spiky hair.
“You and Shaw are still acting like
mortal enemies?”
“More like uneasy acquaintances,
she’s just as prissy and judgmental as always. Why didn’t you call or email me
that you were hurt? I had to hear it from her on the way over.”
He swore as we started to slowly
start and make our way into the house. It upset me to see how deliberate he
was moving and I wondered if there was more serious damage done than the
visible marks I could see.
“I was unconscious after the Hummer
flipped. We went over an IED and it was bad. I was in the hospital for a week
with a scrambled noggin and when I woke up they had to do surgery on my
shoulder so I was drugged up. I called mom and figured she would let you know
what the deal was, but I heard that as usual you were unavailable when she
called.”
I shrugged a shoulder and reached
out a hand to steady him as he faltered a little on the stairs to the front
door. “I’m busy.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Not too stubborn, I’m here aren’t
I and I didn’t even know you were home until like fifteen minutes ago.”
“The only reason you’re here is
because that little girl in there is bound and determined to keep this family
together regardless if we’re her own or not. You go in there and play nice
otherwise I’ll kick your ass broken arm and all.”
I muttered a few choice words and
followed my battered sibling into the house. Sundays really were just my least
favorite day.
Shaw
I closed the bathroom door with a
soft click and turned the lock. I collapsed against the skin and ran shaking
hands over my face. It was getting harder and harder each and every Sunday to
be Rule’s chaperone to these family gatherings, I already felt like I was
getting an ulcer and if I had to walk in on him and one of his disgusting bar
bimbos again I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of his apartment without
committing homicide. I turned around to splash some cold water on my face and
lifted the heavy fall of blond hair off my neck. I needed to pull it together
because the last thing I wanted was for Margot or Dale to notice something was
off and even drugged up and in pain Rome was one of the most observant people I
had ever met. He didn’t miss a thing when it came to either of his younger
brothers and me by association since I was technically lumped into the category
of surrogate little sister.
It was getting harder and harder to
spend time around Rule and not just because looking at him reminded me of
everything that I no longer had which was the problem Margot and Dale struggled
with, not that the insensitive ass had any empathy for his parents. My
struggle came with the fact that Rule was complicated, he was brash, mouthy,
careless, thoughtless, and often cranky and generally and insufferable pain in
the ass but when he chose to be he was also charming and funny, artistically
brilliant and more often than not the most interesting person in the room and I
had been head over heels in love with both sides of him since I was thirteen
years old. Of course I had loved Remy, loved him like a brother, like the best
friend and consummate protector he had been but I loved Rule like it was my
mission in life, like it was inevitable and no matter how many times I was
shown what an awful idea it was, what a bad match we were, what a callous
asshole he could be, I couldn’t shake it so each and every time I had to have
the fact that he didn’t even think of me as more than a car pool driver shoved
in my face it tore a little bit more of my battered heart apart.
My own family was such a mess there
was no way I would be half the person I was today without all the Archers had
done for me. Remy had taken me under his wing when I was a friendless and
lonely pre-teen, Rome had threatened to beat up the first boy that made me cry
because he didn’t like me back, Margot had taken me shopping for homecoming and
prom dresses when my own mother was too busy with her new husband to care, Dale
had taken me to Denver University and CU Boulder and helped whittle down the
choices logically and rationally when it came to picking a college and Rule,
well Rule was a constant reminder that money didn’t get you everything you
wanted and that no matter how perfect I tried to be, how hard I worked at being
everything to everyone that it still wasn’t enough.
I blew out a breath that I felt
like I had been holding for over an hour and took a piece of Kleenex to wipe
away the black smudges that had run under my eyes from the water. If I didn’t
get down the dining room fast Margot was bound to come looking for me and I
didn’t have a reasonable excuse as to why I was currently hyperventilating in
the bathroom. I fished a hair tie out of my pocket and pulled my hair into a
low ponytail. I slicked on a sheer coat of gloss and gave myself a silent pep
talk, reminding myself that I had done this a million other Sundays and that
this one was no different. Just as I was stepping into the hall my phone rang
and I had to struggle to keep back a groan when I saw that it was Gabe calling
again. I sent the call to voicemail and wondered for the hundredth time in the
last month why I had ever wasted a second of my time on his pompous ass. He
was over entitled, overly grabby, overly superficial and overly interested in
my last name and the fact that my parents were loaded than in me. I wasn’t
even interested in dating him, wasn’t interested in dating anyone but my
parents had forced my hand and as usual under their pressure I folded and ended
up spending more time than I wanted with him. I managed to tolerate him for a
lot longer than I thought I would be able to, after all Gabe was way more
interested in himself than in me, it wasn’t until he had started pushing for
sex, started making me uncomfortable by grabbing and touching things I didn’t
want his hands anywhere near that I cut the cord. Unfortunately neither he nor
my parents seemed to want to get the message and I had been inundated with
calls, texts and emails for the last two weeks. Gabe was easy enough to dodge,
my mother not so much.
I was shoving the phone back into
my back pocket when a quiet voice stopped me. “What’s going on with you little
girl? I’ve been gone for over eighteen months and all I get is a hug and a
peck on the cheek before you disappear? Where are the tears, where’s the
hysterics that I’m home safe and sound? What’s working in that complicated
brain of yours because I can tell something is on your mind?”
I hiccupped a little laugh and let
my forehead fall onto the strong chest in front of me. Even battered and
bruised Rome was the kind of guy that stood between the people he loved and
anything that might possibly hurt them. He patted the top of my head and laid
a heavy hand on the back of my neck. “I missed that pretty face Shaw; you
don’t know how good it is to be home.”
I shuttered a little and wrapped a
carful arm around his waist so that I could give him a squeeze and not hurt
him. “I missed you too, Rome. I’m just stressed out. School is crazy right
now, I’m working three or four nights a week and my parents won’t get off my
back about this guy I just broke up with. You know I love it when we’re all
together. I thought your mom was going to have a heart attack when she called
to tell me what happened to you. I’m so glad you’re okay, I don’t this family
would be able to handle another Archer son going down.”
“No probably not. I can’t believe
she still has you playing chuffer to my idiot brother.”
I hooked my arm through his and we
started to make our way to the dining room. “It’s the only way he’ll come. If
I have to miss it because of school or because something comes up he just blows
them off. Half the time when I get to the apartment he doesn’t even know what
day it is and has to scramble to get out the door, today would be a prime
example of that. If I show up he feels obligated to ride with me no matter
what or who he’s in the middle of doing.”
Rome swore under his breath. “It
wouldn’t kill that kid to play nice with mom and dad once a week. He shouldn’t
need you to be his babysitter.”
I shrugged a shoulder because we
both knew that all the Archer brothers had a role. Remy had been the good son,
the straight A student, the future Ivy leaguer , he was also the one saddled
with the role of keeping Rule out of jail and running interference when his
twin got into trouble that he couldn’t talk his way out of. Rule was the wild
card, the one that lived life to the fullest and made no apologies for those he
might offend or hurt along the way. Rome was the boss, the twins adored him
and followed his lead through good and bad because lord knew with the way the
three of them looked there was lots and lots of bad thrown their way. With
Remy gone it wasn’t a surprise to anyone that Rome had become even more
protective of his remaining brother and that I had fallen seamlessly into the
role of trying to keep Rule on some kind of path of straight and narrow.