“You fill those out nicely, Peaches.” His eyes slide from my bare torso downward. “Turn around for me?”
I catch the corner of my lip between my teeth, trying not to smile. Giving him my back, I hazard a glance over my shoulder.
He blinks hard. “Fuck. You should keep those. You’re totally hot.”
I turn back around, holding the T-shirt to my chest. “You’re hysterical. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
He smirks. “I speak the truth. Now, put that shirt on before I ravage you.”
Shaking my head in amusement, I shrug it over my head.
Archer taps the counter, “Up here. Lemme have a look.”
And boom, all the air gets sucked from the room again.
He grits his teeth. “Sorry, Peaches. You don’t have to look. Close your eyes again if you want.”
I blow out a hard breath. “It’s okay. I’m good.” I boost myself backward onto the counter and watch as Archer pulls out his medical supplies again, lining up gauze, ointment, and tape.
Archer pats my thigh, and I shift, leaning back on my hands, and open my legs wide enough that he can look at the wound, which is just south of his boxer briefs. “It’s healing okay. A little red, maybe.”
I only glance down briefly, hating the way it looks.
Through clenched teeth, he murmurs, “I still can’t believe that fucker just let Nick put you in his car.”
A moment later, Archer is in the process of gently dabbing some of the ointment over the cuts when the door to the bathroom crashes open. I jump a mile, but Archer calmly turns around as Kingston and Cannon charge into the room. “I see you got my text.”
Cannon’s blue eyes pierce mine, questioning, and Kingston looks like he’s going to spit nails as he growls, “What thefuckhappened?”
FOURTEEN
KINGSTON
After Archer’s cryptic text,Cannon and I rushed back to the house to find out what the fuck has been going on in our absence. Neither one of us expected the level of absolute bullshit that has transpired. Now, gathered in front of Archer’s bank of expensive monitors, we look over the footage again as flames lick my skin. I’ve never been so angry at another brother in my entire life.
“That motherfucker,” Archer hisses under his breath as he shoves away from his desk, the chair rolling as he spins around to face us. My gaze slips from him to where the rage vibrating through Cannon’s body is a potent, palpable thing. The video footage is shocking. Ugly. A disgusting display of behavior for our brotherhood. And I’m definitely not referring to Elliot’s role in it. Seeing what transpired right outside in our own backyard this evening has me reeling. I’m sick over it, my jaw pops and twitches like mad, and normal breathing is replaced with abrupt heaves of my chest as I try to contain my anger.
I must get myself under control, because she’s in her bedroom, drying her hair, and after what we’ve seen, I don’t want to give her anymore cause for worry. “It’s a good fuckin’ thing we looked at this while Elle’s occupied.” I rub my hand over my jaw, eyeing Archer. “You said she was traumatized, but fuck. I wasn’t expecting that. Arch, can you walk us through what happened from your perspective? Because we can watch the different feeds from the camera, but… I’d like your take on things.”
Archer braces his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs. “When I walked out onto the patio, I could immediately hear her screaming and the sounds of an altercation. My heart stopped when I reached the top of the steps and got an eyeful of her wailing away on him. And then I got down there so I could pull her off Alec”—his eyes flick to mine, the wound in them clear—“and I couldn’t tell whether it was her blood or his. I was fucking terrified.”
Before Archer had even opened his mouth, I saw the tension he carries in his shoulders and the exhaustion in his eyes. This entire shit show of an evening must have been rough on him, so I’m glad he’s not shying away from admitting it. These motherfuckers need to know what a shit idea it is to mess with Elliot. How many times do we have to warn them? Threaten them? Punish them? They’re pushing me to my limit. I growl low in my chest as I finally collapse onto the arm of one of the plush chairs Archer is so fond of.
“On one hand, I’m glad I put cameras out there so we have the access to see everything, but on the other hand, I’m not. Hearing what they said to her before she lost it—that was worse than I fuckin’ imagined.” Archer scrubs his hand over his face, looking completely battered by the thoughts in his head. “I didn’t want her to relive it by having to tell me, so I told her she didn’t have to, that I’d have a look for myself. But damn, the shit about Stuart seeing us in the pool and all the slut shaming. Awful. And that was before his admission about Nick.”
Cannon holds up his phone, then begins to type as he drops onto the same chair I’m perched on. A moment later, our phones ping with several notifications.
He fucking taunted her.
That makes me want to slam his head into a wall.
He doesn’t even know what happened.
Hasn’t got a clue what he did.
I groan aloud. “Would it make a difference if he did, though?” My gaze flicks to Archer. I study the way his jaw has gone rigid and how he’s staring at the floor between his feet.
I trust him. But I’m curious how that shit show went down—and what repercussions it might cause. Because I know Archer. There is no way he’d let this slide while he waited for us to haul ass back here. My eyes roam over him again, bare-chested, no sign of damage anywhere, not to his torso, face, or hands. Not a damn thing out of place, except the damp wildness of his hair that it’s clear he’s been tugging on all evening. “You took care of this.” It’s not really a question, but more like a statement of fact.
