I swallow the knives gathering in my throat. “What do you want me to do, Archer? She wanted to leave. She wanted to enjoy having two rich boyfriends for as long as she could?—”
“Stop it!” he barks.
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
He jabs a finger painfully into my chest. “You fucking know it’s not. That girl chased your ass into an elevator to stand up to you.”
“She chased after me to save her job. Let her go, Archer.”
Suddenly, his forearm is pressed against my throat, and my back is slammed violently against the wall. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Is this how you want to live? Alone and miserable? You were happy with us. Admit it, you stubborn prick!”
“Typical Archer, resorting to violence,” I spit back.
There is such vitriol in his eyes, not for me but for what I’m saying. For this role I’m playing, because if anyone could see through my bullshit, it’s Archer Wilde.
I shove him away, and he steps back with a look of desperation. When I hear the shake of the pill bottle she left on the table, I spin toward him.
“And what about these?”
He holds them out to me, and I’m suddenly too exposed, so I snatch them from his hand and throw them back into the drawer, slamming it shut.
“Julian, talk to me.”
“It’s nothing,” I bark. “I used to take them when I couldn’t handle it. But I can handle it.”
“You call this handling it?” he bellows. “Julian, you’re shaking. You’re talking nonsense. Freya was right. You’re letting your anxiety ruin everything.”
“What aboutyou?” I shout. “We can’t just be your medicine because you don’t like therapy or drugs, Archer. We can’t fix you any more than you can fix us.”
His jaw hangs open with shock. “We were happy. Thislifewas finally worth trying for.”
“Just get out, Archer,” I bellow.
“This is what you want?” he asks with tears in his eyes. “What you truly want?”
I run my hands through my hair, messing it up more than it already was. “It was going to end eventually, Archer. Stoppretending that any of us were cut out for forever. You were gonna bail eventually, and you know it. Freya is committed to her work, as she should be.”
“I was gonna bail? I’m the only one here fighting.”
“Yeah well…” My chest panting with heavy breaths, I lift my gaze to his face. “You abandoned your other family. What makes us any different?”
He shoves me one last time, gritting his teeth as tears fill his eyes. “Fuck you, you coward.”
Tearing my ring off his pinkie finger, he sneers in my face before tossing it to the floor. It clinks loudly against the wood before rolling under some furniture. The sound makes me flinch.
“She asked me to stay because she cares about you, you know,” he snarls. “But I think that’s the last thing you want, Julian. You hate the idea of someone caring about you, don’t you?”
I hate this vitriol on his face. I just want to wrap my arms around his neck and have him go back to being the warm, comforting Archer he always is, but then what? Then he knows how weak I am? My mind won’t let me see a future where I get over this hang-up and let them in.
It won’t let me be happy.
So with a tremble in my bottom lip, I stare into his eyes. “Just go, Archer. That’s what you do best.”
I watch the pain flash through his eyes. It’s brief and cutting, but it’s there. Then, with that, he throws me against the wall and storms out of my apartment.
As the door closes behind him, I stare blankly across my empty apartment. Onyx meows, as if she too is joining in the argument. Shouting at me for being so stubborn. So hopeless. So weak.
I glance sideways into the mirror again, lost in the sad blue eyes of the man looking back. I’ve taken such precautions against this. I have put up my walls and my armor, and I made the world hate me for so long to keep from feeling this excruciating pain.
