“You really care about him, don’t you?” Vaughn says.
“I’m in love with him.”
The words come out without me thinking. A reflex from the most primitive, instinctual part of my brain.
Like they are coded in there at the very core of me.
Vaughn’s head jerks back at my confession, his mouth falling open.
I plunge on. “But there will be lots of men who will fall in love with Archie, who Archie can be happy with. Archie only has one brother. And I think you need to heal his heart before he can ever give it fully to someone else.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“But there’s something you need to understand,” I say. “The thing you said to him—that he was too much—that’s been destroying him. He’s built this entire personality around making himself smaller so no one else walks away.”
Vaughn’s face goes pale.
“You didn’t just cut him out of your life. You taught him that being himself was dangerous. If you want to be his brother again, that’s the thing you have to fix.”
Vaughn is studying me with an expression I can’t read. It’s unsettling because it’s the same way Archie looks at me sometimes, like he’s seeing something I didn’t mean to show.
“What about you?” Vaughn asks slowly. “What happens to you in this scenario?”
I think about this morning. Archie in his robe, not looking at me.Don’t ruin this.The cold space in the bed where his body should have been.
“I’ll go home,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
Vaughn stands. He looks at me for a long moment, then goes to leave.
“You know,” he says, “when Elizabeth described Archie’s boyfriend, she said he was the only man she’d ever met who deserved Archie.” He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. “I thought she was full of shit.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
I sit in the empty conference room for a long time.
My phone is still in my hand. The recording is still there. I replay it to listen. Vaughn’s voice, tinny and compressed, admitting to everything I’ve spent eight years angry about.
I press delete.
The file disappears. Eight years of wanting justice, gone in a tap.
I put my phone face-down on the table and stare at the two untouched glasses of water I poured for a meeting that was never going to happen.
I’m in love with a man I’ve just decided to let go.
But I’ll sacrifice myself if it means Archie gets to live his life whole and happy. That’s all I want for him.
That’s what he deserves.
Now I just have to tell him I’m leaving without telling him why.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Archie
My cast is off.
