“What the hell is happening?” I whip my gaze back to Chloe and stop barely short of sobbing as her claws dig into my flesh. Not because she’s hurting me, but because the sting of her nails is a million times better than the sting of not being wanted. “Aubs, I don’t understand?—”
“You’re panicking.” She extends her hand, offering the mug. “A token of peace. Stay here with me a little while longer, drink your coffee, hear me out.” She flashes a wide smile in my peripherals. “Then you can spin out and murder everyone.”
“How is… Why…” I cast my gaze around the room and inspect every inch, every corner, for answers to the million questions flashing through my mind. I count chairs in the sitting area, scan the television mounted to the wall, and scour the small kitchen space just ten feet from it. I stop, surprise making my jaw tremble, and study the glittering coffee machine perched exactly where I planned to put one eventually. My pulse sprints out of control, hammering inside my chest and annoying the cat until she digs her claws deeper in my skin in retaliation, but I don’t want her to go. God, I don’t want her to reject me and run away, so I set my hands on the mattress and carefully push up to match Aubree’s pose. I bring the sheets with me, and before she can run, I grab Chloe and settle her on my lap, dragging my palm along her soft fur and scratching behind her ears. “Aubs?”
“Let’s start with the most obvious. You’re at the house.”
“I fell asleep at the apartment.”Is Archer here, too?“Aubree, I know for a fact I fell asleep at the apartment. So what’s?—”
She pushes the coffee further into my space, forcing me to take it. “Archer brought you here.”
“He…” My eyes burn. So easily, so instantly, I’m reduced to an emotional mess.I hate it. “W-why?”
“Because this is your home.” She fingers the frayed hem of her skirt, grinning all the way up into her eyes. “Seems he knows you quite well, Chief, which means he knew the hours after infusion reduce you to a coma zombie. That knowledge came in handy this past week while he was desperate to spend time with his wife, but knew doing so while you were awake only made you cry more.”
“He…” My breath catches in my lungs, hitching and spasming. “Archer is?—”
“Freaking out. He’s in pain. Scared. Exercisingherculeanlevels of patience and willpower.” She brings smiling, laughing eyes across to mine. “He wanted to be here when you woke. It was a tense conversation. Fortunately, I convinced him that it would do more harm than good.”
I shoot a look toward the closed door. No moving shadows on the other side. No shuffling feet. “He’s here?”
“He’s wherever you are. Always.” She takes my hand and holds on when my first instinct is to pull away. She locks us together, because she knows me so well, too.
I moved to Copeland City two Decembers ago, and in less than thirty hours after stepping off the plane, I’d met two of the best friends I’ll ever call mine.
This has been the loneliest week I’ve ever spent in this city.
“There’s some stuff I need to tell you before you go out there guns blazing.” She tightens her grip and drops her eyes to my untouched coffee. “Drink. It’ll help.”
“You’re planning to talk his way out of this?” I glance down at my coffee, my breath shuddering. “It’s not your responsibility to smooth things over for us, Aubs. Archer and I?—”
“Are working with fractured truths and half-pictures. You did something that, when he found out about it, scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Then you suggested taking a break.”
“But Aubree?—”
“And then he accepted that break. He did exactly what you asked of him. You hurt your own feelings when he didn’t beg you to change your mind.”
“Hurt myownfeelings?” I set my coffee on the bedside table and sit taller, scaring the damn cat so she skitters off the bed with a furious hiss. “Aubree, he told me not to come home! He told me?—”
“That’s where the half-picture and fractured truths come into play.”
“He doesn’t want me!”
“Such a lie,” she scolds, her brows pinching close together. “Don’t do that, Chief. You know Iknowanyway.”
“He wants me,” I whimper. “He wants memostof the time. He wants the medical examiner. The neuro-weirdo who hates talking to outsiders. He wants my body and my personality and my mind, and he doesn’t even hate when I describe facets of my job in excruciating detail, even when hearing those things makes him sick to his stomach. He wants my heart and my bad attitude, even when it creates more work for him. Which, it does. Often. I know he wantsmostof me. But that last little bit, the bit I can’tnotbe, he doesn’t want that.”
“Minka—”
“I will always search for justice for the girls who had none. Iwill continue to stand up and right the wrongs these people commit. Icannotlive in a world where men like that exist, Aubs, not when it’s within my power to make things better. Archer doesn’t want that part of me. He doesn’t want the most important part.”
“In the time it took for you to drive down the hill, speak to Soph, and change your mind about walking away, do you know what Archer was doing?”
I scoff. It’s watery and pathetic and comes with a humiliating side of booger running from my nose. “Hanging out with his family. Firing up the barbecue.”
She rolls her eyes. “He almost killed Felix, because Felix rarely knows when to shut up, and then he almost drowned Cato, because Cato loves you more than he loves his own brother. You, crying? Flipped a switch in that boy’s mind that nearly ended in bloodshed.”
“But—”
