So while she tried to score us a round of free drinks on the unsuspecting visitors, I continued to pick at our loaded French fries. Fries were always good, but smother them in fake cheese and pile them with pieces of bacon, and I was a goner.
I slurped the remnants of my Jack and Coke, silently begging Shayna to hurry up so we could get our drinks and get back to talking. Bored, I turned my head to stare out the bar’s window, only I never made it that far because my gaze snagged on the man sitting by himself in the corner.
Archer Mack.
When I moved to Gettysburg, I’d heard that he lived in the area—word traveled remarkably fast in small towns—and it took me only a couple of seconds to realize why the name soundedfamiliar. We’d gone to high school together. Granted he was a senior when I was freshman, so it wasn’t for long, but that’s how I knew of him. He’d always kept to himself back then too, so it didn’t surprise me that he was all by himself at a bar now.
Through my tipsy brain, I tried to reconcile the boy from my teenage memories, with the man sitting twenty feet from me. His dark hair was longer on top, and swept lazily across his forehead as he stared down at his phone. Everything about his posture screamed he was trying to blend into the shadows, but as it would turn out, it was incredibly hard to hide when you were well over six feet tall, and covered in tattoos.
Unsure what prompted me into motion, whether it was the alcohol in my system, or the simple fact that I hadn’t done it back in high school but had always kind of wanted to, I gave up on waiting for a free drink, secured my own, and suddenly found myself standing before him.
“You’re Archer.”
His phone screen illuminated bright green eyes, and shadowed the cleft in his chin. If it weren’t for the three inch silver scar running through his left eyebrow, he’d be handsome in the almost “too perfect” sense. As it was, it lended him a dangerous edge that had my stomach somersaulting.
“I am,” he said, sitting up straighter. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
I held out my hand. “Darcy Adler. I believe we went to high school together. Well, actually, I know we did, but that sounds really creepy.” I was rambling, and that was absolutely the liquor’s fault.
His mouth turned upwards, and he reached across the table, taking my hand in his. The calloused warmth of the small contact sent a chill through my body. “I’d be inclined to believe you, except I most definitely would’ve remembered you.” Thoseeyes scanned my face before trailing down my body, and I felt the heated path they took as if he had physically touched me.
A blush crept across my cheeks, and I pressed my lips together against what would’ve been a very stupid grin. It was a cheesy line, almost too cheesy, but it was effective nonetheless. “No, you wouldn’t have. I was told you were trouble on my first day and stayed clear.” Why did I say that?
He chuckled, and sipped his beer. “Smart advice. Why aren’t you listening to it now?”
I took the open seat opposite him. “Because that was almost twelve years ago, and people change. Plus, you never seemed all that bad to me.”
“You didn’t know me back then.”
Taking a sip of my drink, I shrugged. “I’m an excellent judge of character. It’s why I don’t have a lot of friends. The majority of people suck.”
He smirked. “I’m afraid, beautiful, that your superpower is off the mark where I’m concerned.”
I narrowed my eyes playfully at him, feeding off his use of the word beautiful. “Are you issuing your own warning to me right now?”
“I’m simply agreeing with whoever gave it to you in the first place.”
Rolling my eyes, I asked, “And what exactly is so bad about you? Because from where I’m sitting”—I gave him the once-over he’d given me—“I’m not seeing it.”
“Ninety percent of the time, you can’t see trouble coming.”
“Is that speaking from experience?”
There was a flash of darkness in his eyes that disappeared as fast as it came. I saw it though; it was there. Part of me wondered if that was the trouble Garrett, and now Archer himself, were cautioning me about. “I can’t speak from anything else. Not honestly anyway.”
“Well, in my experience, bad people don’t give self-proclaimed warnings.”
The muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed slightly, flexing in a way that drew my attention to how muscular he was. “You’ve got a lot of experience with bad people?”
A humorless laugh bubbled out of me. “Only all of my exes. I have a history of dating some real assholes. Kind of ruined the whole dating thing for me.”
“Well, then”—he raised his beer towards me, and I lifted my drink up, lightly tapping the glass to his in cheers—“we’ve got that in common.”
“Your exes also suck?”
He chuckled. “No, I don’t have any exes. I don’t date.”
My brows pinched together. “Why not? You aren’t a fan of monogamy?”
