I sucked in a breath. “Archibald Christopher Quinn.”
“How do you know my middle name?”
“Baby, I know your fucking blood type.”
A sound slipped out of him, dragged up from somewhere deeper than his voice. His throat worked around it in a sharp swallow. Chin lifting, his eyes found mine, brimming with awe and unshed tears.
“You—” his voice faltered, the edge of it softened by something close to disbelief. “You know all that…?”
I adjusted his glasses. “Hmmm.”
“If you know everything, why didn’t you know about Abel?”
My hand stilled for half a second before shifting, palming the back of his head.
“Because your pain isn’t mine to take,” I said quietly.
“Wh—what?”
“I can find records. Dates. Reports. Statements written by people who weren’t there and didn’t feel it.”
I scratched at his scalp.
“But that wouldn’t behim. And it wouldn’t be you. It would be a version of your life that someone else decided was clean enough to file away. I want to hear it the way it lives in you. Even the parts that don’t make sense.Especiallythose.”
Something in his expression broke open, and the thought that followed wasn’t heroic—it was quiet, ugly, and absolute:anythingthat hurt him would end in my hands.
“I’m not going to take your pain and turn it into something easier to look at,” I murmured. “I know what it feels like when someone does that.”
A slow breath moved through him, his weight settling more fully against me instead of holding itself back.
“I’ll learn you the right way,” I whispered. “From you.”
Not from files. Not from records. Not from anyone who thought they understood.
11
ARCHIE
Idon’t think people talked enough about how fast it happened—the moment something shifted so completely your body justmoved, aligning itself before your mind caught up.
Every instinct I’d had ruthlessly rearranged itself around one person like they’d been lying in wait.
There was zero warning, and I was fucked.
Royally.
Because it wasn’t that he was brilliant or composed or criminally handsome—it was the way his attention settled on me and didn’t move. The way his hands found places on my body like they belonged there. The way being near him made me safe enough to close my eyes.
God.
Existing inside Henry Rothwell’s attention was… addicting. My lungs loosened like they’d been tight for years without me realizing it, skin buzzing with something restless.
The rest of the world didn’t disappear.
It just stopped mattering.
“Rabbit,” he hummed.
