Unimpressed, his lips firm into flat lines. “Never send me a skull and bones emoji.”
I snicker. “Okay, but the rest are valid. You can send me a little water droplet emoji to nag me to drink water. I can send you a little rainbow emoji to tell you Aubree’s on my nerves, and I’m about to commit a felony. If I’m feeling unwell, I’ll tell you. No bullshit, no lies, no fear of getting in trouble.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing with nerves.
“And you’ll trust that I’m okay.” I sit taller and flash a bright smile. “Next.”
“Next?”
“Mmm. I know you worry about me, and I know it weighs on you. But there’s more. And though I don’t claim to be Aubree with the brain foo-foo, I feel like maybe the more has something to do with Detective Banks.”
Telegraphing his mood more than he wants, a deep grunt rolls from the depths of his chest.
“Mm. That’s what we call a bullseye, so now it’s your turn to share the load. Tell me what hurts, then we can both carry a bit of the burden.”
“There’s noth?—”
“No bullshit,” I remind him. “No lies. No fear of getting in trouble.” I tighten my grip on his face andforcehim to see me. “If you want me to tell you the scary things, then I’m gonna need the same in return. What happened with Detective Banks today?”
“Today?” He twists in my grip and kisses my wrist. “Nothing. Half my lifetime ago? Loads.”
“Okay, well…” I dip a little lower and search his eyes. “What happened half your lifetime ago? And why is it burning you uptoday?”
“It bothers me that he walks around all self-righteous and shit, bitching aboutmebeing his enemy when he was the one who lied. If he’d told me he was a badge, I still would’ve fought with him,” he rasps. “I still would’ve stepped in front of his bullets. It pisses me off that he came into my home back then, convinced Lix they were friends, and then used that connection to fuck us over with no care for the bodies he left scattered in his wake.”
“You’re mad the intel he gathered hurt your father’s world?”
He scoffs. “I’m mad he didn’t care enough about Lix to share that intel in a safer way. To save Lix from having his teeth kicked down his throat. Or his ribs broken. Or his arm snapped over a guard’s knee, because they knew he was feeding information tosomeonehe shouldn’t, but he was too trusting to even consider that Banks was the problem. I’m mad Lix and Banks have been in the same roommultiple timesthis year, but no one is saying shit about what went down when they were kids. It’s like it never happened. And I’m mad Banks gets to flap his lips all day long about how I’m my father’s son and a good-for-nothing piece of shit, but when we cut through the noise and look at this in black and white, I’m not the one who lied. I’m not the one who fucked the other over. He thinks he has some kind of moral superiority because his father has medals, and mine was a fuckin’ scourge on this earth, but ya know what? I was a fucking kid, and I wasstillman enough to tell the truth and call this shit out for what it was.”
He drags my hands off his face, but he doesn’t end our connection. Rather, he pulls me closer, draws my arms over his shoulders, and contorts us into a hug that doesn’t feel quite right. So I give up on our two-stool situation and simply climb onto his lap.
He wraps his arms around my torso and exhales a grunt of pleasure and pain.
“I had no clue hugs could heal until I met you.” He buries his face against the side of my neck, breathing heavily enough to warm my skin. “I needed them last week most of all, so now that I have you back, I intendto make up for what we missed.Thisis how you redistribute everything else and make it easier to carry.”
“Have you considered sitting down and having a real conversation with Detective Banks?”
He coughs out a dismissive laugh. “Funny.”
“I’m actually being serious.” I tilt back and study his face. “I know being under eighteen makes you a child, and over eighteen makes you an adult. I know we can look back to when Detective Banks was inside your home and easily determine where each of you stood. But there’s no magical switch inside our brains that flicks over on our birthday, Archer. Yes, he was an adult, and yes, you were a kid, but he was also groomed from childhood to grab a badge and become his father’s protégée. He was pushed into a role that the adult Drake Banks has proven he doesn’t want, and even if he was older than you back then, he wasn’tthatold.”
“You’re standing up for him?” Instead of anger, Archer gives me pain. He gives me vulnerability. “I don’t make a habit of spilling my guts, Minnnka. But the one time I do, you’re taking the other guy’s side?”
“I’m not taking his side.” I frame his face and search his eyes. “It’s entirely possible he’s not proud of the things that happened back then, but he was young and following orders. Now he’s grown, and maybe he feels rejected by your open hostility.”
“He deserves to be rejected! He’s a fuckin’ traitor and a coward.”
“And I imagine he’s been sitting with those emotions for half of his life. Maybe he felt justified back then, because it was the job and he thought he was only screwing over the bad guys, but now he’s forced to look you in the eyes every single time he comes on shift and acknowledge the means may not have been worth the end. He has to take accountability for his part in hurting good people, and maybe he wants to make it right, but it’s really hard to swallow that kind of crow when the guy you wanna patch things up with won’t listen.”
“I don’t owe him a chance to speak, Mayet. Fuck! I don’t owe him shit.”
“No.” I press a kiss to his lips. “You don’t.” Another kiss. “But you oweyouthat chance.” A third kiss. Then I pull back and take his hands. “When someone weexpectto hurt us hurts us, we take our licks and move on. It’s easy, because we saw it coming all along. But when a friend hurts us, it stings. When a badge hurts us, we feel betrayed, because those are the people who swore to protect us. Your father was always the villain in your world, so when he fulfilled his prophecy, you and your brothers shrugged it off and continued to live your lives. But you not only considered Detective Banks a friend, but I also bet you considered him someoneyou sat with in the trenches. An ally. And if I know you the way I figure I do, then you probably considered him someone you should protect. Even though he was older,” I clarify. “Even though he was bigger. Tim wasyourfather, he wasyourproblem, and Drake was just a guest inside your home.”
“I—”
“Kinda like how you protect me every single time we visit that house.” I trail my fingertips along the sides of his wrists and peek up at him from beneath my lashes. “Drake not being who you thought he was has scarred you, Archer. But him lashing out now?” I bring his hands up to my lips. “It’s like he’s reopening those old wounds and pouring salt in for maximum pain.”
“All the more reason to fuck him up,” he grumbles. “Talking is the last thing I wanna do.”
