Page 80 of Loving at 40

His head rises, and his dark eyes liquify. He nods, chewing on his bottom lip.

“It wasn’t your fault.” He didn’t tamper with the wires. He didn’t pull a trigger. She was involved in very illegal things, and he was doing his job. His job. “So you’re done with the assignment.”

Archer slowly nods again. “The department wants me to go into the witness protection program, but I’ve refused. I’ve already led a hidden life, Jenna. I just want a chance at being a regular guy.”

As I gaze over his body, there’s nothing regular about Archer, and there never will be. For the first time, I see the exhaustion in his eyes and hear in his voice how apologetic he is. I also realize if he hadn’t jumped off that boat, he’d be dead in the explosion himself.

Without another word, I scoot closer to him on the couch and slip my arms around him, hugging him from the side. He lowers his face and presses a kiss to my temple, holding his lips there.

“Are you safe here? Are we?” Suddenly, my thoughts leap to my girls, and Archer pulls back.

His arm wraps around my lower back. “I would never ever put you and the girls in danger, and I’ve already told you I would protect you with everything I had. I was protecting you when I left, but I wasn’t gone, ’Locks. I hadn’t left you.”

The note and his medal are my reminders. They were a message that he’d be back, only I hadn’t read it properly.

“Someone had eyes on you the moment I left.”

I pull back from him, but his fingers fist in the back of my shirt, refusing to allow me to escape. “Someone was spying on me?” I glance over his head, looking toward the window behind the couch. The blinds are closed, but a shiver ripples over my skin.

“For your safety, someone was keeping me informed.” His harder voice stiffens my spine. He had someone looking out for us. He was protecting me. He was protecting my girls.

“Are we safe?”

“I had to be certain Vi hadn’t made any connections between you and me. Not a hint of her passing on your name to someone else. You’re as safe as you can be. She never left my sight once I was on that boat, and she didn’t get out of me who you were.”

“You said I was no one.”

“More pretending.” His voice lowers and he leans forward, propping his forehead against mine. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

It still hurt, and he knows it.

We sit in silence for a moment as I try to catch up on everything. This can’t be my life. I’m a small-town high school teacher with two little girls and a mortgage. I’m not part of espionage or drug rings. Archer flattens his palm on my back and strokes up my spine.

“You have nothing to fear. I’m here now.” His hand cups the back of my head as he’s done so many times before he kisses me or while he kisses me. Will he kiss me?

Slowly, his fingers move for my hairline and draw down the side of my face, brushing locks around my ear. He watches his own movement and slides those fingers along the column of my throat before tipping up my chin. His gaze falls to my mouth before meeting my eyes.

“I’m home,” he whispers.

I swallow around the lump in my throat. The fear. The relief. Overwhelmed, all I want to do right now is hold him. Without responding, I climb over his legs and wrap myself around him, holding him tight to my chest. Within seconds, Archer tips us sideways until we’re a tangle of limbs. Legs entwined. Arms around one another. His face buried in my neck. And we hold tight like the life preserver we are to one another. Breathing each other in. No longer drowning. Now we just need to learn to swim.

32

[Archer]

I wake with a start to the sound of a phone chirping like crickets. Jenna stretches beside me, reaching for the device on the coffee table.

“Hello.” Her sleep-filled voice stirs my insides, and I’d be hard if I wasn’t already. We’re back to sleeping on the couch. For the past three nights, we’ve fallen asleep clinging to one another on this thing, listening to heartbeats and nestling together like we’re afraid to let go.

Daylight hours have been a different story. She remains distant. As Jenna had a four-day weekend from school, we didn’t leave the house other than some trips outside to build a small sled hill in her backyard and a snowman. To the outside world, we look like a family, but we aren’t there yet, and that becomes evident when Jenna introduces me to the neighbor as the brother of a college friend.

I definitely want to be more than that.

“Shit,” Jenna mutters, scrambling to get out from beside me. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“You said a bad word,” Rosie says near the bottom of the staircase while Jenna hops around looking for I don’t know what while still on the phone.

“Okay, give me fifteen, and thank you so, so much for calling.” Jenna clicks off the phone, drops it to the low table, and digs both hands into her hair. She takes a deep breath and then goes into tornado mode, scrambling toward Rosie.