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“You insist on pretending we’re not worth it.” He pulls me closer, but not so close that the guys sitting in security will think anything untoward is playing out on camera two. “You don’t have to pretend, Minka. You’re mad. That’s fine, feel the mad. You’re sad. Fine, feel that too. But know that you only feelanythingbecause you feel something forme. I promise you, your stomach wouldn’t ache the way it does right now if you were thinking about some random asshole in the street.”
“We can’t do this.” I lift my chin, my shoulders, and take a step back. “Archer, I’m trying to make this clean.” I study his beautiful green eyes and refuse to step forward, when, really, that’s what I want most. “I’m trying to let you go in such a way that we can continue our working relationship. You’re making it impossible.”
“I don’t want just a working fucking relationship with you.” His nose flares with every word he growls. “I will not walk into this damn building, day after day, and pretend we’re not something more.”
“We can’t beanything. We already had problems, Archer! This isn’t about Miranda or secrets or you having sex with other women. This is about the fact I have no room in my life for a man.”
“You said you would make room,” he snarls. “You said you’d give us a try and see where it goes.”
“I saw where it went! It led us here,” I point down at my feet, then across to the refrigerators. “It led us to fighting on a crime scene in front of every news outlet in the city, and it led to my stomach aching so much, I don’t want to eat. I can’t!”
“Which is why I came down here first thing this fucking morning.”
Reaching into his coat pocket, he takes out a yogurt pouch—the kind with strawberries and blueberries and wild colors on the foil packaging. “It’s not as cold as it should be, but it’s still good. I only took it out of the fridge twenty minutes ago.”
“Archer…” My heart aches. My stomach swirls. My instincts wage a war against my heart and my brain. Then he cracks open the lid and hands me the breakfast pouch so my pulse skips in my chest. “You need to stop.”
“You need to give me a good reason to walk away,” he counters. “Because right now, you not being brave enough to be vulnerable isn’t cutting it for me.”
“I’m not scared to be vulnerable. Ichoosenot to be.”
“And I choose to hold on tight until you can meet me on the same level. This isn’t some bullshit game of cat-and-mouse, Minka. I’m not playing here, and I’m not here because your rejections are a challenge. I’m here because I was stupid enough to fall for you.”
My heart stops.
“Only you,” he continues. “Always you. So sure, we’re new, and yeah, we have to figure each other out. I’ll find out some shit about you and get pissy about it, and you’ll find some shit out about me and get pissy. We’re two grown adults with our entire lives spent apart. And now we’re trying to combine the two and hope for the best. But ya know what?”
He comes closer, so his breath feathers along my lips and my fingers twitch to touch. “I’m realistic enough to know there’ll be a few speed bumps along the way. I’m realistic enough to know you’ve had a life before me. And men before me. And every single time I come within a hundred fucking miles of finding out their names, we’re gonna find more speed bumps in our way. But we’ll get through it.Together.”
He reaches down and grabs my yogurt hand, then pushing the pouch up until the top touches my lip, he doesn’t remove his hand until I push some of the liquid onto my tongue. “When you see Miranda again, you’re gonna still be mad. And when I hear how you support what the vigilante is doing, I’ll get mad too.”
“Wh-what?” I bring the pouch down and swallow what’s in my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve made your stance clear. And I’ve made mine clear. We’re on two sides of a single wall, and next time the vigilante nails someone and it’s splashed all over the news, and you’re sitting there, smug behind your cup of coffee because another killer is off the streets, I’ll get pissed, because I don’t share your belief that a killer gets to take out other killers. The fact we can’t come together on this is a big fucking deal. And still,” he growls, “I’m gonna stay. And I’m gonna talk it out with you. And I’m gonna insist that what we have remains untouched by that shit. Because we’re more than that.”
He pushes my breakfast up to my lips again. “We’re more than Miranda London, and we’re more than a business relationship. We’re more than every single thing that wants to step in our way. And I can fight this alone for a while, Minka. I’ll fight for us both. But eventually, you have to help me.”
“Archer, I—”
A blood-curdling, stomach-twisting, ear-splitting scream echoes from inside the refrigerated room and forces my heart to stop. I spin to the doors in a single millisecond, then I drop my breakfast and break away to sprint toward Aubree’s scream.
But Archer’s arm wraps around my stomach first. His left hand goes to his gun, and his right hand comes to my torso with enough strength to leave a band-like ache winding through my gut.
Together, we crash through the heavy door in search of the threat, but Archer places himself in front, first through the door.
Always protecting me.
I scramble to look around him. I steal the spare gun from his hip and flick the safety off. But then I startle at the sight playing out across the room.
Fletcher shields Aubree much the same way Archer shields me, and just like his partner, Fletcher’s muscled arm points straight toward the table. In his hand, an unshaking police-issued service pistol, locked and loaded.
Because on the gurney sits a man in his mid-thirties, the side of his face destroyed, his left arm hanging limp. And his left leg, when he dizzily sways to the side and shows it off, is stamped with a license plate number.
“What th—”
“He’s alive!” Fletcher’s voice breaks with a squeak, a sound I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Someday, I’ll find it funny. Someday, I’ll tease him for it. But today, my stomach twists with incredulity. “The dude just sat up like Frankenstein’s fucking monster!”
Twenty feet from where Archer continues to defend me, Landry Mellet’s eyes dazedly swing around the room. He’s woozy. He’s confused. And he must be in a world of pain.
Finally, his eye—the one that isn’t swollen shut—locks on to mine.
Then he drops.
“Oh shit!” I set my borrowed gun on the floor and sprint to the unconscious man’s side just as he slams to the tiles and his head snaps around from the force.
Flipping him to his back with a grunt, I lean over him and attempt to listen for breath sounds. “Someone, call an ambulance! Mr. Mellet?” I check for a pulse. “Mr. Mellet!”
