Page 101 of The Sounds of Her

His soft laugh is like a warm breeze over my skin. This isn’t what I was expecting after last night. We need to talk about it, but I can let him take the lead. To a point. I take a sip of the coffee, its smooth and rich, and black. I don’t remember telling Archer how I take my coffee.

“Why did you let me sleep so late?”

“You needed it,” he says.

“You have a show tonight?”

“Yeah, last one before New Zealand,” he rubs a hand over the back of his head.

“Right.”

And our last night together. I’m flying back to New York tomorrow evening.

That sits heavy between the two of us, as heavy as the conversation we had last night. We stare at each other over the top of my coffee cup. Archer breaks the stare when he indicates the table where he has set out the food. It’s only then I smell the bacon and my stomach growls.

Archer looks down at it and laughs. He reaches out for my hand. “Come on before the neighbours bang on the walls at all that racket.”

“Funny.” I let him tug me across the room to the table.

We eat mostly in silence. I keep surreptitiously looking at Archer, trying to gage how he feels after the revelations last night. If he doesn’t want to acknowledge his emotions, I’m not going to get pissed about it, but the reason behind it is huge. He needs support and I’ll be gone tomorrow.

“The news articles aren’t going away,” he says after checking his phone while I stack the dishes onto the room service tray.

“About Adam?”

“Yeah,” he sets his phone down and sighs. “It’ll pass. The press gets bored if they can’t get any dirt. With us and Zosia’s team saying nothing, they’ll move onto something else.”

“Don’t use it as an excuse.”

“What do you mean?”

“To not tell Adam.”

His jaw clenches because he knows what I mean. “Tell him what?”

I give him a flat look. It says it all.

“He has enough to worry about. It was bad enough talking about it last night,” he says, setting his phone down and leaning back, looking defeated.

“How does it feel now you talked about it? Do you feel any different? When I told you, then Jenna, about my problems, it felt like a weight lifted.”

He’s quiet so long I wonder whether I should prompt him.

“She wants me to sign an NDA.”

“For what?” I frown.

“Not to talk about it.”

Just when I thought she couldn’t be a bigger asshole.

“Well, it’s after the fact, so there is no point. It can’t be enforced.”

“I’ve refused to sign it.”

“Good. She’s trying to pre-empt you taking any action.”

“What kind of action?”

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