Page 41 of Mine for a Moment

I stare at her as her mother leaves the room, leaving us alone. “Are you still in love with him?” I ask without thinking. They have so much history, and how the fuck could anyone compete with that? I can have her in my bed and make her moan my name, but it feels like the second she walks away from me, her thoughts drift back to him.

She looks up, uncertainty written all over her face. “I…I don’t know.”

I reach for another balloon and watch it inflate. “Do you truly not know, or are you reluctant to admit that you still have feelings for him?”

She takes a deep breath and looks to the side. “Does it matter?”

“What if I tell you it does?”

“Why?”

“It can’t be a surprise to you that I don’t enjoy sleeping with a woman who’d rather be with someone else.”

Her eyes widen, a hint of insecurity flickering through them, and it takes me a moment to realize how what I just said might have come across.

“Fuck,” I mutter. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, darling. You know what you do to me, how much I want you.”

She nods, but I can tell her feelings are hurt. “I know,” she murmurs, but I don’t think she does. There’s no way she could understand how fucking wild she drives me. “I know, Archer. That’s not the part that hurts. It’s the fact that it isn’t me who’d rather have someone else. It’s you.”

“You know that’s not true,” I say instantly, denying it.

She glances at my phone, and my heart sinks. My password.Fuck. “I don’t blame you,” she says, her voice trembling. “I understand. Truly, I do. I knew what I was getting into, but so did you.”

Thirty-Four

Serenity

I sigh as I distribute the snacks Mom prepared across the tables in the backyard, my mood sullen. Ezra kept Archer and me up all evening with board games that neither of us wanted to play, but neither he nor I could come up with a good excuse not to when it’s what we’ve always done when we’re all home.

In the end, I had to call it a night and head to bed by myself, quietly resenting Ezra for keeping me from Archer on a night I really wanted to be with him. He and I have never argued, and I wouldn’t say our conversation yesterday was an argument per se, but something about it didn’t sit well with me. I’d been so frustrated that I nearly snuck out with my stash of spray cans that I keep hidden. I haven’t felt the urge to do that since Archer showed me what he’d done to his guest room for me. It doesn’t help that Mom and Dad put us to work again the moment we woke up this morning, depriving me of a chance to speak to him.

“Serenity!”

I turn around at the sound of Theo’s voice, and for the first time inyears, my heart doesn’t skip a beat. Instead, I look around the rapidly filling backyard, my eyes settling on Archer. He’s standing next to Dad and Ezra, the three of them sorting out the barbecue together.

Archer’s eyes meet mine just as Theo’s arm wraps around me, and I tense. “Hey,” Theo says, surprising me when he lifts me off the ground and hugs me tightly.

He smiles as he puts me down, and I smile back at him involuntarily. “What was that for?”

Theo shakes his head and brushes one of my curls out of my face. “Just happy to see you.”

“You literally saw me two days ago.”

He grins at me. “Exactly. I didn’t get to see you yesterday, and it felt like an eternity.”

I laugh at his ridiculousness, but my gaze keeps drifting back to Archer, whose expression has hardened. My heart sinks when he turns his back to me, and I step away from Theo.

“Where is Kristen?”

Theo’s smile melts away. “We had an argument, and she decided to stay home.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, unsure what else to say to that. “Is there…is there anything I can do?”

He shakes his head. “No, nothing at all.” He throws his arm around me. “Except maybe grab a drink with me. Did I see you spiking your mom’s lemonade when I walked in?”

I throw him a conspiratorial look as I lead him closer to the drink station, hyperaware of how close it is to where Archer is standing. He looks at us as Theo and I head his way, his gaze settling on the arm Theo still has wrapped around me, and I try my hardest to resist the urge to shrug it off like I did last time, when Theo told me he didn’t want anything between us to change.

I pour both of us cups just as Mom walks up to the boys with one of my older cousins by her side.

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