Page 45 of Love You Always

Archer kneels in the space next to my car, still blocking the door. Expression serious and unwavering, he holds me by the forearms.

“She’s a friend. I was at a bar last night with my brothers andshe had too much to drink. No idea where her purse ended up, so I brought her back here. She slept on the couch.” His voice is rough but soothing. I want to believe him, but walking in on Callum last night has me mistrustful of all men.

“I should go.”

“Is that what you want?” His face is an unreadable mask, which helps because I need to make this decision myself, and not stay just because he wants me to.

I close my eyes and allow myself a moment to sort through the past twenty-four hours, when I’ve gone from dreaming about a future family to the present when I have no idea what lies ahead. But I nod.

“I’ll come inside.”

The presence of the woman in the dress has put a halt to whatever just passed between us, and now all I feel is cool air when Archer stands up and offers me his hand to pull me to standing outside my car. But he doesn’t let go, and I take comfort in the strength of his large, warm palm and strong fingers wrapped around mine as we walk toward the woman still standing in the doorway, her dress looking even more sheer the closer we get.

I hope I’m not making another mistake.

CHAPTER 21

Archer

The second cupof coffee has Alicia talking a mile a minute, her legs crossed underneath her on my couch, while Ella looks on from an armchair in the corner.

I don’t blame her for sitting as far away from the trainwreck of my personal life as possible. If it were me, I’d have driven away like she was planning. Especially after Alicia recognized her and went fangirl for a full two minutes until I could settle her down. I’m not sure how I persuaded Ella to stick around, but I’m grateful for whatever gods of manifesting convinced her.

Without her purse, Alicia has no idea how to reach her friends. All of their numbers are stored in her phone, which she doesn’t have. “D’you want to log into your account on my phone and search for it?” Ella offers.

“Oh, good idea,” she says. I meet Ella’s gaze and press my lips into a sort of smile, hoping it conveys how much I appreciate her kindness to Alicia. I can’t think of many women who’d take meat my word that there’s nothing going on between us, especially after what she just witnessed with Callum. I feel even more lucky that Ella chose to come here this morning. That she chose me.

I also kick myself for not searching for Alicia’s phone last night. I could’ve set off a chime to alert whoever had the phone, saving myself the whole nightmare of carrying Alicia from my truck to my house. In other words, I could be standing in my driveway with my hands on Ella’s soft skin right now instead of staring at her across the room like I’ve been doing for the past half hour.

Ella and Alicia set about logging in, and after a minute, they’ve located her phone. “That’s Carla’s house.” Alicia slaps her hand against her forehead. “Right. I had a clutch, so I stuck it in Carla’s bag, and she hung it on the hook under the bar. Totally forgot about that.”

A few minutes later, they’ve succeeded at reaching out to Carla on a social media messaging app and arranging for Alicia to pick up her bag on the way to her apartment. Relief washes over me as I see my errand coming to an end so I can pick up where I was with Ella outside. For the past half hour, I’ve been able to think about nothing else. I keep sneaking glances at her, clocking details I didn’t notice when we were outside. Her rosebud mouth, devoid of gloss or lipstick. The way her eyes dance when Alicia tells her that I’m a big teddy bear underneath my “snarly exterior.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I gripe, only to find Ella smiling at me from her chair, which is about as far away from me as she could be in this room. My muscles twitch, eager to pull her onto my lap and inhale a deep breath of her skin, her hair. I can’t stop staring.

“So where was I?” Alicia asks, reminding us that she was in the middle of giving Ella “all the dirt” on me since we’ve known each other forever. So far, it’s only resulted in a few stories about my football days and the cheerleaders I used to date. But then shestarted in on a story about a bear and I distracted her by refilling her coffee cup.

“The story about the bear,” Ella reminds her. I shoot her a frown, but she returns a sweet smile that says she’s eager to hear embarrassing stories about me.

“You should’ve seen his face,” Alicia says, telling a story she drags out whenever she wants to relive the glory days of our high school friendship. Usually it’s when she wants me to do something for her, some sort of man-power errand that requires a truck. She reminds me of how close we were once, which only serves to remind me that we’re not close anymore.

“Pretty glad you didn’t. Not my finest moment,” I say, hoping Alicia will cut to the shorter version of the story of how I thought I was defending my friends against a bear on our senior retreat.

“On the contrary, it was adorable.” Alicia sips more coffee.

“It was a normal testosterone-fueled guy response,” I explain. “My knuckleheaded friends thought it would be hilarious to pretend to be a bear when it was my turn to tell a ghost story by the campfire, and when one of them yelled ‘bear!’ I jumped to my feet and put my hands over my head to make myself look big and menacing.”

Alicia snorts coffee from her nose at the memory. “He looked like he was ready to shred the bear with his teeth.” She does her best impression of a vicious-looking face, teeth bared and jazz hands, which I most definitely did not do.

“You look like you’re auditioning to play the wolf in a bad Broadway musical,” I say, shaking my head. I drain the last of my coffee and stand up. “Anyway…we should grab your stuff from Carla’s and get you home.”

Alicia looks from Ella to me and nods. “Right. Got it. Sorry.” She stands up, straightens the hem of her short dress, and twists her hair into a knot on top of her head. “Okay, ready.” She looks around us on the floor. “Did I have shoes?”

I walk to the back door and grab her stiletto sandals. “Ready?”

“So pushy,” Alicia says, grabbing them from me and hanging them from her finger. “I’m kidding. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Do you want to hang here or come for the drive?” I ask Ella.

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