Page 60 of Turning Tides
“You make me feel safe too.” No matter how things went with Cyrus, I wasn’t giving this up.
Chapter 29
Shane
If I thought wewere going to lie in bed all day, I’d thought wrong. Because the minute Archer’s eyes opened, he looked up at me and smiled, saying, “Do you want to get a tattoo today?”
He was impossible to say no to. So I showered and dressed, and Archer made us coffee and rummaged in my fridge for something to eat.
“I don’t see anything I want.” Archer pouted at me.
“We can go shopping later and stock my cupboards with all your favorite things,” I promised. Archer smiled at me over top of his coffee cup.
“Careful, you might spoil me.”
“You’re worth spoiling.”
He didn’t have a response to that.
“The fact remains that I don’t want to tattoo you on an empty stomach.”
“Then we’ll go for breakfast. I’ll take you to Bennett’s.”
Archer smiled at me again. “Ethan’s probably sick of you by now,” he teased.
“He may be sick of me, but Taylor makes a mean waffle.”
Archer retrieved his sketchbook and drained the rest of his coffee in a couple big swallows. The way his throat bobbed when he swallowed was obscene and I was tempted to drag him back to bed to have mywicked way with him again, but his enthusiasm about the tattoo was contagious.
We were just sitting down in a booth at Bennett’s when I realized that this was the first time we’d been out together as a couple. Our other rendezvous had been secret. Casual hookups and stolen moments. I reached across the table and tangled my fingers in Archer’s.
“This is our first official date, you know.” Archer’s face lit up at my words. He acted like me declaring it was a date was the single best thing he’d ever heard. “I never should have agreed to hide us from your brother. We could have done this so much sooner.”
He squeezed my hand. “I think things will work out the way they’re meant to. I’m not sad that we had that time to ourselves. It was kind of nice to feel like I had something that was just for me, you know.”
“I know.” I squeezed his hand back. Hiding from everyone, seeing Archer on the sly, had been fun. I liked the way that it felt when we were together. Like we existed in a bubble. But it was the fate of a bubble to pop eventually, and that’s what had happened the night before. Our bubble finally burst.
Ethan appeared with a pot of coffee. “Good morning. Coffee?”
“Please.”
Ethan filled two cups. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Two waffle stacks.”
“Bacon or sausage?”
“One of each,” Archer said. He caught my gaze and grinned at me. “So we can trade.”
Ethan promised to be back with our food in a few minutes.
“Why have I not ever been in here before?” Archer asked, looking around at the decor. The diner was brightly decorated in chrome and red. A wall of photographs highlighted the journey of the Bennett family through the years. Ethan’s family had run the diner before him.Then Ethan and Sarah, briefly. And the rest of the pictures were Ethan and his kids. The town had watched Jonah, Colby, and Taylor grow up here.
“We’re here now, that’s all that matters.”
Archer spied the wall of photographs. “Is that like the celebrity wall or something? Do they get famous people here?” He stirred a couple sugars into his coffee.
“Those are pictures of Ethan and his kids. Taylor still works here in the back as a cook, but Jonah went on to become a teacher at the high school and Colby is the manager of a gym here in town.”
