by Jill Shalvis
Through the light filtering in from the hallway, Elle could see Archer on the bed, heavily bandaged and heavily sedated. He was breathing oxygen through a tube and a saline IV drip ran into his left hand. The nurse had told her he was very busy sleeping and healing, and that the longer he stayed out the better because he wasn’t going to be feeling great when he woke up.
She sat at his side and pushed the hair from his forehead. “That was enough excitement for the rest of my life,” she murmured. “But the important thing is that you’re going to be okay.”
“Don’t feel okay. Feel like shit.” His eyes were still shut and if she hadn’t been staring right at him, she’d probably not have heard him at all. Both she and Joe leapt to their feet.
“You’re awake?” Her eyes immediately filled with tears and her throat clogged up. She’d never felt so emotional in her life as she bent over his bed and pressed her lips to his scruffy jaw.
Archer tried to raise an arm toward her but given his grimace and agonized grunt, he was caught off guard by the pain. “What. The. Fuck.”
“Stay still.” She put her hands on him. “You’ve got to stay still. You’re in the hospital. Do you remember what happened?”
Archer blinked a couple of times, probably trying to shake the cobwebs. “You almost got yourself shot.”
“Not even close because you put yourself in front of me and took the bullet yourself.”
“Because I’m not the one of us maybe carrying our baby.”
Joe stood up. “Maybe I should go . . . anywhere but here.” He gestured to the door and then practically ran through it.
Elle sank back to the chair, worn out. Clearly Archer was a little more lucid than she’d imagined possible. And since she’d gotten the proof of not being pregnant an hour ago, she could at least take that off his mind. “I’m not,” she said just as a nurse bustled into the room, beaming wide, Spence right behind her.
“Good evening!” the nurse said, all chipper. “Or shouldn’t I say good almost-morning?” She moved to the IV pump that was attached to the pole and began hitting buttons. “Nice to see you’re awake, Mr. Hunt. You’ve had a whole waiting room filled with people wondering about you all night. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he said, eyes still on Elle. “I want to sign myself out now.”
The nurse smiled and patted his arm. “Soon,” she said and then flashed both Spence and Elle a look that said she’d majored in handling tough patients. She placed a small clicker into Archer’s good hand. A cord ran from the clicker to the pump on the IV pole. “Press this if you feel the need for more pain medication,” she said. “Don’t worry, no matter how many times you hit it, you won’t overdose.”
“Good to know,” Archer replied, stabbing the button with his thumb repeatedly, his gaze still locked on Elle.
“I’m not pregnant,” she told him.
Spence blinked. “What?”
Archer just stared at Elle, his face all but impossible to read. “You sure?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Sure sure?”
“Yes.”
He stared at her some more, and she’d have sworn disappointment flashed in his eyes. Good God. Maybe she needed some meds. Then he began to struggle to sit up, muttering something about options and how he’d been stupid enough not to narrow them down for her.
“What are you doing?” she cried. “Stop.” She rushed to him and held him down. “You need to stay still. What do you need?”
“For you to not sleep with Caleb or Mike. Or anyone with a penis.”
“Well that definitely narrows it down,” Spence said.
Elle eyed Archer’s finger on the pain med button. “That must be some seriously good stuff.”
“It’s not the damn meds,” he said.
“Let me make sure I have this right, okay? Only people with penises are out? So people who don’t have penises are okay? Is that what you’re saying?”
Archer blinked once, slow as an owl. “Maybe we make a onetime exception,” he said. “If I can watch . . .” He was slurring his words. Closing his eyes, he put a hand to his head. “Fucking pain meds.”
She turned to Spence.
“Yeah, it’s the drugs,” he said, looking amused. “He’s a cheap-ass lightweight on drugs. He hates them, usually refuses all pain meds. I don’t think they gave him a choice this time though, considering he was unconscious and all. He’s gonna be seriously pissed when he sobers up.”
“I mean it,” Archer said, lifting his good arm to try to point at Elle, missing by a good yard. “Not gonna share you, not with anyone, not even Spence.”
“Understood,” Spence said, lifting his hands. “She’s all yours, man.”
“Excuse me,” Elle said. “I’m not anyone’s! I’m my own person! And are you listening to me? I’m not pregnant!”
Spence, looking pained, and also like he wished he’d been shot, sank to a chair.
“Still mine,” Archer said from the bed, eyes still closed.
Elle choked out a laugh. It was that or scream. “First of all, you’re the only man I’ve ever known who could make me want to hurt him in his own hospital bed. And second of all, if I’m yours, then you’re mine, pal. And I don’t share either so you’d better tell that to all those women always tripping over their own feet whenever you so much as smile at them.”
Archer opened his eyes and stared at her very intently, as if he couldn’t quite focus. “We could just bite the bullet and make it official so there’s no question.”
“Official?” she asked. Maybe squeaked.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll get married. Spence?”
“Yeah?” Spence asked warily.
“Book two seats to Vegas.”
Spence pulled out his phone.
Elle just gaped at them both.
Archer actually smiled then. “You’re so pretty, Elle. I want to eat you up.”
She turned to Spence, who was now on his phone. “He’s not going to remember any of this, right?” she asked.
“Hard to say. Morphine’s a bitch.”
“Apparently.” She stared down at Archer some more. His eyes had closed again but he was still smiling. God knew at what. She was torn between enjoying this and taking advantage of the opportunity to get him to talk. She decided to do both. “Spence, we need a minute.”
“Gladly.” And with what looked like huge relief, he made himself scarce.
Elle sat at Archer’s side and reached for his hand. “Did you mean it?” she whispered, desperately needing to know if he remembered the “I love you.”
His eyes were still closed and he was breathing deeply, the kind of breathing one did when one was deeply asleep.
Which answered the question, she figured with more than a little disappointment, but then she nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke.
“I’ve meant everything I’ve ever said to you,” he said, just quietly without moving a single muscle, like maybe everything hurt. “I’m passing out now,” he announced.
She stared at him as he drifted away from her, her heart pounding.
A few minutes later, Spence came back in and found her still sitting there. “You okay?”
“He lost a lot of blood,” she murmured.
“He’s been worse off.”
“I think he’s in shock.”
Spence snorted. “Probably he’s afraid you’ll actually want to use those tickets I just booked for you. I know that’d send me into shock.”
Stunned, she stared at him. “Wait—you actually bought us tickets to Vegas?”
“Hey, he sounded pretty serious. And God knows, you drive him freaking nuts. I thought maybe he’d finally snapped.”
Elle had no choice but to laugh because she was the one who felt like she’d snapped. She wondered if they gave out morphine for that.
Chapter 25
#TeamArcher
The first thing Archer became aware of was soft, muted beeping. The antiseptic
smell came next. Which meant it hadn’t all been a nightmare. Fact was, he remembered clear as day stepping inside Lars’s back door and hearing a gun being cocked. Push had come to shove and he’d had only a single second to make a choice. And that choice had been Elle. It’d always been her and it always would be. “Fuck. I was hit.”
“That’s what happens when you play the hero” came a voice he hadn’t expected.
Archer forced his eyes open to find his dad standing at the foot of the hospital bed.
“Thought you left the hero game,” his dad said.
Archer didn’t roll his eyes only because it would hurt. Everything hurt. “What are you doing here?”
“My son got shot. What do you think I’m doing here? And why the hell weren’t you wearing a flak vest? You forget everything I ever taught you?”
“Hey, I’m feeling fantastic,” Archer said. “Really. Thanks for asking. And nice job on calling me back after, oh I don’t know, any of my phone calls.”
His father stared at him for a long beat and Archer did his best to stare back but he had problems. One, he felt like someone had skewered him right through with a hot poker. Two, he was high as a kite. And three—he couldn’t see Elle.
Why couldn’t he see Elle? “Look, I don’t know who called you, but—”
“I called him,” Elle said. And then there she suddenly was, standing up from a chair across the room.
He stared at her. “What the hell for?”
Anyone else would have backed down. But not Elle. Never Elle. God forbid she back down on anything. Instead she lifted her chin, eyes flashing her temper, although her voice was quiet. Quiet steel. “You lost a lot of blood. You took a long time to wake up.” She paused a moment and he realized she was struggling to keep it together.
And suddenly he felt like the biggest sort of asshole. “Elle—”
“So yeah, I called him,” she said. “Get mad at me, not him.”
The thing was, she knew how he felt, how shitty the relationship was between him and his dad, and the last thing he wanted was to deal with it here. “You shouldn’t have made the call.”
Spence came up to Elle’s side and looked down at him. “Hey, man. I’m the one who helped her track his number down so if you need someone to take into the ring, you’re looking at him. But gotta warn you, you’re down more than a quart so I think I could take you.”
“Oh for God’s sake,” his dad said. “Is all this melodrama really necessary?”
“Take her out of here,” Archer said to Spence, eyes on his dad, his every breath sending pain spearing right through him.
“I’m standing right here.” Elle glared down at him. “You want me to go so bad, tell me yourself.”
No way in hell did he want her to witness the showdown between his dad and himself. He was already flat on his back, as vulnerable as a man could get. He looked her in the eyes. “I want you to go.”
She drew in a breath and turned away. Spence slipped his hand in hers and then they were gone, leaving Archer alone with the man staring down at him like he was the biggest disappointment of his entire life.
“Nice going, son,” his dad said, “alienating the people who care so deeply for you. You’re real good at that.”
“Well I did learn from the master.”
His dad snorted and then took the chair at Archer’s side. He leaned in, elbows on his knees. “They say you’re going to be okay. Your shoulder’s going to be a bitch to rehab but you’re young and in lean, mean, fighting shape so it’s doable.”
Good to know.
“I’m going to say some things now,” his dad went on, “and I want you to hear them.”
“I don’t know, Dad, I’m pretty busy at the moment, so . . .”
“Smartass. You got that from your mother.” His dad paused and when he spoke again, his voice was softer. Warmer. “She was a good woman. She got me, Archer. I mean she really got me. And she would’ve gotten you too.”
He had Archer’s full attention now. They didn’t talk about his mom much but he wished they would because, Christ, he missed her. He missed her so very much.
“She knew how to handle us both. And she would’ve known how to keep you a part of the family”—he inhaled and then let it out slowly—“when I failed to do so.”
This was more from the man who’d raised him than he’d ever heard in all the years put together. “Are you actually taking some of the blame here?” Archer asked. “Has hell frozen over?”
His dad shook his head. “You can’t stop yourself, can you? Not even when someone’s trying to hand you an olive branch. I’m trying to fucking apologize here.”
Shit. Feeling like an asshole, Archer struggled to sit up, hating to have this conversation from flat on his back but damn, the pain—
“Here.” His dad leaned in and fumbled with a remote attached to the bed. He hit a button that had the mattress jerking as the lower half of the bed raised, wrenching a string of oaths from Archer.
“Shit!” his dad said. “Hang on—” He pounded another button that had the mattress jerking again, this time lowering Archer’s head.
“Shit on a stick,” his dad muttered, randomly stabbing buttons now. All of them.
Dizzy, swearing, Archer wrangled the remote from his dad’s hands, but he was trembling and now sweating to boot and it slipped through his fingers.
“I’ve got it!” his dad said, and he dropped to the floor. On his knees he hit a few more buttons until he managed to get the bed straightened out.
“Holy fuck,” his dad said, swiping his forehead as he sank back to the chair. “That was harder than getting through the police academy.”
Archer laughed and then groaned as that caused another wrenching pain. “Are you sure you’re not trying to kill me?”
His dad’s smile vanished and he blew out a long breath. “Son.”
It’d been a damn long time since his dad had said that word in that voice. Not his cop voice. Not his in-charge-of-everything voice. But a dad voice.
Archer’s chest went tight and they stared at each other.
“Elle’s call took ten years off my life,” his dad finally said. “So the question is who’s trying to kill who?”
Archer managed a small smile. “Admit it, we’re both surprised we haven’t killed each other before now.”
His dad snorted and looked down at his tightly entwined fingers for a minute before meeting Archer’s gaze. “I know why you left. I even know why you stayed gone. What I don’t know is why we’re still doing this, pushing each other away. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m an old man, Archer. I don’t want to die alone.”
“Dad, you’re fifty-two. That’s only halfway old, and anyway you’re far too ornery to die.”
His dad laughed. “Yeah, that’s probably true. And something else that’s also true—I miss your stubborn ass.”
Archer’s chest tightened again. “You don’t. No way do you miss that asshole kid who questioned your every word, the one who not only crossed every line you ever drew but butted heads with all authority figures. Cuz I’d think it’d be a relief to be free of that.”
“Don’t be a chip off the old block, dammit. Not right now. Say you miss me too.” His dad leaned forward and put his hand on Archer’s. “I fucked up, more than once. And eventually I’m going to meet up with your mom again and hell if I want her first words to me to be ‘you messed up with our only son.’ When she was dying—”
“Dad—”