1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve

by Alexandra Ivy

  Gabe drops two boxes on the café table outside CinSations, and glares at me.

  “What the fuck are you doing with Hazel?”

  I stare at him, trying to process. Frankly, I’m still trying to catch up. It’s early and I haven’t had a lot of coffee yet, and Eli is the morning person in this equation, so, “What?”

  Gabe snaps his fingers, his green eyes furious as he stares at me. “She was grumpy but fine, until you showed up with the puppy. She likes him. So tell me what the hell you did that sent her running, Archer?”

  I cock my head at him.

  Because I know. Of course I fucking know. I’m just surprised Gabe doesn’t. “She’s your best friend, Gabe. Doesn’t that mean she tells you this shit?”

  A spasm of pain flares across his face. Shakes the mischievous, smiling jackass that the town knows and loves.

  For a second, I see Gabriel. The last Devlin to stay in the County, the one who said fuck it when his family said he should go into politics and law. The one who stayed when his family, even his favorite brother, left.

  Everyone left Gabe. Even Hazel. And he’s not as immune to that as he’d like the rest of Green Co. to think.

  So I sigh, and shrug. “Hazel doesn’t talk to me. She hasn’t for a long time, man. I have no idea what’s going on in that pretty little head of hers.”

  Gabe watches me, all narrowed eyed contemplation, and I struggle to keep my face blank.

  Until, finally, he snorts.

  “Get a donut, Archer. I hear they’re to fucking die for,” he says, and then he’s snatching up his boxes and shoving back into CinSations.

  Eli, coming out of the shop, gives him that tight smile he only ever fishes out for Gabe, and it reminds me I need to ask about what the hell is happening there, but I don’t.

  I haven’t since I came home from Afghanistan and Eli graduated and we both joined the force. I remember it, clear as day. I was sitting at Mom’s house while Hazel prowled around, nursing a bottle of beer and giving these reserved little smiles. Eli was graduating and she was two years from it herself, and her eyes skipped over me like I wasn’t even there. Gabe alternated between clinging to her like a burr in fur, and spinning away like a falling star. But he avoided Eli, and I would say it was unconscious, except that I had watched my brother and Hazel and Gabe for too many years to see it as anything but what it was.

  They were avoiding each other.

  And because I was so wrapped up in my own shit, I let them. I didn’t push. That was six years ago.

  Sometimes, when shit drags too long, you don’t get to bring it back up. After Hazel left, we didn’t see much of Gabe. Mom said he came by, sometimes, but it was never when we were there.

  Green County was small, but if he wanted to hide, he could and without Hazel as the glue to bring him into our inner circle, there was no real reason for us to see him.

  Bury something long enough, it’s hard to bring it back up.

  “What did Gabe want?”

  I hesitate, and then, “He wanted to know if Hazel and I were fighting.”

  Eli’s eyebrows go up and he frowns. “You have to see someone to fight with them, and you’ve seen her what, three times since she came home?”

  There’s an accusation in his voice, and I ignore it. I don’t need to defend myself to Eli. He’s never pushed me for an explanation. He just accepted it. I think if it were just me, he’d push. If it were just Hazel he’d push. But with both of us playing the same game—avoidance and refusal to talk—he let it slide.

  I know he wants an explanation. But for now—“Here,” he says, handing me a cup of coffee and a slice of carrot cake. Thank god for Eli. Kid knows me way too well. “Pratt wants to talk to us. Eat in the car.”

  I huff at that, but follow him back to where I parked.

  Being detectives means we get drive an unmarked car. Being Brandon Archer means I’m driving my unmarked car, a sleek 74 Roadrunner, fully restored, and painted a blue so deep it borders on black. Eli laughs and says it’s not practical because people know it’s mine. But we aren’t undercover so fuck that noise.

  I hate driving anything but my girl.

  Eli turns down the radio and I glance at him as he thumbs through emails on his phone.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about family dinner?” I ask casually.

  Guilt in those big puppy eyes before he shrugs quickly.

  “Because you wouldn’t come. Nora’s been inviting you since Hazel came home and you’ve blown her off every single time.”

  “Does it occur to you I might have had plans?”

  “Not if those plans include a girl you don’t call again, or the bar,” Eli deadpans, and I grin, sipping my coffee as I head toward the courthouse.

  “It’s Green Co, man. I’ll see them again.”

  “Archer, you’ve been avoiding Nora since Hazel blew back into town. And she gets it. I get it. Even if I’m not asking—I know there’s some shit you won’t talk about. But, fuck, man.

  She misses her kids. That’s all.”

  And that makes me feel like shit, because Nora did her best with us. When we could have ended up in the county home, we ended up with Nora. And she fought like hell to give us the best she could.

  “I’ll do better,” I say and he flicks another glance at me. It’s not much, as far as promises go, but it’ll do for now. It’s enough for Eli for now.

  Maybe it’s time to put aside my shit with Hazel and make peace. I glance at the clock on the dash and sigh. I’ll go, after our shift.

  The morning after talk is about four fucking years overdue, and Hazel might be pissed, but I’m done playing this by her rules.

  If it’s effecting Nora and Eli it’s gone on far too fucking long.

  Chapter 3

  The thing about small towns is that they’re small. Nothing really happens here. It’s the beauty of the place, the whole reason I fell so fucking hard for Green County when I moved here.

  Dad’s latest duty station. Another military brat in a town full of them.

  On the surface, Green County looks perfect. Idyllic. Fucking Mayberry in the middle of corn-fed Kansas.

  But the more I look around, the more I think we’ve got a problem. It’s something they don’t show the outside world. And I am the outside world, to some degree, even after Green Co rallied around us.

  Do you remember that day? So many people don’t. It’s easy to forget.

  October 28th. 1996. Most of the country thought we were moving out of Bosnia. We were.

  It was a quiet time for the military.

  For a military brat, there’s nothing quite like peace. Nothing that’s quite as comforting.

  It wasn’t supposed to happen—that’s the tragedy of it. But a plane crash is a plane crash.

  Green County is home to Sanders Army base and it lost twenty-seven soldiers in one morning. The entire country paid attention, descended on the County like a fucking horde, demanding to know what went wrong.

  Here’s the thing, though. Most of the people left behind were families. Kids and their surviving parent.

  There were four, who weren’t.

  Four kids who were orphans. One—Anna Winters--got out clean, got picked up by an aunt and whisked away as soon as legally possible.

  The other three. Well. The military and Green Co had no idea what the hell to do with them.

  Nora stepped in. She was lifelong Army, retired, and living a quiet sort of life. She owned a diner on the edge of town that the boys from base swore by and truckers liked to stay in. She kept it clean, kept a few cabins out back to let truckers and drunk soldiers crash in, and made a decent living.

  And she took those three orphans in. Raised them as her own, gave them everything she could, and if Green Co and the Marine Corp kicked some money her way for publicity and survivor benefits, she tucked that in a little fund for each of them.

  Sometimes family is the blood your born to.

  And sometimes. It’s the woman who
steps up and takes you in when the world is falling apart. It’s the gentle giant who becomes your best friend and brother, even if he was born in Germany and you were born in California. It’s the quiet green eyed young man who’s so eaten up with grief and unspent anger that you creep around him for months before you find him, broken down in the basement, and crawl into his lap, because you get it.

  Fuck, you get it.

  Family isn’t just the people you’re born to.

  It’s the ones who chose to love you.

  Nora taught me that. So did Eli, the brother of my heart. And so did Archer. Although he stopped being my brother, a long fucking time ago.

  I sit back and rub my eyes.

  Stare at that last line.

  Fuck.

  This isn’t what I’m supposed to be writing. I’m supposed to be doing an expose on the criminal underworking’s of the County—and there were underworking’s, even if the entire County looked the other way—and instead I was rambling on about family.

  This is why I got dismissed from the paper in Boston.

  Ok, no it’s not but fuck it probably had something to do with it.

  A knock on my front door jerks my head up and I frown. Coffee. I need more coffee. I glance at the corner of my desktop and mutter a curse. No wonder my back hurts. I’ve been working almost nonstop since I got home from CinSations, ten hours ago.

  At my feet, Smith growls, a low, furious note that rumbles through his chest.

  Antisocial mutt is more like me than is probably healthy. If I gave a fuck, I might even do something about it.

  “Stay,” I order, half-hearted, and stand, making my way to the door. He follows me, a half-formed noise in his throat.

  Brandon Archer stares at me through the thin glass, his expression tense.

  Six months. I had a damn good run before he pinned me down. Not as good as I wanted— if I had my way, we’d never do this, spend our lives in our respective corners.

  I pull open the door and stare at him.

  “Our shit is effecting Mama, Hazy. Time to be adults about it.”

  “Don’t wanna,” I say, sticking my lip out in a pout and he breathes a laugh that rubs against my skin.

  The problem with Archer is that he’s too much. He was too close growing up, too angry and too mean, and then he was too sweet, too gentle.

  And then he was too fucking hot, and any idea that he was my brother, something I’d always struggled with, vanished in want.

  Here’s the way it worked.

  They died. And we lived. Nora did what she didn’t have to do, picked us up to keep us out of the group home, and gave us a family. A broken family, but Nora reasoned that no one would understand our collective loss, and individual hell, quite like each other.

  It was a twisted sort of logic, but it also made all the sense in the world, and it fell, so fucking easy, into place.

  In a time when breathing was hard, we were easy.

  But Archer had never been easy. He didn’t know how—he was the oldest, older than Eli by four years and me by five. He felt the lost more than we did, and he was angry. God, he was angry. That’s what I remember about that first year.

  The crushing grief, and Archer’s furious anger.

  It gave way. Even Archer couldn’t maintain fury in the face of Nora’s calm practicality and Eli’s wild, infectious enthusiasm. They coaxed him out of his fury. And he coaxed me out of my grief.

  And then I fell for him, so hard that it stunned even me, and I ruined everything.

  “We’ve been doing things we don’t want to do for years, Hazel ,” he says, and I shiver as his voice wraps around my name. “We both fucked up. Time to pay the piper and talk shit out, because Nora is gonna kick my ass if I miss another family dinner, and if she doesn’t, Eli will.

  Dude’s my partner. I can’t avoid his sulking.”

  I laugh a little at that and sigh. Let him in. “Come on. You talk while I cook.”

  Archer’s eyebrow hitches up at that, and I shrug, turning away. “I’m starving.”

  I feel him following me into the little farmhouse. It’s not nearly as nice or as spacious as Gabe’s down the road, five acres and a line of trees over, but it’s mine.

  Once upon a time, my parents wanted a house. And then Mom died, killed by a drunk driver. Dad couldn’t give me stability or even a mother, hell—he couldn’t even give me him, thanks to the Corp. But he bought a house, and hoped that would be enough for a kid reeling from the loss of her mother.

  After he died in the Green Co Crash, as the national media dubbed it, Nora rented the place out and put the profits in my account.

  When I graduated and went off to school, I had more padding then I had any right to, and a house, if I wanted it.

  It made everything falling apart a little easier to bear, if only just because I didn’t worry that I’d end up homeless or on Nora’s couch.

  I mean, Mama Nora would take me in. She was pretty fucking fantastic and would love for me to come home, even for a weekend. Nora missed us. Even if she kept it to herself, she missed us like crazy.

  It was a mutual feeling though.

  “Isn’t that your lunch?”

  I glance at Archer and where he’s frowning at a box lunch from CinSations. Shit.

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  His green eyes go flinty and he frowns at me. “What the fuck, Hazel?”

  “I was working. I didn’t get hungry,” I say, defensive, and his scowl deepens. He grabs my arm and pushes me onto a stool at the bar. “Sit the fuck down before your blood sugar crashes.”

  “Jesus, Archer, I haven’t fainted since high school.”

  He ignores me, rummaging through my cabinets before he makes a satisfied noise and emerges with a sleeve of saltines and a jar of peanut butter. He leans against the counter across from me and makes me peanut butter cracker sandwiches, and I’m thrown.

  Not by his actions, but into the past.

  When I was a little girl, I was the one that was easily forgotten. Not Nora’s fault. I wanted to be forgotten. I wanted her to focus on Archer. He was older than me, when that October storm destroyed our world. Sixteen, and all this bottled rage. For the first six months, everyone was wrapped up in keeping Archer from self-destructing. He fought too much, raided Nora’s bar, and stowed away in a five different trucker’s cabs. He made it all the way to the Canadian border once, before Nora caught up with him and dragged him home.

  Eli pulled him out of his rage.

  Eli with his easy smiles, and his nightmares. With his bright days and black nights. Eli was, of the three of us, the one who handled shit. He smiled and answered the questions directed at us in public, kept me tucked close so I wasn’t dealing with too many questioning stares.

  He kept seeing his friends, stayed on the basketball team, and drank himself stupid to keep the nightmares at bay.

  Archer quit running, because Eli needed him. Because when Eli crawled into Archer’s bed, the nightmares didn’t come. When Archer was in the other bed, Eli didn’t need to drink. Because when Archer joked with him and insulted him, when Archer dragged him to the garage, and made him learn basic car maintenance before he banished him to the stool and fetching tools, he made the fake smile Eli gave the world real.

  Nora was right. She knew we’d need each other to heal. As the six-month mark passed, and Green County was infested with reporters looking for soundbites and the photos of the Airplane Orphans, it didn’t sting as much as it should have. Because Archer and Eli were on their way to healthy.

  “Hey,” Archer says, jerking me out of my memories and nudging the plate of crackers at me, with a glass of chocolate milk. “Eat.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him. “Archer, I’m not thirteen. I can have real food.”

  “Real food takes time to cook, and you aren’t playing with knives or fire when you’re tired and about to have a sugar crash. Eat your snack like a good girl.”

  I snarl, and he crosses his arms, his face impassi
ve and unimpressed.

  “If I eat this, will you leave me alone?”

  He doesn’t blink, but I grab a cracker and bite into.

  Bite down on the moan that wants to spill out because, fuck, I was hungry. I chew and swallow thickly, and take another bite, and ignore the way Brandon fucking Archer is staring at me, his expression too damn smug.

  “What the hell do you want, Archer?” I demand.

  “Wanna know why you came home, for one,” he says easily, reaching out and swiping one of my crackers. I growl and he bares his teeth at me in a parody of a smile.

  Bastard.

  “You answered your own question. It’s home,” I say, smiling tightly. It’s not the truth, but it’s as close as I’m willing to go with him.

  “You remember that time when you were, I dunno, maybe thirteen. The summer Nora paid me to babysit you and Eli?”

  I frown at him, but give a slow nod. It was, in the privacy of my own mind, what I called our Golden Summer. It was when everything was safe and we were happy, before—everything that came after.

  “Why?”

  “Remember that first week, when Eli and I would go swim in the lake for hours, and you would hide in your room with stacks of books. You told me so many fucking lies to get out swimming. Because you didn’t want to admit the truth.”

  I flush and he grins. “You didn’t know how.”

  “I don’t understand the point of this.”

  His eyes darken, going from grass green to the shade of a deep forest, flecked through with gold. “You didn’t have to lie to me, then, Hazel. You’ve never needed to lie to me.” That softly, calling me out on my lie.

  And I still can’t force the words out. I nibble at my snack and watch as Archer pries the cracker he stole apart, and slowly licks it clean.

  And holy shit, I can’t watch that. It’s almost pornographic, the neat, quick little licks that catch the peanut butter until the cracker is clean and his lips are shinning, and the tip of his tongue is caught between his teeth.

  His smirk is slow and sexy.

  “I’m coming to family dinner, Sunday. You think you can fake it for a few hours, for Mama?” he asks, and I nod, my throat too dry to do anything else.