1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve

by Alexandra Ivy

  I don’t want to be.

  That doesn’t mean Nora and Eli would agree, if I were to show up at the diner and announce that I was in love with the girl I grew up with.

  Fuck. I freeze, going tense. And because I’m pressed against her, she feels it. She twists a little, her gaze finding mine, curious and worried.

  “I don’t care,” I whisper and her mouth falls open, a little. I smile, a little bit of tension easing in my chest and I sit up. Pull her against me and whisper the words against her skin. “We spent our whole life taking care of other people, Hazel. We spent our whole life taking care of them. When is it our turn?”

  She gives me a tiny smile and kisses me, gentle. “We don’t get one.”

  I growl against her lips, and she huffs a laugh, a small, startled noise. “That’s not good enough for me, Hazel.”

  She stands, shifting away from me. Slips into a pair of shorts that are barely there and pulls a loose tank top on.

  Covering herself up and hiding from me.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I say clearly, and she goes very still. Her eyes wide and watching me. “I don’t want to fuck you in secret or get you off while Eli is asleep in the next room, muffling your screams because he can’t know. I don’t want to sit across from you at Mama’s and pretend we’re nothing more than we always have been.” I shake my head and stand up, dressing. “I love you too much to do that shit anymore, Hazel.”

  Chapter 21

  I follow him out of my into my bedroom, and he cleans up while I get dressed, my body still buzzing with remembered pleasure, and reeling from the quietly spoken confession.

  I don’t know what to do with an Archer who is in love with me. I’ve spent too many years telling myself that some things aren’t possible. Too many years knowing that it didn’t matter how I felt or how he felt—there was too much between us to ever be an us. Too much from Eli and Nora to let us be more than the other half of the family.

  But now he’s saying the things I’ve wanted to hear, and told myself could never happen and it’s so damn tempting.

  I want it so damn bad, I’m ready to take his hand and drag him to Mama’s. To go to the station and kiss him hard and dirty against the wall behind his desk and traumatize Eli in the process.

  I can’t.

  But I want to.

  So fucking bad.

  He’s in the kitchen, pouring tea in glasses, and tossing the stuff to make sandwiches on the table. I slide in beside him and it’s easy.

  The fact is that being with Archer. Working with him has always been effortless. We never talked about what we did—we never needed to. We understood each other without talking about it.

  So it’s like breathing, slipping back into that. Handing him cheese while I slather mayo and mustard on the bread, tearing off lettuce while he scoffs and piles both sandwiches high with ham and roast beef. Cutting both sandwiches neatly in half and placing them on plate while he adds a pickle to mine and a bag of chips to the table and pulls his open to salt and pepper it.

  It’s easy and it stings and it makes everything we could be—a whole future and a life— almost reachable.

  “Archer,” I say, and my phone buzzes.

  His eyebrows climb but I swallow hard and shove the words down and look at the message.

  Unknown: Stop playing house. Get to work. She’ll see you at the lake.

  I swallow my nerves and tuck the phone away before taking a bite of my sandwich. “What was that?” Archer asks.

  I shrug and offer up a thin smile. “Story I’m working on. What’s going on with your homicide?”

  He blows out a breath. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Eli, but every time I do and Scarlett comes up, I lose it.”

  Typical Archer.

  “What happened, there?” I ask, gently. Ignoring the fury I’m feeling that my brother was being dicked over by some bitch and Archer didn’t think to tell me.

  That doesn’t matter, and doesn’t have a place, not right now.

  “She was someone he met at work, if you’d believe that. From a precinct in Topeka. We had a kidnapping—domestic shit, custody didn’t shake out the way the dad wanted so he scooped the kids and beat tracks to here. It was Scarlett’s case and she met Eli and that was it.

  You know how he can be with the initial fall.”

  I do know. My brother has always fallen too hard and too fast.

  But after Amy and then Lisa, I don’t know. I thought he’d back down. “Was there anyone else, after Scarlett?” I ask.

  Archer shakes his head. “It happened a few months after you left. He met her and three months later he was moving out and the Chief was furious and—fucking hell, Hazel he was snorting coke like it was going out of style and going to work a fucking case. He’s what I would arrest, if I weren’t doing everything I could to keep him clean and on the force.”

  “What happened?”

  “Scarlett was dirty. We got that from her department pretty quickly, once I realized something wasn’t right and started digging. She’d been stealing from the evidence locker for years and letting some big fish skate out of their arrests without a damn thing sticking. But she’s smart. She played it close. Then, with Eli. I dunno, Hazy, it’s like she got sloppy. Didn’t care if she got caught. Or maybe she was just cocky enough to think it’d be missed. She never had a lot of respect for the GCPD. I don’t know. But I talked to Billings, and got Eli clean. He was on probation with the force for almost two years. But he also flushed out Scarlett and Topeka owed us for that, which helped keep Billings happy while we got him back on the straight and narrow.”

  And he stayed on it.

  But it makes sense, now. Why Eli looks so fucking haunted, so much of the time. Why his smile is brittle and not quite as real as my brother has always been. Sometimes he is. But it’s different.

  Tainted.

  God.

  “What happened to her?” I ask, and my voice is pure venom, all biting fury that gets Archer’s attention.

  “She vanished. Left Topeka and the County, and went to hide with whoever the fuck she’s been working for.”

  Bitch. Fuck up my brother’s life and then vanish. Bitch deserves to be strung up and skinned slowly—

  “Breathe for me, Hazy-eyes. She’s gone. Eli is safe. I need you with me, not hell-bent on bringing that whore to her knees.”

  I snarl and he laughs. Even now, he’s more amused by my temper than intimidated by it. Dumbass.

  “Eli is fine, now. He is, sweetheart. And we can use this.”

  “Why? How?”

  “Morningstar. Eli thinks Scarlett was working with him.”

  My blood runs cold, because it’s the second time he’s mentioned that name. And Michael did, too.

  “There’s something bigger here,” I murmur, and Archer shifts, stealing a sliver of onion that falls from my mostly untouched sandwich. “It’s why I came home.” Not strictly true, but close enough.

  “Green County is a corridor. And the prostitutes down on Victory are too well organized—there’s something in the background. Fuck, Archer, even Emery is dirty.”

  He stiffens, and his eyes dart away. I go still. “You fucked Abbi Emery?” I say, slowly.

  Because I know him, and I know what the hell he looks like when he’s feeling guilty about shit.

  “Don’t judge me,” he mutters, dropping the last bite of his sandwich on his plate.

  I laugh, a short, incredulous noise. The girl has been trying to get Archer in her bed for the better part of the past sixteen years, since she realized that an Airplane Orphan would buy a mountain of goodwill in Green County.

  Even when she was a senior in high school, Abbi Emery knew exactly what she wanted.

  “It was a dumb move, I’m aware. Eli has had a lot of fun reminding me on a regular basis. Now. Moving along. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  I blink at him. “Archer. C’mon. You know the County isn’t as Boy-Scout Americana as the fucking to
urists would believe.”

  He shrugs, a little uncomfortable looking and I huff a sigh. “The County is lousy with corruption. It’s on base, and it’s in the Mayor’s office, and the only reason I tend to think it’s not in the force is because you’re there and you’d kill someone for touching your precious force. But it’s a thing. And I think this—the murders the other day—have to do with that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because why else would someone go through that much trouble? There was a lot of rage behind her murder, right?” I play it over in my head. What he told me. The blank horror in Eli’s eyes.

  And Michael and John, bloody and furious and too fucking calm.

  Yeah. This was personal.

  “You shouldn’t get involved,” he says suddenly, and I jerk, hard. My eyes wide. He’s got this look, coming over his face that I know too well.

  “Archer-”

  “It’s dangerous, Hazel. You need to stay out of it and let me do my job. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”

  “Archer-”

  “Just. Forget Morningstar. Forget Scarlett. I’ve got it.”

  I stand while he’s still babbling, and he watches me. Watches as I skirt the corner of the table and get a good grip on his hair, and jerk his head up.

  I kiss him silent.

  His hands find my waist, drag me down, and I whimper as I land against him, his cock hard against me.

  Already. Jesus. He could fuck me again, already, and that’s a very tempting thought.

  “You’re gonna get yourself hurt,” he whispers.

  Probably. With Gabriel being held by crazy killers, the chances of that are a lot more likely than Archer realizes, not that I’m gonna be the one to clue him in.

  “Let me help. I’m good at digging up secrets. And I never got hurt doing it, when I lived in Boston.” I nip his earlobe as he traces a hot path down my throat, and his teeth close over the curve of my neck. My hips roll down, into him, without any real permission from me. “You need me.”

  He hums against my skin, an acknowledgment of that. Breathes the words against my lips. “I’ve always needed you, Hazy-girl.”

  I make a noise that’s like a whimper and he takes it. Takes my lips and gives me back so much more. Holds me close, and together, when his words threaten to shake me apart and his lips curve over mine and coax me open, licking into my mouth with this hunger that’s fucking insane. I want him.

  As stupid and dangerous and impossible as it is. I want him.

  I think I always will.

  I twist in his grip, and until I’m straddling him in the chair, and rocking against him and his hands are in my hair. So easy. It’d be so fucking easy, to slip his jeans down and tug my shorts to one side and ride him, right here.

  I groan and he laughs against my lips, arching up into me, his voice a filthy hot promise in my ear. “Wanna ride me, huh, baby? Just fucked you. But you’re a greedy girl and you want it again, don’t you?”

  His hips punch up again, punctuate his statement and I moan.

  “What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?”

  Chapter 22

  I was sixteen, when I met Eli for the first time.

  It’s funny, that someone who became the central figure of my life could be absent from it for sixteen fucking years. Half my life, and he wasn’t part of it. That’s weird as fuck, when I think about it too hard.

  Because if there is anyone who has affected me, it’s Eli. Nora and Hazel, they have their places, and they’re important. I wouldn’t be the man I am, if Nora hadn’t kicked my ass back into line, and Hazel hadn’t demanded I step up and take care of Eli.

  But Eli.

  Lijah is what kept me moving. He forced me to be better, and kept me from falling apart, when Hazel left and always needed me. Even when she left and Nora got used to being on her own again, Eli needed me.

  I was sixteen, when I met Eli for the first time.

  I was furious, all rage and grief and violence balanced on a hair’s trigger.

  Eli was the same, but he turned all that fury and grief inward, made it his own burden. He was terrified of being abandoned, terrified of being a problem and having Nora turn him out.

  The kid was a fucking mess.

  But he was my mess. And I put him back together, patched up the worst cracks in his self-worth, and he started to heal. Not completely. Some things you never completely heal from— losing your single mother in a fucking plane crash is one of those things. But what Eli needed was a place to belong. Someone to belong to.

  And I gave him that. We gave him that.

  Doesn’t mean we didn’t fight like fucking savages, when he got pissed, and he did. Often.

  I’m pretty sure that this moment, with him standing in Hazel’s kitchen, all furious lines and disbelieving eyes, as Hazel sits panting and on the edge of orgasm in my lap—pretty sure this is one of those times we’re gonna fight like savages.

  “What the hell is happening?” he demands, his voice a tight line of fury. Hazel is tense and still in my lap, and I look at her, quickly. Checking that she’s not freaking out too badly.

  She totally is.

  Shit.

  “Up, baby,” I murmur, patting her ass and she scrambles out of my lap and away from me.

  And that isn’t happening.

  “This’s got nothing to do with you, Eli,” I say, softly, catching her hand and dragging her close enough to me that I can catch her before she bolts. She throws me a disbelieving look, like she can’t quite believe that’s the argument I’m going with.

  “She’s our fucking sister, Archer!” Eli yells.

  Hazel throws up a hand, and glares at Eli. “She is right here, and wasn’t fucking forced into anything, so if you have a problem with this-” she points between us, “you don’t get to be pissed at him. You take that shit out on both of us.”

  “You’ve been in love with him since you were fourteen, Hazel,” Eli snaps, disgusted. “Of course you’d jump all over him. He’s a fucking slut who needs to learn where the fuck his boundaries are.”

  Hazel freezes, her eyes wide and hurt, and I see the second it clicks with Eli, just how far over the line he’s crossed. “Hazel,” he starts, and she skitters back a step.

  “Get the fuck outta my house,” she orders, her voice low and tight. Eli makes a wounded noise and she snarls, ripping her hand from me, and marching to the door. “You want to treat me like one of his throw away whores, Lijah, I’ll treat you the exact same way. Get the fuck out.”

  Eli is pale, and throws me a pleading look. I shake my head. “You fucked this one up, dude. I’d do what she said.”

  He glares, all furious indignation, but he does. He leaves. She stares at him when he’s on the back porch, giving her his pleading puppy eyes. “Hazel, you know I didn’t mean that. This— it’s fucked up. You know it’s fucked up.”

  She stares at him. “I know that I told him no. That I wouldn’t do a fucking relationship, because I was worried about you. And you want to tell me I’m one of his whores? Fuck you,

  Elijah.”

  She slams the door in his face, before he can protest or attempt to defend himself and I rise, studying her. “You okay?”

  Hazel gives me that are you a fucking idiot? stare I know so well, and makes a dismissive noise. “Cat’s out, now. Get out of here and do some fucking damage control. I’ll call when I find out something useful about Morningstar.”

  She goes on tiptoes to kiss me, and then she’s moving, away from me.

  I know a Hazel dismissal when I see one, so I don’t bother to push for more.

  Especially since I can see Eli next to my car, glaring at me.

  Fuck.

  I take a deep breath, and shove out of the house, buckling my gun belt on and jogging down the stairs of the farmhouse.

  “Don’t,” I warn, before he can even open his mouth. “You don’t get to have an opinion about this.”

  “I don’t get to have an opinion about
you fucking our sister.” I jerk around and shove him, hard.

  Hard enough that he stumbles back a step.

  Eli never expects me to go on the offensive.

  “I’ve never fucked Hazel. And you’ll treat her with some fucking respect, or I’ll lay you out, Lijah, I swear to god.”

  His eyes go very wide, and he pales. Sways just a little. “Archer,” he whispers.

  “You don’t get an opinion, Lijah. Not on this. What Hazel and I do, that’s between us. We’ll let you know when and if it affects you. Until then, keep your fucking mouth shut and give her the fucking respect she deserves.” I glare at him and he nods, once. Still watching me with that wide, almost scared stare.

  I can’t deal with that stare. Not yet. So I turn to the Roadrunner and throw over my shoulder, “Let’s go. We’ve got four dead bodies and we’re still no closer to answers.”

  Chapter 23

  There is a part of me—a pretty sizable part—that wants to drag Archer back into my room and fuck him senseless, just to shut Eli up after that nonsense.

  Another part of me wants to call Nora and tell her not to believe a word Eli says.

  Both are throwbacks to when I was in high school and Eli was the annoying big brother who dragged me into more trouble than he managed to drag me out of.

  And neither part is something I can indulge in right now. I swallow hard and pull out my phone. It buzzed again, while I was eating with Archer, and I’m not so stupid to think it’s anyone but Michael.

  I’m right. It’s a picture this time, and my fingers creak, too tight, on the casing of the phone.

  Gabe is sitting in the same chair. His shirt’s been cut away, and there are burns on his chest that weren’t there in the last picture.

  But he’s glaring. His honey gold eyes still bright with fury and indignation. That helps, for some reason.

  Unknown: Two hours. The lake.

  I glance at the timestamp. Shit.

  I’ve got just enough time to get my shit together and make a phone call before I need to leave. I make the call.