A Righteous Man

by Crownover, Jay

  “Ry Archer, where in the hell are you? Mom and dad are worried sick about you.” My little sister’s voice was shaky and sounded like she’d been crying. She was normally a pretty tough cookie but tended to be overly dramatic and emotional about most things. Part of that was because she was a teenage girl. But a huge chunk of it was that she took after our father in pretty much every single way other than her appearance. She looked just like our mother, with her white-blond hair and pretty green eyes.

  However, she was as reckless and rebellious as our old man. She was as outspoken and opinionated as he was. She was bold and colorful as he was. She was fearless in everything the same way he was. And she felt everything on an extreme way the same as him. Both of us grew up knowing without a doubt how much we were loved and cherished by our parents, but especially by our dad. The opposite was also true. Whenever we disappointed him or did something he didn’t approve of, we felt his displeasure down to our bones. It was a lot to take in and balance out, but luckily our quiet and mostly even-keeled mother kept our household and our father in check. I wished I took after her the way Daire took after Dad, but I was kind of the odd man out in our family.

  I’d heard more than once from my grandparents and my uncle that my personality and behavior were almost a mirror image of my dad’s twin brother, who was no longer with us. It was a sore spot with my dad whenever someone made the comparison, but he didn’t deny that there were times I reminded him of his twin brother. No matter how much time had gone by since he lost his twin, my dad still very much missed his other half and felt his loss. Sometimes my mom told me stories about the two of them and her when they were growing up, and I could sense the similarities. It sucked he had passed away so young for so many reasons. Only one of which was I really had no one to relate to in my family. I was kind of the black sheep in a flock that was already pretty dark.

  I sighed and squeezed the steering wheel between my hands.

  I loved my little sister with everything in me. We were extraordinarily close and rarely kept secrets from each other. We were close enough in age that it had often been the two of us against the world no matter what. She was my favorite person and my most trusted confidant. But she was also my ex’s best friend. They were only a few months apart in age, and where one went, the other often followed. When I first started showing interest in my ex, my sister was totally against the idea of us being anything more than good friends. She told me she never wanted to be caught between the two of us. She never wanted to have to pick a side or have to keep something from either one of us. I waved the concerns off because I was sure my ex and I were meant to be. I’d grown up surrounded by true love and examples of young love maturing into happy, healthy, long-lasting marriages. I thought staying with my first love through thick and thin might be the only way in which I took after my parents.

  I didn’t want to think that Daire knew what would happen to my relationship before I did and she kept something so huge from me. Any way I looked at it, she had to know things were going south before I did.

  “I’m going for a drive. Tell mom and dad not to worry. I’ll be fine.” I would be. Eventually.

  My sister sighed on the other end of the line and I could hear her pacing around. She was the type who was constantly in motion. She never sat still, and her mind was always going a mile a minute. I knew if I didn’t convince her that I was okay, she would venture out aimlessly into the night trying to track me down, even though she had no idea where I was or how long I’d been in my truck.

  “You’ve been driving for the last four hours? Are you even in Colorado anymore?” Daire’s voice rose sharply.

  I looked at the clock on the dashboard and blinked when I realized how much time had passed. I was still in Colorado, but just barely. I was almost at the southern border. I didn’t have a plan when I climbed in my truck and started to drive, but subconsciously I started heading in toward the one person no one would ever suspect me of turning to when I was hurting.

  “Give me some time, Dare.” I wanted to close my eyes and make the world disappear until I could fully deal with the empty ache in the center of my chest. Since I was driving, that wasn’t an option, so all I could do was shake my head and blink my eyes, which alternately felt like they were hot with tears and dry as the desert. “I have to get my head on right before I try to talk to anyone, but especially you, about what went down today.”

  She made a distressed sound, and I could clearly imagine her putting her brightly painted nails to her mouth. She always wore a bunch of rings and bracelets that clinked and banged together, making so much noise. My little sister was anything but subtle, and you could always hear her coming. She knew how to make an entrance, but she also knew when it was time to back down and fade into the background. She knew all my buttons and when to push them. I would always answer her when she called me, but I had limits to how much I would let her poke and prod me when I was hurt.

  “I didn’t know, Ry. I honestly had no idea Royce was going to break up with you. She’s been weird lately, but I thought it was because we were graduating, or maybe because her mom is getting married. She never mentioned anything about you to me. I promise I would’ve told you.” I could hear that she was starting to cry and it made me feel like shit.

  I should’ve listened to her at the start when she said dating Royce was a terrible idea. We were all too close, our families too connected for it to end any other way.

  Royce Wheeler was the daughter of a couple my mom and dad were extremely close with. All my closest friends were actually in my life for the same reason. Her dad worked with my uncle, operating several custom car and motorcycle garages across Denver. And both her stepmother and real mother were really close with my mom. Royce had been pretty sick when she was young, so her parents often turned to my mother, a doctor, for advice and guidance. My cousins Remy and Zowen, along with me, my sister, and Royce, and a couple older kids we didn’t see much, Joss and Hyde, as well as my dad’s coworker’s daughters, Glory and Bowe, all spent a lot of time together growing up. We were a close group brought together by our parents, but we stayed together because we all genuinely liked each other and had various things in common. Not all of us lived in Colorado during the course of our friendship, as our families grew and the world around us changed. But we always saw each other during the holidays and made it a point to be present for any major life event of the others.

  Some of us were closer than others, like me and Zowen and Daire and Royce. And there were a few of us who rubbed each other the wrong way and had to work at playing nice with one another.

  Well… really, that was only me and Bowe Keller.

  We were the closest in age out of everyone, but that was the only similarity between the two of us. We never particularly got along from the time we were figuring out how to walk and talk. I always thought it was a good thing she lived in Austin with her folks and I only had to see her on holidays and during the summer. But today, I wanted her to be closer. I wasn’t certain why she was the one I wanted to share my heartache with. I just knew that I wanted to see her right now when my whole world felt like it was upside down.

  I blew out a breath and tried to reassure my sister, “I believe you. I know you wouldn’t stand by and let me be blindsided like that.” But I also knew she would fight to the death for Royce, so she had to be in a tough spot right now. “Just give me some space right now. I’ll call Mom and Dad when I get where I’m going. Tell them not to worry too much. Let me catch my breath and calm down for a minute.”

  My little sister sighed again, and I heard her knock something over—her sadness and frustration were palpable. “You don’t have to run away from home in order to hide your emotions, Ry. As hard as you try to convince everyone otherwise, we know you’re human. Stop trying to force yourself to be perfect all the damn time. You’re allowed to be sad and angry right now. You’re supposed to be upset when your heart gets broken. I know you don’t really know what losing feels like,
but this is it, and you shouldn’t go through it alone.”

  I did tend to strive for perfection, but obviously I missed the mark or I wouldn’t have gotten dumped so mercilessly.

  I cleared my throat and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, squinting as a semi-truck passed me on the opposite side of the road. “I’m only going to be alone for a little bit.”

  She was correct when she said I was running away to hide my feelings.

  That was something I always did.

  But there was one person with whom I never put on the pretense of perfection, mostly because she saw right through it and never failed to call me out on my bullshit.

  “Ohh…. okay.” Almost instantly, my sister’s tone changed, and she seemed to be relieved. Like I said, we were super close, and she knew me better than I knew myself somedays. It wouldn’t take her too long to figure out where I was going, even if the destination would be considered highly unlikely to anyone else. “Well, drive safe, and don’t forget to check in with Mom and Dad when you have time. I’ll try to hold them off for a little bit. For what it’s worth, I already gave Royce a piece of my mind. About the college thing, and about you. I know she was the one making all those decisions in secret, but I honestly think she’s hurting as much as you are right now.”

  Impossible. She walked away, and I could hardly move. She took me down to my knees and left me breathless and hadn’t bothered to spare me a backward glance. There wasn’t an ounce of the kind, caring girl who had me wrapped around her finger for so long in Royce as she ripped my heart out. I definitely didn’t recognize her. Worse than that, though, was that I didn’t recognize myself either. I wasn’t familiar with failure, so losing the most important thing in my world forced me to react in a way that was totally unlike me. I was behaving like the kind of people I tended to loathe.

  Unreasonable.

  Irrational.

  Unpredictable.

  The reason I disliked people who acted in such a way was because I never allowed myself the freedom to be so chaotic and carefree. I was jealous, and the envy ate away at me.

  Fortunately, I had a thirteen-hour drive to pull the frayed edges of my ego together and to slip back into my role of the golden boy who was unnaturally blessed.

  I drove through the night and into the very early morning. I only stopped for gas and the occasional bathroom break. I silently cursed at how big and flat Texas was as the miles added up. I made a quick stop to shove a greasy, fast food breakfast in my face when my stomach started growling. Because I was an athlete, I normally avoided anything that came in an oil-stained paper bag. But right now, the usual rules didn’t apply. I was alone, so I didn’t need to pretend to be perfect for anyone.

  I took a moment to shoot a couple texts off to my sister and my cousin. Zowen was pissed it took so long for me to respond to him and warned that my dad had already shown up at his house looking for me. We were all home from school for summer break, so it made sense that my folks figured I would hit up my uncle’s house first when I disappeared. My uncle Rome was even scarier than my dad when it came to discipline and order. He was the last person next to my father I wanted to come looking for me, especially while I was all caught up in my feelings. My uncle was a former military man who was now a successful entrepreneur. He didn’t take shit from anyone who wasn’t his pint-sized wife or his wild, mouthy firstborn. My cousin Remy was even more of a handful than my little sister and twice as rebellious. She was always in one kind of trouble or another, but she was probably the most loyal and passionate person I’d ever encountered in my life. Both Daire and I idolized her when we were growing up, and she was often the one we turned to when we needed help managing our relationships with our parents. She was one of our group who left the state when she ventured out into the real world. I think we all expected as much from her.

  Remy was a wanderer. A free spirit. She was also irrevocably in love with Hyde Bishop-Fuller, the oldest dude in our inner circle. Unfortunately, Hyde had never returned her adoration, and when he enlisted in the military a couple of years ago, Remy really saw no reason to stay in any one place for too long. I missed her like crazy, and I knew Zowen worried about her endlessly, but she always seemed happy and as carefree as ever when she finally materialized. I always envied her easy-going attitude. Nothing seemed to ruffle her feathers. Well, nothing other than Hyde.

  I’d never been that relaxed and unaffected. I took myself far too seriously.

  It was still early enough in the morning that I didn’t have to fight traffic when I pulled into Austin. It was hardly a surprise that the girl I came all this way to see was just now getting home when I parked my truck at the end of her driveway. She didn’t even blink when she saw me climb out of the cab and make my way toward her.

  Her black and purple hair was piled on top of her head in a messy ponytail, and her dark eye makeup was smeared around her honey-colored eyes in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or not. She had on a pair of skintight, red leggings that looked like they were made of leather and a pair of shiny black boots that were laced up to her knees. Her T-shirt had the logo of a band I was sure no one besides her had ever heard of scrawled across the front of it, and the bottom was chopped off so that it skimmed her pierced belly button. I always thought she looked like she had just climbed out of the pages of a comic book, and today was no exception.

  Instead of walking into the cute but tiny mid-century modern home that sat just off South Congress street, she waited until I was standing directly in front of her before she crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at me.

  I was waiting for her to demand an explanation as to why I was suddenly standing on her doorstep. I was ready for her to pick a fight. I’d spent the last hour of the very long drive bracing myself for her to rip me apart and ask all the questions I didn’t want to answer.

  Instead, I whispered the words, “it hurts so bad,” and almost immediately lost all the composure I’d tried so hard to build. I aimlessly made my way toward the girl who was my sworn enemy.

  She didn’t push me away or make fun of my complete and utter breakdown.

  No. She didn’t do anything I expected her to do.

  Bowe Keller never did, which was why I never knew what to do with her or how to handle the conflicting ways I felt about her.

  All I knew was she was the person I needed the most at this moment.

  First and foremost, thank you to each and every one of you who picked up this book.

  And an extra-large thank you to anyone who has or will take a few minutes to leave a review. I hate sounding like a broken record every time I release a book, but reviews really do help, and leaving one is the very best thing you can do for a new release and an author. And in case you hate the book and worry about a bad review being unwelcome, that isn’t the case. Any honest review is a big help and super encouraged. Never trust a book with no bad reviews…lol.

  I’m sure this year has been challenging in a lot of ways, and the fact you picked my book to escape into for a bit honestly means the world. Both reading and writing were a struggle for me this year, but when I did fall into a story that took my mind off a myriad of things I just couldn’t shake, I was so grateful for the reprieve for the break from reality. It is always my honor to bring that into someone else’s life. If you’re having a hard time for any reason, I hope you know you are not alone, and those feelings are totally valid, always, but especially this year.

  That’s a long-winded way to say thank you to all my readers and the amazing bloggers still showing up in Romancelandia during unprecedented times. You are really holding it down, and I am so grateful.

  Of course, there would be no book, good, bad, or ugly, without my creative team. One of my favorite parts of publishing a book independently is getting to handpick the folks I want to work with. I think I have the best of the best and cannot recommend Hang, Elaine, and Beth enough. They are worth every single penny. You can find their info at the beginning of
this book.

  I owe my beta team the world. I think I have this author thing figured out nearly a decade into it, with over thirty books published. But without fail, I learn something new and figure out a way to be better and write better books each time they hand a rough draft back to me. I appreciate them so much. It’s such a huge deal for anyone to offer their time and talent for the benefit of someone else. Seriously, they show up regardless of how tight the turnaround time is or how awful my initial draft is. My beta team really is the best. Pam, Teri, Alexandra, Kelly, Cheron, Sarah, and Karla all bring something invaluable to the table. I couldn’t imagine putting out a book without having them be the first eyes on it.

  Last, but certainly not least, is my undying gratitude to my assistant Melissa. She takes on any challenge I throw her way. Believe me when I say there are a lot of them! She forces me to see the glass as half full, even on the hardest of days. I feel like we’ve accomplished so much and grown together. We’ve worked together for a long time, and I think all the best parts of both of us have rubbed off on one another. She remains one of the kindest, most compassionate humans I’ve ever met, even when the world feels like it is constantly on fire.

  I mentioned it in the Author’s Note, but this book wouldn’t have been written if it wasn’t for my awesome reader’s group Crownover’s Crowd. They are just the chilliest, most encouraging group of readers on the interwebs, and I’m so happy we have a safe place to gather and interact regularly. If you haven’t joined, I highly suggest you do.

  Below is a list of all the places you can find me:

  Facebook.com/groups/crownoverscrowd

  Bookbub: bookbub.com/authors/jay-crownover

  Website: jaycrownover.com

  My store: shop.spreadshirt.com/100036557

  FB page: Facebook.com/AuthorJayCrownover

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