“He’s never…” she said, as her fingers curled around her brand. Nya couldn’t say that Archer had never hurt her, but he’d never hit her. “Archer and Damien aren’t even close to the same.” Hearing this helped her to understand why Tag felt the way he did about her current lover. Tag considered the two men the same.
“I guess time will tell,” Tag said and started to turn away.
But Nya heard herself asking, “What happened to Damien?” Tag stopped with his back to her and his hand on the door. “I stayed at yours and I was too emotional to ask, that was the closest I’ve ever come to rock bottom. I didn’t care about me. I couldn’t care about anything else, but I need to know now. What happened to him?”
“He left,” Tag said without turning around.
For five years she’d been under Damien’s spell. Most of her memories were faded pictures, or blurry dreams; she’d been numb for the last couple of years of it. But Damien had disappeared from her life, just like that, so abruptly that sometimes she wondered if he was ever there at all.
It seemed so unlikely that Damien would just walk away. She’d tried to leave him many times, especially when the violence first started. But Nya had learned it was pointless to fight gravity, and that’s what he’d been. No matter how many times she jumped away, he was always stronger and pulled her back down.
“How did you get him to leave?” she asked. “Did you kill him?”
Her friend’s chin lowered, angling toward his shoulder. “Is that what Archer told you? He told you that I killed him?”
“Archer never told me anything. I never asked him about where Damien is now.”
“Maybe you should,” Tag said. “I can tell you that I didn’t kill him. But that doesn’t mean he’s still breathing now.”
Tag opened the door and departed, leaving her with a single question that could only be answered by one man.
For once she was in luck; the man with that answer couldn’t lie to her. Striding forward, Nya grabbed her purse from the hook by the door and went out.
Sizzle was a building site. There was music playing and men working in every corner, but when Nya marched past them, she ignored all their words and catcalls to head straight for the office. Going inside, she found Archer standing in the middle of the empty room, typing something into his phone.
“Did you kill him?” she asked, dropping her purse to the floor.
“Who? Did I kill who? Who’s dead? I haven’t killed anyone this week if—”
“Archer,” she said and moved deeper into the room. “In my apartment, the night we got back together, when Tag came around he said something about a secret. You looked at him and he got nervous, what was it you knew that I didn’t?”
It didn’t take Archer long to grasp how earnest she was and his importance level matched hers. “Tag paid him. Damien. Paid him to leave. That was why Damien went away without a fight. Tag didn’t want you to know, he got nervous because he wanted you to think he’d done something brave, instead he took the easy way out… He’s a coward… both of them are cowards.”
“Damien didn’t need money,” she said. Her ex wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a nicer apartment than any man she’d ever been with, a nicer car.
“He paid him a lot of money,” Archer said.
She recognized the way he tensed. It was in the way his shoulders straightened and his expression cooled. Nya read the signals which were a sure sign her lover wasn’t about to apologize. That meant Archer had done something…
“You killed him,” she said in a distant kind of whisper.
“No. I could’ve. Would’ve. Wanted to… I did what your buddy should’ve done.” His lip curled with disgust until she could see his teeth gritted in anger. “What kind of a pansy-ass hands money to a scum-sucking bottom-feeder like that piece of shit? That bastard put his hands on you, not just once or twice, but again and again for years. He doesn’t deserve to breathe, Nya. I wanted to kill him. And I still haven’t decided… I might.”
“You might? You know where he is? You’ve seen him?”
Tag didn’t want to apologize for what he hadn’t done to Damien and Archer wouldn’t apologize for what he had done. “Yes. Yeah, I have… Anybody who hurts you will get a visit from me.”
“Anybody who…” Damien wasn’t the only man in her past who’d hurt her. “Tag’s brother…?”
“Yeah, I know where he is too,” Archer said. “He was more fun than Damien was. He cried, pissed his pants. But he was pathetic anyway, living in a shithole with a junkie bitch, it was a crack den. He’s where he deserves to be, in the closest thing to hell that this planet has to offer… But I still went a couple of rounds with him, just for fun. Told him to keep his eye out because if I ever got the word from you I’d be back to end his miserable life.”
Archer hadn’t just claimed her present and her future, he’d gone out of his way to clear up her past. “Archer,” she exhaled.
“I won’t say sorry. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it on your conscience. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for them. But I wanted them and anyone else who was interested to know that you’re protected now by a man who will go to any length to settle the wrongs done to you… You can be mad and put me in the doghouse and piss off to Phoenix, but—”
“Archer.”
Nya rushed over and grabbed his face to pull him down and kiss him. She wasn’t mad. She was shocked and maybe part of her was a bit horrified that these men who were going about their lives, wherever they were now, had received a visit from her boyfriend.
Archer wanted to put his mark on her for all to see. Every man from her past and her present knew there was only one man in her future.
Nya wrapped both arms around his neck and squeezed. “You could’ve got hurt,” she said.
He straightened, which forced her hands to slide to his chest, but he kept her in his arms. “They hurt you,” he said. “That’s not ok, and I don’t take the easy way out like Taggert does. I don’t just decide to stop talking to someone like he did with his brother, or pay someone off like he did with Damien. I take a guy by his throat and dangle him off the edge of a building. I scar them. I hurt them. I torture them, Ny.”
She remembered a story Brett Hexam had told her about the man who touched Archer’s former girlfriend. “Fella…”
“Any man who touches you will get a visit from me and I’ll make sure they spend time every single day remembering who I am and what they did to you. Every day they’ll be sorry. When they hurt you, they took a piece of you—that means they took a piece of me too. So I took a piece of them.” There was something malevolent about the way his eyes narrowed. “Imagine how much of Damien I left behind after the number of times he hurt you… as little as I possibly could. I took pieces of him, Nya. For you. I made him confess and I didn’t just write on his body, I carved those words into him permanently, babe. He’ll never forget. And he’ll never hurt another woman again.”
Nya had wanted vengeance for Jamie so badly. But she’d never seen her same vehemence in Archer, until now. Archer wanted to hurt Damien and Tag’s brother as much as Nya wanted to hurt Jamie’s killers. It didn’t matter that the men in her past hadn’t killed her; Archer had the same level of hatred for them.
She couldn’t chastise him for loving her that much.
“Promise me, you won’t go near them again,” she said. “It’s not them I’m worried about, it’s you. I want us to draw a line right here, today.”
“A line for what?”
“The future. It starts today. Our future. We don’t let past lovers and bad experiences affect us now. No more. We love each other. We build our future. Nothing that came before today matters anymore.”
His fingers moved through her hair and down her back. “I love you, Squirm.”
Her slow smile became a laugh. “Yeah, I think you really do. I can’t believe you went to Damien.”
Archer shrugged, she’d lightened the m
oment with her laugh. “Someone had to. You can’t believe how angry I was when I heard Taggert had paid him off like all he deserved was a slap on the wrist. You’re fucking lucky I didn’t take Taggert apart, because I wanted to.”
And that was where the anger came from, the hatred. Sure, Archer didn’t like that Taggert put Nya in danger now, but at least Archer knew he was around to look after her. Archer hadn’t been around in the days of Damien and if he had been, she recognized that Damien would never have been a part of her life for as long as five years. He’d have been lucky to last five minutes after Archer found out the truth of what was going on in their relationship.
“Are you done here?” she asked. “Nobody you want to cut open or scar or trim?”
“I’m done,” he said. “Unless you have orders for me.” Nya shook her head. “I’ve got a message to meet the guys going on the job tomorrow night though… Want to come with?”
Yeah, right, like he was really asking that question. Shame she couldn’t push to see how close he’d let her get. “I’d love to, but I have to go shopping,” Nya said. She’d run out on Ester and couldn’t leave the woman waiting too much longer.
“Shopping?” Archer asked. “What for?”
“A wedding dress,” Nya said.
Instead of screaming and running away, Archer smiled. “Tradition is you wait for me to ask, babe.”
Nya rubbed her hands up and down his chest. “Not for me… I have a good friend who’s getting married. She hasn’t said yes yet, but she will after you’ve had a conversation.”
“You want me to have a conversation with your friend and tell her to get married?” he asked and his lower lip protruded a fraction. “That’s a new one. But I’m always looking to diversify.”
“You’re not having a conversation with her. You’re having a conversation with him. The groom.”
Archer was confused. “What am I telling him? He has actually proposed, right? This isn’t me pressuring some poor schmuck into marrying one of your stalker friends, is it?”
“I don’t have stalker friends,” she said, scratching her nails up and down the sides of his neck.
“Yeah, I suppose. You don’t really have friends. You have me, your employees… Tag…” Archer groaned her oldest friend’s name. “The only woman you hang out with is…” His voice trailed off as his eyes slowly closed. “Fuck. Ester.”
Nya laughed and pushed to her tiptoes to lock her fingers together at the back of his neck. “That’s right, my love. Your mommy’s getting married.”
“Again,” he said. “Who the fuck is this guy? I don’t know how she does it. How does she get them on the hook so fast? I didn’t even know she was seeing anyone and now she’s getting married? Is this another ancient guy with a million bucks? How does she suck ninety-year-old cock? Ugh, I don’t know how she does it.”
“I’ll be sure to tell you,” Nya said. “When we get to that age and I’m still enjoying yours.”
He kissed her head. “So who is the guy and what am I telling him?”
“Well,” she said, linking her fingers between his and drawing him towards the door. “That’s a conversation we’ll have while you drive me home. But drive slow because I don’t want the shock to cause an accident.”
Archer groaned. “When you say shit like that in a conversation about my mother I get nervous that I don’t have my blades around.”
“You won’t need a blade to handle this guy,” Nya said, pulling him through the club. “I guarantee it.”
nineteen
Nya had a restless day knowing that Tag’s big job was supposed to be going down that night. Archer had been the one to clue her in about it because Tag hadn’t returned her calls since their conversation in her apartment yesterday.
Whatever Archer had said to Derren the day before must have worked because today the four of them, Ester, Derren, Archer, and her, had gone to apply for the marriage license. Nya didn’t get why the witnesses needed to provide so much documentation and sign things before the big day, but she was distracted trying to call Tag and trying to get information out of Archer.
Ester was high too and dealing with her when she was so excited was next to impossible. Every time Nya tried to focus on what was happening, Archer or Derren would ask her to entertain Ester who was getting on their nerves.
Given that this was such an important occasion, Nya didn’t mind sticking with Ester, the last thing she wanted was Derren to change his mind at this late stage. They weren’t even talking about waiting; they were going to get married the following day. But Derren knew about Ester’s habit of jilting her groom and probably didn’t want to give her the chance to do it to him.
Ester had less than a day to make plans for what was supposed to be the biggest day of her life. Nya was always going to worry about Tag, it didn’t matter what else was happening in her life, she still cared about the man who’d always been there for her. But the wedding plans did keep her mind off her own troubles, making her suspicious that Archer had maybe encouraged Derren not to delay the ceremony.
After spending most of the afternoon shopping with Ester, Nya was back in Archer’s apartment, sharing his couch and a bottle of wine with the bride-to-be.
Still, she couldn’t settle.
Archer was there, he wasn’t going on the job himself. Although she had no idea where he’d been that afternoon and evening before he returned to the apartment. He did tell her that he would have to go out later, after the job was done, so he’d told her that they couldn’t spend the night together. Nya had tried to fight him, but he’d been insistent, so in a while, she and Ester would be herded downstairs to spend the night in her bed.
There was a silent expectation that Nya would keep the bride-to-be in check and make sure she showed up on time at the courthouse, sober. The last part would be the hardest.
It was frustrating that this huge life event, this happy occasion was happening while Tag could be out there getting killed, and if anything went wrong tonight, Nya wouldn’t be in any fit state to look after anyone; she wouldn’t be able to look after herself.
Archer was being shifty and wasn’t answering questions, he’d been on the phone a lot, and hadn’t engaged much with the women. Ester was trying to party, but Nya couldn’t stop watching her man, pacing around, talking in whispers, his brow down in a permanent frown.
He’d tried to calm her whenever she asked questions or got anxious. Nya didn’t even care about the state of her friendship with Tag right now; she was too busy being worried about his safety. Archer’s words about not trusting this Lucas or his crew plagued her. How could she relax and listen to Archer’s comfort when he’d already made it clear that he wouldn’t throw his lot in with Lucas’?
If the job went off without a hitch, each man would take a piece of what they were stealing and go their separate ways to regroup the following day with their spoils, and she guessed, to meet up with Lucas. After that they’d have forty-eight hours to make their way to the rendezvous in Phoenix.
Nya didn’t know what was so important about this job. All she knew was that they were raiding some kind of protected warehouse for supplies that would allow them to start their own out-of-state operation on the other side of the country. Other than the fact that distance between the crime scene and their new home made sense, she didn’t know why Phoenix was relevant, especially since apparently Lucas was staying here.
That was one of the things that had been bugging her all day. Maybe Lucas had connections out there, maybe someone big had been taken down and there was a power vacuum waiting to be filled, she didn’t know. But why the hell did it have to be so far away? If it had been closer, she and Tag’s friendship wouldn’t be in this mess.
“You can walk down the aisle with me,” Ester said.
Nya snapped back into the present moment. Ester was glowing and it was so nice to see the woman this happy. Derren must have said all the right things. Ester was probably kidding herself, but from what she’d
said to Nya, the woman believed her groom’s declarations to be spontaneous. Though Nya wasn’t dumb, she guessed it had been Ester’s plan all along for Nya to talk to Archer who’d nudge Derren along, but Ester wasn’t admitting it.
Archer didn’t like the idea of them getting married at all. He said it was just another crazy step in their volatile relationship and that it wouldn’t last. But it was important to Nya and it was important to Ester, so he did as he was told, just the same as Derren did.
Nya could understand the craziness of Ester and Derren’s relationship and how their love brought them together as much as it drove them apart. She didn’t really think much would change between the couple. Derren had apparently said he wanted to live together and be faithful, that’s what Ester had said. Now that they were getting older, it probably made sense for them to settle down, but like Derren had said, it would never be Walton Mountain around here.
They would probably scream and hate each other, storm off in opposite directions and come back together again as they had done for the last two decades or so.
“Sure,” Nya said. “I can do that, if you think Derren will be ok with it? It’s not a big fancy day.”
“No, that would be silly,” Ester said. “We’ve been around the block too many times to have a fucking fairytale wedding.”
“Your dress is beautiful though. Archer’s been really generous with the budget.”
“Budget?” Archer called from the kitchen, proving that he listened in even when he wasn’t present. “Derren’s covering this wedding bullshit, not me.”
Ester hid her laugh, maybe Archer was paying for more than he realized. Nya could understand a woman getting excited about her big day except Ester had had more than a few weddings, she’d just never managed to go as far as saying ‘I do’ and Nya found herself hoping that she really would this time.
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