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“I’m used to him being gone. I’m mad that he left.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, groaning at how childish and stupid I felt. I sounded like a lovesick teenager, like someone whose world had gotten thrown into a blender after getting his dick wet for the first time.
“But you knew he was going.”
“I asked him not to go.” I raised my voice even though I didn’t mean to. With a loud exhale, I brought myself back to normal as much as I could manage. “I asked him not to go and he left.”
Flynn eyed me over the rim of his coffee mug, eyes a little too bright for how early it was and how early I’d woken him. “Well, did you give him a reason to stay?”
CHAPTER10
OWEN
In the threedays since I’d gotten home, Archer had called me on all three of them. I hadn’t spoken to him once, making a point of sending his calls to voicemail before they even reached the third ring. But in the four days since I’d gotten home, I’d also jerked off thinking about himwaymore than four times. The number was beyond anything I’d ever imagined possible at twenty-eight years old, but every time I took my dick into my fist, I swore it was going to be the last.
Not the last ever.
Just the last forhim.
Not that it was even for him.
Just…
I needed it to be enough.
“Do you think gold or silver is better?” Mandy asked, reminding me of exactly how badly it had to be enough. I was in the middle of helping her mood board her wedding, my mind fresh with another replay of Archer’s fingers up my asshole.
“For what?” I tried to blink her board into focus, but there were so many pictures and magazine clippings on it, I had no idea what part of it she’d been talking about.
“Silverware, Owen.”
“I figured the hotel would handle that?” I gave my sister an awkward shrug and fished my phone out of my pocket. “Sorry, gotta take this.”
My phone wasn’t ringing, thankfully, but I needed to get out of the house and clear my head.
Once outside, I hopped off Mandy’s porch and headed toward the field at the back of our neighborhood. My sister and her fiancé lived in the house Mandy and I had grown up in as kids. Our parents had long ago downsized to an apartment on the edge of town, and that suited them fine. Less money on living, they’d said, more money to enjoy being old. I didn’t think either of them was old, but early retirement served them well. They only agreed to let her move in if I signed off, and I had no interest in depriving my sister of anything more than I already had.
Though, it was hard to say whether or not missing out on a life with Archer by her side would have been a loss or not.
It was clear he’d done well for himself, staying in L.A. after college and making more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I didn’t know anything about him really, and I couldn’t back that up, but his clothes felt nice against my skin and he smelled expensive.
He smelled like everything I’d ever wanted.
But… no.
The field wasn’t a great place to go because Archer and I had spent more nights out there than I could count. Back when he was Archie to me, back before things had turned into whatever they’d become. I wondered sometimes, if I’d not written him the letter, if I’d not been so sullen. Would it have ever happened between us? Would he have ever realized I had feelings for him? Or would he have married my sister and tortured me in a completely different way?
I headed the rest of the way through the field and past the tree line. Not terribly far into the woods, but enough to be hidden from view. That was where the fort Archer and I had built still stood to this day. It was worse for wear, the boards weather-stripped and splintered, nails long since rusted. But, the summer before, I’d hauled a lawn chair out into the structure so I didn’t have to worry about getting scratched or hurt.
Or worse, spiders.
Throwing myself into the chair, I stretched my legs out and let my head fall back. There were gaps between the beams on the roof now, shrunken from the years of abuse they’d taken from the weather, and the sun peeked through, casting long shadows over my feet and the floor.
It was impossible to be there without thinking about Archer, especially how fresh the memories of him were in my brain and on my skin. I rolled my cell phone around in my hand, knowing the right thing to do was probably the last thing I would.
Archer answered on the fourth ring.
“Owen?” he asked my name like it would be anyone else calling him from my number. Like anyone was as foolish as I was.
