Page 37 of Edged
“Are you sure?” I threw his earlier question back at him, and he chuckled again, a low laugh that almost sounded like an exhalation. “You don’t really want the answer to that question.”
I did want the answer, but I knew a deflection when I heard one. Whatever Archer thought his truth to be, it was his and he wasn’t going to share it. At least, not with me and not on this phone call. Talking to him was agony because my brain battled between wanting to tell him all the horrible things I thought about him while also aching for all the devilish things my body wanted him to do to me.
“What do you want, Archer?”
“I don’t think I have a good answer for that,” he said after a pause. “But I was serious. I’d get on a plane, Owen.”
“You can’t come here.” I had to be quick to cut that idea off before it turned into something tangible. “Mandy is here and she’s getting married soon, and I won’t let you ruin her life again.”
“How is your sister?”
“Clearly she’s fine,” I snapped. “She’s getting married.”
“I know.”
“She’s fine, Archer.” I let my tone soften, because while he deserved my vitriol, he didn’t deserve it from me about her. Their past was between them and ours was between us, and even though parts of those lines intersected, they weren’t the same. I had to remind myself of that sometimes, because if I focused too much on my sister’s heartbreak, it would eclipse my own. My feelings for Archer and what we shared, what he’d done, what he’d caused, were plenty enough for me without hers on top of it.
“I’m glad,” he said. “The guy…he…”
“He’s good to her.”
“Do I know him?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” My neck ached for how tense I was, and I had to will myself to relax against the support of the chair.
“No,” Archer said quietly.
“You don’t know him,” I said, but I didn’t want to talk about my sister with him anymore. “What do you do for work now?”
“Do you really care?”
“I fucking asked you, didn’t I?”
Archer huffed a breath into the phone. “I’m in corporate real estate.”
“I wouldn’t have pictured you doing that.”
Archer was smart; he always had been. Ahead of his class for so many years that he’d ended up fresh out of college before I’d barely even started. Leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us, his intellect could run circles around every teacher at our school and they all knew it. He’d never been a problem child, but he was easily bored, attention span fickle.
Except when it came to me.
“Well, my degrees are in marketing and finance. Real estate was a fluke that’s paid the bills and then some,” he explained.
“Are you rich?”
He laughed again, like the question was part of an inside joke I didn’t know about. “Yeah, Owen. You could say that.”
“Well, if you want to see me again then you can afford to put me on a plane, right?” As soon as the question left my mouth, I regretted it. Even as my dick pulsed at the promise of Archer’s mouth or hand, I knew I shouldn’t have let the words out. “That was a dumb question. Never—”
Archer cut me off, “I could put you on a goddamn private jet if you said the words.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“With the exception of last weekend, Owen, it’s been a very long time since you and I have seen each other. You don’t know anything about me besides what you remember, and the man I am now scarcely resembles the boy I was back then.” Archer’s tone dipped down a register, the tease and threat of promise ripe with every word. “I have more money than I’ll ever know what to do with and if you won’t let me get on a plane and come meet you face to face, then don’t for one second think that I won’t do the opposite and bring you here to me.”
“You won’t bring me anywhere, Archer. I’m not a thing for you to shuttle across the country when you want to get off.”
“What’s ridiculous is you thinking that I need to bring you here in order to get either of us off,” he countered. “I can get you off over the phone if I wanted.”
