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“Yeah.”
“Hi.”
I could picture him shoving his hair out of his face the way he used to do when we were kids and he was nervous. He wasn’t nervous that night in the basement and he wasn’t nervous at the hotel. Or rather, if he was, he’d leaned into different tells. The only time his hair had shown even a strand out of place was after he’d gotten off. And I hated how good disheveled looked on him.
I’d never tell him that.
“What’s up?” he asked, when I didn’t say anything back in response to his greeting.
“I don’t know, Archer. You’re the one who’s been calling me.”
A butterfly floated in through one of the cracks in the roof, clearly on accident. He flittered around the four walls, not able to find a way back out, and if butterfly wings could feel exasperated, I’m sure his did. His pace across the fort turned frenzied, and I knew how he was feeling. Safe and trapped and exhilarated all at the same time. With a sigh, I stood and used the cup of my hand to urge him toward the door so he could escape.
“I don’t like when you call me Archer,” he said.
“It’s your name,” I reminded him.
“You used to call me Archie.”
It almost sounded like longing in his voice, but as soon as I’d registered it, it was gone.
“You used to be Archie,” I whispered.
“Am I not now?”
“Not to me,” I said softly. “Not for a long time.”
For years it had been Archie and Owen, Owen and Archie, and then he’d become Archer and me? I was still Owen, just without him.
“Besides.” I cleared my throat and settled back into my seat. “Everyone calls you that now. It’s not special.”
“It was,” he countered. “It would be.”
“Don’t do this,” I warned. “That’s not why I called.”
“Whydidyou call, Owen?”
I didn’t have an answer and he knew it.
“To tell you to stop calling me,” I lied.
“Are you sure?”
“I’d like to be.”
That earned me half of a laugh, which had me closing my eyes and scrubbing a hand down my face in shame. The sensation coursed through my body like some kind of tangled and electrified web that paralyzed me with every inch it crept up my spine. Rooting me in place, forcing me to sit with the way Archer made me feel, the things I wanted from him.
Hell, from anyone.
“If you tell me to stop calling, I will,” he said. “If you tell me to get on a plane and come home, I will.”
“Your home isn’t here.”
He answered that with silence.
I sighed, letting all the breath out of my lungs until it felt like my shoulders were going to sink through the chair. “Don’t say anything else to me that you don’t mean, Archer.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
