Three days later, Nya was in her apartment tossing croutons through her salad waiting for a knock to sound on the door. Tag had refused to speak to her for the first two days, but she’d called him this morning and he’d actually picked up the phone. She didn’t know what had changed, but he’d agreed to come over.

Archer was at Sizzle checking on progress for her. The workmen were in tearing the place apart and it made more sense for Archer with his intimidating stature and stare to go and chum along with the construction guys rather than her who’d been fobbed off with plenty of mollifications like, “Sure, darlin’,” and “Don’t you worry your pretty little head.”

She was sort of sick of hearing their placations and that was saying something, because Archer was the king of condescension. But even when he said things to her in his patronizing tone, she knew he heard her. These guys seemed to have her on permanent mute like Archer did with his television. It was just a shame that Nya couldn’t turn on her own subtitles for them.

The front door opened and she tensed, expecting to see Tag coming in. But instead it was Ester. Having the woman here when Tag was on his way probably wasn’t smart, but Nya always smiled when she saw the vivacious blonde.

“Hello, my daughter,” Ester chirped, carefully putting her purse by the door as she closed it before trotting over and taking Nya’s face in her hands. “So beautiful.” Ester kissed each of her cheeks and then her lips. “Pregnant yet?”

“No,” Nya said amazed at how having Ester around relaxed her. She actually managed a laugh, which was incredible given how nervous she’d been just a few minutes before. “I’m waiting for someone.”

Ester peeked into the salad bowl and plucked out a crouton to pop it between her lips. “Is he cute?”

“Tag. I’m waiting for Tag.”

There was obvious disappointment on her face as her hand fell onto the breakfast bar. “Oh,” Ester said.

“You don’t like him,” Nya said, taking the salad past Ester and over to the table.

“He’s cute,” Ester said, searching for something positive to say.

Nya put a hand on the back of a chair and turned to put the other hand on her hip. “Is it because Archer doesn’t like him or because… of something else?”

“It’s because of the way he speaks to you,” Ester said, creeping around the breakfast bar. “There’s a lack of… respect? Maybe? No. I think he respects you. He just feels superior or maybe he expects you to worship him. I don’t know. I don’t like the way he snaps at you. The way he makes judgements.”

“Archer snaps at me.”

“Not in the same way. Archer snaps to protect you when he’s telling you to be quiet or sit down or take your clothes off, I don’t know. Tag…” Ester rolled her hand at the wrist like she was searching for something, but it didn’t come and she exhaled with a shake of her head. “I don’t know. He just seems to care an awful lot about himself and not an awful lot about anything else.”

Nya couldn’t blame Ester for thinking that way, she’d only known Tag as a man strung out on drugs, snapping at her over a crowded dinner table. As far as Ester was concerned, he probably had a lot to be grateful for.

While Nya was still wondering about her friends’ opinions of each other, Ester was ready to move on. “Would you like to go shopping when you’re done with your friend?” she asked, doing a lap of the room like she was checking for anything new or different.

“If you want,” Nya said. “I’ll have to call Archer—”

“Oh, Chase doesn’t care if you shop. We can get our nails done too!”

Ester’s nails always looked newly-manicured, but she was always looking for an excuse to pamper herself. “Maybe,” Nya said. “How are things with you? Is Derren still in town?”

Ester stopped and put her fists on her hips. “Yes, he is.”

“And you’re…?”

Nya tried to read the woman’s expression, but it was difficult to figure out what she was thinking. Archer would go crazy if she did, but Nya was sort of tempted to offer Ester some alcohol because her tongue loosened when she was drunk.

“Do you think Archer has any money lying around upstairs?” Ester asked.

Nya wouldn’t let Ester skirt the issue. “Ester! You know everything that happens between Archer and I, and I get in trouble for talking to you about it. What’s going on with you and Derren?”

“Who knows with that man,” Ester said, folding her arms under her breasts and cocking a hip. “He…”

Oh. Nya grew worried. Ester never hesitated when she talked. She never hesitated, she just… didn’t. Rushing away from the table, Nya went to take hold of Ester’s arms and pulled her over to the couch, which wasn’t as large as Archer’s, but gave Nya the excuse to stay close. Keeping hold of Ester’s upper arms she peered into the woman’s face wondering if that really was upset that she could read.

Since Ester wasn’t talking, Nya started making guesses. “He hurt you? He said something to hurt your feelings or…? He never laid a hand on you, did he?”

“What he did was much worse,” Ester snapped. “I’m so shocked and appalled and disgusted and outraged and…”

Oh God, this was going to be awful and Archer would be so torn if there was real conflict between Ester and Derren. “What did he do?” Nya asked.

“He wants to get married! Can you believe that bastard?”

It was a nightmare, a travesty, a tragedy, a shocking, outrageous liberty that he’d made such a horrible suggestion. “He does?” It was weird, but Nya felt overjoyed and tears actually sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Ester, why do you look so sad?”

“Because he wants to get married. He wants to tie me down. He says it doesn’t matter, that we can go on as we are, live our lives the way we do and I can screw whoever I want… Course that means he’ll be able to as well, but…”

Hmm, what an odd thing for a guy to say when he was proposing. “So why get married?” Nya asked. “If you don’t love each other…”

“Of course we love each other. We’ve loved each other for decades. We just don’t like each other very much most of the time.”

Nya sagged as she exhaled and her fingers covered her mouth. What on earth was Archer gonna say when he heard about this and why the hell had Derren decided to do it now?

“Ester,” Nya sighed.

“He said either we get married or that’s it, we’re over for good.”

This was confusing and came out of left-field as far as she could tell. “Does he really want to marry you? If you believe he loves you, why wouldn’t you marry him?”

“Because it will wreck it,” Ester said, slow, as if she was explaining something to an idiot. “I love Derren. He loves me. We never say it. We don’t go for all that romantic, soppy shit.”

Men could be such idiots; the problem was clear as day. “Oh, Ester,” Nya said, putting a hand on the back of the couch. “That’s why you’re upset. You want him to say that he loves you. You want him to tie you down. That’s what you’ve been looking for all these years, the same fucking stability that Archer wants.” Nya had found that mother and son actually had something in common, two such opposing personalities, while all along they wanted the same thing. “You want Derren to demand commitment.”

“I do not!” Ester said. “How dare you! Take that back!”

The woman did a good job of acting offended and Nya momentarily considered taking her words back, but her smile wouldn’t allow it. “Tell him the truth. Tell him you don’t want him screwing around. Tell him you need fidelity. Tell him exactly what you want.”

“No,” Ester said, folding her arms tighter in a show of petulance. “If he doesn’t already know—”

“He’s a man! And he’s trying to give you what you want. He just doesn’t understand what that is. Sometimes we have to spell it out for them. He wouldn’t be asking to marry you if he didn’t love you. You’re right to believe that he does and I guarantee that he doesn’t want you screwing around. No man wants his woman sleeping with other men and if you were married that’s exactly what you would be. You’d be Derren’s woman.”

There was a knock on the door and Nya pulled Ester to her feet. “That’s Tag?”

“Go upstairs and wait for me. This is either gonna take five minutes or five hours, I don’t know which.”

“Plenty of time for me to search Archer’s place for the big bucks and the good liquor,” Ester said, winking at her and scurrying across to pick up her purse. “If you need me just holler.”

Ester opened the door with a theatrical flourish and swanned past Tag who was wearing a scowl. Behind him, Ester waved to her and then disappeared down the corridor.

“Come in,” Nya said from her place at the couch.

Tag stepped inside and closed the door.

Nya had never been awkward with Tag before Archer came into her life. But it wasn’t her lover’s fault that things were strained between them—not today.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Tag said. “Say what you want to say.”

“Do you want to come in and sit down? We can have lunch, have a drink, or a coffee?”

He stayed rigid. “Is that why you brought me here, Nya? For food?”

His anger wasn’t as intense today, but it certainly still hung around him. It was unmistakable.

Nya didn’t want them to be like this. “I’m sorry that I hurt you,” she said. “I never wanted to.”

“I’m scared for you, Nya,” he said and his words were so sincere they were striking. “We’ve never lived thousands of miles apart.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m worried about you too. If something happens or something goes wrong, I might not know or be able to get to you.”

“You have to come, Nya. It’s the only way you can be safe.”

It was disappointing that he’d come here to try to persuade her to leave.

“I never thought this would happen,” she said. “I never thought it would be this way.” Damn the tears that wanted to come, the sadness that welled up inside her and heated her eyes as her chest grew tight. “I’ll always need you in my life, Taggy. I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“We don’t have a choice,” he said, a sort of callous shell began to form around him. “If you choose Archer—”

“It’s not a choice. Why is it that you think I can only have one of you? Why can’t I have both? We’ll be far apart, but we can visit, we can call.”

Tag was shaking his head. “But we won’t. He’ll take over your life and I’ll have a new one. You know what it’s like for us. We go a few weeks, few months, but we always come back to each other. Except, how will we come back to each other if we’re a continent apart? If you fuck up, if I fuck up, yeah, we might look for each other. But if you think it’s likely you’ll need me like that, then you should be coming with me now.”

Tag was confident that nothing would go wrong at his end, but he was equally sure that something would go wrong at hers. “Archer will look after me. He won’t break my heart, he promised—”

“Oh, well, as long as he promised,” Tag said.

He hadn’t even left the doorway. He was inside the apartment, but he wasn’t making himself at home as he would everywhere else she’d ever lived. He’d been here before, they’d hung out and had fun, but, he was seeing this place now for what it was… Archer’s property, just like she was.

“This job, this one you have to do before you leave?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tag said. “There’s a group of us involved, each of us have different skills… We do our part, prove our loyalty, and Lucas will set us up in Phoenix.”

“Lucas? That’s the man in charge?” Tag nodded. Archer had used that name and her love didn’t trust this Lucas—that was enough for her to be wary, but not enough for Tag. “Why do you trust him? Why does Gio trust him? What’s so special about—”

“Look, Nya, I never talked to you about my work, I always kept you away from it. Kept you safe. I know Archer involves you in everything, that he drags you into his work, but it makes me sick. I don’t think you need to know anything that could endanger you.”

Like his address? It was ironic to hear Tag on his high horse, judging Archer, when the closest she’d ever come to losing her life in recent years, was the night she refused to give up Tag’s address.

“I don’t want you to leave hating me,” she said because the truth was, their friendship was more valuable to her than arguing about work. “I want to fix this. I want you to be happy for me.”

“How can I be happy when you’re choosing another man over me?”

“I’m choosing the man I love,” she said. “The man who loves me. The man I want to make a life with. The man I want to have a future with. This is not some casual guy who I met last week who I’m kind of attracted to. This guy is the one I hope to marry and have kids with.”

“Does he know that?”

“Yes, he does,” she said, trying her best not to be upset or offended by the way Tag spoke of her relationship with Archer. “Archer is honest with me and I am honest with him. He knows what I want and I know what he wants. And we love each other! We have respect and—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Tag said. “I know you, Yorkie. I know how you get infatuated with guys. It’s like Damien all over again. Something about these arrogant pricks gets you going and for a while, it’s fine, you’re safe. But how long did it take before Damien turned on you? He was great for six months? A year? Was it as many as two? You weren’t honest with me about what happened in that relationship. I don’t expect you to be honest with me about your relationship with Archer, about how many times he’s raised his hands to you.”

“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 moment 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.”