Break the Sky (Spiral of Bliss Spin Off) (31 page)

Sobs crowded my throat. I tried to swallow them back down, but with Archer holding me so tightly in his powerful arms, like he’d be there throughout the entire storm, no matter how long it took or how destructive it was, I surrendered and cried. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, my whole body weakening under the force of the onslaught.

Archer sank into an easy chair, pulling me on top of him, his arms never loosening their grip on me.

I buried my face in my hands and let the tears fall, acute grief and pain whipping like wind through me. I cried until my throat was scraped raw, until the sobs left me shuddering and exhausted.

“I did everything right,” I whispered, pressing my palms to my hot face, the confession tumbling out of me. “Everything.”

“I know you did. So did she.”

“Then why, Archer?” I was hollowed out. Aching. I pulled away from him and paced to kitchen, as if movement would ease the pain. “Why the hell did she die?”

“Kelsey, whether you did everything right or wrong makes no difference. There’s only so much you can control.”

Intellectually, of course, I knew that. But emotions were not ruled by intellect. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a fist.

“I had a girlfriend,” Archer said behind me. “She died, too.”

My fingernails dug into my palms. “How?”

“Car accident. She was pregnant.”

I turned to face him, my chest so tight it hurt. He unfolded himself from the chair and rose to his feet, his presence so potent that I took a step back.

“What happened?” I whispered.

“You called me a fuck-up when we met,” he said, and I tried not to wince at the reminder.

“Archer—”

“You were right,” he said. “I was much worse than you ever were or ever could have been. After I dropped out of high school and left the West family’s perfect life, I did it all—drugs, fighting, stealing, jail time. Stayed away from my parents. Didn’t want a goddamned thing to do with Dean. Especially didn’t want to hear about all his achievements. Even as a kid, I knew he was destined for success. I was hell-bent to go in the opposite direction.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I was living with Sarah outside of Vegas. She’d also had a messed-up life, but she was trying to get her act together. Good person. Worked as a waitress. For some reason, she put up with me. We were living together for a couple of months when she got pregnant.”

I sank onto the edge of the bed and buried my face in my hands. I didn’t want to hear this, but I didn’t want him to stop telling me. Didn’t want him to stop giving me a piece of himself.

“After we found out, she convinced me to straighten up, get clean, try to do right by this kid we were going to have,” he said. “I went into rehab, got my head together. We talked about getting married. A Social Services woman helped Sarah with prenatal stuff. I found a job with a construction company. The owner had a lead on a house that was going into foreclosure, and I asked him if I could help work on it. I had this…”

He paused and cleared his throat. “I had this idea that if I helped fix up the house, maybe I had a shot at getting some kind of mortgage so Sarah and I could live there one day. If nothing else, at least it would prove I could work. It was a little two-bedroom place.”

He’d never had a chance to work on the house. I knew that already. My chest ached. I couldn’t tell if my heart hurt so badly because it was so empty or because it was getting so full.

“Sarah was working at a restaurant,” Archer said. “She was late coming home one night. The cops…” He paused again. “The cops said she’d gone off the road. The car hit a tree. They said she died on impact.”

“Oh, Archer.”

I couldn’t stand it. My eyes filled with fresh tears. I felt his presence, felt him go down on his knees in front of me, pulling my hands away from my face.

I stared at him through blurred vision, seeing my own pain reflected in his dark eyes, the shared intensity of it seeming to steady the world again.

“Kelsey, I’m telling you because I did everything right.” He tightened his hands on mine. “Sarah and I both did. Everything we were supposed to do,
we did
. And she still died. It’s fate, you know? A lousy toss of the coin.”

I buried my head in my arms again. Aching for what he’d gone through, for a girl’s life lost too early, and a baby who’d never had a chance.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

He brushed his hand through my hair. “You take on too much, storm girl. Pain happens. Sometimes like tornados out of nowhere.”

Tornados that I still loved for all their fury and destruction.

After a few minutes of quiet, Archer lifted me into his arms and eased me onto the bed. He stretched out beside me, curving his body against mine.

A perfect fit. His chest pressed to my back, my rear against his groin, his knees tucked into the backs of mine. I buried my face in his pillow. He rested his hand on my hip. His breath stirred my hair. I fell asleep in the shelter of him.

I woke before Archer did and untangled myself from him to use the bathroom. I still wore my suit and trousers from yesterday, everything now completely wrinkled.

I borrowed Archer’s toothbrush to brush my teeth, and his comb to pull the knots out of my hair. I looked tired, with dark circles under my eyes and my skin like parchment, but I was calmer. The worst of the storm had passed.

But I’d been an atmospheric scientist long enough to know that there was always another storm front on the horizon.

Always.

He was still sleeping when I came out of the bathroom. This time, I tucked my body against his from behind and slid my arms around his waist. I must have fallen asleep again because I woke when the bed dipped. Archer sat on the side of the bed, pulling his jeans off.

He looked over his shoulder at me when I stirred. He didn’t ask me how I felt. He didn’t mention the previous night. He just reached out to brush a lock of blue hair away from my face.

I pushed to one elbow and fumbled for my glasses, which I’d left on the bedside table. I closed my hand around the frames, then dropped them. Archer was still watching me.

Aside from his boxer briefs, he was naked. With his black hair rumpled, his sculpted torso bare, and that raven’s wing tattoo skimming over his right arm, he looked like a magnificent, otherworldly creature about to take flight.

I leaned forward. He met me halfway, our lips colliding in a warm kiss that tasted of mint. He shifted, moving to brace his arms on either side of me, probing deeper but unhurried.

I let myself sink against the pillows, let him inside my mouth. I smoothed my hands over his arms and up to his strong shoulders.

He unfastened the buttons of my blouse, parting the folds to reveal my white lace bra. When he undid the front clasp and bared my breasts, I gave over. I knew I didn’t have to do anything but fall into the cascade. I knew that wherever he took me, it would be a place of pure bliss. All I needed to do was surrender.

I watched him kiss his way down my body, rubbing the taut peaks of my nipples. He dipped his tongue into my belly button before pulling off my pants and the skimpy panties between my legs. His hot murmurs vibrated through my skin, creating a pool of warmth in my core.

I stretched and arched against him. We shed the rest of our clothes slowly, peeling them away like snakeskins. He moved over me, fitting his body against mine. He pushed. I yielded. He gave. I took. He captured. I surrendered.

The world rocked, like the rhythmic sway of a ship, the thunderclouds too far away now to be of concern. I shattered beneath him, a slow rise that unfurled in my veins before exploding into a thousand stars. As I was falling back down, I watched Archer above me, his chest muscles shifting, his face set and eyes dark with heat.

He lowered his mouth to mine again just as he plunged into me with his own release. I tightened my arms around him, wanting to feel every shudder coursing through his body, knowing he was feeling this bliss because of us.

When he rolled to the side, I sat up and did what I hadn’t yet had a chance to in the weeks we’d been together. I explored all the slopes and planes of his body, tracing his pecs down to the ridges of his abdomen and the V of muscles leading to his groin.

I ran my hands over his thighs, his flat, hard belly, and the corded length of his forearms. I flexed my hands on his powerful arms, smoothed my palm over his raven’s wing, the flowers spread across his shoulder.

The birds hovering over the flowers were both silhouettes with their wings outstretched. If you looked closely, you could see the threads of color woven through their wings—red, purple, blue, and gold.

“You’re beautiful,” I whispered, letting my fingers trace a flower petal. “So incredibly beautiful.”

His jaw stiffened as he looked at my hand on his skin. For a moment I expected him to refute what was so obvious and true. But instead he grasped my wrists and tugged me so I was lying half on top of him. He closed his arms around me.

Moonlight shone through the uncurtained window. I could still see the outline of the Butterfly House.

“Are you finished with it?” I asked.

“Almost.” He pressed a hand to my hair. “We’re doing the final touch-ups on the floors and trim. Lots of little things left to do, but the major work is done.”

Though I had known from the beginning he’d leave one day, pain stabbed through me at the realization that the day would soon be
here
.

“Oh,” I managed to say. “So when are you leaving?”

Tension rolled through him. “As soon as it’s done, I guess.”

“Okay.”

That was the biggest lie I’d ever told. It was not okay. Nothing was
okay
about Archer West swooping into my life like a beautiful, wild bird, sending my life into a tailspin, and then
leaving
.

Not just leaving. Leaving me. Leaving me alone.

“Okay,” I repeated, only because he was looking at me with his dark, haunted gaze and all I wanted to do was throw myself at him and never let go. But I couldn’t because he was leaving.

A knot formed in my throat. I could hardly remember my life before him. I didn’t want to imagine my life after him.

“I don’t want to go without you,” he said.

“Then don’t.” Though I had never been one to ask for anything, the plea came out as easily as thread slipping from a needle. “Stay here.”

His eyes darkened. I sensed the uncoiling of old pain in him, the regrets and sorrow we’d both felt for so long they had become part of us.

“Why not?” I whispered.

A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “Square peg. Round hole.”

“That’s not true. You… you fit here, Archer.”
With me.

Even as I stammered out the words, a black pit opened inside me because I’d come to know Archer as well as he knew me. He hadn’t come to Mirror Lake to stay. He didn’t fit here, not really, not with Liv and Dean’s life and Avalon Street and my tenured professor career.

Still, I tried to picture it. I so wanted to believe it could happen—that I could convince him to stay in Mirror Lake and that we would both be happy. He could find a construction or motorcycle repair job. I’d teach classes and write papers and do all the professor things I was supposed to do. We would go grocery shopping together. Visit the mall. Take a trip every now and then. Share chocolate milk.

And beneath the surface would run a river of unease as I waited for the day when Archer realized he was bored out of his skull living such a contained life. The day when my guilt over forcing him onto my safe, narrow path became too much to bear.

I didn’t think Archer would ever fit in anywhere. He couldn’t. He was too bold, too fierce, too powerful. The world had to accommodate him, not the other way around.

A tight feeling gripped my chest. “I’m not… I don’t mean that you should stay for good or anything. Maybe just a few weeks longer.”

He turned away from me, his expression shuttered. He shook his head.

The black pit inside me opened wider. But I had known. I had known from the beginning.

I had no tears left to cry. The combined weight of our pasts and uncertain future seemed too heavy to escape.

I stroked Archer’s tattoo down to the raven’s wing curled over his arm. I traced the feathers and wished above all else that I could take flight with him.