Page 43 of Defiant
I’d be lying if I said I understood this. “I don’t get it. If you’re not happy with her, if she’s spying on you and everything, why are you with her?” I wasn’t saying him breaking up with Brittany would solve all of our problems, but it would be one less.
Though, I supposed, she’d have the entire town at my door with torches and pitchforks immediately after.
“I have to be,” Archer muttered, clearly unhappy with the whole situation.
Ditto, buddy.
Frowning, I said, “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I just…I have to be. She’s been obsessed with me for years, and last year she finally figured out how to trap me, okay?” Archer shrugged, looking absolutely helpless. The look did not suit his handsome features. “There’s no way out of this for me.”
“If you tell me what she has on you, I can help—” Me, offering to help Archer, the boy who I swore vengeance on not too long ago. Couldn’t everything stay the same for a fucking week? Like, take it easy, Midpark. I could only handle so much at once.
“No,” Archer spoke, stepping toward me. Less than a foot separated us now, but moving away from him was the last thing I was thinking about. “You can’t help me. You’ll only get hurt worse than you already were, and I don’t think I could take it.”
I tried putting it all together, but it was hard, and I still thought there were a few pieces of the puzzle I was missing. “Is that why you brought me here, away from town? So you could tell me half of the truth and try to get me to give up? I’m not going to stand back and let you or Brittany walk all over me. Even if what you say is true…you still hurt me, Archer. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I don’t forgive easily.”
Or, you know, ever.
Truth was, I’d never been in a situation like this before, never been on the outside looking in. Not once in my entire life had I had a whole school at my heels, nipping and biting, waiting to watch me fall.
Archer took yet another step closer to me, his words heavy as he spoke, “I’m sorry.”
Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, sometimes being sorry wasn’t good enough. You couldn’t change the past, no matter how hard you tried. Some things simply were. I’d get back at Brittany, regardless of what he’d just told me, and I’d figure out a way to get back at him, too.
Maybe it was wrong of me. Maybe Archer wasn’t lying when he basically said Brittany had him by the balls, but I didn’t care.
I would make them both miserable.
“Noted,” I said, and it was all I said. Anything else I might’ve thought to say in that moment didn’t matter. I’d heard him out, which was more than I thought I’d do half an hour ago. He didn’t deserve anything from me, even if he was just as trapped as I was.
A long breath came from his lungs, and Archer inched closer to me still, murmuring, “If things were different…” Too close to me. Far too close. Because that’s the thing, wasn’t it? If things were different—but they weren’t. You could live in denial all you wanted, but it wouldn’t change facts.
And right now, the fact of the matter was…I was so terribly confused.
I shook my head once, whispering, “But they’re not.” My gaze snapped up to his, and my breath caught in the back of my throat. I could feel his body heat radiating off him; he stood less than four inches away.
Way too close, and yet, at the same time, not close enough.
“I know,” he spoke quietly, leaning his forehead against mine, the touch of his skin causing mine to flush immediately. His hands found my hips, holding me softly as he murmured again, “I know.”
He knew, and yet he could not keep his hands off me.
It was wrong. I should push him away, be the bigger person. I should not fall for anything he played, and yet I felt myself growing weaker for him as the seconds wore on. Why didn’t I think to push him away when I had the mental capacity to realize how foolish this all was? It was something I should’ve done a minute ago, but now I feared it was too late.
“If things were different,” Archer whispered, the hands on my hips becoming firmer, steadier, now that he knew I wasn’t going to push him off, “I would make you feel like the only girl in the world.”
My eyes shut of their own accord, my heart beating rapidly in my chest, threatening to bust out and run away. To be the only girl in the world, to be Archer Vega’s front and center, his one and only. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself, it sounded amazing.
But that was something I would never admit out loud, to anyone. Hell, I doubted I’d ever admit it to myself again.
Archer’s grip on me forced me backward, and before I knew what was happening, my back collided with a tree just off the gravel pathway. He pinned me there—not hard, but enough strength behind the gesture that I couldn’t just walk off.
At this point, I didn’t think it mattered. Somehow, I’d fallen under Archer’s spell again. God, what was wrong with me?
So many things, apparently.
His heat flooded into me, his forehead still against mine. He was breathing hard, which caused my mind to wander in a bunch of different directions, directions I should not let my mind go. Alas, if there was ever a weak moment in my life, it was now.
