“That seems like kinda a big deal to slip his mind.”

“Contrary to what all you Archers have stuck in your head there was a lot more to Remy than our friendship and what was or was not going on with me.”

He snorted loudly. “Yeah right. Remy was a different person after he found you. He was always a good guy, always the best of all of us but once you came along it was like he finally found his purpose. You gave him someone to care about without any of the bullshit baggage the rest of us had. You made him better.”

My heart squeezed so tight in my chest I thought for a second everything inside me was going to turn inside out. “Well he saved me so we made each other better.”

We fell into an uncomfortable silence again until the car stopped in front of his apartment complex. He turned in the seat and looked down at me. I peeked at him from under my arm. The blue in his eyes was all but swallowed up by the paler silver and gray. “Can you get back to University Park or do you need me to take you? I can have Nash follow us since he’s home from work.” It was a nice offer, one I was surprised he extended, but I had had my fill of Archers for the day and the drive from Capitol Hill to University Park wasn’t that bad on a Sunday in the early evening.

“I’ll make it. It’s not that far.” I scrambled out of the back and had to lean on the door frame while he got out of the driver’s seat. We were standing so close I could see the pulse in his throat thumping under the tattoo he had there of a humming bird. “Thanks though.”

He exhaled and rubbed his hands roughly over his face. He took a step back and made sure I was looking him dead in the eye when he told me, “I’m serious about Sunday. Don’t show up here next week expecting me to play nice. I’m over it.”

I snapped a salute with two fingers to my brow and let my body collapse in the seat he had just vacated. “Message received. My services as chauffer slash buffer are no longer needed, which means I probably won’t be seeing you around. Try and take care of yourself Rule, seriously somebody has to.”

I shut the door before he could say anything else and didn’t even wait until he moved away from the car to put it in reverse and pull away from the apartment complex. It was a short drive to my own apartment that I shared with my best friend Ayden. I had met her freshman year when we shared a dorm room together. She was a chem major, worked at the same sports bar I did and totally had the patience to deal with all my endless neurotic crap. Her family background was no picnic either so I loved that I could always rely on her to be there for me, she was also smart as hell and it had taken her exactly zero seconds to figure the reason my social life was boring and that I could never commit to any of the guys I dated was because I was hung up on Rule Archer so when I came stumbling in hurting with tears in my eyes she put me to bed without questions and pulled the blinds in my room closed while she fetched me some pain killers and a giant glass of water.

The bed depressed when she climbed up next to me as I kicked my peep toe heels off and tugged my belt through the loops on my slacks.

“It was bad today?” Ayden was from Kentucky and her southern drawl rolled over me like a smoothing balm.

“He was with some skank again, he had a hickey the size of Alaska on his neck, my mortal enemy from high school hit on him at Starbucks and it took Margot and Dale less than a minute to insult his clothes and hair and remind him he is not now or never will be his dead twin brother. Luckily this time they left out his job and disregard for manners but he blew his top and stormed out. They’ve all decided its best we no longer come up on Sunday making this the second family I’ve been a part of that can’t figure it out and just love and appreciate one another and to top it off Gabe has been blowing up my phone all day and I can’t think of anyone I want to talk to less, so yeah it was really fucking bad today.”

She brushed a hand over my hair and laughed softly. “Girl, the situations you find yourself in.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Did you give him the key to his place back?”

I moaned a little and buried my head in the pillow. “No I totally spaced it but it’s not like I’m in any hurry to walk in on him and two girls at once again. Honestly I’ll be super glad to never have to see Rule’s pierced junk again.”

She snickered a laugh at me and rolled over on to her back so that she was staring at the ceiling. Ayden’s hair was as black as mine was blond and cut in a funky short pixie style. She had big whiskey colored eyes and a heart that was pure gold. Besides Remy she was the best friend I ever had and I loved her for not making me have to lay it all out for her to sift through. She just got it and while she might not understand how I spent my time equally loathing and loving a person that viewed me as nothing more than a nuisance, she never condemned or criticized me for it.

“That boy, he is a handful.”

“I don’t know, maybe the space will be good for me. Maybe time away from the whole family will finally give me the breathing room to kill the way I’ve always felt about him. I can’t spend the rest of my life walking away from other people just because they aren’t Rule.”

“Well I can’t say I’m sorry to see Gabe go, but you do deserve someone that treats you amazing and loves you in all the right ways. You’ve earned it because no one I’ve ever met in my whole life loves as freely and gives as much as you do and seeing as those parents of yours might as well be carved out of ice that’s just a damn miracle. You’re a good girl Shaw and at the very least you deserve a good guy.”

I folded my hands together and laid my cheek down. My head was slowly starting to stop throbbing and all I wanted to do was take a nap and maybe work on processing everything that happened today.

Ayden was right, I did deserve a good guy, I knew what one looked like, knew what one acted like in fact I had been best friends with the ultimate good guy. Remy embodied everything any sane girl would want in a boyfriend and yet I had never had those feelings for him, not once. I remembered clearly the first time he had taken me home with him. I was thirteen and having a really hard time fitting in with all the preppy, rich kids my first year of high school. I knew now that image and brands mattered, but then I just wanted to wear jeans and my hair in a ponytail. Remy had been seventeen and captain of the football team. He found me crying in the girl’s locker room one day after a particularly nasty verbal beat down from Amy and her crew. He didn’t make fun of me, didn’t ask questions or get all weird because I was a freshman and he was a junior he just bundled me up and carted me home with him because I was sad and alone and he didn’t want me to be either of those things ever again. He told me he could tell by my eyes that I was a kind person, that I needed someone to look out for me and from that minute on he decided he would be the person to do it. I remembered all the warm and fuzzy feelings that came with that moment, remembered the gratitude and overwhelming joy I felt at finally having someone see how worthy and deserving of unconditional love I was, but what I remembered most was everything inside me going upside down when Rule walked into the kitchen and titled his chin up at me and asked, “Who’s the chick?”

My heart stopped beating, my lungs felt like they were going to collapse; my skin was suddenly too tight all over my body and I couldn’t form a rational thought or a coherent sentence. Of course then I chalked it up to a silly teenage crush, all the Archer boys were good looking and had qualities that made them larger than life and every girl I knew had to have a prerequisite infatuation with a bad boy at one time or another, of course they normally grew out of it when they realized the bad boy was just an ass and they deserved to be treated better, but as time went on and as things changed my feelings never did. It was clear they were never going to be returned, Rule only saw me as Remy’s little tag along, as a spoiled little rich girl and then as we got older as Remy’s girlfriend, which sucked because I had never been any of those things and as a result I sabotaged relationships, turned down guy after guy simply because I didn’t want a good guy, I wanted the one that was damaged and blind to the way I felt.

I was a good girl, I was loyal and honest, and I worked hard and invested a lot of time and energy in building a secure future for myself. I stayed out of trouble and went out of my way to try and be the polished and perfect daughter my parents wanted me to be and the successful driven woman the Archers had given me the confidence to be, what I never spent any time being was the person that I actually felt like I was. She was locked somewhere deep inside of me, suffocating and still holding on to the hope that Rule would notice she was alive. It was exhausting and on the vulnerable moments when I was brutally honest with myself I had to admit I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up.

Chapter 3

Rule

It was a crazy busy week at the shop. I think mostly because we were right in the thick of tax refund time and people that had extra money to spend often wanted to spend it on ink. I was booked with back to back appointments all the way through Saturday and even went in on Monday night to work on a guy’s sleeve I had started a few months ago because I just didn’t have any room in my schedule to fit him in. Nash was just as booked as I was, so when Saturday night rolled around we were both ready to let loose and tie one on. Sunday afternoon went about the same as last week only this time I walked the girl to her car and didn’t have to worry about Shaw bursting in on a scene I didn’t want her to see. I called Rome to see when he was going to come to town, but apparently things at home weren’t any better after last week so he wasn’t ready to leave mom on her own yet. I wanted to care, wanted to feel bad for her but I just couldn’t muster it up.

I was getting ready to crack open a beer and plop in front of the flat screen to relax and watch the game when Nash came out of his room pulling on a hoodie and a black ball cap over his shaved head. He was a few inches shorter than me, built a lot stocker but in all actuality was a hell of a lot better looking. He kept his black hair shaved close to the scalp because he had twin tattoos on the side of his head and bright, bright eyes that looked more purple than blue and stood out starkly against his much darker complexion. He didn’t have as much metal in his face as I did, just a hoop through the center of his nose and both ears sporting obsidian gauges, and for whatever reason he kept his hands and neck free of ink, which always made me laugh because of the stuff permanently marked on his head. We were a matched set so when we went out together it was usually a given we wouldn’t have to come home alone. Nash was a much nicer guy than I was, he just looked several degrees more badass.

“Jet and Rowdy are at The Goal Line watching the game. They wanna hangout if you’re game.”

Rowdy worked at the shop with us and Jet was the lead singer of a local metal band we liked to go see play. They often rounded out the group that Nash and I traveled in and going to the bar to watch the game sounded a lot more fun than brooding on the couch by myself. So I put my beer back in the fridge and shoved my feet into my black boots.