“Pull over!” Rule let out a string of curse words and hastily weaved around a minivan to the shoulder of the road. I got the door open and practically fell on my knees as I lost everything in a violent stream on the asphalt. Warm hands pulled my ponytail out the way and handed me a ragged bandana when I could finally breathe. I took the bottle of water he handed me and sat back on my heels while the world tilted in a bunch of different directions.
“What’s wrong?”
I sloshed the water around and spit it out on the ground away from the tips of his black boots. “Migraine.”
“Since when do you have those?”
“Since always. I need to lie down in the back.”
He pulled me to my feet with a hand under my arm and I realized it was the first time in years he had ever deliberately touched me. We never hugged, never brushed against each other, never hi fived or shook hands; we were strictly in a hands-off type of relationship so my system almost revolted at the contact. I groaned as he practically shoved me back into the car. I was short so stretching out along the back seat wasn’t a big deal. Rule got back behind the wheel and look at me over his shoulder. “You gonna make it the rest of the way?”
I threw and arm over my eyes and placed a hand on my rolling belly. “It’s not like I have a choice. Just be ready to pull back over if I scream at you.”
He pulled back into traffic and was quiet for only a minute before demanding, “Does everyone know you get migraines?”
“No. I don’t get them very often, just when I’m stressed out or not sleeping well.”
“Did Remy know?”
I wanted to sigh but I just answered, “Yes.”
He muttered something I couldn’t hear and I felt him rather than saw him look back at me. “He never told me. He told me everything, even crap I had zero interest in hearing, he never shut up about you.”
He was wrong, so very, very wrong but that was Remy’s secret and even though he was gone I still would go to the grave with it. There was a lot Rule and Rome never knew about their brother, things that he was scared to share, things he battled with on a daily basis and the fact I had migraines and was irrevocably in love with Rule didn’t even scratch the surface.
“He probably just forgot about it, like I said I don’t get them very often and when you guys moved to Denver and I still had to finish high school he probably just forgot they happened because we didn’t hangout as much anymore. They’ve been worse the last few years.” I didn’t have to explain it was because Remy was gone and all the stress he balanced out for me was now my own to deal with.
“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 f**king bad today.”