Elijah was looking around and not missing fresh flowers, candles, Ray LaMontagne or the set dining room table.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“What’s going on?” Archie repeated.
And Jagger didn’t have to keep his body locked anymore at her tone.
It wasn’t incredulous.
It wasn’t wounded.
It wasn’t shocked.
It was a profound mix of all three.
Elijah didn’t miss that either and he went still.
“What’s going on?” She said it again.
“Baby,” Jagger called softly.
Hound let him go.
But Archie didn’t look at Jag.
She only had eyes for her brother.
“Do you care?” she asked.
“Ar—” Elijah started.
“I spent an hour at the grocery store. Hours and hours straining passionfruit and making meringues and mixing and layering cream and mascarpone. Chopping veggies. Cleaning my place. All this because my man’s parents were coming over. I met them all of five minutes ago, four of those five minutes spent talking about you. Now you have a bee in your bonnet, and you bust into my home and you ask me what’s going on?”
“I could hardly know this was happening when you don’t pick up my calls, Archie,” Elijah pointed out.
“And so you’ve decided now is the time to chat, you hammer on the door and push your way in?” Archie asked.
Elijah looked embarrassed by that and was not making eye contact with anyone but Archie.
“I’m sorry my timing is off, but that does not negate the fact we need to have a conversation and we can’t do that if you don’t accept my calls or return my texts,” Elijah shared.
“So write me a letter, send me an email, don’t barge into my home when the timing suits you,” Archie shot back.
Lafayette entered the discussion.
“I think now it might be good for a few of us to leave.”
He took Joany’s hand but looked pointedly at Elijah.
Elijah ignored Lafayette. “We need to set up a time to talk.”
“And I’ll get on that when I’m ready to talk,” Archie stated. “Not now, when I’m having a dinner party for Jagger’s parents.”
Elijah appeared to be getting angry. “You can’t just leave me hanging until you’re ready to speak to me.”
Archie shook her head. “I’m not doing this now. I have something happening. Go. I’ll get in touch.”
“When?” Elijah demanded.
“When I get in touch,” Archie replied.
“I spent all week worried about that scene you instigated at Dad’s—”
“Eli, really, you can’t miss I’ve got something happening right—”
“And now you want me to just take off and wait until you deign to—”
All right, Jag was done.
“Listen, friend,” he began, starting to move closer to Archie.
Archie looked to him and he didn’t stop moving until he was at her side, but he shut his mouth.
She turned back to her brother. “Go, Elijah.”
“We’ll have brunch on Sunday,” he decided.
“No, we won’t,” she refuted. “Sundays are my days with Jagger. I’ll be in touch.”
“Archie—” Elijah tried again.
But finally, she lost it.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she rapped out loudly. “Tonight is not about you. That scene at Dad’s was not all about you. The entirety of everyone’s lives are not all about you.”
She drew in a big breath.
And then she let him have it.
“Mom dying was not all about…YOU!”
Jag put his hand on the small of her back, but other than that—other than letting her know he was close, and she could call on him—he was powerless to do anything.
And he didn’t want to, because he wanted his folks to spend time with his woman, he wanted to eat schnitzel and fruit, meringue and cream.
But she needed to do this.
Elijah looked like he’d been sucker punched. “I can’t believe you just said that to me.”
“I should have said it ten years ago,” Archie retorted.
“Word on that,” Joany muttered.
Archie shot her a look.
Joany pressed her lips tightly together.
“I lost her too,” Archie said to her brother. “Dad lost her.”
“He got over her pretty quickly,” Elijah returned sharply.
“No, he didn’t, it took years for him to find and marry Haley. And Mom’s picture is still in his wallet.”
Oh fuck.
At her deteriorating tone, Jag moved his hand from her back to curl his fingers around her hip.
“He just moved on with his life,” she continued. “He has a great capacity to love. He has to give it to somebody. Okay, so you can have whatever it is you need, Eli, do you honestly want him to have nothing? To be alone? To grieve and pine for her until he dies? Is that what you want?”
Elijah said nothing.
“And what am I to you, Elijah?” she pushed. “I was your cook and your cleaner and your caretaker after she was gone. Now I’m your administrator and property manager. When do you start being the big brother and maybe think about what your little sister needs for a change? When do you kick in with this family, Eli? When does it stop being all of us tiptoeing around you and your grief? When are you gonna wake up and see we all lost her, we’re all trying to move on, not because we want to, but because we have no choice?”
It was torture, not pulling her in his arms.
But Jag held still, close, but not invasive, and let her have what she needed.
“I don’t have to be okay with my father marrying another woman, having another family, being with someone that is not my mother,” Elijah bit.
“Yes you do,” she fired back.
Elijah’s head jerked.
“That’s what love is. That’s what family is,” Archie stated. “Finding a way to be okay with someone you love being happy. Even if, at first, it hurts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Haley. She loves Dad like crazy. She treats him like gold. She cares about us. He didn’t have another family. He added to ours.”
Elijah stood there, motionless and speechless.
Arch wasn’t the latter.
“Now, honestly, if you cannot get your head out of your ass, Eli, I have to tell you, in front of company, two of those company I do not know but I very much want them to like me, but I have to say this anyway…we have an official problem,” she declared. “Because I’m not playing this game for you anymore. You either figure it out, and I’ll help you, or we co-own a building and that’s it. And if you have some issue with how I manage it, you’ll have to put it in writing, and I’ll decide how I feel about your concerns. If you don’t like my decision, you can let me buy you out, or you can sue me.”
Elijah’s eyes widened. “Are you honestly standing there reducing us to that over Haley?”
“No,” she whispered, and Jagger’s gut clenched at the pain in that one syllable. “I’m reducing us to that because I’m sick and tired of you treating me like shit.”