About anything.
He wanted her to give whatever she needed to him so he could take it from her.
He just didn’t think he should ask.
“Jagger, baby,” she shifted one hand to wrap it around the back of his neck, the other she moved to wrap around his throat, “talk to me.”
He heard the words, but he didn’t hear them.
Because it seemed like all the blood in his body all of a sudden had rushed to his head, his vision had blurred, and his mind had blanked of everything.
Except her hand at his throat.
His voice didn’t even sound like him, it was jagged and harsh, when he demanded, “Take your hand off my fucking throat.”
She did this immediately.
But he was lost.
Gone.
Blind, he couldn’t even fucking see.
Couldn’t think.
What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Christ, he had to get out of there.
He had to go.
He moved.
She got in front of him, hands to his chest, saying sharply, “Jagger!”
“I’m takin’ a walk, be back,” he forced out.
He moved to the side, losing her.
She got in his way again, hands flat on his chest, but this time she put weight into them. “Jagger, what’s happening?”
He tried to lose her, failed.
God.
Fuck.
God.
He shook his head hard.
What the fuck?
What the fuck was happening to him?
She was pushing him back. “Jagger, honey, look at me.”
There wasn’t anything I could do to make things better.
He was moving backward, and he heard Archie demand, “Jagger! Look at me!”
I have a life and a business and I’m falling in love.
He went down.
Vaguely, he understood he was sitting on the couch because she’d pushed him there.
He felt her crawl in, straddle his lap.
She had his head in her hands and was gently shaking it.
“Come back to me, Jagger, baby. Come back. Look at me, baby. Please,” she begged, sounding freaked.
Freaked and distressed and even panicked.
“I don’t know…how to…love you,” he forced out.
“Okay.” She kissed his forehead. “Okay.” She kissed his cheek. “Okay, baby.” She kissed his lips. “Give me more. What do you mean by that?”
“I will be the best father to our kids, Hound taught me that. But I don’t know how to love you.”
“You do.”
“He got his throat slit. Dad. They slit his throat.”
He heard it, the hiss of breath, the sting of pain.
He felt it knifing through him as it cut through her.
Christ, it hurt.
Always…
The hurt.
Then she was kissing his face all over, in between whispering a tortured, “God. God. God.”
“He died before he taught me how to love,” he told her.
She wrapped her arms around his head and held it tight to her chest.
“He loved her so much. She loved him so much. He loved her so much. So much, losing his love broke her. I don’t know how to love you like that. I don’t know how to take care of you. He died before he taught me.”
Her body bucked, her sob filled the room, and she held on tight.
“He died before he taught me,” Jagger repeated. “I don’t remember…” He swallowed. Hard. “I don’t have any of him. I don’t remember his love at all.”
Archie was rocking him, he felt her lips at his hair, she was humming nothing, just a sweet sound from her throat, as her body pulsed with her weeping.
“I don’t know how to love you,” he whispered, the words ragged. “I don’t know how to take care of you.”
“Baby, what are you talking about? You’ve been taking care of me from the second you laid eyes on me,” she replied. “I felt your love all the way across a cemetery and you didn’t even know my name.”
A noise came out of him, low and animalistic, and his arms went around her.
He knew by the sound she made when he latched on that he was holding her too hard.
He just couldn’t stop.
“I needed nothing, until I lost her,” she said into the top of his hair. “And then I saw you, and I got what I needed.”
He made that sound again.
She held his head so tight against her chest, she was probably giving herself a bruise.
“Everyone loves him so much,” he pushed out. “And I have no fucking clue who he is.”
“Oh, baby,” she whispered, kissing his hair, rocking his body, holding on tight. “He’s you.”
That was when it happened, it broke, coming hard and fast and hot, it poured into her shirt.
At the end of it, they were lying on her couch, Archie wrapped around him, Jagger with his cheek resting on her chest, his arms curled around her body, his mind a fog, his body exhausted.
“I shouldn’t have kept away. I shouldn’t have nursed my fucking pride. I should have come to you sooner,” he muttered to the back of the couch. “I should have been there to help you deal with Elijah’s bullshit. I should have been there for you. I should have had you.”
“The trigger,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing, honey. Shh,” she shushed.
“He would have had you. He wouldn’t have waited.”
He was talking about his dad.
Graham Black.
His father wouldn’t have kept his mother hanging.
Jagger didn’t do the same.
He’d failed the woman he loved.
“Jag, honey, it didn’t happen that way. It happened this way. And for us, this was the way it needed to happen. I’m not angry. I’m not hurt. I have you now. I’ve got what’s mine. I’m good. So good, baby. So, so good.”
He took in a deep breath, let it go.
And another.
And then, “All my life, she grieved for him. I had to watch, loving her and not being able to help her.”
Archie stroked his hair.
“I didn’t get it, until I saw you. And I was scared as fuck how I felt about you. Because love for me was mixed up in loss. In pain. In void.”
Arch stayed silent and stroked his hair.
He dropped his head back, and she tucked her chin in her neck to look down at him.
And he said, “I love him and have no memory of him. I miss him and I never knew him. He’s everywhere and he’s never been there. All that shit is whacked. It makes no sense.”
She cradled his cheek in her hand and replied, “It makes perfect sense to me, because he’s right here and I’m so, so, so glad he is.”
He’s right here.
Jag pushed up and took her mouth, rolling on top of her.
Archie rounded him with her arms and kissed him back.
He ended it and shoved his face in her neck.
She returned to stroking his hair but added his neck, shoulders and back.
“I wanna watch that movie with you,” he said into her skin.
“Right now?”
“No. I don’t know when. But soon. Though, tomorrow during the day I’m hanging in the shop with you.”
“Okay, we’ll go to your place after we close.”
“No, here. When we watch it, I need to watch it here.” He lifted his head and looked down at her. “I need to be in your space when I see it again.”