“Try.”
Like it’s so simple.
My hands tighten on her shoulders. Almost unconsciously, my thumbs begin to rub small, soothing circles against her skin. Whether I’m soothing her or myself, I’m no longer sure. It takes me a while to find the words.
Just start at the beginning.
This part is easy to tell.
The rest will be harder.
“You know last spring, my brother was released from prison.”
Her eyes widen. Whatever she’d expected me to say, it was not this, but she nods for me to carry on.
“When he first came home, things were fine. Even good, for a little while. But pretty quickly, they started to unravel. He started to unravel.” I expel a breath. “Turns out, while he was behind bars, Jaxon made some powerful enemies.”
“Not shocking, given his personality,” Jo mutters.
“Agreed. Long story short, he found himself in need of protection. And he got it… but it came at a price.”
“A price?”
“He joined a gang.” I hold her gaze. “The Latin Kings.”
She gasps softly. Even someone like Josephine Valentine, daughter of privilege, has heard that name. A name synonymous with drugs, guns, and dangerous criminals.
“Those men last summer…” Jo whispers, her eyes spinning with thoughts.
The hair on the back of my neck goes up. “Men?”
“The scary ones with the tattoos… I think their names were Rico and… Barbuda? Barbazon? Bar-something. They came looking for Jaxon.” Her eyes widen. “And… for you.”
“What?” My hands fly from her in an exasperated jerk. “How could you not have said something about this?”
“Oh, as if you share anything with me. Please.” Her eyes roll. “Hello, pot! Meet kettle!”
“God, Jo! Those guys are seriously bad news. You can’t keep things like that to yourself — not when they threaten your safety. You should’ve told the police. You should’ve told me.”
“How was I supposed to tell you anything last summer?” she retorts, her rage flaring back to life like an ember hit with a shot of pure oxygen. “You were barely talking to me! Do you really think I was going to chase you down and say, ‘Hey, Arch, just a quick FYI, there are some seriously bad thugs looking for you and your dickhead brother. They cornered me in a parking lot and majorly freaked me out.’”
“They cornered you,” my voice is scary soft, “In a parking lot.”
“Don’t look at me like that! All vengeful and brooding. You don’t get to be mad at me. First of all, it was a year ago. Second of all, I’m mad at you right now. Stay in your lane.”
“You could’ve would up hurt or worse—”
“Like you did?” She stares suddenly at my damaged wrist, her mind making the connection in a single leap. “Did those men have something to do with your accident? Was it an accident? The Wadell twins said you flipped your truck…”
“Yes and no. It’s complicated.” I pause for a moment. “Those men in the parking lot — they were enforcers for the Kings. They followed me around all last summer, looking for my brother. Threatening to hurt anyone I cared about if I failed to deliver.”
Her eyes are working with thoughts. Turning over my words. Weighing each of them for significance. “That’s why…”
“Why what, Jo?”
“Why you started acting so weird… Pushing me away. Holding me at a distance,” she murmurs, looking rather rattled by the realization. “You were trying to protect me.”
“Yeah, well. Some good it did. They found you anyway.”
There’s a long beat of silence. Jo looks away from me, out over the water. In profile, her tension is apparent; jaw locked tight, pulse a quicksilver tattoo in her jugular vein. Her next question is asked through clenched teeth. “Why were they so determined to get Jaxon?”
“He owed them money. They wanted him to pay it off by dealing for the gang. Not pot or coke, either. Hardcore stuff. Heroin. Fentanyl. Oxy. Meth. They saw him as a linchpin for the North Shore — an access point to get their product in the hands of rich prep school kids with big piggy banks.” I sigh deeply. “But when Jaxon proved less than cooperative with their grand plans… they didn’t react well. So they took my parents captive. As leverage.”
“They took Flora and Miguel?!” Jo explodes in shock. “Oh my god!”
“Mmm. The morning of graduation… I woke up with you, in the boathouse…” My eyes drift over her shoulder, to the stone building at the end of the dock. I swallow sharply, pushing the memories aside. “When I checked my phone, there was a message from Rico, demanding I bring Jaxon to him. And along with that message, there was a picture of my parents, held hostage. They…” My voice cracks. “They were duct taped to chairs. They looked so fucking scared. They looked like… like they thought they were about to die. I swear, my heart stopped in that moment. I don’t think it started beating again until I knew they were safe.”
I hear her pull in a gulp of air. Cautiously — so very, very cautiously — her hand creeps into mine. We both tense at the contact, freezing for a split second as the world jolts on its axis.
Jo recovers first. Her fingers wind with mine. Our palms meet. She squeezes gently. Offering me strength. It’s more than I deserve, after everything I’ve done to her.
But I squeeze back.
Hard.
“I didn’t stop to think,” I continue, ignoring the way my pulse is thundering between my ears. “I didn’t pause. I didn’t wake you. I just… reacted. Threw on my clothes, hopped in my truck, and headed straight there. I called the cops on the way.”
“And then?” she prompts. She’s practically vibrating beneath the strain of holding in her questions. It’s taking every bit of her self-control to let me get the rest of the story out uninterrupted.
“My own fault, really. I was so focused on getting there, I blew right through a red light. Never saw the truck coming. Sure as hell felt it, though.”
She lifts our interconnected hands close to her face — hers, so small and fine-boned, mine a mess of scars. She examines the damage through a haze of gathering tears.
“The truck flipped three times. When it finally stopped, I was hanging upside down by my seatbelt. Shattered glass everywhere. Metal frame crushed like a soda can. I’ve never been in so much pain. Thankfully, I wasn’t conscious for long. The blood loss…” I shrug as lightly as I can manage. “I passed out. When I woke up, I was in an ICU bed.”
In handcuffs.
Charged with my brother’s crimes.
At your parent’s absolute mercy.
I omit those details, for the moment. Jo looks like she’s struggling to process everything I’ve just told her; I hesitate to pile on too much at once.
“God, Archer.” Her voice is shaking. “I can’t even imagine… That must’ve been terrifying. Your parents. The accident. All of it.”
I give a shallow nod. I can barely breathe, let alone speak with her so close to me. Touching me. Her hand in mine. The scent of her hair stirring in the breeze around us. The press of her bare thigh against my damp jeans.