Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(80)

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.”

She nodded, swiping her hands over his forehead, his cheeks, pushing back his hair, touching him constantly.

“I have to talk to my mom,” he admitted.

“Yeah, you do,” she said gently.

“Will you be there with me?”

“At your side, baby.”

At his side.

He bent and touched his mouth to hers.

He lifted away and told her, “I also need to sit down with Tack. They were best friends. I need to know my father. I need to feel what he feels when he says the words. I need to look at his face as he’s saying them.”

She nodded. “You want me there for that too?”

“I don’t know. Can we see?”

“We can do anything, honey.”

We can do anything.

They could.

They were alive.

Breathing.

They had time.

She was right there.

Right there.

And she was his.

“You okay after all that happened tonight?” he asked.

“I am now.”

He felt a rueful grin hit his lips. “Not sure how that can be, me losing it on you.”

“Because you gave that to me, and it’s precious, I needed it and you needed to let it go.”

“Well, if you say it like that,” he joked.