Page 38 of Duality (The Archers #1)

EVELYN

D id normal people actually sleep for eight hours a night?

Was that even possible? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten eight hours of sleep in a row at night.

Not in many, many years, at least. In the last two weeks, I had gotten it more often than not, and I had never felt so well rested.

Or had so much extra energy to think. My brain was firing on all cylinders after rescuing Marcus yesterday, and I wasn’t able to shut it down.

I had tried going to bed a few hours ago but gave up after tossing and turning. So I turned to tea.

I stared at the steam rising off the chamomile tea in my favorite mug.

My brain spun in loops. The Mayor’s Gala was tomorrow evening.

We had gone over the plan time and time again, but it still felt like we were missing something.

I felt off center and unsettled, like there was something just on the edge of my periphery, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.

It was a good plan, but there were a lot of moving parts, a lot of pieces and people outside my control, and it was making my brain spin.

It wasn’t just the thoughts of the gala keeping me up.

I was still processing the events of yesterday and all the emotions I felt when I realized Marcus was missing and then finding him with Finch holding a gun to his head.

It had taken everything in me yesterday to enter that room and act like I didn’t have a care in the world.

But I had done it. And I had shot Finch.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had to take a life. In my line of work, it was inevitable.

The first person I killed had been a man who had broken into our first safe house, intent on killing his wife, who had taken their kids and ran from him.

I had been sleeping on the couch when he’d stormed through the front door in a drunken rage.

He’d kept on coming even after I had pulled my gun, and when he’d lunged towards the hallway where his family slept, I had put two bullets in his chest.

The Archers had just started back then, and it had actually been my first interaction with Detective Patel.

I had explained I was a family friend helping the woman get out of a bad situation, and he had broken in.

It was a clear case of self-defense, but I had been torn up over it for weeks.

Not because of killing him, per se. I didn’t feel any guilt over killing him, especially not when his six-year-old daughter sported bruises around her throat.

But to this day, I could feel the recoil of the gun in my hands and the realization in his eyes as two bloody spots bloomed on his chest.

I didn’t feel guilt over killing Finch. He had kidnapped Marcus, and I didn’t believe he planned on letting him go, even if Alexander had paid the ransom.

It was why I had followed Carter out of the door while Alexander and the others planned on the best strategy to take him out when they made the exchange.

Finch would have taken the double payday from both Alexander and Citadel if he had been given the option.

No, I didn’t regret killing him. But I still felt the recoil of the gun in my hands and his blank eyes when he fell to the floor.

The life draining from his eyes… Well, that was a nice addition to the nightmares that always haunted my dreams.

Maybe that was why I was avoiding sleeping tonight.

I pulled out my phone and opened the email from Liam.

I scrolled through the options he sent for new safe houses.

I rubbed my temples as I scanned through the listings.

We needed to replace them quickly. People needed our help, and they needed safe places to escape to.

Spouses and children escaping from abusive partners and parents, stalking victims having a safe place to go while we located their stalkers, people who had lost their jobs and just needed a place to stay while they got back on their feet.

We couldn’t help them all, but I would be damned if we didn’t try.

Although it didn’t matter if we bought or built new safe houses if we couldn’t neutralize Citadel.

Citadel also wasn’t the only threat we were facing.

We still weren’t any closer to finding out who hired Citadel.

Liam and Sebastian were searching, but they hadn’t turned up anything yet.

We couldn’t fight an enemy we didn’t know.

The problem was that we didn’t know anything.

“Hey.”

I looked up at Marcus’s soft voice. He leaned against the doorframe, dressed casually in black sweatpants and a black t-shirt that hugged his broad chest. Bandages covered his wrists from where they had been rubbed raw yesterday.

Rage filled my chest when I saw them. Even if Marcus had been an ass to me for the last few weeks, there was a primal part of me that was furious he had been hurt.

“Hey,” I said back, lamely.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

I shook my head and took a sip of tea. Even though we had called a tentative truce yesterday, I hadn’t gotten to talk to Marcus alone yet.

Today had been filled with planning and surveying the damage to the safe houses.

I had only gotten back to the manor a few hours ago, and Adrian had tried to usher me off to bed straight after dinner.

He filled a glass of water and took a seat across from me. “I just wanted to apologize again.”

I shrugged off his apology. “You were just trying to protect your brothers. I get that.”

And I did. It’s what had prevented me from getting too angry with him over the last few weeks.

He was just trying to protect his brothers, and no one probably understood that better than I did, or maybe Alexander.

Okay, I lied. All of my men were pretty protective.

Not my men. Maybe my men? I didn’t know anymore.

“Besides…” I shook myself out of that spiral. “I was the one who dragged you all into this mess in the first place.”

Marcus lifted one shoulder and then dropped it, the move highlighting his muscles more than should be legal.

“I think it was inevitable. we would have been dragged into this eventually. It was only a matter of time before Citadel’s client moved into town, and we got involved.

I don’t see Citadel letting us go unscathed, if this is the type of dirty, underhanded shit they are willing to pull.

This way we had a warning and saw it coming, versus being caught off guard. ”

I inclined my head. I hadn’t thought about it like that. He rubbed his face, looking down at the table. “I’m not sure we would have walked away from that ambush at the warehouse without your and the Archers’ help.”

He looked so serious and earnest in his gratitude that my stomach churned uncomfortably. Trying to lighten the mood, I teased him. “How hard was that to admit?”

He laughed, his voice husky and deep. I squirmed in my chair. Fuck, that laugh was dangerous. “Touche.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “But I want to apologize again, and maybe…explain why I reacted the way I did. It’s the least I could do.”

I recognized the shadows in his eyes, like I recognized the ones in mine when I looked into the mirror.

I knew he had seen some things in the military, and I didn’t want to make him relive it.

But at the same time, I knew sometimes it made our burdens lighter when we talked about them.

Not that I had a lot of experience doing that…

“It was my last mission,” he started slowly.

“We had been given an intelligence packet that felt lighter than usual. I had asked the commanders on the base about it, but they insisted it was all they had on the target. I didn’t think anything of it.

We had the highest security clearance on base, and it wasn’t unusual for intelligence to be light.

” He let out a humorless chuckle. “In hindsight, I should have known.”

“Hindsight is always a bitch,” I said, sipping my tea. I cracked a smile when he laughed for real this time, loosening some of the tension around his eyes.

“The mission was FUBAR from the start,” he said, running a hand through his hair.

My lips quirked at the acronym the military unofficially used for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.

“I thought we just had gotten bad intelligence, but we walked into an ambush. I—I lost three guys that day. Good guys with families. We barely made it out with their bodies. In our debrief back at base, I learned that the commanders had kept vital information from us. Secrets they had no business or no need to keep from us. It cost my men their lives.”

My heart ached for the pain that was etched across his face. I recognized it in my soul, and I could see how deeply it impacted him.

“I blew up at them,” he admitted. “I said a lot of things you should never say to a superior officer. They almost court-martialed me, but I threatened to go to their commanding officers with their fuck up, and they let me finish my tour early.” He swallowed hard.

“In a way, it was best, and I got to be with their families for their funerals, but still.” He stared at the table for a few moments.

“When I got back, Alexander had already started SDS. The intent was to have it built up by the time I got back, but the timing didn’t work out, obviously.

But it helped give me a purpose. A place where I could control the rules.

Law school helped even more as I dove into the nuances of the law.

The order and structure reminded me of the military, but this time I had all the information.

” He shrugged. “I know it’s not healthy or rational all the time, but… ”

“But trauma rarely is,” I finished for him.

And that was what it was. Trauma. After hearing his story, I understood why he had reacted so strongly to my secrets.

“It’s something,” he said, cracking a wry smile.

I returned his smile. “I know a thing or two about it, so I get it.”

He dropped his gaze to his hands before looking back up at me. “Can we really start over?”

I frowned. I thought we covered this yesterday. “Of course. Friends, right?” Was he taking it back?

“I want to be more than friends.”

I froze, feeling like a rabbit on the end of the snare of his piercing gaze. He smiled indulgently at whatever was written on my face.

“We can start as friends, but I don’t want another secret between us. I want more, but I’m willing to wait.”

I looked down at my tea, cradling the mug. “I’m…attracted to you, too, but…” I trailed off. “I never saw any of you coming. Never dreamed of this. And with everything going on… Maybe someday,” I said lamely.

God, I had to get myself together. They were offering me everything I ever wanted. Why was it so hard to reach out and take it? Well, I knew why. Trauma really was a bitch.

“I’m looking forward to it.” He smiled at me. “And I’ll work hard to make someday a reality.”

He stood and rounded the table. I held my breath as he pressed a kiss to my forehead and left the kitchen, leaving me with a warm tingle down my spine and a cool mug of tea. I blew out a shaky breath. Why was it so hard to accept everything they were offering?

Because the last time you relied on someone that much, they let you down.

I winced at my inner voice bringing my darkest secret to the surface.

The last people I had relied on that much were my parents.

I didn’t even let Danny in, and arguably, he was the one person I trusted the most since the incident.

But that night had changed me irrevocably, and for a long time I worried it had ruined me for good.

But now with these men… Well… I didn’t realize just how much I did trust them till just now.

Not just with my body, but with my heart, too. But was that enough?

I didn’t stew in my thoughts for long before Alexander found me. He smiled tenderly down at me, and I weakly returned it. His smile dimmed slightly as he took me in. He held out his hand.

“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

I only hesitated a moment before taking his hand.

He had been sleeping in my bed with me since the attack on SDS headquarters a week ago.

With his arms around me, he kept my nightmares at bay.

It was the most restful sleep I’d ever gotten, and it felt dangerous how quickly I’d come to rely on him.

What happened when they realized that my life and my problems were too much, and they left me?

I didn’t think I would ever recover if they left.

I had started to lean on them so much over the last week.

I tried to push those negative thoughts aside as he led me into my room, but they lingered like a predator waiting to strike. Only time would tell if trusting them to catch me would be a mistake or if I was destined to free fall until I hit the ground.