ChapterEleven
Archer
I blew out a breath, my cheeks inflating then deflating quickly. I had made some terrible mistakes in my life. Okay, perhaps not wholly awful, nothing horrific that would break me. But I had indeed made some mistakes.
My marriage had been a mistake, but I wouldn’t go back and change it. I had needed to make those wrong choices in order to become myself.
I hadn’t stood up for myself with Marc or my father until it had almost been too late. But I had lived through that, and while I didn’t regret the choices I made, I still knew that they were mistakes.
I wouldn’t allow myself to think of the mistake that would cost me more than I could bear. The one that was going to cost me far too much.
A mistake that had everything to do with the man I shouldn’t have wanted.
Killian had cried. He hadcriedafter we had rough sex on a kitchen floor.
I let out a shaky breath, annoyed with myself for letting any of my emotions through. Why had I slept with him? Why had I put myself in that situation?
I sat around with my brothers, brothers-in-law, and my father, as we watched a hockey game, crossing our fingers that the Avalanche actually did something for themselves this year, and yet all I could do was get stuck in my own head because I had slept with a man I had hurt.
Oh, I might not have done it on purpose, but I had to have hurt him.
Because I had been selfish and I had wanted him.
And he had cried.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Lee asked as he stared at me, studying my face.
I put on my best Archer Montgomery smile and winked.
“Just thinking about how I should have moved quicker when it came to you. But Paige stole you out from under me.”
Beckett snorted from beside me. “Our little sister’s going to beat you up one day if you don’t stop joking about that.”
“I don’t know. I think the two of them would’ve been a cute couple,” Jacob added as he sipped his drink. Annabelle’s husband was exhausted; I knew that he hadn’t been sleeping. I wasn’t the only one going through my own turmoil these days.
We had buried his mother eight months ago. She had remained on this earth for as long as possible with a smile on her face. She’d done so even as the ALS had progressed, so she could hold her grandchildren.
And eight months ago she had taken her final breath, with her husband, Jacob, and Annabelle in the room. I had been still living with them, watching over the twins as they tried to comfort each other in their grief.
It was hard not to wonder how selfish I had been for keeping my head up my own ass, as Killian had told me. Because other people were going through far more hell. Losing so much, and all I had lost were a few smiles along the way and part of myself, which I had freely given.
“Okay, that was a deflection if I ever heard one,” Lee scolded as my brothers turned towards me, and my father raised a brow.
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did Marc do something?” my dad asked, scowling.
“It wasn’t Marc, I promise.”
“But he called you when you were with the girls,” my dad pushed.
I closed my eyes. “Sometimes, I swear our family is a little too close.”
“Again with the deflection,” Lee said as he punched my side. I was still healing from the fall and then had re-bruised myself in the best way on that kitchen floor.
“Ow.” I rubbed the spot where he had hit. “What was that for?”
“I didn’t hit you that hard.”