Sinner(182)

“Stop touching me, Hudson!”

“Well stop fucking falling then!”

We glare at each other for a second, and it’s taking everything I have to meet her eyes and not to stare at her trembling lower lip, or further down to where I can clearly see her nipples poking out of her sheer gown. Somehow, somehow, chivalry wins out over my dick, and I let her go, putting her back on her feet. She shivers, and before I know it I’m shrugging my tux jacket off and pushing it towards her.

“Stop it, I don’t want that.” Her eyes flare defiantly, all the while rubbing her arms with her chilly looking hands.

“It’s freezing out here”

“Well I’m fine!”

I grit my teeth and roll my eyes. “Have you seriously always been this fucking obstinate?”

“It’s my ‘political edge’,” she sneers out.

“Well, that’s one word for bitchy.” I cringe again inside, wondering how the hell I can go about murdering the voice inside my head that keeps insisting on letting everything out.

She frowns at me, reaching up to push a loose lock of hair behind her ear and just looking so damn cute standing there shivering. “Is there a fucking point to all this?”

Ugh, yes, if I could just stop acting like an asshole and ruining it.

I clear my throat. “Yes, actually. Archer Holdings believes in your campaign.” Christ I sound like I’m giving a board meeting address.

She purses her lips and clenches her jaw at the name. “Fantastic, well tell them to vote however their little hearts desire in the election. I’ll have my people send over some lawn signs and buttons if they’d like.”

“Cute” I mutter, seeing her frowning mouth turn up slightly at the corners.

“So, what, is my Dad trying to buy my love from beyond the grave or something?”

I grimace, feeling my muscles tense and hands clench, before I have to remind myself that she never knew William Archer like I did; like we did.

When he found me, I had nothing; less than nothing really. None of us did back then, until he dragged us back from the brinks of our own personal hells. And when I say ‘Nothing,’ I don’t just mean in the material possessions sense of the word either. When a man is broken inside as I was - like all three us were - there’s almost no coming back from it. In the very bottom depths of my own nightmare, with the shit I’d seen and the even worse shit I’d done, I’d given up on myself; almost.

“When a man gives up on himself, that’s when he’s truly gone” He'd said to me that first night, sitting in that shit-ass bar as he’d pulled the bottle away from my shaky hand when I’d reached for another drink. “And you don’t seem like you’re gone, not yet.”

‘But Goddamn close to it’ is what I would’ve said, looking at me that night.

I asked him later what he saw in any of us when he found us in that shithole of a slum-bar on the outskirts of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was curious about me when I asked him, but Bryce had been way worse than even I was back then with his addictions. William’s only response had been a single word: “Promise.”

‘Promise’ is what turned three shell-shocked, burned-out, drugged out soldiers for hire to the worst dictators on Earth into the disciplined new men of means we were today. We’d never be the man who saved us, but we’d pledged our lives to getting as close as possible.

And a promise - not just any promise but THE promise - is what brings me out here in the freezing cold, looking at Reagan Archer and wondering how in the world a guy who’d lived through the shit I’d lived through is having the hardest time in the world trying to figure out what the hell to say to her.





Chapter Three





Reagan




P A S T



“Reagan! Ray! Do not make me late!”

“What? I’m here, jeez.” I stomp down the stairs from the second floor landing with a scowl on my face, a scowl that only deepens when Quinn and my Aunt Kelly coo and aww and gush over the frilly, stupid pink dress I’m wearing as I make my appearance.

“Oh Reagan, you look adorable, honey!” Aunt Kelly gushes; clutching her hands together eagerly before digging in her purse for her camera.

I groan; “No! No pictures!” I make a face as the flash goes off regardless, setting my jaw even harder as I stomp the rest of the way down the stairs. I am fourteen years old, still very firmly in the grasp of my anti-dress tomboy phase, and I absolutely hate that I’m dressed up like a freaking cabbage patch doll.

“Well I love my dress!” Chelsea comes bounding down the stairs, and even Quinn rolls her eyes at the exuberance. Chelsea is ten and firmly believes she’s actually a Disney princess.