Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(206)

Quinn looks at me sadly, shaking her head. “Ray, he’s d-”

“He’s missing, Quinn, he’s not dead.” Well, missing for three months. Last seen near the Syrian border, presumed dead.

My sister tenses her jaw and exhales through her teeth, either because she’s thinking it too, or more likely because she’s just not about to have this argument again with me, here of all places. “In any case, you’re not supposed to be drinking.”

“So?” I sneer at her. “I’m mourning.” It’s really only half true; maybe even less actually.

Of course I’m upset about my Father’s death, but the anger is still so present that it’s clouding my ability to really grasp that he’s gone. I’m angry that it’s felt like he’s been gone for years anyways. Always off doing something in some random part of the world that he won’t tell us about and that I don’t want to know about anyways. I remember asking him once when I was much younger if what the kids at school had said were true.

“Do you sell guns, Daddy?”

“It’s complicated, honey.”

Right, ‘complicated’. It’s bullshit like that, mixed with his complete absence from our lives - certainly after Mom died, but almost completely in the last three years - that have me spiking soda with wine like some sort of total amateur.

I storm away from my sister, just in time to see the staff ushering Hudson into the room full of mourners along with the two other guys, Bryce and Logan. I barely know them - honestly, I hardly know much about Hudson really - but in that moment of them walking into my Dad’s funeral, I kind of hate them. I hate them because they were closer to my father than any of us ever were. The military sons he always wanted and never got. And in that moment, there at his funeral, their presence makes me feel like they have more of a right to be there then I do.

Of course, his being there is also just another lingering question as to what we’ve been doing the past few weeks. Since our pre-dawn ride to Bear Mountain, there’ve been other late-night calls and other adrenaline-filled car rides. We talk all night somewhere, or just go for a drive, or he shows me some wild rooftop in the city I never knew existed. It’s platonic, but only on the surface. We smile and do weird things like shake hands after he drops me off at my dorm.

But it wouldn’t take any sort of particular genius to see that below all that stuff lies something much more adult. Something powerful and aching and sensual, and barely contained lies beneath that ‘friend’ surface, and every time he calls or every time I look into his eyes as he says goodnight to me, I feel like it’s going to come rushing out of us like a burst dam.

And of course, his eyes spot me almost instantly across the crowd, and they linger, and I’m sure he can see the deep flush of red spreading across my cheeks before I hastily turn around.

“Ms. Archer,” the deep voice shakes me from where my mind is somewhere lingering on Hudson, and I turn to the older man with the thick mustache who I vaguely remember meeting before. He’s military, and even though I’ve never bothered to learn what any of those pins and symbols mean, I’m pretty sure the amount of medals on his chest the golden oak leaves on his lapel mean he’s important.

“Major Lawson, ma’am, United States Marine Corp.”

He salutes me, and I’m sort of not really sure what I should be doing with someone so formal, so I end up awkwardly curtseying. The Major’s stern-looking mouth turns up slightly in the corners as he smiles in an almost grandfatherly way at me.

“I was quite close with your father, Ms. Archer. In fact you and I have met before, though you were a little girl back then.” He breathes and turns away for a second before he looks me directly in the eye. “My deepest condolences for your loss, Reagan. William Archer was one of the finest men I ever knew.”

Great, someone else telling me how great of a guy my Dad was. It would’ve been nice to have seen that for myself when he was still around.

Instead though, I nod quietly. “Yes, he was.”

He reaches out and takes my hand, and as I look into his face, I really do see the hurt and the pain of someone who truly knew my father. “I know he wasn’t always here for you girls, but you should know that your father was so proud of the women you all grew up to be, and I know he wished he could have told you that more often.”

I realize in that moment of sadness in his eyes that while I lost the ghost of someone I should have known better, this man lost a friend.

“Your father was a great man, Reagan, and if you don’t mind my saying, the apples have not fallen far from the tree.”