It had been three years. Three lonely, three empty, three sorrow filled years since the Archer brothers went from a trifecta to a duo. I was close to Rome, he was awesome and had always been my role model when it came to being a badass, but Remy was my other half, both figuratively and literally. He was my identical twin, the light to my dark, the easy to my hard, the joy to my angst, the perfect to my oh so totally f**ked up and without him I was only half the person I would ever be. It had been three years since I had called him in the middle of the night to come pick me up from some lame ass party because I was too drunk to drive. It had been three years since he had left the apartment we shared to come get me with zero questions asked because that’s just what he did. It had been three years since he had lost control of his car on a rainy and slick I-25 and slammed into the back of a semi-truck going well over eighty. It had been three years since we had put my twin in the ground and my mother had looked at me with tears in her eyes and stated point blank, “It should have been you,” as they lowered Remy into the ground. It had been three years and his name alone was enough to drop me to my knees, especially coming from the one person in the world Remy had loved as much as he loved me.
Remy was everything I wasn’t, clean cut, well dressed, interested in education and building a secure future and the only person on the planet that was good enough and classy enough to match all the magnificence that he possessed it was Shaw Landon. The two of them had been inseparable since the first time he brought her home when she was thirteen and trying to escape the fortress of the Landon compound. He insisted they were just friends, that he loved Shaw like a sister, that he just wanted to protect her from her awful, sterile family but the way he was with her was full of reverence and care. I knew he loved her and since Remy could do no wrong Shaw had quickly become an honorary member of my family and as much as it galled me she was the only one that really, truly understood the depth of my pain when it came to losing him.
I had to take a few extra minutes to get my feet back under me so I sucked back the rest of the coffee and shoved open the door. I wasn’t surprised to see a tall figure coming around the SUV as I labored out of the sports car. My brother was an inch or so taller than me and built more along the lines of a warrior. His dark brown hair was buzzed in a typical military cut and his pale blue eyes, the same exact icy shade as mine looked tired as he forced a smile at me. I let out a whistle because his left arm was in a cast and sling, he had a walking boot on one foot and there was a nasty line of black stiches running through one of his eyebrows and across the top of his forehead. The weed whacker that had attacked my hair had clearly gotten a good shot at my big bro too.
“Looking good solider.”
He pulled me to him in a one armed hug and I winced for him when I felt the taped up side of his body clearly indicating some busted or bruised ribs. “I look about as good as I feel. You look like a clown getting out of that car.”
“I look like a clown no matter what when I’m around that girl.” He barked out a laugh and rubbed a rough hand through my spiky hair.
“You and Shaw are still acting like mortal enemies?”
“More like uneasy acquaintances, she’s just as prissy and judgmental as always. Why didn’t you call or email me that you were hurt? I had to hear it from her on the way over.”
He swore as we started to slowly start and make our way into the house. It upset me to see how deliberate he was moving and I wondered if there was more serious damage done than the visible marks I could see.
“I was unconscious after the Hummer flipped. We went over an IED and it was bad. I was in the hospital for a week with a scrambled noggin and when I woke up they had to do surgery on my shoulder so I was drugged up. I called mom and figured she would let you know what the deal was, but I heard that as usual you were unavailable when she called.”
I shrugged a shoulder and reached out a hand to steady him as he faltered a little on the stairs to the front door. “I’m busy.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Not too stubborn, I’m here aren’t I and I didn’t even know you were home until like fifteen minutes ago.”
“The only reason you’re here is because that little girl in there is bound and determined to keep this family together regardless if we’re her own or not. You go in there and play nice otherwise I’ll kick your ass broken arm and all.”
I muttered a few choice words and followed my battered sibling into the house. Sundays really were just my least favorite day.
Chapter 2
Shaw
I closed the bathroom door with a soft click and turned the lock. I collapsed against the skin and ran shaking hands over my face. It was getting harder and harder each and every Sunday to be Rule’s chaperone to these family gatherings, I already felt like I was getting an ulcer and if I had to walk in on him and one of his disgusting bar bimbos again I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of his apartment without committing homicide. I turned around to splash some cold water on my face and lifted the heavy fall of blond hair off my neck. I needed to pull it together because the last thing I wanted was for Margot or Dale to notice something was off and even drugged up and in pain Rome was one of the most observant people I had ever met. He didn’t miss a thing when it came to either of his younger brothers and me by association since I was technically lumped into the category of surrogate little sister.
It was getting harder and harder to spend time around Rule and not just because looking at him reminded me of everything that I no longer had which was the problem Margot and Dale struggled with, not that the insensitive ass had any empathy for his parents. My struggle came with the fact that Rule was complicated, he was brash, mouthy, careless, thoughtless, and often cranky and generally and insufferable pain in the ass but when he chose to be he was also charming and funny, artistically brilliant and more often than not the most interesting person in the room and I had been head over heels in love with both sides of him since I was thirteen years old. Of course I had loved Remy, loved him like a brother, like the best friend and consummate protector he had been but I loved Rule like it was my mission in life, like it was inevitable and no matter how many times I was shown what an awful idea it was, what a bad match we were, what a callous ass**le he could be, I couldn’t shake it so each and every time I had to have the fact that he didn’t even think of me as more than a car pool driver shoved in my face it tore a little bit more of my battered heart apart.