Leveled Page 13

  Hands grabbed my shoulders from the back and I almost turned around swinging. I knew it was going to be Orlando and as much as I wanted to deck him I wanted to love him even more, which meant I could never hurt him.

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now.” I had my keys to the truck in my hand and stared at him numbly when he reached out and snatched them out of my grip.

  “I know, but you need to let me explain some things to you, Dom. I fucked up.”

  I bit out a laugh and watched the way his eyebrows snapped down over his eyes. “Obviously, but don’t worry, Lando, our ending won’t be disastrous … it’ll just be an end.” I was so pissed I could hardly see straight let alone the remorse and sorrow that lined every inch of his handsome face.

  “Do you really think that if I was going to rekindle something with an old flame that I would be cruel enough to flaunt that in your face on your special day, Dom? Do you really think that little of me? Haven’t I spent these last few months telling you how much I don’t want you to hurt or be hurt?”

  There was so much sadness in his tone that it smothered some of the flames of rage that were licking across my skin. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You said he wasn’t around anymore and you also told me he was everything at one point in your life. What did you expect my reaction to be, Lando? Even it was just a friendly hug, that’s too much when you are obviously still hung up on the guy. I never had a shot.”

  He sighed and put my keys into his pocket. He combed both of his hands through his hair and then reached out to put them on my shoulders like he was holding me in place in case I decided I wanted to run again.

  “That’s not him, Dom. It’s not the same guy.” I was opening my mouth to snap that I had two functioning eyes in my face when he shook his head. “Twins. They were twins.”

  Were? I relaxed my stance a little and crossed my arms over my chest. We just stared at each other for a long moment until Lando sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Remy and Rule Archer. Rule, the guy inside, is the only surviving twin, Dom. Remy got in a car accident several years ago and was killed instantly. For a long time I thought it was all my fault.”

  I was trying to follow, but I still felt like I was missing big chunks of the picture. “Why didn’t you just tell me that when I asked you about the picture? You deliberately let me believe it was a relationship that just ran its course and ended badly.”

  He let go of my shoulders and took a few steps away so that he could pace back and forth in front of me. “Because I never really dealt with Remy dying, Dom. I loved him … hard. He was my first everything and I was head over heels. I wanted forever and I only got a couple of years. When he died it broke something inside of me and I was never really interested in fixing it. I was going through the motions, thought I was doing things right, and then you show up and show me I’m doing everything wrong.” He cracked out a bitter laugh and turned to look at me with his hands on his hips. “I told you when we first met that the body has its limits and you need to listen to them. Well, so does the heart and I thought mine had reached it and then there you are and all of sudden everything seems limitless. It was scary, Dom. It is scary. I lost someone I loved and in that I lost myself, too. I didn’t even realize it until I started falling in love with you.”

  They were pretty words and I wanted to believe them, and the man giving them to me, but I was still unsure and confused. “Why did you think his accident was your fault?” I understood how powerful a motivator guilt could be and was looking for a way inside his reasoning. I had watched it get really close to taking Royal down in its clutches but luckily she was a fighter and had fought back until Asa showed up to pull her all the way free. Guilt would go a long way in explaining why he was still so hung up on the man who had been his first love.

  “Because we fought the night he died. We had been fighting a lot after we moved in together. It was supposed to be a huge step forward but ended up being a hundred steps back.”

  He scraped a hand over his face and I could see sadness and memories that went along with a light in his eyes. They were so pale they almost looked silver as he continued to look at me.

  “Remy didn’t tell anyone he was gay, not his brothers, not his parents, no one knew. He moved in with me and used his best friend, a gorgeous girl with a wonderful soul, as a smoke screen. He let everyone he loved think she was his girlfriend and that we were just roommates. We were together for years, Dom. I never met his family, he never met mine and didn’t want to. At first I dealt with it because I loved him and I thought things would change. I convinced myself that love, like we had, was obvious and impossible to hide and keep in the shadows. I was wrong.”

  A noise escaped my throat even though I was trying my best to be impassive and listen to his story with my head and not my heart. But he was breaking, shattering right in front of me, and that stabbed right into my heart. He was shaking and it had nothing to do with the chill in the air and I could tell the iciness in his stare was going to melt soon and that tears would follow. I had seen many parts of Orlando since we started, whatever it was we had started, but this was him showing me his soul. Uncovered, unprotected and out from behind the shield of fear he normally kept it behind. It was beautiful but also hard to look at.

  “On the night he died it had been a bad day. I was getting ready to graduate from school and was looking at different teams I could intern with. I told him maybe it was a good idea to leave Denver, that maybe we should leave and go somewhere that no one knew us so we could be free to be who were. He freaked out and told me he would never leave his family, he would never leave Rule or Shaw.”

  The first tear fell but before I could stop myself, I leaned up on my tiptoes and kissed it off his cheek. His hand curled around the back of my head to hold me in place as he rubbed the smooth surface against the dark bristle that decorated my cheek.

  “I told Remy that it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Shaw was in love with Rule and that he was breaking her heart by using her to fool his family and called him out for doing it on purpose. Everyone loved Remy. He was the golden child in the Archer family and I knew they would accept him regardless of who he loved, but he refused to see it. He told me I could move wherever I wanted, but he was staying put. I asked him why he didn’t love me enough to be honest about who he was, who we were together.” Lando’s voice broke and caught in my ear and even though I was still mad at him I moved to put my arms around his waist so I could hold him while he got the rest of the heartbreaking tale out.

  “He told me he loved me as much as he could, but he loved his family more so I had to take what he offered or leave it. God, Dom, I wanted to marry him, I wanted to have kids with him … do you know what his words did to me? Rule called in the middle of the argument and asked Rem for a ride. They were always dropping things and running off because the other needed something, so it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but I was trying to fight for our future and he was more concerned about Rule.”

  No, I didn’t know how that must have felt for him, but I could imagine it felt a lot like what had coursed through me when I saw him wrapped up in the other twin’s arms. It felt like the whole world was ending and like you would never feel anything good again because of it. Whoever coined the phrase “Love hurts” nailed it. It had the ability to hurt worse than taking a bullet and falling off of a goddamn building to the concrete below.

  “I told him that even if he couldn’t love me like that, I loved myself enough to know I deserved better than to be a secret, and I told him Shaw deserved more than being his cover-up. I told him if he left, then I didn’t want to see him again.”

  He was crying for real now. I could feel the liquid slip between where our faces were pressed together and all I could do was tighten my arms around his lean waist and hold on until the end.

  “He told me he always thought I deserved better and left to go get Rule. I never saw him again and when Shaw called to tell me that he was dead I coul
dn’t even go to the hospital or anything because his family had no idea who I was and I didn’t want to out him after the fact, so I fell apart and no one was there to help pick up the pieces because I’d allowed myself to live a lie.”

  He pulled back and used the back of his hand to scrape at his face. He was paler than normal and his eyes looked like the center of a blizzard, they were so cold and remote.

  “I went to his funeral alone. I grieved for him in all the worst ways possible because I felt like I pushed him out the door, like I wasn’t good enough to make him stay. I was mad at myself, mad at him for everything, and even when I realized the only person suffering for my actions was me and I stopped trying to punish myself, I still didn’t move on. I still have a hard time admitting he’s gone and when I see Rule sometimes, for just a second, I think it’s all been a big cosmic joke. But he is gone, there is no going back. It’s hard to give so much of yourself to someone and then for them to tell you’re lacking. It’s hard not to be enough for someone who you love more than anything. It’s hard not to be more than fear.” He sighed and shook his head. “I told you I fucked up and I mean it. I handled this thing between us wrong from the get-go, Dom, and my only excuse is I wasn’t ready for you. I thought I was taking a risk by getting involved, but I lied. I kept so much from you, never tried to explain why getting in so deep with you terrified me. You never had all the information you needed to understand why I am the way I am and that isn’t fair.”

  I shifted on my feet as I tried to decide what the best course of action was now. I mean the guy had just poured his heart out on the cracked pavement and I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why he had been so guarded with me up to this point. Everyone has baggage and he obviously had never unpacked and was still living out of his. It was my turn to sigh and put my hands on my hips.

  “I think—” I was going to say that I thought the best idea would be for us to maybe take a few weeks and decide what we really wanted. I was going back to work and even though I cared a lot about him and really did want to be with him, I wasn’t ready to give that up. It wasn’t that he wasn’t enough or that my job meant more; now they were equally important to me. But I still didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t a cop and I wasn’t ready to find out the answer to that just yet.

  Before the words left my tongue, he was right up against me so that we were chest to chest. He put his hands on either side of my face and dropped his head until our foreheads were touching and then he rubbed the tip of his nose against mine.

  “Dom.”

  I blew out a breath and it made his lips twitch where they were a centimeter away from mine. “Lando?”

  “You are more than the fear. You are more than any kind of stupid excuse I can come up with to keep myself from being absolutely head over heels for you. I’ll worry about you every time you walk out the door regardless if you are going to work or to the grocery store because I am in love with you. I know it’s going to take some work, but I have it on good authority that means it will be worth it because we earned it.”

  I’d never had anyone besides my family and Royal say those words to me before and I was stunned that they had the power to level a grown man. I put my hands around his wrists and let his hammering pulse sooth me as I closed my eyes.

  “I love you too, Orlando, and I will never hide that from anyone.”

  His eyebrows twitched and a tiny grin pulled at his mouth. “Yeah?”

  I nodded, which made our foreheads bump into one another. “Yeah, and I’m sorry about Remy and overreacting in there. It felt like a sucker punch. It’s been a shit day all around.”

  He winced and then leaned forwards so he could give me the lightest of kisses and pulled back. “I’m sorry for all of it. I should’ve been there for you today. I should’ve been there for you all along instead of letting you go it alone. If it makes you feel any better, your little sister threatened to unman me if I break your heart and I don’t think it was an idle threat.”

  I chuckled and let him put his arm around my shoulders and guide me back towards the bar.

  “Ari is a handful but mostly harmless.” I cut him a look and reached out to wrap my arm around his waist and tugged him closer to me. “My family will love you because I love you. We just need to clear a few things up.”

  Again those light eyes became glinty with moisture. “Yeah?” this time when he asked it, I could hear all the questions he was scared to ask in it.

  “Yeah, Lando.” My response had all the answers in that one word. No hiding and no fear.

  We weren’t about a beginning, middle or end because now that he was here with me without the fear and regret he had used as a barrier, we were endless and our hearts were indeed limitless when it came to the love we had for one another.

  Chapter 14

  Lando

  4 weeks later …

  My new normal was better than my old normal had ever been.

  There was still an adjustment here and there and the fear that something was going to happen to Dom while at he was work never really went away, but I trusted him to take care of himself as best he could and I trusted him to take care of the love we had between us by making smart choices and being extra careful. Still there was a night he was late coming over and when he showed up, he had a vicious-looking black eye, a cut on his cheek and a gash that was taped shut on his forehead. He brushed it off as a tussle with a suspect that got out of hand but the wounds, as superficial as they were, still sent me into full-on flight mode and I’d had a momentary freak-out, which meant I shut down and pulled away from him … well, I tried to. Because we were in this together, Dom came after me, bugged me, pulled at me until I came out of my safe place behind the fear and he refused to let me wallow in the mire of worry and doubt.

  I’d managed to smooth things over with his family and he was right, they loved me because he loved me, even if Ari did watch me with eagle eyes to make sure I watched my step with her brother. They were a tight-knit unit and there were no words to describe how warm and right it felt to be embraced by the people that loved the same man I did. I in turn took Dom home to my folks and spent the entire visit giving my mother warning looks as she kept dropping hints about a future wedding and the possibility of grandchildren. Dom took it all in his stride and with good humor. When he mentioned his sisters, I could see the wheels spin in my mom’s head as she told him to bring them by for a visit over the holidays. I knew instantly that she was thinking that Austin was still single and if this particular Voss could settle down one of her boys, maybe another Voss could work miracles and give her other boy a reason to return home. With her fiery personality and dark good looks, Ari was right up my younger brother’s alley, but I didn’t tell Dom that because he was fiercely protective of his siblings and I doubted he wanted my playboy of a brother around either of the girls.

  Dom was also making an effort to get to know the new people in Royal’s life and had gone out of his way to make peace with Asa. The cop and the reformed criminal would never be best friends, but he had stopped glaring at the golden-haired southerner every time he walked into the room. I had also asked him to go with me to say a proper good-bye to Remy and felt my heart fill up with even more love for him when he readily agreed.

  On a cold and snowy day, Dom and I drove to the small cemetery in the mountains where the first man I loved was laid to rest. I never got to grieve properly, never had the chance to share the pain of saying good-bye with the people who understood just how deeply the loss went, so I asked Rule and Shaw to meet us there as well as Rome and Cora. The six of us gathered around the snow-dusted grave and bid farewell to the young man who had in some way or another had a hand in bringing us all together. I had lost a boyfriend when he passed, but gained so many experiences and a plethora of amazing people because of him. I considered all of them Remy’s last gift to me. His way of showing me that even though he couldn’t love me the way I needed, the way I deserved, he had loved me in his own way.


  Dom put his arm around me when I started to tear up as Rule bent down and tapped his knuckles on the top of the tombstone and rasped out, “Your boy done good, Rem. We all did pretty damn good and it’s a fucking shame you aren’t here to see it. We miss you.”

  There was some sniffling from the girls as Rome and Dom cleared their throats, which was pretty much the male equivalent of sniffling and that made me smile. It was the good-bye I needed all along and the good-bye Remy deserved from me. I was getting ready to tell the Archer boys and their woman how much I appreciated them doing this for me when Cora suddenly let out a little shriek that sounded extra sharp in the quiet of the cemetery. Rome looked down at her with a frown that made his scarred face look even fiercer than it normally did.

  “What’s wrong?” The tiny blonde put a hand on her very big belly and blinked wide eyes up at the giant former soldier.

  “Umm … don’t panic but I think we need to go … now!” She was always a bossy little thing but in this circumstance everyone jumped to do her bidding.

  A moment that was somber and heavy was suddenly filled with giddy excitement and chaotic joy. It was almost like there was some divine intervention, some guiding hand that decided the time to be sad was over, life was moving on, families were growing and everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be. Remy might not be there in the flesh to witness it but there was something in the air, a little tingle at the back of my neck that reminded me those that we loved lived on in all of us.

  It was a rush back down the mountain to get Cora to the hospital before the newest Archer made his appearance, and Zowen Phillip Archer turned out to be as much a tiny replica of his big, badass father as any newborn could be. Barely hours later and everyone was happy and safe, resting comfortably and well loved.

  Soon after the visit Dom and I settled into each other’s lives with very little hitch or hiccups. There were still new things about one another that we were discovering now that the distance and hesitation I had built between us was gone, but for the most part the time we spent together felt fated, it felt comfortable and well-worn. When we were together it was like love wrapped around us in a cozy blanket and for all his talk about working for it and appreciating the results of conquering something that was hard, being in love with each other was easy and really no struggle at all.