The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa. Jay Crownover
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want to finish my tour; I don’t want my tour to end like this. I hate leaving my platoon hanging. I’ve been in the army for six years, Shaw; I don’t really know how to do anything else.”
“You have a whole lot of people who love you, Rome. Getting out of the army and being safe shouldn’t be what scares you.”
“I know that, but it is what it is.”
We lapsed into a minute of silence before he went back to Gabe. “What did Rule say to the ex?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I dunno. He told him to leave me alone and Gabe immediately jumped to the conclusion that the reason I dumped him was because of Rule. Everyone always thinks that everything I do is because of Rule. It gets old.”
Rome stared at me with eyes that looked so much like his brother’s. I could tell by the twist in his mouth that I was not going to like what he had to say.
“Isn’t it?”
I glared at him and poked at my plate. “No.”
“Rule convinced Remy to move to Denver as soon as they graduated so you decided to move here, too. Rule acts like an ass, making things with Mom and Dad impossible, so you decided to play peacemaker and drag him home every weekend. Rule acts and everyone has no choice but to react and we’ve all been doing it for years, you included.”
“I didn’t break up with Gabe because of Rule.” That wasn’t entirely true but I didn’t need Rome trying to pick it apart.
“Really?” His incredulous voice had me bristling. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of your relationship with Remy—”
I interjected automatically, “We were just friends, best, best friends.”
Rome went on like I hadn’t even said a word. “But I do know that when you thought no one was looking you watched Rule like a hawk. I know that every time he came stumbling home drunk, reeking of sex and cheap perfume from whatever teenage tramp he talked into letting him in her pants, you looked like he had kicked you in the gut. I know that every Sunday you looked the same way when you brought him home, so, Shaw, are you really going to try to tell me that the choices you make don’t involve Rule?”
I sighed and pushed the plate away, my appetite suddenly gone. “What do you want me to say, Rome? My life has been entangled with the Archer boys for as long as I can remember. How much truth do you really think you can handle? I mean, some of it just isn’t anybody’s business. You want to hear that from the second Remy brought me home I loved him but that I was in love with Rule? Do you want to hear that Remy knew and took that secret to his grave? Do you want to hear that I spent years and years being sad and alone with only Remy and you guys as friends, but it was okay because you guys were all I needed? Do you want to hear that every day my heart broke a little more because Rule had no idea I was alive? Do you want to hear that without your mom and dad I would have probably been forced into some boarding school and then some hallowed Ivy League college just so my parents didn’t have to deal with me? Come on, Rome, what do you really want to know?”
By the time I was done my voice was bitter and I had twisted my napkin into a little ball on my lap.
“Why did Remy keep you so close if he knew you were all tangled up by Rule? He had to know that wasn’t a match that was going to happen. Rule doesn’t do anything that takes work, and as much as I love you, little girl, you aren’t easy.”
These were the questions that I wished Remy were around to answer. I sighed. “He had his reasons, one of which was to keep me as far away from my family as he could. He didn’t want me to turn into a Stepford daughter, even though he was only partly successful. Sometimes I still don’t feel I can get out from under all their expectations.”
He tapped his fingers on the table. “So you’ve been in love with my brother since you were fourteen?”
I snorted. “Pretty much, and everyone else in the world seems to know it but him.” I tried really hard to keep the memories from Saturday night at bay.
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“Uh … you’ve met your brother, right? Mr. I’ll Bang Anything with Big Boobs and a Negative IQ? Mr. I’ll Do What I Want When I Want? Rule doesn’t need to know because it won’t change anything.”
Rome shrugged his good shoulder and winked at the waitress as she dropped off our bill. “I don’t know, maybe it would be good for him to know. He’s lived his life as a substitute for Remy for so long, maybe it would wake him up to know someone as good as you, as kind and loving as you, has feelings for him and has for a long time. I know deep down he’s a good guy, he just buries it under so much bullshit it can be hard to find.”
My plan was to avoid Rule until hell froze over. I didn’t regret sleeping with him; in fact, it had lived up to every expectation I had ever had of sex and, in all truthfulness, my ideas of sex with him. There wasn’t any other person I could have imagined giving my virginity to. While I wish I had been sober and that it had been based more on emotion than physical attraction, the deed itself had been amazing and worth any twinge of remorse I had. I knew my relationship with Rule would never be the same and I had to be okay with that. I refused to be the girl who pined after him, who stalked him and called him a hundred times a day. I decided the morning after it was all said and done that I was lucky it had been as nice as it was and if that was all I was ever going to get from Rule it was going to be enough.
“No, his knowing wouldn’t change anything; it would just make me feel worse. We both know I’m not his type and I’ve dealt with enough rejection from people who are supposed to love me to last a lifetime. Rule and I can just go on being uneasy companions when we’re forced to spend time together and that’ll just have to be how it is.” Rome didn’t need to know that things were bound to be even more strained and awkward between us now.
“Dinner with your dad was that bad this year?”
“He got married again; she’s twenty-five.” I rolled my eyes. “She spent the entire dinner telling me why I should rush the sorority she was in last year before she graduated. Dad spent the whole dinner trying to tell me that I needed to give Gabe another chance. He wrote me out a check for a grand after implying he would double it if I took Gabe back, so it was more like extortion and torture than dinner.”
He chuckled without humor. “No word from your mom?”
“No.”
“I don’t know how someone as softhearted as you came from those two.”
“Me, either. I’m just glad I only have to deal with them in limited doses anymore. Being a constant disappointment is exhausting.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “My little brother probably knows a little bit about that.”
“Clever.”
“I try.”
“What happens at birthday dinner stays at birthday dinner—right, Rome?”
“I’m not going to say anything. If he hasn’t noticed it after all this time it’s not my job to hit him over the head with it, but I do think there is a good chance the two of you might be really good for each other. Opposites attract and all that.”
The problem with that was I didn’t think Rule and I were really all that opposite. I mean, yes, he had ink from the top of his Mohawked head to his booted toes, and he was all metal barbells where I was pearls and antique cameos, but we were both people trying to live beyond the boundaries everyone else seemed to want to set for us. We both had deep, painful issues with our parents and we both loved the other Archer boys beyond measure. We both desperately wanted to be seen for the value we had without other people’s expectations of what we should or shouldn’t be doing, and after Saturday, I now knew we both wanted sex to be just a little bit rough and just a little bit dirty. Yeah, not as opposite as one would think at first glance.
“I’ve been trying to keep Rule from living