can ask me anything.” In truth, he needed it. He needed someone besides Shen to know, even if it wasn’t everything.
“Are you dicking him around? I don’t want to think that Bryce hired you to humiliate him or something, because it seems like you really hate him.”
“I do,” Archer said, letting all his frustration out with those two small words. “He had no right to do what he did.”
Corinne was quiet a long while before she spoke again. “I believe you. I just don’t understand why you didn’t say anything.”
Archer swallowed thickly. “It’s complicated. I…my life was…I had been in Paris for so long. Then Rex asked me to come home for a while, and I didn’t expect to meet Julian. I certainly didn’t expect to like him.”
“But you do,” she pressed.
He nodded, then bowed his head and stared at his hands which were starting to ache from how hard he had them squeezed into fists. “So much. You probably know that he and I just met.”
“Katerina said you haven’t been back that long,” Corinne said.
Archer closed his eyes. “I wasn’t going to come back at all. I have so much work, and Rex knows it. He knows he couldn’t keep me for long.”
“Archer.”
He looked up, because although it had only been a few days, it felt like years since he’d heard his name spoken aloud, and it soothed something inside of him. “Yeah. Yes.”
She laughed and hit the gas a little harder, speeding down the A1A in the small pocket where there was no traffic. “You have to tell him. You know that, right? I mean, I wouldn’t have known, but my family has money. They’re lawyers, they’ve been involved in politics for years. One of them is going to recognize you. You look like your brother.”
Archer flushed hotly. He had never seen it, but he’d heard it enough times growing up. But it was hard to see himself in someone as rugged and handsome as his brother was. Rex had taken all of the social charm, all of the poise, and left Archer with a pretty face and no real idea what to do with it.
“I should probably go. I don’t want to cause a bigger scene.”
Corinne bit the inside of her cheek, pulling it concave. “Are you really that much of a coward?”
He bristled. “It’s not about that. Jesus, I’m…” He let out a frustrated groan and scrubbed both hands down his face. “It wasn’t supposed to be complicated. I didn’t realize how rich you people were. How…how connected. I forgot how involved everything was now that Rex is the goddamn governor.” He let out a small string of French swears which made her laugh quietly.
“I see why he likes you.”
“Because I’m a mess?” Archer shot back.
She laughed again, softer this time, shaking her head which dislodged a few curls from the bun she had twisted at the back of her head. “You’re definitely his type. And I say that as someone who has watched my brother navigate a world full of men who are anything but.” She stopped, then pulled over into a pharmacy parking lot and put the car in park. After a beat, she turned to him, her hands clenched into fists. “Are you planning on leaving him?”
Archer blinked at her. “I…don’t know what’s going to happen after this. It wasn’t meant to be serious.”
“Well, it is. Whether you wanted it or not, I know the look in his eyes. I’ve seen it before—and it was never with Bryce.”
“He was in love?”
“Not with a person—with the idea of someone accepting him as he is. No one has ever stood up for him the way you do—and I mean, I get it. You don’t have anything to lose here. We aren’t your people.”
It wasn’t meant to be cruel—it was nothing more than simple honesty, but it stung because Archer had let himself get a little bit comfortable with Julian’s hesitant affection, and Fredric’s easy acceptance. “You aren’t.”
“We could be, though. At least, the ones who matter.”
He lifted a brow at her. “You mean the people who have let Julian suffer? Who never say anything, who stand there and allow your mother to degrade him? Or who greet him with vicious mockery because everyone else is doing it?”
She flinched, hard. Her head pulled back and her eyes fluttered shut, and he didn’t know if she was going to admit her own part in Julian’s torment—or if she’d lash out and then blow his cover. “I love