Here With Me (The Archer Brothers 1)

“Well, I guess he’s earned a point.”

“Evan,” she drags my name out, her voice full of disappointment. I can’t help it. Whenever I think of them together I see red, and maybe a hint of green. No, I take that back. I see a lot of green. I’m jealous as hell that he’s spent the last six years with my girl while I’ve been fighting a losing battle in the jungle. And for what? There hasn’t been a resolution or even a debriefing on what we did over there. It hasn’t even made the news, nor have we been called in and relieved of our duties. A small voice tells me I should probably fear for my life right now. What if whoever is in charge considers me or the other guys a threat and takes us out?

I try not to linger on that thought. The last thing I want to do is alert Ryley that anything may be amiss, but it’s definitely on my mind.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ry.”

“He’s your brother.”

“He was. I don’t consider him as such anymore. If he were acting as my brother, he wouldn’t have placed his ring on your finger. He would’ve stood by you, helped you raise our son as his nephew, and been there when you needed him. Pursuing you is crossing the line. I’m also having a hard time understanding how it is he knew about my location, but had no qualms trying to make you his.”

“What if he didn’t know, Evan? Have you thought about that? You’re holding all this anger in, and he may have not known.” She pleads his case, something he should be doing, but hasn’t had the balls to come home and do. Your brother coming back from the “dead” should be enough for any commander to relieve you of your duties and let you return home. Yet, he’s not here. Maybe it’s because I called him last night and told him if he knew what was best, he’d stay gone. That could backfire though because I need him here so Ryley can dump his ass and restart a life with me.

“Obviously we don’t have the answers, babe. But what he did? That alone is enough for me to disown him.”

Ryley leans away from me, her back pressing against the steering wheel and her arms crossed over her chest. I glance around quickly, looking at the people passing by, keeping my eyes anywhere but at the scowl on her face. She pulls my chin in her direction and I can tell she’s pissed, which is fine because I’ve been in a perpetual state of pissed offness since I returned. I think I’m entitled to feel this way.

“What if I sought Nate out? Have you ever stopped to consider that it might have been me who went after him?”

I study her for a moment before my head starts to move back and forth. “Are you telling me that you’ve had the hots for my brother? That while we were together you secretly longed to be with him? Told our mother that you could do better than me?”

“What… no,” she blanches. This is exactly how I know he went after her and not vice versa.

“My point exactly, Ryley.” I push her hair behind her ear and caress her cheek. “I don’t want to fight about this. Right now, I want to go hang out with my buddies, our friends. I want to have a good time and just relax and pretend that everything is normal.”

“Okay.” She hesitates a beat before answering with a smile while removing herself from my lap. I groan as I watch her ass wiggle in her stupid little shorts before climbing out of the car after her. We walk hand in hand to the beach, both of us carrying the necessities that I had hidden away in her car.

River and Frannie are already set up and it’s comforting knowing that she and Frannie are so close. River and I hug it out before both popping open a cold one. He pats me on the shoulder and motions for me to follow him down the beach.

“How are things going?”

I shrug. “They’re all right I guess, considering the situation. Nate hasn’t come back yet, and I’m not sure if he’s staying away because he knows I’m going to beat his ass or what.”

“Man our lives are so fucked right now.” River tips back his beer and takes a long pull. We stand, facing the ocean with our feet buried in the sand. This is the perfect place to talk because the waves drown out our voices. If anyone is lurking, we’ll be hard to hear.

“I talked to Ryley’s mom today,” River starts and immediately has my attention. “She’s been digging and it’s not pretty, but she’s afraid to cause waves at the moment. She wants more evidence.”

“What has she found?”

River looks around and over his shoulder. “Our files were pulled months before we left, each one flagged. The initial mission was never logged. There’s no evidence that we went to Cuba. Everything about us being there…” he shakes his head. “Nothing. There’s nothing until they notified the families that we were dead. Our files were then transferred and that’s it.”

I look at him dumbfounded. How are all the logs not there? The extractions? “What about the kids we put back on those Hercules’?”

River shakes his head. “There’s no record. Clarke even searched for the kidnapped child and found nothing. There never was a police, FBI or CIA report. You’d think if a child of a U.S. Senator is kidnapped the damn media would be all over it, but there’s nothing. And all those children we rescued, no records.”

“Where the hell did they go?”

He shrugs and empties his beer. “I don’t know, Archer, but I don’t like it. Whatever we were told to do, we contributed to a crime.”

I stand there in disbelief, questioning my commitment to the Navy. Maybe it’s not the Navy I should be questioning, but our CO. Where the hell is he? I turn and look over my shoulder at Ryley; she’s sitting in a chair talking to Frannie.

“How’s that going?” River tips his head toward Ry.

“It’s… difficult. I have fucking blue balls as in I really think they’re starting to turn fucking blue. I feel like I’m looking at a damn skin mag every time she walks in a room and we just had a serious make-out session in the car. It’s fucking high school all over again.”

River laughs, earning a stink-eye look from me. “Is she shutting you down?”

I nod and tip back my bottle. “It’s that damn ring. If it wasn’t there I wouldn’t hesitate, but I know if she goes that far she’ll have regrets and that’ll be bad for me. I’ve already pushed my luck with her, and she’s cheated on him. At least in my eyes she has.”