“I see.”

“No, you don’t. All you see is that Nate is home and we’re engaged. You see me, right now, but you don’t see me the way I need you to.” Ryley angles her body so she’s facing me, tears rolling down her face. “For years I battled through the pain of losing you and so did Nate. I didn’t set out to be with him, and he knows that. You were dead. We buried you, and yes there was a mistake, but we can’t erase the damage that has been done. We have to move forward and you have to have patience with both me and EJ.”

Ryley wipes angrily at her cheeks, smearing her tears. “And you,” she says, facing Nate. “If you knew your brother was alive, I’ll never forgive you. If this was some ploy or some act to be with me –”

“Ryley, why would you think that?” Nate’s voice is pleading, and I realize it’s probably how mine sounded too.

“I don’t know, but the thoughts are there, Nate. How could no one know they were alive? How could you have identified his body?”

Nate takes a deep breath. “Your face was mangled.” He looks at me as he says this. “Your arms were missing, so there weren’t any tattoos and I couldn’t match our birthmarks. Believe me that’s the first thing I looked for. They told me that a bomb had gone off and they had recovered as much of you as possible. They showed me your dog tags and a picture of Ryley from high school, that’s all there was. I asked for a DNA test and they swabbed my cheek right there. A few days later it came back as a match.”

“Did you ever think it was your own DNA?” I ask.

“No, not until you walked through the door. I trusted them. Why wouldn’t I?”

“We all trusted them,” I correct him as I pull my tags out from under my shirt. “But that doesn’t excuse you from taking over my life.”

I DIDN’T KNOW.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know.

I repeat the same three words over and over again in my head while Evan blatantly glares at me. I can’t keep my eyes fixed on him, even though the warrior in me is telling me not to break eye contact. My eyes shift from him to Ryley and back again, trying to piece together what‘s been going on since I left, or since Evan returned from the dead.

“Daddy, are you coming?”

Evan turns sharply at the sound of EJ calling for me. His jaw tightens. His fists are clenched. I can’t blame him, but I’m not correcting EJ and neither has Ryley. Evan may be his biological father, but I’m his dad. I’ve raised him since he was born. I’ve been there through every illness, bump, scrape and I’ve earned the right to be bearer of the title. But as I look at my brother and my fiancée standing in front me, together, I’m not sure that’ll be enough.

“I’ll be up in a minute, buddy,” my voice cracks as I call up to EJ. He’s the one who is going to suffer the most. The adults can push everything under the rug and move on, but EJ is too little to understand. He’s not going to be able to grasp the difference between Evan and myself.

And I refuse to tell EJ I’m not his dad.

“Are you going to answer me, or just stand there?” Evan moves to sit down, crossing his leg over his knee like him being here is no big deal, when it in fact, it’s monumental. I close my eyes tightly and pray that I’m having an out of body experience. Maybe I was exposed to something and it’s causing hallucinations because by all accounts Evan Archer should not be sitting on my couch, in my house. The simplest answer to all of this is that he’s an imposter and is infiltrating my family. My brother is dead, buried six feet under about fifteen miles from here. I know because I was just there talking to him.

I was here the day his body came off the plane. I identified him. I cried for him and for the loss my family was suffering. I held his fiancée in my arms so she wouldn’t crumble to the ground from devastation at his funeral service. None of this makes sense, yet here sits a man who looks and speaks like my brother, only he can’t be because my brother would never let me claim his son as my own.

I have two of Evan’s most prized possessions and if the man before me actually is my brother, I just became public enemy number one.

EJ comes thundering down the stairs, shouting for me to come and join him. Evan’s eyes are trained on him, and mine are on Evan. There’s no handbook on

how to handle this situation. Evan and I have never trained for anything like this. It’s unchartered territory, and I’m nervous. EJ passes by Ryley, who hasn’t moved an inch since Evan sat down. I’ve noticed in the brief time they’ve been home that she watches him like a hawk. What I can’t determine is if she’s waiting for him to do something dangerous, or if she wants to crawl in his lap and tell him it’s going to be okay. Never mind the fact that she still wears my ring on her finger, not his.

As soon as I sit down, EJ hops into my lap. He’s blocking my view of Evan, and that gives me a little reprieve from the death glare.

“Nate, are you hungry?” Her voice is meek, unsure and sounding nothing like the Ryley she was when I left. I don’t even want to know how many nights she’s cried herself to sleep. In my mind, the only image I want to have of her sleeping while I was gone is by herself. But I know Evan well enough to know that he hasn’t left her alone.

“I am, but I can make something.”

She shakes her head. Her lower lip quivers as she pulls it into her mouth. EJ is restless on my lap and the tension in the air is so thick that it’s suffocating. EJ taps me on the face, taking my attention away from Ryley.

“Did you hear’d me?”

Evan mutters something as he stands up and passes by, following Ryley into the kitchen. The eighteen year old in me wants to get up and go be the third wheel, much like I was in high school, but my son needs my attention.

“I’m sorry, buddy. Tell me again.”

EJ prattles on about everything he’s done while I’ve been gone, but I’m only picking up a few tidbits of information. Each time I hear “Eban” my train of thought diverts. I’m not being fair to my son right now and I hate that. Each and every time I’ve returned from deployment he has been given my utmost attention. He’s curious about what I do and loves going to base with me. The guys love having him around too.

Tags: Heidi McLaughlin The Archer Brothers Romance
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