The Shepherd (The Game 6)

I couldn’t fucking believe what I was hearing.

“Listen,” he pleaded with me. “I knew it was a bad idea. When you’re planning on breaking up with someone, you don’t go along to meet a childhood friend. But he can be convincing, and I thought… I don’t know. I thought maybe a weekend away in some postcard-worthy little town could turn things around. I know—bloody stupid. But when the last two years of your relationship have been long-distance, it’s easy to think time together can fix things.”

I eyed him sharply, stuck on the “two years” part. “How long have you been together?”

“Four years,” he admitted. Four goddamn years. That wasn’t some unsteady future and a handful of dates. Four years was serious. “It’s been a lot of going back and forth. He’s been working overseas, I’ve had my studies, he’s been in New York, me in Pittsburgh, me in London, him in Rome… It was never going to work out. For several reasons.”

That’d been Archie’s opinion. Angelo had clearly thought otherwise, because as he’d angrily shouted at me the next day, he’d wanted to surprise me; he’d wanted me to meet the guy he hoped to spend the rest of his life with.

I still couldn’t believe Archie was standing right in front of me. What the hell did he think was going to happen? The night we’d met, he’d been on the receiving end of similar texts as me. He’d arrived early on a flight from Pittsburgh, and he’d been frustrated when I’d ended up in line after him at the shooting gallery. He’d had a fight with Angelo, I’d learned afterward. And then, in between having dinner with me, flirting with me, making out like teenagers with me, discussing dates with me, he’d received updates on Angelo’s missing luggage and all that. Archie knew, when he was with me, that he was gonna have breakfast the morning after with his boyfriend and his childhood friend.

“You should leave, Archie.”

He looked up from the ground, hurt slashing through in his expression. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”

“Then why the fuck did you come?” I threw out my arms, suddenly pissed. Because screw him. He had no right to waltz right back in and stir the pot for the fuck of it. No matter how deeply we’d connected that day five years ago, he’d cheated on Angelo and lied to me.

“Because I had to try,” he said, his voice strained. His eyes glistened too.

“Try what?”

“I—” He stopped short. Either he didn’t know how to phrase himself, or he was chickening out. But then he burst out in frustration. “I haven’t been the same since we met, Greer. Okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? It’s been five bloody years, and I haven’t been able to let go. Even now, I still get mortified and ashamed when I think of how I hurt you. You—not Angelo. Four years with him and one day with you. I know it makes me a rat bastard, but there it is. You changed everything. You changed the game, you changed the rules. You changed me.”

I clenched my jaw and directed the next surge of anger at myself, because I was the asshole whose heart started beating faster with a sensation way warmer and more fervent than I deserved. This wasn’t the time to soak up the feeling of being special to someone. For crying out loud.

“Look, I…I stopped by here a couple weeks ago.” He retrieved an envelope from his back pocket and smoothed it out. “It was during the day, and Nathan—I don’t know if you know him. He was on the porch, and he told me it was members only. That, if I wanted to talk to someone specific, I’d have to go through the website. He helped me start an account, and we talked a little online the other day.” He extended the envelope to me. “He said he doesn’t have any invites left to make me a member, but he was kind enough to extend a plus-one invitation to the party tonight.”

I accepted the letter and studied him while he kept his gaze downcast.

He was in pain.

“I could’ve visited you at work,” he said quietly. “I could’ve shown up on your doorstep, but I wanted it to be here. I’d already joined my first kink community when I found your Facebook account and saw that you—and a bunch of your friends—had liked a page called Mclean House. And it sealed the deal for me. I had to see you again. I had to see you in this environment.”

He took a step back again, only in the other direction. As if he wasn’t returning inside through the patio. As if he was going to walk along the side of the house to get to the front instead, maybe because he was leaving.