Authors: Georgia Cates
Tags: #romance, #adult contemporary, #m leighton, #samantha young, #georgia cates, #down to you, #on dublin street, #beauty from pain, #beauty series, #up to me
Beauty from Pain (45 page)
head and set me away from him. “I don’t know why you’re
always defending that boy; he’s got a hot temper and a wild streak
a mile long. You’re a smart, beautiful girl; you have to know
how Rule’s story ends.”
“I don’t believe in
skipping ahead, Dale. I read the book all the way
through. Tell Margot to give me a call when she calms down,
but I’m serious about Sundays. Until it’s an actual family
gathering, until Rule stops being vilified for just being who he is
and not who you want him to be, I’m not coming. This just
hurts too much.”
“Fair enough little girl,
but if you need anything you know we’re just a phone call
away.”
“I know.”
”You know he wouldn’t
appreciate you falling on the sword for him.”
“Maybe not Dale, but it’s
my sword to fall on and even if nobody, including Rule himself, can
see it, he’s worth it. I think so and I know Remy always
thought so. You might want to try and remember that next time he
shows up with pink hair.”
driveway and paused when I saw the brothers with their heads bent
close together. Rule looked mad and Rome looked sad, it was
heartbreaking and impressive all at the same time. Rule saw
me first and pulled away. They said something to one another
in low tones and bumped fists. Rome pulled Rule into a one
armed hug and made his way over to me. I received the same
treatment with the addition of a kiss on the cheek.
“I’m gonna put as many
fires out here as I can over the next week or so and then make my
way to the city. I’ll hit you up when I can.”
“Try and convince your mom
to get some help Rome, please.”
“I love you, little girl.
You try and keep that jackass out of trouble for me.”
his cheek in return. “I always do.”
“I didn’t know it was this
bad, Shaw. I’ve missed so much by being away.”
“Families are like
anything else, they take work, patience and people willing to make
it work. I’m so very glad you came home, Rome.”
another hug and tossed my keys at Rule. “I have a headache.
Can you drive back to the city?”
I normally never let him
anywhere near my car, he had a lead foot and no regard for other
drivers on the road, but I wasn’t going to make it. I felt
the headache growing into a migraine and all I wanted to do was
close my eyes, crawl into a soft bed, and pull the covers over my
head. I got into the passenger seat and curled into a
ball.
Rule didn’t say anything
as he turned the ignition on and headed towards home. He left
the radio off and didn’t even try and bother with forced
pleasantries. I knew he wouldn’t apologize for the scene; he
never did, so I didn’t even bring it up. I was drifting in
and out of a little nap when Gabe’s ringtone started to trill from
my pocket. I swore, which was something I rarely did, and
turned the stupid thing off. By now my stomach was in knots
and I was seeing spots in front of my eyes.
“He calls you now more
than when you were dating.” Rule’s voice was low and I
wondered if he had any idea how much my head was
hurting.
”He’s a pain. I told
you he didn’t get it.”
“Is it a problem?” I
cracked an eye open because it was really out of character for him
to show any concern for me.
“No, I mean it’s only been
a couple weeks and I think he misses the idea of me more than
actually being with me. I keep thinking he’ll get bored or
find someone else and just go away.”
“Make sure you let
somebody know if he becomes an issue. No girl should have to
deal with that noise.”
“I will.” We lapsed
back into silence again until he cleared his throat. I’d
known Rule long enough to know he was working his way up to
something and I just needed to wait.
“Look, I’m sorry about
this morning; I’m sorry about a lot of Sunday mornings. You
don’t need to keep seeing me at my worst; in fact it’s not your job
to see to me at all. I’m done with forced family fun time.
It’s not doing anything but driving the knife in deeper, and I see
that now. This drama has been building for years and it’s not
fair that you’re still stuck in the middle of it without Remy to
back you up. He loved you to death and I’ve done a piss poor
job honoring that.”
argue the semantics of my relationship, or rather nonrelationship
with Remy to Rule yet again. No one in the Archer family
seemed to get that we were friends, best friends and nothing
more. The legend of our relationship had turned into a
monster that I just couldn’t combat, especially when the tiny
amount I had eaten for brunch was suddenly crawling back up my
throat. I lurched forward and grabbed Rule’s arm. It
probably wasn’t the smartest move since we were going ninety five
on the freeway, but I was about to toss my cookies in a car that
cost more than some people made in a year.
“Pull over!” Rule
let out a string of curse words and hastily weaved around a minivan
to the shoulder of the road. I got the door open and
practically fell on my knees as I lost everything in a violent
stream on the asphalt. Warm hands pulled my ponytail out the
way and handed me a ragged bandana. When I could finally breathe
again, I took the water bottle of water he handed me and sat back
on my heels while the world tilted in a bunch of different
directions.
“What’s wrong?”
around and spit it out on the ground away from the tips of his
black boots. “Migraine.”
“Since when do you have
those?”
“Since always. I
need to lie down in the back.”
with a hand under my arm and I realized it was the first time in
years he had ever deliberately touched me. We never hugged,
never brushed against each other, never high-fived or shook hands;
we were strictly in a hands-off type of relationship so my system
almost revolted at the contact. I groaned as he practically
shoved me back into the car. I am short so stretching out
along the back seat wasn’t a big deal. Rule got back behind
the wheel and looked at me over his shoulder. “You gonna make
it the rest of the way?”
I threw and arm over my
eyes and placed a hand on my rolling belly. “It’s not like I
have a choice. Just be ready to pull over again if I scream
at you.”
He pulled back into
traffic and was quiet for only a minute before demanding, “Does
everyone know you get migraines?”
“No. I don’t get
them very often, just when I’m stressed out or not sleeping
well.”
“Did Remy
know?”
just answered, “Yes.”
He muttered something I
couldn’t hear and I felt him, rather than saw him, look back at
me. “He never told me. He told me everything, even crap
I had zero interest in hearing–he never shut up about
you.”
He was wrong, so very,
very wrong but that was Remy’s secret and even though he was gone I
still would go to my grave with it. There was a lot Rule and
Rome never knew about their brother, things that he was scared to
share, things he battled with on a daily basis. The fact I had
migraines and was irrevocably in love with Rule didn’t even scratch
the surface.
“He probably just forgot
about it, like I said I don’t get them very often and when you guys
moved to Denver and I still had to finish high school, he probably
just forgot they happened because we didn’t hangout as much
anymore. They’ve been worse the last few years.” I
didn’t have to explain it was because Remy was gone and all the
stress he balanced out for me was now my own to deal
with.
“That seems like kinda a
big deal to slip his mind.”
“Contrary to what all you
Archers have stuck in your head there was a lot more to Remy than
our friendship and what was or was not going on with
me.”
“Yeah, right. Remy was a different person after he found
you. He was always a good guy, always the best of all of us,
but once you came along it was like he finally found his
purpose. You gave him someone to care about without any of
the bullshit baggage the rest of us had. You made him
better.”
My heart squeezed so
tight in my chest I thought for a second everything inside me was
going to turn inside out. “Well, he saved me, so we made each
other better.”
We fell into an
uncomfortable silence again until the car stopped in front of his
apartment complex. He turned in the seat and looked down at
me. I peeked at him from under my arm. The blue in his
eyes was all but swallowed up by the paler silver and gray.
“Can you get back to University Park or do you need me to take
you? I can have Nash follow us since he’s home from
work.” It was a nice offer, one I was surprised he extended,
but I had had my fill of Archers for the day and the drive from
Capitol Hill to University Park wasn’t that bad on a Sunday in the
early evening.
“I’ll make it. It’s
not that far.” I scrambled out of the back and had to lean on
the door frame while he got out of the driver’s seat. We were
standing so close I could see the pulse in his throat thumping
under the tattoo he had there of a hummingbird. “Thanks,
though.”
hands roughly over his face. He took a step back and made
sure I was looking him dead in the eye when he told me, “I’m
serious about Sunday. Don’t show up here next week expecting
me to play nice. I’m over it.”
I snapped a salute with
two fingers to my brow and let my body collapse in the seat he had
just vacated. “Message received. My services as
chauffeur slash buffer are no longer needed, which means I probably
won’t be seeing you around. Try and take care of yourself
Rule, seriously, somebody has to.”
I shut the door before he
could say anything else and didn’t even wait until he moved away
from the car to put it in reverse and pull away from the apartment
complex. It was a short drive to my own apartment that I
shared with my best friend Ayden. I had met her freshman year
when we shared a dorm room together. She was a chem major,
worked at the same sports bar I did and totally had the patience to
deal with all my endless neurotic crap. Her family background
was no picnic either so I loved that I could always rely on her to
be there for me, she was also smart as hell and it had taken her
exactly zero seconds to figure the reason my social life was boring
and that I could never commit to any of the guys I dated was
because I was hung up on Rule Archer. So when I came
stumbling in hurting with tears in my eyes she put me to bed
without questions and pulled the blinds in my room closed while she
fetched me some pain killers and a giant glass of
water.
The bed depressed when
she climbed up next to me as I kicked my peep toe heels off and
tugged my belt through the loops on my slacks.
“It was bad today?”
Ayden was from Kentucky and her southern drawl rolled over me like
a soothing balm.
“He was with some skank
again, he had a hickey the size of Alaska on his neck, my mortal
enemy from high school hit on him at Starbucks and it took Margot
and Dale less than a minute to insult his clothes, hair and remind
him he is not now nor will he ever be his dead twin brother.
Luckily this time they left out his job and disregard for manners,
but he blew his top and stormed out. They’ve all decided it’s
best we no longer come up on Sundays, making this the second family
I’ve been a part of that can’t figure it out and just love and
appreciate one another. To top it all off, Gabe has been blowing up
my phone all day and I can’t think of anyone I want to talk to
less. So yeah, it was really fucking bad today.”
my hair and laughed softly. “Girl, the situations you find
yourself in.”
“Tell me about
it.”
“Did you give him the key
to his place back?”
buried my head in the pillow. “No. I totally spaced it,
but it’s not like I’m in any hurry to walk in on him and two girls
at once again. Honestly I’ll be super glad to never have to
see Rule’s pierced junk again.”
She snickered a laugh at
me and rolled over on to her back so that she was staring at the
ceiling. Ayden’s hair was as black as mine was blond and cut
in a funky short pixie style. She had big whiskey colored
eyes and a heart that was pure gold. Besides Remy, she was
the best friend I ever had. I loved her for not making me have to
lay it all out for her to sift through–she just got it. While
she might not understand how I spent my time equally loathing and
loving a person that viewed me as nothing more than a nuisance, she
never condemned or criticized me for it.
“That boy, he is a
handful.”
“I don’t know, maybe the
space will be good for me. Maybe time away from the whole
family will finally give me the breathing room to kill the way I’ve
always felt about him. I can’t spend the rest of my life
walking away from other people just because they aren’t
Rule.”