Slow Burn (The Archer Brothers)

by Rose Harper

  His response causes me to break out into another fit of laughter. So much so, I don’t know why, but I stop what I’m doing to press my face into the wall, trying to muffle the sound. More like fall into the wall, if I’m really being honest. My torso bumps into it, and I fight to keep my balance when it tries to fight back.

  Is it trying to fight back? Well, motherfucker, let’s dance.

  Swinging my arm out, open palm because my hand doesn’t want to cooperate with me right now, I’m met with a grunt, shortly before something very squishy rests in the palm of my hand. Something very squishy, round, and unbelievably warm.

  Quirking my eyes up, I turn my head so fast the world spins on its axis as I set my eyes back on Derrick and his swaying form, seeing his eyes wide and fearful. The fuck is he scared for?

  “Brah, this wall’s squishy. It feels like a boobie!” I giggle-snort, showing him by clenching my hand again. Another grunt sounds out and followed shortly behind is a blast of pain that waifs off the side of my face. Some ungodly sound comes out of my mouth, as I grab the side of my head and slide down to the floor.

  Yes, the wall is definitely fighting back.

  “What the fuck are you two dipshits doing?” a harsh voice whisper-shouts out.

  Oh, hey, hey … I know that voice.

  “Little bird,” I release in a singsong voice. “Little bird, little bird, did you know!”

  “Shut the fuck up, asshole!”

  “Why you so mean to me?” I sigh, then another round of chuckles falls from my lips as a thought pops into my head, and I speak before I can stop myself. “I made sure you got yours that night. I mean, we went, what … four rounds?” I thrust my hips from side to side.

  Something tells me I just crossed the line when I hear a growl resonate through the hallway, but I can’t be too sure about that. When the gasp reaches my ears, something else tells me I just fucked up, but again, I don’t know how.

  It’s not until I’m grunting, all the air leaving my lungs, as Derrick fucking power bombs me right in the middle of the hall.

  “You son of a bitch!” he growls, turning on top of me.

  Scrambling, I push him off me, clambering to my feet. But my movements are a little more unsteady than I realize because seconds later I’m falling forward, my head ramming into the wall. Only, it would be me to miss every goddamn stud to keep from going through, because seconds later, my head enters the wall and stops against something hard. Drywall and dust explode all around me, choking me so much I break out into a coughing fit.

  “Fuck!” I hear Derrick say, just moments before peals of laughter echo inside the wall. “I didn’t mean to cause that. Mom and Dad are going to be so pissed.”

  “Jesus.” I feel a tap on my shoulder, but other than that I’m cloaked in darkness. “Are you okay?”

  I brace my hands on the wall on either side of my head, preparing my retreat. Pushing at the same time I’m pulling, I get … absolutely nowhere. Fuck.

  “I think I’m stuck,” I reply, my answer muffled by the wall.

  The sound strikes me as funny. It reverberates all around me like that Rockstar shit on Smule—yes, I’ve played it, and no, I don’t have a VIP membership … anymore. So, I test my voice with a few hums, making sure it sounds good. When no one objects, I let the fur fly.

  “Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let’s talk about sex.”

  “Shut up!” Derrick and Sparrow whisper-yell at the same time.

  “Party poopers,” I huff.

  “We need to find a way to get him out of this. I think his ears are catching him,” Sparrow says, and fuck all mighty, her dainty, soft, feminine hands land on my shoulders. I can’t stop the shudder that races through my body—the zap of electricity that seems to have a live switch to my cock. Because it starts rising, and there’s no stopping it now. Visions of our time together dance around in my head, all the while I’m silently praying no one looks down. If they do, both of them will know what her touch does to me.

  “Just,” I gasp, shaking my head. “Let go. Don’t touch me.”

  “But you’re—”

  “In a wall and I’ll still be here without you touching me. Just please, take. The. Hands. Away.”

  “Okay, I’m just going to say this right now,” Derrick says. “Since you’re in the wall and can’t run, I need to ask you a question. Did you fucking sleep with my sister?”

  He sounds more alert and less drunk than he did just moments ago. I told you, I get wild when I get the Morgan in me, so I can’t be held liable for what comes out of my mouth. The secret Sparrow wanted me to keep, that’s long gone now. If Derrick knows, this entire house is going to know before breakfast. I’m just glad her parents aren’t due back here until the day before the wedding.

  “Um, is that a trick question?” I ask, knowing I’m just digging myself in deeper.

  A sharp pain reverberates through my ass cheek. It’s then I know I’m up a shit creek and have to start explaining. My ass is literally on the line here, and whether Sparrow wants me to out our time together or not, I have to because of my big fucking mouth.

  “Answer me,” he says at the same time I say, “Yes.”

  “Don’t be fucking with me, Declan.”

  Sighing, I clench my eyes shut. “I’m not, Derrick. It happened the night before I left for Hollywood.”

  I expect a hit, slap, or a pinch—hell, I expect something, but the only thing that happens is a deep-seated groan. Personally, I can’t tell if that’s an “I’m going to fuck you up” groan, or an “I should have known” groan. Either way, I’m fucked.

  “I knew it,” he groans, drawing out the words.

  “What?” Sparrow pipes up.

  “I knew something happened between you all, but until now I didn’t know what that was. I should have, but I didn’t expect my best friend to fuck my sister.”

  And now I feel like shit. I suppose I should’ve felt that way long before now, but I never brought into account how Derrick would feel about Sparrow and me being together like that. He’s been my best friend since we were thirteen years old. If this causes him to cut ties with me, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. Losing him would be like losing an appendage, crippling—life altering. It would feel like I’m losing everything.

  “I can explain, Derrick,” Sparrow urges.

  “No, goddammit, you can’t explain. Neither one of you can.”

  I’ve never heard him so angry before, and that includes me kicking him in the nuts when we were fifteen, just to see if we could handle the pain or not. I knew he would be angry if he ever found out, but I didn’t expect him to be this angry. What started out as a fun-filled night of laughs and trickery turns into a night I watch as everything that’s familiar to me disappears.

  I vaguely hear retreating footsteps going up the hallway, and my heart falters inside my chest. Something tells me that what he just found out ruined anything we had with each other. It hurts to even think about that because when no one else was there for me, Derrick never left my side. He didn’t ask any questions—didn’t expect answers I couldn’t give him.

  He was just there as a best friend is supposed to be, and I fucked it up by sleeping with his sister.

  “Declan,” Sparrow whispers after a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I, um … Can I help you out of the wall now?”

  Sighing, I whisper, “No, I got it. Go check on Derrick.”

  “Are you sure?” The longer she’s around me, the more anger I have building up inside.

  “Just go.”

  Skating my fingers along the surface, I tighten my hand into a fist, rear back, then punch through the wall right above my head. I hear her gasps as I do it again and again and again in different spots; the anger at myself eating me alive inside.

  I just ruined the best friendship I’ve ever had in my life, and for what? A fuck
when I was twenty? I know I’m not thinking rationally right now, but I’ve always been the type of person that goes off my emotions, now being no different. No matter how much it feels wrong to think it, I wish I’d never felt her silky-smooth skin dance under my fingers as she panted for each labored breath.

  Wish I never met her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sparrow

  He’ll never accept what I have to tell him. Shaking my head, I walk away, heading toward Derrick’s room where he and Darcy are staying. The storm clouds gather around me, feeling as if any moment it’s going to open up, dashing me with the cold rain built up inside. It’s heart-wrenching, devastating.

  Everything is falling down around me, and I didn’t even get to tell Declan about Drake, which is what I was heading to his room to do. It took me hours of contemplating before I’d gathered up enough courage to do it. Hours of doubting whether or not I had the nerve to do something like that—to rip everyone’s lives apart.

  I mean, it’s Declan. Yes, he hurt me but finding out he has a nine-year-old son will devastate him. Ruin him in ways I will never be able to understand, and that’s the silver lining. The other option is that he looks at me, laughing off the fact he has a son. Declan’s not that type of person, but people have surprised me before. He could very well not want Drake, and that revelation would absolutely devastate me more than if I were to tell him and he wants to be in his life.

  After the millionth time of second-guessing myself, I walked toward his bathroom door. I had to do this for Drake. I owed it to him, and I made a promise. When it comes to Drake, I never break my promises, even though I wanted nothing to do with this. When I went through the bathroom to knock on his door, that’s when I heard him and Derrick, laughing outside in the hallway and went to go investigate.

  Only, I didn’t know Declan was going to out us in his stupid drunken haze.

  Softly pecking on the door, I get nothing but silence in response. I know Derrick is in there because I can practically feel the wrath rolling off him in waves through the door. The fury, shock—even betrayal. I can feel it slither across my skin like a snake slithers through the grass—slow, cold, wet, and disgusting.

  “Derrick, can we talk?” I whisper, leaning my mouth toward the crack that remains even with the door closed.

  “There’s nothing to say, Sparrow.” He sighs, and I can practically feel the weight of a thousand lives resting on his back. It’s labored, harsh, and dreary all at the same time.

  “I know it’s not something you wanted to happen—”

  “What was the first thing I said to you when I saw you noticing Declan?” he asks, interrupting me.

  Cringing, I reply, “‘Whatever you do, Sparrow, don’t get with my best friend. I don’t care who you have, what you do, or where you go—just not him.’”

  “And what did you do? You went ahead and did it anyway,” he retorts with a bark of forced laughter.

  “It’s not like we planned it, Derrick. Things just happen.”

  “Things don’t just happen,” he scolds, the sound of his voice cracking like a whip against my face. “You sound like you’re twelve. Own up to your actions, goddammit. Be an adult for once.”

  My blood starts simmering in my veins as I stare daggers at the door. If my deathly glare could cut through wood right now, this door would already be chopped up into tiny pieces. The audacity of him to say those things when he can’t even own up to the fact his fiancée is cheating on him. That he’s known this entire time because I’m the one who told him and showed him proof, yet he still doesn’t want to believe it.

  Fine. He wants me to own up to my actions? He wants me to be an adult? Well, he better get ready for the backlash because I’m through holding back when it comes to him. I’m also not standing on the other side of this door when I tell him, either. We’re going to do this face-to-fucking-face, then I’m leaving and going back to my son.

  Fuck his fiancée—the cheating bitch. Fuck him. Fuck Declan. Fuck everybody.

  Using all my weight, I twist the knob and barrel my way inside his room. Darcy screams when the door slaps against the wall with a hellish thud, and she leaps up in bed like she’s just been burned, clutching the sheet to her chest. I couldn’t care less if I woke that piece of trash up; she’s not worth the worry.

  “You want me to own up to it? Huh?! You want me to tell you that Declan has been the only goddamn man I’ve ever fucking been with, and that was when I was eighteen?! That the night I came into his room it’s because a bad storm scared me so fucking badly I was shaking and almost in a full-blown panic attack? That he was the only person that would hold me, shush me, and tell me everything was going to be all right. That he did that because he wanted to, not because everyone else was either fighting, fucking, or gone?

  “You want me to tell you the day he left,” I scream, tears building in my eyes as I claw at my shirt that rests over my heart. “It felt like someone pulled my soul out of my body and shattered it right in front of me? Do you, goddammit?! Declan was the only person there for me when no one else was. He’s the only one who showed me true compassion—selflessness.” Tears teeter over my lids and trek down my face as a sob catches in my throat and my body starts shaking.

  “That I loved him,” I whisper, a catch jolting through my chest, “from the first moment you brought him home, and he gave me that ridiculous name I secretly love more than anything. Before him …” I cry out. “T-That before him, no one even bothered with me. Declan is the very reason you even started paying attention to me! He’s the very reason no one picked on me in school! He fought for me when you didn’t! He gave me the world, then for some reason ripped it away from me!

  “He’s going to do the same thing to Drake, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it! He’s going to reject him, push him away just like he did me, and no one will even care!” Just as soon as the words fly from my lips, everything stops. Derrick’s breathing. My breathing. My heart. I slap a hand over my mouth, eyes widening as my rant comes to a dramatic close.

  No, no, no, this can’t be happening right now. I can’t believe I lost my head and outed Drake without an ounce of reluctance.

  “Who in the fuck is Drake, Sparrow, and why do you think I would reject him?” A voice so low, so lethal it causes me to shudder, slithers in from the door I forgot to close.

  Oh, my God, no! I wasn’t … He wasn’t … It was supposed to be different. He wasn’t supposed to find out this way. Shit, shit, shit! What the hell am I going to do?

  “A good book has no ending …”

  – R.D. Cummings

  CLICK HERE FOR MORE FREEBIES

  Do you like free books?

  Amazon Gift Cards?

  Free Kindle Fires?

  Here is the page with Rose Harper’s current giveaways on them! Just sign up for her Newsletter and you WILL BE A WINNER!!

  Click this link:

  GIVE ME FREE STUFF

  PLAYLIST

  Slow Hands – Niall Horan

  I Don’t Wanna Live Forever – Taylor Swift

  Piece by Piece – Kelly Clarkson

  Breathe – Faith Hill

  Love Me Like You Do – Ellie Goulding

  A Thousand Years – Christina Perri

  Bring Me to Life – Evanescence

  Everybody’s Fool – Evanescence

  Going Under – Evanescence

  Haunted – Evanescence

  Hello – Evanescence

  Farther Away – Evanescence

  Tourniquet - Evanescence

  THANK YOU

  Thank you for reading, Slow Burn. I hope you loved it as much as I loved writing it, and I can’t wait until you’re fully able to dive into my next work, Slow Burn 2, which is the second serial in The Archer Brother’s Series.

  More by Rose Harper:

  www.authorroseharper.wixsite.com/books/

  COMING SOON

  To ensure you don’t miss

  Rose Harper’s next book, />
  CLICK HERE,

  and you will get an email

  reminder on release day.

  Want to talk to other fans?

  Go to Facebook and join the discussion!

  CAN’T WAIT FOR ROSE HARPER’S NEXT BOOK

  Let her know by leaving stars

  and telling her what you liked

  about this book in a review!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rose Harper thrives on bringing tantalizing, downright shiver inducing Dark Romance and Romantic Suspense novels for her readers to devour. She’s a lover of dark, sizzling passion, and mystery filled stories with twists and turns you never see coming, yet leave you wanting more.

  Sign up to Rose’s New Release email list and you'll automatically be notified as soon as her next book is released: http://eepurl.com/c95qPH

  Check out her website: www.authorroseharper.wixsite.com/books

  And don't forget to come say hello on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRoseHarper/

  Twitter: @AutRoseHarper

  www.authorroseharper.wixsite.com/books