Passionate Exchange

Chapter Fifty-Four

He winces slightly as if hearing her name hurts him. "How do you know her name?" He asks, his stern eyes focused on mine.

I gulp. If I want him to be honest with me then I should be honest with him. "Penny told me," I start, causing him to look even more agitated than before, "but she only told me her name. Honestly, it was my fault she even told me in the first place." I admit, trying to take the blame away from her.

"It's not important." He repeats through gritted teeth.

"If it wasn't important, you'd tell me." I hold his gaze to show him how serious I am. I know little about him from before we met. Most of the things I do know are things that other people have told me. I wish that he could just trust me enough to tell me these things.

"Somethings are best kept to yourself."

"Some people think that when, in reality, it would be better to share the pain with someone else." I counter.

I can feel myself starting to get angered by his stubbornness. Have I not proven to him that he can trust me? He's done things that would make me walk away forever if it were anyone else, but I came back because it's him. I'll always come back.

He gets up, standing rigid at the end of the bed. His lips are tugged down into a frown. His eyes meet mine and I'm taken aback by what I see. They're dark, darker than I've ever seen them. "What makes you think I have any pain to share?"

"We all have things we don't want to tell people," I say softly, knowing that I'm treading on thin ice.

I hate how he's closing himself off from me. People are meant to find out things about each other by now, right? I know we haven't known each other for that long but I'm sure it's been long enough. I push my hands into my hair.

He shakes his head, "not like this."

"You can tell me anything, Archer," I reassure him.

He starts pacing back and forth. My words seem to have no calming effect like his with me. If anything, they're making it worse. "Why are you being so pushy?"

I notice his clenched fists. His knuckles turn white from the pressure. "I'm not, I'm just-" I try to fix what I've said but he cuts me off.

"We're not doing this." He snaps.

My grip on the pillow tightens. "Doing what?"

"This," he gestures between the two of us, "we're not going to share sob stories and bond over the pain that we've felt. Some things are best kept in the past. I thought you'd understand that but it's clear you don't. You're just like everyone else. You think you can fix me, but you can't. You can't, Madison, you can't." He sits on the edge of the bed again, resting his head on his hands.

My heart swells. I shuffle closer, wrapping my arms around him. He shakes me off almost instantly and backs away as if my touch has burned him. My jaw hangs open. This isn't the Archer I know standing in front of me. Something in him has changed...because of me.

He stares directly at me as he says his next words, each one feeling like a punch to my gut. "If I knew kissing you that night at the party would make you feel like you have some right to know everything about me, I would never have done it."

My eyes widen. It feels like all of the air has been sucked out of me. "You don't mean that." Tears dwell in my eyes and a lump forms in my throat. I struggle to talk as I hold back the sobs that are threatening to spill out. Not here, not like this.

"Nothing could ever happen between us," he continues ripping through my chest. "Hell, we live in different countries. What happens when you leave Portland and your thousands of miles away?"

I swallow the lump in my throat. "I don't know but we can figure it out."

"No," he says shaking his head. I don't need to hear what he says next to know he's already made his decision. Nothing I say will change it. "This is pointless. We're not right for each other. You're going to have to find someone in London who's willing to share their past with you because I'm not." He spits.

"Are you serious?" My voice raises with anger.

"More than ever." He deadpans. His eyes are blank like they were when we first met. He's closed himself off again. I try to ignore it and say what I have to say.

"You think that I can just forget about what's happened between us and find someone else to care about just like that?" I snap my fingers to emphasise my words. If he thinks this was some fling for me, that I'll be able to move on within a few days, he's got another thing coming.

He doesn't answer. "If you want to throw this away then be my guest. I'm sorry for wanting to be a part of your life, it's clear that I was wrong about you. You can carry on believing that I was only with you to fix you because I don't care anymore. I'm done." I seethe.

He narrows his eyes, but I hold my ground. I won't let him see that I'm upset. He doesn't deserve that. He doesn't deserve my tears.

"You expect everything to be perfect when it's not. Newsflash Madison, not everyone has a picture-perfect life like you."

It takes everything in me not to go over there and give him a piece of my mind. "How could you say that?" The hurt is evident in my voice, but he doesn't seem to care. I bet he never cared. I was stupid enough to fall for him.

"Fuck you, Archer." I spit with venom laced in my voice.

"No, fuck you. I'm not dealing with this shit." He storms out of my room without a second glance.

I sit on my bed in shock, hugging my knees to my chest. How could I have been so stupid? That was the real Archer, but I refused to see it. I was too blinded by what I felt for him to see what was right in front of me.

He isn't who I thought he was. I don't want to be with someone who won't even tell me about themselves. We're supposed to trust each other and want to tell each other everything. I did want to do that. But it seems it was only one-sided.

I should have known from the start. He never wanted a relationship with me, that should have been a red flag right away. Instead, I carried on seeing him in secret because I had hope that one day, he'd change his mind. I now know that I was wrong.

I continue sitting there for a while until the weight of what just happened hits me. The tears fall down my cheeks with no sign of stopping and I let them. I hug myself until the sobs stop, and my eyelids grow heavy. Exhaustion takes control as they flutter closed, allowing me to forget about what happened for the next few hours.