Love After Us by Claudia Burgoa

Author:Claudia Burgoa [Burgoa, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Literally Alpaca LLC

Chapter Twenty-One

Seth

Dad summons me to the main office. I expect him to be with Finnegan and his business partners for a long time, but it seems I was wrong.

When I wiggle the door handle and enter, I’m ready for him to at least chide me or fire me. Instead, I find Mom waiting for me. Her green eyes are red and filled with moisture.

“Seth,” she whispers before she begins to cry.

“Hey, lady,” I greet her, giving her a big hug and lifting her slightly from the floor. “How’s the best mom in the world?”

“You were gone for too long,” she says between sobs. “I was so worried. We didn’t know…”

My poor mom cries harder. Dad takes her into his arms and asks, “Did you stay for him?”

“To some extent,” I confirm and sigh because as much as I hate to report my every move, this time I have to do it.

I tell him what I remember happened to me during the attack in San Francisco and finish with what I’ve been doing for the past months. The latter isn’t in much detail though. He doesn’t say anything, so I shrug and say, “I had to figure out what the angle of our savior was. The moment I came face to face with him… I had to know why he never came home.”

“Who?” Mom asks.

She’s one of the few who knows how much his death affected me. She was there during my worst nightmares. I take a deep breath and say, “Archer is alive, but he has amnesia.”

She gasps, looking at me as if she’s seen a ghost. “Is he okay? Are you okay?” The questions don’t end there. “Does Piper know? Of course she does. That’s why she’s acting so strangely.”

Mom adores her nieces and nephews and treats them as if they were her own. The hurt in her face is jarring. “Why do my children have to suffer?”

Dad hugs her tighter since he doesn’t have an answer for her.

“Is he the one who saved her?” Dad asks, as if trying to put things together.

“Yep. He’s the sniper at the bookstore. Sanford was right, that job could’ve only been done by one of ours.” I tap my head. “He learned a lot from the Z’s, but I’m sure part of his abilities are just muscle memory.”

“He can’t remember anything?” Mom asks, tapping her head. “That sounds like dissociative amnesia. It’s not easy to treat, more so if they fed him new memories. But with—”

“Mom, he doesn’t want to think about his past or go back to his family.” I have to stop her before she gathers all the family to find solutions.

Don’t get me wrong. I want my friend back, but we can’t force him to do as we say. That’d be selfish.

Dad asks. “Do you trust him?”

“Oddly enough, I do. There’s a part of Archer inside him. He wouldn’t cross us, if that’s what you’re worried about. We’ve been working well together, just like old times.”

We spend the next hour discussing all the operations we ran for the past few months.

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