“Where is he?” Maverick asks first, because of course he does. He’s looking at me like he wants me to say “on the deck” or “in the shower” or “sleeping off a mood,” but he knows that’s not going to happen.
“He left,” I say. My voice holds. Barely. Who am I kidding? I can feel the cracks in it and the tension as it slips into my every movement.
Atticus goes very still, which is as good as a shout from anyone else. Storm’s eyes flick down my body to the shirt and back to my face. Spencer’s eyebrows lift a fraction. Maverick’s hands close on nothing.
“What happened?” Storm asks, calm and knife-edged.
I swallow. I can taste soap and the last of last night. “He told me something, and then he left.”
“What did he tell you?” Atticus asks. There is nothing but calm in his voice. That’s how he carries me when he doesn’t know what he’s lifting yet.
I look at the map because it’s easier to talk to cardboard than to people who will break for me if I cry. “He told me his father said…he told me that I’m a Masterson. That I was his daughter. Conrad’s half sister.”
The room does that thing air does before a storm—pressure drop, silence, a quick gathering of everything that can break.Maverick sits down hard on the edge of a chair he never uses. Storm’s jaw tightens. Atticus blinks once and that’s all; everything else holds.
“Say that one more time,” Maverick says, like repetition might change the shape of the words.
“His father told him I’m his daughter,” I say. “That doesn’t make sense, right?” I look at them all, and if the look is a little desperate, well, I guess I’m entitled. “My mother loved my father. She wouldn’t have had an affair with Mr. Masterson, of all people—it just doesn’t make sense…it doesn’t?—”
“Jesus,” Spencer mutters, low.
“It tracks with what your mother did for work,” Atticus says, thoughtfulness clicking into place like teeth. He’s not playing lawyer. He’s building a ladder to get me out of a sinkhole. “It does not make it true.”
“I don’t believe it,” I say, too fast. “I don’t. Not from him. He wants control. He’s always wanted to control Conrad. If there was any sort of option to keep him in line, it would be this. Get rid of me and make sure that Conrad questions everything and anything in his life moving forward.”
“Yeah,” Maverick says, voice rough. “That’s his brand.”
“Either way, it’s easy enough to prove,” Atticus adds, already reaching for a pad he’s probably had ready since he woke up this morning. “We don’t take his word as shit. We prove it or disprove it ourselves. DNA tests are easy enough now. Hell, we can even confirm it with a chain of custody we can trust. No theatrics needed. No one else sees it until we do.”
“Then we all do it,” Storm says at once, cutting through the table talk. “Not just them. All of us. If we’re going to lay blood on the table, we lay all of it. Then, we can confirm that our family’s dirty secrets are actually ours.”
It makes me cry, Storm’s ferocity. Helpless tears bubble up and brim over, and without another word he comes over and gathers me to his chest.
Maverick snorts once, not quite a laugh. “Only ones possibly in question are Atticus, Conrad, and Phoenix, man. You and I could be our dads’ driver’s license photos.”
Storm gives him the look he gives cameras. Maverick lifts his hands. “Fine. I’ll spit in a tube with you. We’ll start a scrapbook.”
Spencer leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I can get a lab that owes me to prioritize it,” he says. “No names on the paperwork. Samples under initials only. We’ll know fast.” He chuckles. “Thank you, Storm, for not questioning your parentage.”
“Do it,” I choke out. I want the test like I want air. I want it like I want the other result—any result—that gives me back the thing I had just let myself have.
Happiness.
“Phoenix.” Atticus’s voice drops. I look at him. He’s not looking at the pad now. He’s looking at me. “Do you know where he went?”
“He didn’t say,” I answer. “He told me I was his sister after he fucked me, and then he left. I think he didn’t want to be here to watch me process it, or know how my world implodes with his father’s bullshit.” I swallow. “I don’t know if he wanted to be a good man or a coward. Maybe both.”
“He went to the bridge,” Storm says, like a weather report. Atticus doesn’t look surprised. Maverick scrubs his face with both hands.
“I’m going to find him,” Maverick says, already standing.
“No.” The word rips out of me. Everyone freezes. I force breath in and then back out again slowly. “No. He doesn’t need rescue. Not from us. Not from this.”
“You sure?” Storm asks.
“No,” I say honestly. “But chasing him doesn’t help. He’ll be back if he wants to be back. I can’t force him to face me.”
Atticus makes a quick mark on the pad he won’t show me. Then he tears off the top sheet anyway and hands it to Spencer. “The information,” he says. Spencer stands, takes the paper, nods once, and disappears with the quiet efficiency of a man who never needed to announce it when he did the right thing.
