Iwas already in the parking lot when Frankie came out.
She didn’t look like someone walking toward answers that could rearrange her entire life. She looked like Frankie—hair half-tucked behind one ear, backpack slung over one shoulder, walking fast like she didn’t trust the ground not to move under her.
When she spotted the Ferrari, she made a beeline for it.
The passenger door flew open and she slid in, breath a little uneven. “I’m going to get such a bad record for skipping school,” she muttered, dropping her bag at her feet.
I smiled despite myself. “Would you rather I had waited until after?”
She turned and shot me a look so loaded with disbelief and faint panic that I actually laughed.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Because that would have beensomuch better.”
God, I adored her.
I hit the accelerator and pulled us out of the lot and into the flow of traffic like this was just another afternoon drive and not the moment everything tilted.
“So,” she said after a beat, eyes on the windshield like she was afraid to look at me. “What did it say?”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I flipped open the center console and took out the envelope.
The lab’s logo sat stark and official against the white paper, heavy as a brick. I held it for a second longer than necessary, then passed it to her.
“I haven’t opened it yet,” I told her quietly. “I was waiting for you.”
Her fingers closed around it, knuckles whitening. I shifted gears and sped past the next traffic light before it could turn. We weren’t speeding, but we were sure as hell not going slow.
“I’m pretty damn sure I know what it says,” I added, keeping my eyes on the road. “But I didn’t want to find out without you. And I didn’t want us doing this where anyone could watch us fall apart or celebrate.”
She swallowed hard beside me.
So did I.
Wherever this went, I was with her in it. Every mile of the way.
“What do we do if it says Maddy is right?” Frankie asked quietly.
The question hit harder than anything else had.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, then forced myself to loosen it again. The road curved ahead of us, empty and wide, like it had been waiting for this conversation.
“Then we deal with it,” I said.
She didn’t look convinced.
“I mean it,” I went on. “Not in some vague, brave-sounding way. I mean we take the truth and we figure out how to live with it without letting it own us.”
She stared down at the envelope in her hands. “How?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I know what we don’t do. We don’t pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t let anyone decide what you’re allowed to feel. And we don’t let them turn you into a problem to be solved.”
Her throat worked. “And us?”
That was the real question.
I glanced at her then, just long enough to let her see that I wasn’t running from it.
“Us doesn’t disappear just because something gets complicated,” I said quietly. “It never has.”
