Not because she wasn’t good enough, because she was too good for it.
Those people would’ve tried to turn her into something smaller. Something quieter. Something easier to control.
My Frankie had never been meant to be small.
She finally blew out a breath, long and slow, like she was letting go of something she’d been holding too tightly.
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever this says… it’s just about other people’s choices. Not ours.”
I felt something steady in me latch onto that. Onto her.
“Though…,” she added, trailing off.
I tilted my head, watching her. “Though?”
She made a face, lips twisting, nose wrinkling in that way that always wrecked me. “I want to make that whole nature-versus-nurture argument,” she admitted, “but I’m not actually sure which side I want to vote with here.”
The way she said it — wry and anxious and stubborn all at once — cracked me.
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
“Of course you do,” I said, smiling at her like she was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. “Only you would turn a DNA test into a philosophical crisis.”
She shot me a look that was half glare, half smile. “This is very serious, Archie.”
“I know,” I said gently. “And you’re still adorable when you’re overthinking it.”
Her lips twitched despite herself.
And for a moment — just a moment — the weight of the envelope didn’t feel quite so heavy.
Frankie finally blew out a breath, long and slow, like she was letting go of something she’d been holding too tightly.
She didn’t open the envelope yet. Just held it there, fingers tight around the edges, like hesitation itself had weight.
“You know,” I said quietly, “nature versus nurture is only one argument.”
Her gaze flicked to me. “Oh?”
“I can think of a few others.”
I let that hang there on purpose.
She made a face at me, unmistakably unimpressed. “You don’t get to just drop that little grenade and not explain it.”
I grinned and reached over, cupping her cheek in my palm. The moment I touched her, she leaned into it without thinking, and the simple trust in that movement went straight to my chest.
“Everyone makes leaps,” I said softly. “And our nurture isn’t just our home life. It’s our friends. Our friends’ families. Our teachers. The people who show up for us. And at the end of the day… it’s the person we decide to be.”
It would’ve been easy for me to be every inch the spoiled, cruel snob people expected when they saw my last name. Honestly, I could’ve been a lot worse than that. But I didn’t like that version of myself.
I much preferred the one I was with Frankie.
I brushed my thumb lightly along her cheekbone. “So that means you are who you want to be.”
Her eyes searched mine, something soft and aching and hopeful flickering there.
“Whatever that envelope says,” I continued, “whatever bullshit it confirms about Edward, Maddy, and their fucked up history, that isn’t us. It willneverbe us. We’re who we want to be.”
