Archie’s expression didn’t soften, but it shifted—measured now, like an officer recalculating odds. “You think papering over this will work?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I’d rather fight a dozen lawsuits than torch a house and pray we’re faster than the cameras.” It wasn’t totally a joke, but absolutely not serious either. No matter how pissed they were.
Jake tightened his jaw, the bat a silent, dangerous thing at his side. He looked at Archie like he was waiting for permission, for the old secret handshake that turned men into actors in a plan they’d sworn not to question.
Chin lifted, Archie didn’t say yes or no, immediately. So, I reached for one nugget that burned in the back of my brain since Sharon dropped this bomb.
“Whatever we do, we need to make sure that we can still look Frankie in the eye. That folder—burning her house down—revenge of any kind? That’s not just going to shut Sharon up. It’ll alienate Frankie, and she’s already fed up with us.” Not that I could blame her.
Mouth tightening, Archie’s whole expression turned to stone. For a second I thought he’d give Jake the nod, that we’d all go marching into something that would take us down the same as her. Then he blew out a long breath.
“We do it your way—for now,” he said finally, and the words fell like a truce. “We buy representation. We contain. But if she escalates, if she crosses a line, we respond. Not with arson.” The last he said with a hard look at Jake. Yeah, our resident hot head needed to forget that whole idea and forget itnow. “We’ll respond with something that ends the game for her without ending us.”
Jake watched him, then looked at me, half disbelief, half relief. The bat hung there, useless for a heartbeat.
“You sure?” Jake asked, voice smaller.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I’m sure I don’t want us to be the ones who fan the flames.”
With a huff, Jake let the bat drop, just enough to show he hadn’t surrendered his fury—only his immediate action. He shoved a hand through his hair and glared at the folder, at the neat scrap of Sharon’s handwriting I could still see in my mind.
Archie opened the folder again, carefully this time. “I’m going to make the call,” he said. “We start with counsel. We plan. We move fast.”
“Should we wait for Coop?” The heat stung my head. Somewhere in the distance a lawn sprinkler kicked on, the tiny percussion of water on a hot stone.
“He hasn’t bothered to answer any of us,” Archie said, his phone already out and pressed to his ear. “We’re all in favor of legal recourse?”
I nodded once, and Jake followed suit but slower.
“Then we outnumber him three to one, no matter what he wants to do.”
As Archie waited for his call to be answered, I studied Jake and saw in him every terrible thing this could become if we let hatred lead.
“This is Archie Standish,” Archie said and I transferred my attention back to him. I could see the map of an attack already sketched in his brain. Then I looked at the folder and felt the gravity of what we were standing on—too many crossroads and only one of them ending without ashes.
“You think Frankie will ever talk to us again after this?” Jake asked in a quiet voice, misery replacing his anger as Archie continued to brief his attorney. I didn’t answer Jake because I didn’t have one.
Right now, if I were Frankie? I’d probably cut us all off andrunin the other direction.
Chapter
Five
JAKE
Archie had a way of making the ordinary feel like a war room. The lawyer he’d called had us meet him in a glass box of beige and chrome almost an hour away. The office was closer to the Standish corporate offices—made sense. Thankfully, it wasn’t in the same building even if it was a weekend. Despite the timing, an assistant showed us straight into a conference room that smelled faintly of lemon polish and money.
I’d been running on a kind of exhausted, furious autopilot since the posts went live. Fuck, that wasn’t true. I’d been running on this since Frankie and I finally kissed for real and she admitted that she had sex with her French boy toy. My head kept playing the same stupid loop—her soft voice, the wounded look in her eyes, my fury, then the stupidity at the pool party. Outing her to the rest of the senior class had been the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
No, that had been the cruelest. The stupidest was what we did over the summer. I hadn’t been thinking about Frankie either time. It had all been about me and that was probably the most humbling piece of it all. I was anasshole.
“Hey,” Coop said, elbowing me lightly and I cut a look to him. “You good?”
I snorted. “As good as you are.”
“Cool. I’m glad to know we’re both in a shitty mood.” As annoying as all of this was, I was glad he was there. He showed up five minutes before we were leaving for the meeting. We filled him in on the car ride.
“Great, so not only are we all assholes,” Coop had said. “We’re disgusting assholes to boot.”
