Memory and shame braided together so tight I could hardly breathe. As much as I wanted to argue that those girls were as into it as we’d been, it didn’t condone anything we’d done.
Archie sat with his legs crossed, all cool and composed, like he wasn’t anywhere near as affected by this as we were. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe…
I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face and sitting forward. Part of me resented Archie for being able to write a check and make people move. Part of me was grateful as hell that he could.
“You’re not out of options,” the lawyer said after the greetings, flipping open a leather binder and setting a stack of paper on the table like cards to be played. He talked in legalese that had the bluntness of military orders: preservation of evidence, cease-and-desist, potential civil claims for invasion of privacy, extortion, and—if the videos crossed certain lines—revenge porn statutes.
“Whatever you do from here,” he said, “you don’t destroy anything. You don’t contact her. You document every interaction. You let us handle talking points. You breathe. And you don’t take the law into your own hands.” He didn’t need to finish the sentence; I’d heard that exact warning in my own head an hour earlier—don’t burn a house down, don’t swing a bat.
Archie answered the questions I couldn’t, as precise and unblinking as the attorney. What was the provenance of thefootage? Were there originals? Backups? Who else had access? He wanted a timeline, every call, every text—everything that made up the messy web Sharon could string into a noose.
I felt my mouth go dry thinking about what we’d done in the name of being clever. We’d filmed so much, sent so much, joked about blackmail as if the joke couldn’t mutate into a blunt instrument. The lawyer’s list of “what to do” read like a checklist for containment. Get forensic experts to trace leaks, issue preservation letters to platforms, preemptively prepare a public statement that framed us on human terms instead of predators, consider litigation to force takedowns. It all sounded sensible. It also sounded like the part of a life I didn’t want to imagine—the constant legal shadow over every decision, every hiring choice, every public smile.
Between the attorney’s procedural rhythm I felt something else. A low, constant churn of anger that wanted a simpler satisfaction. Revenge. I imagined a hundred petty, primal things—expose her secrets, take what she had, humiliate her back until her name was mud. They were quick, hot fantasies that eased the wound for a second and then left me lonelier than before. I knew, in those rational spaces the lawyer’s voice cut through, that they were only venting. That’s all they were: a release valve. I told myself that out loud in my head until the words sounded like another lie.
At some point the lawyer asked if we wanted to consider a settlement—an agreement, confidentiality, maybe even a monetary payment to buy silence. A human thing to do, he said. I could tell Archie liked the sound of it; men with money like options. Bubba made a face like he wanted to spit. Coop looked ill. Me? I didn’t know. My anger and my principles were both bruised and equally loud.
After the meeting we walked back out into the heat, the world outside indifferent—cars droning by, people hurryingtoward the nearby mall, sprinklers kicking on. Archie dropped his voice to that scale-it-all-down tone he favored. “We can afford containment,” he said. “We can snap the reel back on the story and keep everyone breathing. But it buys us time, not absolution.”
That line—buys us time—sat in my gut like a foreign object. It meant I could keep living the way my father wanted, a tidy human problem that could be managed, filed away in a drawer with receipts and attorney fees. Fees I couldn’t afford and no way in hell my parents would pay.
It was only blind dumb luck no one had told my father yet. Someone would. It was just a matter of time to figure outwho.
Paying Sharon off also felt like bribery. Pay enough and you can keep your life. As guilty as the thought made me feel, it wasn’t untrue. Archie’s money had always been a wall and a tether—safety for a price, autonomy if you accepted his wealth changed all the rules.
I thought about Mom then. Her face that morning flashed through me—she’d held onto her coffee cup like it anchored her, and when she’d looked at me, I’d felt something like a door closing in her eyes. Not anger. A disappointment so precise and small and sharp that it landed deeper than a yell ever would. She’d said nothing about college, Dad, possible repercussions at school, or even the suspension I’d just come off of. She’d only asked if I could fix it. That look cut into me harder than any legal threat.
Worse, Becca’s question kept replaying. “Do you look at all girls that way… did you look at Frankie that way?”
She hadn’t meant to land it like a mine; she was young, trying to understand her brother, to stitch together a story she could sleep with. I’d had no answer.
The truth was unspooled and ugly. Sometimes I’d been reckless enough to objectify people, to make jokes that shouldhave never been jokes. Sometimes it had been consensual, messy, and later regretted; sometimes it had been a line crossed and I’d flirted with its blur.
I didn’t know when the line moved, or when I had stopped seeing people as people and started seeing them as parts of a game. Not knowing that—having no answer for Becca—felt like the worst part. My sisters were annoying most of the time, but I was supposed to be the one who protected them.
If some guy did to them…
No, I shoved that out of my head. No one was allowed to treat them that way.Ever.
So why did you do it?The nasty little voice was as muchmeas it was Frankie, calling me on my own shit. The slice of her tone, the coolness in her green eyes, and the implied dare would all leave a mark equally. For the first time since I woke up that day, I found myself looking forward to Frankie being pissed at me.
I could hate fighting with Frankie and relish it at the same time. She never let me get away with stuff like this. Her utter non reaction all day hurt more than Mom’s disappointment. Had I truly fire-bombed what was left of the bridge between us?
“Remember,” the attorney said as he rose, shaking each of our hands briefly and perfunctorily. “No posting, no commenting, noreacting. Avoid her at school. Avoid her parents.Avoidher period. We’ll handle it from here.”
Two hours after we walked in, we were back out by the car. The heat rolled up from the pavement and sweat soaked the back of my shirt. “How do wenotreact?”
No one else had asked that question, but I had to know.
“We fight smarter,” Archie said in a dry tone as he adjusted his sunglasses.
Bubba sighed. “We don’t fight at all. For now, we let her and everyone else take their shots.”
Unsurprisingly, Coop just groaned. “As much as we deserve whatever they throw at us,Frankiedoesn’t.”
“Then we stand in front of her,” Archie said without missing a beat. “I have no problems with the potshots at us.” But not Frankie. Bubba and Coop both nodded. Slanting a look at me, Archie raised his brows.
“How do we respond to protect Frankie if we’re not supposed to respond at all?” Because I’d take the hits for Frankie. I’d burn the chance to repair my reputation. What was the point of it if we’d—no ifIhad pissed away any chance with her?
