Our eyes met.
There was no hostility there. No suspicion. Just… understanding. Which somehow felt worse.
“I got him, Jeremy.”
“Very good, Mr. Archie.”
“She knows you’re here,” Archie said quietly after Jeremy left us alone. Maddy’s voice rose, almost stridently, down the hall and I had a feeling that she and Mr. Standish were behind closed doors.
Probably a good thing.
My throat tightened. “Is she okay?”
Archie hesitated for half a beat. “She will be,” he said carefully. “Right now, she’s exhausted. Overloaded. She doesn’t need anger.”
“I know,” I said immediately. Too fast. “I’m not—I’m not here angry.”
Archie’s mouth twitched like he didn’t fully believe me but appreciated the effort. “Good. Then come on.”
He turned, leading the way upstairs, and I followed, hands shoved into my pockets like that might keep me from breaking something. Or someone. Or myself.
The house grew quieter the higher we went.
At the top of the stairs, voices drifted from down the hall—Bubba’s low and controlled, Jake’s sharper, cutting in and out. Guard dogs. Both of them.
“Guys are in the game room, that’s where I’m heading.” Then Archie motioned to a closed door a couple of feet away. “Jeremy put her in the butterfly room,” he said. “Rachel’s with her.”
Rachel. Good. Thank God.
I nodded, then froze. Was I grateful for Rachel Manning? Yeah, you know what, I was. So I shoved that oddity aside and squared my shoulders. If she was in with Rachel…
“Did she… did she ask for me?”
He looked at me for a long second. Long enough that my pulse started thudding in my ears. “She asked where you were,”he said finally. “I didn’t tell her you were working or anything else. Just said we’d keep reaching out.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
He knocked once, lightly, then waited a beep for her to call out before he opened the door. The room already smelled like Frankie. Clean cotton. Something floral. Home.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped, phone in her hands like it weighed a thousand pounds. Rachel was beside her, one arm loosely around her back, like she’d been holding Frankie together by proximity alone.
Then Frankie looked up.
Our eyes met.
And five-year-old me—the kid who’d shared crayons with her and loved how she punched another kid for me—crashed straight into seventeen year-old me, the idiot who’d made a mess of things because I didn’t realize she had no idea how we felt and instead of making it blatantly obvious, I chased other girls.
Her face went through about six emotions in two seconds.
Shock. Relief. Wariness. Something softer. Something hurt.
“Hey, Coop,” she said, a flicker of a weary smile trying to turn up the corners of her mouth. Even in the midst of her own misery, she was trying to reach out to me.
I crossed the room without thinking and then stopped myself short, like I didn’t trust my instincts anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the only place to start. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I just—I got your text.”
Rachel glanced between us, sharp and assessing, then stood. “I’m going to grab water,” she said, clearly translatingI’m giving you space but I will absolutely murder you if you hurt her.
