25 Christian
I’m holding a blood-soaked T-shirt to my face while Jamie leans against the counter with his arms crossed and Ryan sits at the table, head down, shoulders slumped.
Francesca paces in front of us, furious.
“Does someone want to tell me what the fuck just happened?” she demands.
We all look at her.
“What?” she snaps.
Jamie shrugs. “Just… you cursing. Feels weird.”
She stares at him for half a second, then throws her hands up. “Fuck, fuckity fuck, fuck. Okay? Great. Established- I can swear. Now someone explain what happened.”
Ryan lifts his head, eyes going straight to me. “I hit Christian. It- ”
“It was my fault,” I cut in, pulling the shirt away from my face and dropping it into the sink before grabbing a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer. I press it against my cheek as I sit down beside him. “I was out of line.”
She turns to me, incredulous. “Out of line how?”
“I was a dick,” I say, more bluntly, gesturing vaguely between her and Ryan. “About you. About… whatever this is.”
Ryan exhales, dragging a hand down his face, but before he can say anything, Jamie pushes off the counter like he’s done with the whole conversation. “Yeah, I don’t want to hear this-”
“No, wait,” she says quickly, stopping him. Then, more quietly, “There isn’t an us. Not really.”
“So you aren’t sleeping together every night?” I ask, not loving how jealous I sound.
She flushes pink. “No- I mean, yes. But we are just sleeping. Not sleeping. Not sex. We just…cuddle.”
Jamie lets out a rough breath, tipping his head back against the cabinet. “I want a drink for this conversation.” A beat. “I picked a shit time to quit.”
I lower the ice slightly, staring at him. “You quit drinking?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “A few weeks ago.”
“Jamie ” I start, a grin already pulling at my mouth before I can stop it. “That’s- ”
I catch the look on his face. He doesn’t want this to be a big deal, so I swallow down my excitement and just say, “that’s great.”
He huffs out a quiet, humorless laugh. “Yeah. Sure.” His gaze flicks to her, something sharper creeping in. “Is it a big enough deal to keep you from running off again?”
She sucks in a breath.
“Shit,” he says immediately, pushing off the cabinet. “I didn’t mean that… Fuck. I’m sorry, Frankie. I just-”
He looks at me then back to her. “What the fuck is going on? I can’t handle this. Are you leaving? Do you have some life to go back to? Are we-”
He swallows and looks at me again.
“Just… I’m dying here. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
His face has gone pale.
For a second, I consider ending this conversation entirely, just getting him out of here, do whatever I have to take that pained look off his face.
Ryan stands up. “Okay. We need to talk. All of us.”
No one argues.
“But first I’m gonna grab a shirt,” he says, walking out of the room.
“Yeah- I’m gonna change,” I say, pushing to my feet and pulling my ruined shirt over my head.
I quickly change and march back to the kitchen. I’ve been angry at her since the second she walked back into our lives- angry enough to yell, to demand answers, to shut her out the same way she shut us out.
But when I walk back towards the kitchen, that anger doesn’t land the way I expect it to.
She’s sitting there, silent with Jamie just staring at her. Her shoulders tight, fingers twisted together in her lap, like she’s bracing for whatever we throw at her. Like she’s already decided she deserves whatever comes next.
And I realize she's about to apologize for surviving. About to take whatever we throw at her for simply doing what she thought was the best thing for all of us. No malice, no bad intent... just a choice that a teenage girl thought was the right one.
And like gasoline on water, my rage that was so hot, spread so fast burnt up and now it’s gone.
Ryan walks through the front door and I clear my throat and walk in the kitchen.
“I know why you left, Francesca,” I say.
She looks up at me, startled.
“I don’t like it,” I continue, more evenly. “I don’t like that you didn’t talk to us, didn’t trust us to handle it. But I get it.” I move to stand next to Jamie, leaning against the counter.
“I did trust you,” she says quickly, her voice small. “It wasn’t you. It was Gary.” At his name, her gaze drops for a second before she forces herself to meet mine again. “Is he… still around?”
I shake my head. “No. I stopped paying him the day you turned eighteen. Figured he’d show up then, but he didn’t.”
There’s a beat. “I almost wanted him to show up again,” I admit. “Just so I could deal with it properly.”
She exhales, something tight in her shoulders loosening.
“I hate that,” she says quietly. “I left so you wouldn’t have to pay and you did anyway.”
“I paid him so he wouldn’t look for you,” I cut in. “That’s done. It’s over.”
She nods, but her hands tighten again. “I’m sorry,” she starts. I move to stop her, but she pushes through it. “No- just… let me say it. I should’ve talked to you. I know that. I just- ” she shakes her head, searching for the words. “It all happened so fast. Gary, and then… everything else.”
Jamie lets out a quiet breath. “You mean when I lost my shit and yelled at you that we were all in love with you?”
There’s a hint of humor in it, and she smiles a little bit as she glances at him.
“It wasn’t just that.”
She shakes her head. “It was everything. You guys… Gram… all of you just… giving everything, sacrificing anything. And I- ” she swallows. “I didn’t have anything to give back. I thought leaving would be me doing something to help you all.”
No one says anything. She looks up at us then, eyes glassy.
“I know I hurt you,” she says, quieter now. “I know you hate me. I know that. And I deserve that.”
“We don’t hate you,” I say, sharper than I intend.
She flinches slightly and I exhale, trying to rein it in.
“We were angry,” I correct. “We were hurt. But that’s not the same thing.”
“I already told you, I don’t hate you. We hated what you did,” Ryan adds quietly. “There’s a difference.”
Her composure cracks at that. Tears spill over before she can stop them, and I have to actively keep myself from reaching for her.
Jamie shifts, crossing his arms. “So why didn’t you come back?” he asks. “When you turned eighteen. When his threats had no power. Why didn’t you come home?”
She wipes at her face, sitting up a little straighter, like she’s bracing herself.
“I thought…” she starts, then stops. “I thought too much time had passed.”
“Bullshit,” Jamie says, frowning.
His jaw is tight, his arms crossed so hard they look painful. I want to tell him to breathe, to relax, to calm down, but I know that he needs to get this out or it will eat him up inside.
“It had been, what- ten months? You stayed away for over three years. Why?”
She looks at me, then down at her hands, drawing in a slow breath before closing her eyes.
“I fell in love with all of you,” she says quietly. “And I didn’t know what to do with that.”
I suck in a breath and feel Jamie tense beside me.
I think we all always assumed she felt the same, but it’s strange, hearing her say it out loud.
She opens her eyes and glances between the three of us before dropping to her hands, her fingers twisting together.
“I didn’t know what any of you felt,” she continues, voice unsteady. “Not really. I mean… I thought I did, sometimes. But I couldn’t be sure. And I couldn’t ask without risking everything changing.”
I see a tear fall down her cheek and my hands clench at my sides. I drag a hand over the back of my neck and exhale slowly, but still don’t speak. She needs to say this, needs to get it out.
So I stand there and listen, even though every instinct I have is screaming at me to go to her.
“And even if I came back- if Gary was gone, if you forgave me…”
“We forgive you,” I blurt out without meaning to. “I forgive you.”
She swallows and looks up, briefly, before dropping her gaze again to her hands.
“Even still, I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings. In my head, there wasn’t a version of this where I didn’t lose two of you.”
Her voice cracks.
I want to tell her there’s no version of this where she loses us. That as long as she wanted us, we were hers.
All of us.
“I was young,” she says after a moment, huffing out a weak laugh. “Teenage emotions and all that.”
None of us laugh.
“At the time, it felt impossible,” she says quietly. “Then time just… passed. Too much of it. And after a while, I didn’t think I had anyone left to come back to.”
Silence settles over the room and it takes me a minute to realize they are all looking at me. As if they are waiting on me. Like I’m supposed to have the plan, the answer.
I don’t.
But there is one thing I want to make absolutely clear.
“Francesca, if you want to come home, then come home. Stay home.” I say quietly, unable to let this continue without saying something. Her eyes lift to mine.
“We were always here, Francesca,” I say, slower this time, making sure she hears it “We’re still here. And we forgive you.”