The Exit Strategy

1. Trial by TikTok

TRIAL BY TIKTOK

JUNIE

Oh God. This isn’t good.

I set my empty glass on my nightstand and pull the covers up to my chin.

This will pass. Closing my eyes, I will myself to dream of happily ever afters and not the shit show my life has become.

Monday 8:30 a.m. TikTok Notification: Your video has 3K comments.

No. No, no, no.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, flashing my brother’s name. He’s been in Japan for the last two years learning…whatever it is doctors learn over there, but it’s not our scheduled check-in day, so I send it to voicemail, which must piss him off because he immediately calls back three more times.

Nolan: Answer your damn phone, Juniper.

I bury my face in my pillow. Maybe if I just stay in bed long enough, this will all blow over.

Tuesday 9:00 a.m. Email Notification.

My fingers tremble over the message in my inbox.

From: Callahan Analytics

Subject: Urgent.

And for the second time in less than a week, my dreams are shattered.

Dear Ms. Mercer,

We regret to inform you that due to recent online activity, we are forced to rescind your offer of employment. Our social media morality clause…

My eyes glaze over. When I can’t see the words anymore, I toss my phone aside and scream into my pillow.

I should’ve seen this coming. I’m angry with myself that I didn’t, but somehow, even after my life imploded, this particular brand of destruction still blindsides me.

And I’ve had fifteen hours, sitting in the back seat of my own damn car, to dissect all the ways I was wrong and all the things I should have said, would have said, if I hadn’t been so caught off guard by my own personal band of merry meddlers.

Or as my brother calls them, his best friends.

That’s how long it takes us to drive from a viral crashout in Boston to a town I swore I’d never set foot in.

The town that Cole Whittaker calls home.

Fifteen hours of gas station coffee with my sweatshirt hood pulled low and so many true-crime podcasts that now I’m one check-engine light away from a complete and utter breakdown.

I’ll stop scrolling on my phone in just a minute, I swear.

“Holy shit.” I sit up straighter. “What’s she doing?”

Forty-seven ways to ruin Grace Elliott scroll through my mind as I glare at my phone.

An anonymous call to the IRS because she’s never paid taxes from her nanny job.

Change all the passwords on her bank and credit card accounts. I could do it too. The asshole couldn’t pay her credit card on time, even after I set up her autopay, because she couldn’t balance her checking account with her bar tab and just assumed I’d fix it.

Create a burner account on Reddit. I can call it u/ReceiptsforGraceElliott and counter every single one of her claims.

Hmm…Reddit does like to lose its mind. If I make the retaliation juicy enough, they’d really—

“Why are you still scrolling?” Fen’s sharp words snap me back to reality. He’s generally the playful one, but right now, he’s pissed. “I told you to take all that shit off your phone.”

“What’s happening?” Hudson asks from the driver’s seat. They obviously know me too well—that’s why they’re chaperoning my exile. Left to my own devices, I would have driven right past Porchlight Cove and never looked back.

Porchlight Cove.

Of course Cole would live on a barrier island that sounds as though it was designed for second chances. If I had any other options…

My fall has been deep and fast.

I have no other options now that the TikTok mafia is on my heels.

“Grace started some new social media profiles,” Fen grumbles.

“She named herself I.AM.Sorry and is going on the offensive against our little Spite-Berry.” He turns his glare my way again.

“You should have told me she filmed you throwing all her shit out of a second-story window. Or that you made a goddamn retaliation video last night. This makes my job much harder.”

“I simply refuted her lies,” I say.

“With all the sass and spite you could muster. Jeez-us, Junie.” Fen groans. “Now she’s splicing together bits from your new video to back up her falsifications. This is why you cannot engage.”

Because I’m not as likable as most women my age. I’m too…thorny. He doesn’t say it, but that’s the gist of it.

“You what?” Hudson has perfected the dad-bark. It’s annoying. “For fuck’s sake, Juniper Marie, what the actual fuck. Didn’t the Mr. Fissile debacle teach you anything?”

If I had to label my teenage protectors, I’d say my big brother, Nolan, maintained that role, mostly. Fenway became the excitable uncle who just wanted me to be happy. Hudson was the grumpy dad who never took any of my shit.

And Cole?

Cole became my best friend.

My confidant.

My silent encourager and emotional support beam.

Until he left me too.

Not that these guys have any right to scold me. I’m no longer the teenager they had to shuttle to school. I’m twenty-four years old! And it’s my freaking house.

My mother’s cancer and my deadbeat dad are how my brother and his three best friends became the unlikely shepherds of my childhood—they moved out of their college dorm and into my childhood home to keep our lights on when my mother no longer could and my father flat-out refused.

They were barely adults themselves, but somehow, we made it work.

Lord knows we had the space.

I was almost seventeen when she died, hence the weird boundaries the guys and I have had ever since.

Tugging my hoodie over my head, I shrug. “It’s my house, Hud. She doesn’t even have a lease. She’s a tenant at will, and I willed her gone.”

“Jesus Christ, you little law-skirting shit. That’s not how things work.

” Hudson slams his palm on the steering wheel, takes a deep breath, then meets my gaze in the rearview mirror.

“I know they hurt you, Junie. And if I could kill them with my bare hands, I would. But you’re an adult.

You must start handling situations with your fucking brain, not your emotional trigger finger. Okay?”

As though it’s that easy. But I nod because arguing with him right now is pointless.

He’s had practice with this speech already—six months ago when I started a Wi-Fi war with Mr. Fissile next door for stealing my Internet.

I named my network Mr. Fissile steals Wi-Fi and doesn’t pick up his dog’s poop.

The asshole took me to court for slander and Hudson was forced to defend me.

Of all my guardian bros, Hudson’s the one who’ll use that shit against me.

“What’s happening now?” he asks.

“Grace is gaining followers,” Fen says. “Especially with the new video she posted of Junie…being Junie. Thankfully most of her comment sections are still filled with snake emojis. But I’m not going to lie—Grace is a good actress, and she’s going at this hard. She’s going to be a problem.”

So much for being my friend.

Fen continues filling Hudson in, but I zone out and watch the world roll by. No one has ever understood that I don’t get myself into these situations on purpose. I just don’t know how to be any other way.

It was easier when I didn’t have any friends. It was stupid to let Grace into my life in the first place. That’s an error in judgment I won’t make again. I should’ve just stuck to my books—fiction won’t betray you.

“What about Paul?” Hud asks. He’s watching me in the rearview.

“What about him?”

It’s at that moment that I realize I have no feelings about Paul. None. It’s like a stranger died. Sad but not painful. His betrayal stings, but I loved Grace like a sister. It’s probably why I’m so angry.

“Guess that answers how you felt about him.” Fen laughs.

The truth is, I thought I loved Paul. Now I know I didn’t.

Hud slows the car when the highway suddenly cuts down to two lanes, and we crawl from one stoplight to the next.

The groan I’ve barely contained since Boston finally breaks free.

“It’s not forever, Junie.” Hudson’s uncharacteristically gentle tone raises my hackles. “Cole needs help getting his accounting software in order, and you just need to lie low for a bit.”

“Two months, tops,” Fen agrees.

I start calculating how many minutes are in two months when I spot the welcome sign.

Welcome to Porchlight Cove—Where the lights are always on. Even Heartmark would reject that slogan for being too on the nose. But there it is, in all its cheerful yellow glory.

This is supposed to be my fresh start? Population 1,000 retirees and one very specific reason I’ve never, ever visited the Carolinas with my brother and the Berry Brigade of Merry Guardians.

Cole Whittaker.

I’ve always known where he was, which made it easy to avoid him. These assholes and our group chats keep me informed and up to date whether I want them to or not. And where Cole is concerned, I most certainly do not want.

My brother and his idiotic crew still feel responsible for me years after their duty ended.

They’re the reason I’m in this town, driving toward his life, about to take a job that will make Cole not only my first heartbreak but also my first boss straight out of my MBA program, and there’s pain attached to both those things.

My heart pinches before I can force the frost in my soul to freeze the hell over.

Cole created his own little community here in Porchlight Cove when he built the homes of The Haven—a community within a community.

The only comfort I get from knowing that we were so easily replaced is that Hudson let it slip that Cole built The Haven for young adults and families, but somehow ended up with a small retirement community instead.

Well, a retirement community, and now…me.

He’s only allowing it as a favor to my brother. And perhaps because they’re all a teensy bit worried that Boston has become a crime scene and my face is the chalk outline after Hudson had to extract me from the Brookline Bagelry yesterday because people were filming me.

Even Brookline, my little city surrounded by Boston on three sides, has turned against me.