Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
FRANKIE
Archie took a hell of a lot longer than I expected to get to school. By then, we barely had time to say more than three words once he and Coop got there. Coop looked like hell, but he’d just given me a tight smile and walked away.
“Give him time, babe,” Archie said, pressing a fresh coffee into my hand. “I’ll meet you in class.” Then he, too, was gone. I hadn’t even made it to my locker before the first bell, and our kiss had already metastasized into something with teeth.
Rumors didn’t walk at this school—they sprinted, hurdling over facts, logic, and dignity on their way to becoming full-blown melodramas.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me that by the time I got to my locker, people were already whispering like I’d committed a felony instead of…
whatever that kiss with Archie counted as.
Each murmured Did you hear? felt like a shove to my ribs.
Each Archie? No way—right? made my skin itch.
Every side-eye might as well have read, Look at her. Who does she think she is?
I told myself to focus on the combination lock, but my fingers fumbled twice, then three times. My pulse felt too close to the surface, like it was vibrating through my bones. Maybe if I just pretended hard enough, the world would fall back into alignment. Or at least stop tilting under my feet.
I didn’t see Mathieu until his shadow cut over mine.
And even then I didn’t see him—I felt him first. A familiar warmth, the faint scent of soap he always used, the subtle shift in the hallway when someone tall and quietly intense stepped close.
“Frankie.”
His voice wasn’t angry. And somehow that was worse. His accent softened my name to a caress, but it was off. Not as gentle or teasing as normal.
I froze with my hand still on the locker door. “Hey. I’m sorry I didn’t make it over to get you. I was actually going to text—”
“You kissed him.” No hesitation. No question. A verdict.
Shock punched me in the solar plexus. Rumors were one thing.
But how the hell had this one happened already?
We hadn’t even been at the school. We’d been…
I blinked once before the floor tried to drop out from beneath me.
“Okay,” I said, because I couldn’t think of a real response.
“Wow. That’s—where did you even hear that? ”
The words came out on a shiver of icy chill racing through my system. My stomach bottomed out, my heart thudded so hard it was a pounding that reverberated in my ears.
“It doesn’t matter where.” He stepped forward, just enough that the metal behind me nudged the back of my spine. He wasn’t touching me, but it felt like he had me braced all the same. “Is it true?”
His eyes searched my face, dark and sharp and almost pleading—like if I said the right thing, he’d release the tension coiled through his shoulders.
It made something ugly twist low in my stomach.
“Mathieu, I told you things were complicated. I told you about the guys,” I whispered, trying to keep my voice low even as the hallway noise swelled around us. “I wasn’t lying.”
“Yes,” he said softly. “You told me. But that’s not what you’re lying about.”
A cold crack split through my chest. “Excuse me?”
“You keep pretending you don’t want them,” he continued, voice still quiet, still too calm. “But the way you look when their names come up? The way you talk about them? You can’t even say you don’t have feelings. Not really.”
My breath stuttered.
He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t accusing me of anything in a way that made sense. He was doing something much worse because he seemed to imply he understood me better than I understood myself.
“I’m not lying,” I said, and it came out thin. Weak. “And I am trying to figure things out. That’s all.”
“Then figure them out,” he murmured. “But don’t pretend I’m the one you want if I’m not.”
That landed with surgical precision, leaving heat crawling up my throat. He wasn’t wrong—but he wasn’t right either. And he definitely wasn’t being fair.
“Mathieu, you’re cornering me,” I said, finally pushing against the locker. “Can you just—let me breathe?”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“Yeah, well maybe don’t do it like you’re trapping me.”
Something flashed across his face—hurt, frustration, something dangerously close to jealousy. Which was weird as hell after he said he wouldn’t ask me to homecoming and that I needed to figure out what I wanted.
Then he said the thing that broke whatever fragile balance was left. “You kissed Archie. That’s not nothing, Frankie. Stop lying to yourself about it.”
My lungs forgot their job.
For a second, the hallway noise faded out, replaced by a sharp ringing in my ears. My heart kicked painfully against my ribs, and suddenly everything—this morning, yesterday, the weekend—collapsed into a single overwhelming weight.
“I’m not lying,” I whispered. “I’m trying to survive.”
“Then tell me what you want.”
“I don’t know!” It came out louder than I intended as I shoved off the lockers to try and go around him. Too loud. Heads turned.
Mathieu didn’t flinch, but his nostrils flared. How he could be so cool in the middle of an emotional tsunami made my stomach hurt.
“Frankie,” he said again—gentler, reaching for my arm.
He never touched me.
Because another hand closed around Mathieu’s wrist before he could.
I didn’t have to look to know who it was. I felt the tension coil in the air like a live wire. Felt the shift in the hallway’s attention. Felt the floor tilt all over again.
Archie’s voice came from just over my shoulder, low and lethal in a way that made my pulse skitter.
“Leave her alone.”
The world narrowed to the three of us.
Mathieu’s jaw tightened. “This is none of your business.”
“You corner her like that again,” Archie said, voice a razor wrapped in velvet, “and I’ll make it my business.”
“Archie—” I started, too many emotions battering against each other in my chest.
“Frankie,” he said without looking at me, voice softening just a hair, “you okay?”
I hated that I wasn’t.
I hated that he could see it.
I hated that the kiss was suddenly right there between us again, breathing, alive.
“Yes,” I lied, because it was the only thing I had left. “I’m fine.”
Archie’s eyes flicked to Mathieu’s, dark and unwavering. “Then step back.”
For a very long second, Mathieu didn’t move. Finally, he exhaled through his nose, slow and trembling, and dropped his hand to his side.
“I just wanted an answer,” he said, voice cracking at the edges.
I swallowed. Hard. “I can’t give you one right now.”
Something in his expression splintered and then he walked away, leaving a cold ache in his wake.
The hallway buzzed louder—voices, whispers, phones out. People pretending not to stare.
Archie stayed where he was, hands clenched, jaw locked tight.
And me?
I stood pinned between the boy I’d kissed, the boy I’d hurt, and the impossible mess I’d made out of all of us.
The day hadn’t even really started.
And I already wanted to crawl back into Archie’s Ferrari, bury my face in my hands, and pretend none of this existed. Pretend I hadn’t kissed him. Pretend he hadn’t kissed me back. Pretend the world hadn’t tilted and then started spinning like it wanted to fling me clean off.
But pretending didn’t stop the heat rising under my skin. Or the way the hallway noise turned into a low-grade roar, full of stares I caught out of the corner of my eye—too many, too pointed.
Archie didn’t move until I did.
The second I shifted, he made sure to press my coffee back into my hand then his hand hovered at the small of my back, not quite touching, but there. A steady anchor if I wanted it. A threat if anyone else took one step too close.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “We’re gonna be late.”
His voice wasn’t sharp anymore. It wasn’t even irritated. It was… soft. Concern threaded through steel, and that combination hit harder than the confrontation itself.
I nodded, because I didn’t trust my mouth.
As we walked, conversations cleaved around us, like the tide pulling back from something dangerous. Phones stayed low but angled. Someone gasped when Archie shot them a withering look. Someone else muttered I heard she dumped Mathieu already—
I picked up the pace.
We still had two turns before we reached the hallway that housed our classroom. Two eternity-long turns. Archie matched my stride like he was doing it on instinct, close enough that I felt his warmth every time my shoulder brushed his arm.
And that was a whole different problem, because my heart kept mistaking proximity for meaning.
Ten feet from our class, he finally spoke again.
“You’re sure you’re okay?”
No one else would have asked it like that. Jake would’ve demanded answers. Bubba would’ve tried to make me laugh. Coop… Coop’s question would’ve been quieter, more private. But Archie?
Archie sounded like he already knew I was lying. The smart thing would’ve been to distract him. Joke. Shrug. Redirect. Instead, what came out was, “Everyone is staring.”
He pivoted just enough to look at me directly, one hand braced on the wall like he was grounding himself before he said something he couldn’t take back whatever he planned to say.
“Let them.”
My breath snagged.
He wasn’t posturing. His voice didn’t have that arrogant I-don’t-care edge he used when someone pissed him off. This was different. Protective. Possessive. Maybe too much of both.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is,” he said, running his hand down my arm to my elbow in a casual caress he’d done a thousand times, but today it left a trail of fire in its wake. “They don’t get to judge you for something that isn’t their fucking business.”
“It shouldn’t be yours either.”
That stopped him dead.
I regretted it instantly.
Archie’s jaw flexed, and for a second it looked like he might argue—might remind me he had shown up after my entire reality shattered, that he’d been the one to help me cobble those pieces back together. But instead, he inhaled slowly.