Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
ARCHIE
Iwas already in the parking lot when Frankie came out.
She didn’t look like someone walking toward answers that could rearrange her entire life. She looked like Frankie—hair half-tucked behind one ear, backpack slung over one shoulder, walking fast like she didn’t trust the ground not to move under her.
When she spotted the Ferrari, she made a beeline for it.
The passenger door flew open and she slid in, breath a little uneven. “I’m going to get such a bad record for skipping school,” she muttered, dropping her bag at her feet.
I smiled despite myself. “Would you rather I had waited until after?”
She turned and shot me a look so loaded with disbelief and faint panic that I actually laughed.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Because that would have been so much better.”
God, I adored her.
I hit the accelerator and pulled us out of the lot and into the flow of traffic like this was just another afternoon drive and not the moment everything tilted.
“So,” she said after a beat, eyes on the windshield like she was afraid to look at me. “What did it say?”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I flipped open the center console and took out the envelope.
The lab’s logo sat stark and official against the white paper, heavy as a brick. I held it for a second longer than necessary, then passed it to her.
“I haven’t opened it yet,” I told her quietly. “I was waiting for you.”
Her fingers closed around it, knuckles whitening. I shifted gears and sped past the next traffic light before it could turn. We weren’t speeding, but we were sure as hell not going slow.
“I’m pretty damn sure I know what it says,” I added, keeping my eyes on the road. “But I didn’t want to find out without you. And I didn’t want us doing this where anyone could watch us fall apart or celebrate.”
She swallowed hard beside me.
So did I.
Wherever this went, I was with her in it. Every mile of the way.
“What do we do if it says Maddy is right?” Frankie asked quietly.
The question hit harder than anything else had.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, then forced myself to loosen it again. The road curved ahead of us, empty and wide, like it had been waiting for this conversation.
“Then we deal with it,” I said.
She didn’t look convinced.
“I mean it,” I went on. “Not in some vague, brave-sounding way. I mean we take the truth and we figure out how to live with it without letting it own us.”
She stared down at the envelope in her hands. “How?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I know what we don’t do. We don’t pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t let anyone decide what you’re allowed to feel. And we don’t let them turn you into a problem to be solved.”
Her throat worked. “And us?”
That was the real question.
I glanced at her then, just long enough to let her see that I wasn’t running from it.
“Us doesn’t disappear just because something gets complicated,” I said quietly. “It never has.”
Silence settled between us again, heavy but not empty.
She nodded once, slow and shaky.
“Okay,” she whispered.
And whatever was inside that envelope, we were already in too deep for me to walk away.
Frankie’s voice barely made it past her throat. “Archie… you realize there are laws about that, right?”
The way she said it — wounded, scared, trying to be brave — cracked something open in me and the darker part of myself stir.
The part that had always refused to accept neat boxes and tidy explanations.
The part that had known, from the first second I ever looked at her, that whatever we were was never going to fit anyone else’s rules.
I glanced at her, really looked at her.
Then I smiled — slow, dangerous, completely certain.
“Then I guess we’re complicated,” I said quietly. “Because whatever that envelope says, it doesn’t get to rewrite what I know.”
Her breath hitched.
“They can have their truth,” I went on, voice low and steady. “Edward. Your mom. The lab. Whoever. But they don’t get to own us. They don’t get to decide what you are to me.”
“Archie—”
“I’m not walking away from you,” I said. “Not because of a piece of paper. Not because someone wants to make us something we’ve never been.”
Her eyes shone, fragile and fierce all at once.
The strangest thing was… I didn’t doubt it for a second.
Even if that test came back saying that bitch Maddy was right — even if the whole world tried to label us — I knew it in my bones:
Frankie wasn’t my sister.
She never had been.
She never would be.
She stared down at the envelope like it might bite her.
“Do you want me to open it now,” she asked softly, “or wait until we get—”
She paused, then looked up at me. “Wait. Where are we going?”
I flashed her a grin as I guided the Ferrari through a lazy curve in the road. “Wherever we want.”
She did not look impressed.
Her gorgeous green eyes narrowed just a fraction, the way they always did when she knew I was being deliberately evasive. That look — sharp, challenging, unamused — hit me straight in the chest in the best possible way.
God, I loved the way she handled me.
My smile widened. “Okay, okay. I was thinking we’d go out to the lake. Get away from everyone. From everything.”
Her shoulders eased a little at that.
“I would’ve taken us home,” I added, keeping my eyes on the road, “but Maddy’s schedule has been… unpredictable.”
That was putting it politely.
The woman had made it a personal mission to exist exactly where she was least welcome. There were days she swept into the house like she owned it, rearranging everything in her path, and others she disappeared for hours without warning. It made privacy feel like a moving target.
Frankie made a small sound under her breath. “Yeah. That tracks.”
“So,” I said, glancing at her. “Lake it is.”
She looked back down at the envelope, fingers curling around it again. “And the results?”
“Those come with us,” I said. “I just don’t want you opening that thing in a parking lot with people walking past and someone’s car alarm going off. This deserves… space.” We deserved it.
Silence stretched between us, not uncomfortable, just full.
“Okay,” she said finally.
The way she trusted me with that — with this — settled something deep in my chest.
I turned the car toward the long, tree-lined road that led away from the city, the envelope resting between us like a quiet, waiting truth.
By the time we reached the lake, the world felt like it had exhaled.
October had decided, for once, to be kind — the air warm without being heavy, the sky impossibly blue, a soft breeze skimming across the water and stirring the trees into a low, rustling chorus.
If I was back in Connecticut, the leaves would be turning with flashes of red and gold to dress up the area. Since it was Texas, well, mostly it was green and brown. Not really autumn colors.
Didn’t matter, Texas had Connecticut beat hands down in the most pivotal area. Texas had Frankie.
I drove us down the narrow gravel road that curved along the edge of the lake and pulled into one of the quieter turnout spots — the kind only locals ever used. No houses. No crowds. Just water, sky, and enough distance from everything else to feel like we were alone on purpose.
I rolled the windows down, letting the fresh air sweep through the car, then put it in park and shut off the engine.
Silence settled.
Not awkward. Not empty. Just… waiting.
Frankie held the envelope in her lap, staring at it like it might decide to open itself.
I leaned back in my seat and let her take her time.
After a few seconds, she let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “How are you so patient?” she demanded, irritation salting the words.
It only made me smile.
“Because I’m here with you,” I said easily. “I can wait forever if you need it.”
Her mouth popped open into the most adorable little O, eyes widening like she hadn’t expected that answer at all. Even as I savored that delightful reaction, her expression shifted.
She studied me for a long moment, like she was trying to read something written just beneath my skin. A faint shimmer caught in her stunning green eyes—nerves, maybe, or the weight of everything we were standing on the edge of—and it made my chest ache in the best possible way.
I watched her do what she always did when things got real. She went inward. Centered herself. Found the part of her that didn’t break just because the world was loud.
It was one of the things I loved most about her.
God, she was beautiful. Not just in the obvious way—though that part was impossible to miss—but in the way she moved through things.
The way she listened. The way she cared.
The way she had looked at me from the very first day like I belonged, even when everything about my life screamed that I came from somewhere else.
She’d been startled by my family’s money, by the size of the house, by the way everything around me had been designed to impress or intimidate. But it hadn’t dazzled her, and it hadn’t scared her away, either.
She’d just… taken it in. Filed it under “part of Archie.” Like it was no more defining than my stupid jokes or the way I hated losing at games.
Each time I tried to picture her back in my old world—Blue Ivy Prep, the endless social maneuvering, the quiet cruelty wrapped in refined politeness—she didn’t fit.
Not because she wasn’t good enough, because she was too good for it.
Those people would’ve tried to turn her into something smaller. Something quieter. Something easier to control.
My Frankie had never been meant to be small.
She finally blew out a breath, long and slow, like she was letting go of something she’d been holding too tightly.
“Okay,” she said. “Whatever this says… it’s just about other people’s choices. Not ours.”
I felt something steady in me latch onto that. Onto her.
“Though…,” she added, trailing off.
I tilted my head, watching her. “Though?”
She made a face, lips twisting, nose wrinkling in that way that always wrecked me. “I want to make that whole nature-versus-nurture argument,” she admitted, “but I’m not actually sure which side I want to vote with here.”
The way she said it — wry and anxious and stubborn all at once — cracked me.
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
“Of course you do,” I said, smiling at her like she was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen. “Only you would turn a DNA test into a philosophical crisis.”
She shot me a look that was half glare, half smile. “This is very serious, Archie.”
“I know,” I said gently. “And you’re still adorable when you’re overthinking it.”
Her lips twitched despite herself.
And for a moment — just a moment — the weight of the envelope didn’t feel quite so heavy.
Frankie finally blew out a breath, long and slow, like she was letting go of something she’d been holding too tightly.
She didn’t open the envelope yet. Just held it there, fingers tight around the edges, like hesitation itself had weight.
“You know,” I said quietly, “nature versus nurture is only one argument.”
Her gaze flicked to me. “Oh?”
“I can think of a few others.”
I let that hang there on purpose.
She made a face at me, unmistakably unimpressed. “You don’t get to just drop that little grenade and not explain it.”
I grinned and reached over, cupping her cheek in my palm. The moment I touched her, she leaned into it without thinking, and the simple trust in that movement went straight to my chest.
“Everyone makes leaps,” I said softly. “And our nurture isn’t just our home life. It’s our friends. Our friends’ families. Our teachers. The people who show up for us. And at the end of the day… it’s the person we decide to be.”
It would’ve been easy for me to be every inch the spoiled, cruel snob people expected when they saw my last name. Honestly, I could’ve been a lot worse than that. But I didn’t like that version of myself.
I much preferred the one I was with Frankie.
I brushed my thumb lightly along her cheekbone. “So that means you are who you want to be.”
Her eyes searched mine, something soft and aching and hopeful flickering there.
“Whatever that envelope says,” I continued, “whatever bullshit it confirms about Edward, Maddy, and their fucked up history, that isn’t us. It will never be us. We’re who we want to be.”
The question hovered on her lips, I could read it as clearly as I could see how perfectly green her eyes were. But instead of asking that unspoken question, she said, “Ready?”
I nodded once.
She held it out. “You rip it open, I’ll pull it out.”
A slow, wicked smile tugged at my mouth. “You know,” I said lightly, “pulling out takes skill.”
Her reaction was instant and spectacular—cheeks flaming red, eyes bright and scandalized, and a scowl trying desperately to pretend she wasn’t laughing.
“Behave,” she ordered.
But the tension cracked. Just a little. Enough.
While she was busy trying not to smile, I tore the envelope open.
“Hey—!” she protested, snatching it from me, but it was too late. The paper slid free into her hands. She stared at it, eyes darting back and forth as she read, processing numbers and names and lines that suddenly carried the weight of our entire future.
For the first time since this nightmare started, a flicker of doubt slipped through my certainty.
Then her breath hitched.
“You were right,” she whispered.
Relief slammed into me so hard I almost laughed. I tucked that brief, traitorous fear away and grinned at her, all smug confidence.
“You know,” I said, “you should really start remembering that I’m always right.”
She let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, shaking her head even as tears streamed down her face. “You are such an ass,” she managed, but she was smiling through it.
That was it.
I shoved my seat back, reached across the console, and unbuckled her seatbelt before she could protest. Then I pulled her over into my lap, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight. It wasn’t graceful. The steering wheel dug into my side and her knees bumped the dash, but I didn’t care.
We made it work.
She buried her face against my shoulder, laughing and crying at the same time, and I held her like I’d been waiting my entire life to do exactly this.
“You’re not my sister,” she murmured, still shaky. Then she let out a snort laugh. “I mean, I’m not your sister.” The quaver in her voice betrayed the tears still escaping her.
“No,” I said into her hair, fierce and sure. I alternated between rubbing her back, and stroking her hair. “You’re not.”
Thank. Fuck.