shifting again. I was still nibbling on my thumbnail when Ian gripped my hand and tugged it away from my mouth. Dammit, I’d stopped chewing my nails years ago. I squeezed his fingers, and he tightened his grip on mine. Whatever the people on the phone said to Archie, he quieted, because his response didn’t carry.
I should be the one calling and raising holy hell. I was still processing the fact there were DNA tests in the first place. I glanced back at the three not matches sitting on the table. “Do you think…” I didn’t know what to think.
“Not gonna speculate,” Ian said quietly. “We don’t know enough, and the minute we start speculating or assuming, we invite a lot of assumptions. We have no idea what all this means, Angel.”
“Don’t borrow trouble?” It was pretty good advice.
“More or less,” Coop said, agreeing as he pulled out a sprinkles and chocolate covered donut and held it up to me.
“I’m good,” I said with a shake of my head, ignoring his askance look. Yeah, I didn’t usually turn down food. Turning down chocolate and sprinkles was worrisome, but the two apple fritters I ate earlier—savored really—sat like hard lumps in my stomach.
I glared back down at the papers again. Fucking Maddy. It had been a good day right up until we opened those letters. Letters I’d been carrying for months, so yeah, maybe I should have opened them, but I kept forgetting they were there.
There were so many other more important things. But fucking Maddy kept destroying everything she touched.
I picked up my phone and tabbed over to the text messages from her the night before. One after another, I scrolled through them, and then I scrolled up to the handful—bare handful—we’d shared over the last few months.
We’d talked so little, it took almost no scrolling to get to last summer and the messages canceling our trips back east to see colleges because she was “working.”
The empty promises.
The excuses.
The lack of interest.
“I want the names,” Archie said as he walked back into the kitchen, his shoulders squared and his eyes blazing. “I’ll give you until Monday, but consider you and your entire lab on notice. I will be contacting my attorneys today, and if it takes filing suit against you for invasion of privacy and damages, you can be damned sure I’ll do it.”
He didn’t look away from me once when he gave a mirthless little smile at whatever the man on the phone said.
“Maybe,” he conceded without any kind of concession. It was a marvel how he did that. “But let’s put it this way, I can afford to make your life and your lab very uncomfortable. Can you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, he just ended the call and then stared at me. “Jake go get coffee?”
“Yep.”
He nodded and shoved his phone in his pocket before holding out a hand to me. I clasped his hand and let him pull me to my feet.
“Let’s go, boys. You guys are dressed fine, but Frankie needs to change.”
“I do?”
“Yep,” he said, tugging me toward our room—well, my room really, but it had grown to be ours more and more. “We’re not doing this… We’re not sitting around and staring at those letters. We know they’re DNA tests, and we’re assuming that you’re the donor being matched with a paternal sample.”
In my room, he opened the closet and then eyed me before looking over what was in there. Curious, and a little bit amused, I folded my arms and waited. He still hadn’t said what we were going to do.
“Without more data, we’re going to be chasing ourselves in circles.” He slanted a look at me. “So, we have two choices. We can sit here stewing about it all, which is not my favorite choice, but I will if you need it. Or we can get changed, wait for Jake to get back here, and go do something fun.” He glanced past me. “All of us. Tonight is still mine, but I can share today.”
“Generous,” Coop said with a smirk, and flopped onto the bed. Tiddles leapt up to walk over and flop on his chest, motorboat purring until Coop began petting him. “So what is the plan then?”
“WeFLY.”
“Excuse me?”
“WeFLY,” he repeated, and then pulled out one of the Torched long sleeve sweatshirts I hadn’t gotten to wear yet. The rose on fire had always appealed to me. At the drawers of my dresser, he pulled open the second on