Page 132 of For the Plot

“Because you’d be disowned otherwise,” Maya adds.

“Because Kendall bribes me with sex if I play nice,” he mutters.

“Damn right I do,” Kendall says, raising her glass.

“Okay,” I say, tossing my napkin down onto the breakfast table, “I’m not interested in my hearing about my son like that.”

“Oh, but I have to hear about how my dad had sex in his fucking office two days ago? Or rather, fucking walked in on it.” Archer rolls his eyes, reaching for the entire bottle of champagne instead of his mimosa.

“Oh, right,” Skye says, her face flaming now. “Oops, forgot about that.”

“Fuck,” I groan, trying to laugh through the dynamic that is our family. “To be fair,” I say, pointing toward him, “I’ve asked you multiple times to knock before marching into my office.”

“To be fair,” Archer snaps back, “I didn’t expect my stepmom to be on her back on your desk, with her heels over your shoulders in the middle of the fucking workday.”

The entire table is laughing now, everyone’s face a different shade of red.

“Baby,” Kendall says, reaching over to calm Archer, “to be fair, your desk has also seen its fair share of, umm, encounters.”

“Oh.” I laugh, pointing my finger at my son. “So it’s not just me, then?”

Archer rolls his eyes and drags his hands dramatically down his face. “I’m done talking about it, thank you.”

The banter continues. Natural. Like this makes sense now in a fucked-up way… our weird, twisted, messy family. Archer doesn’t flinch anymore when Skye curls into my side.

And me? I just sit back and breathe it all in.

This life. This woman. This table full of complicated, beautiful people who made it through hell and found something like peace on the other side.

Skye leans into me and whispers, “You know, she wasn’t wrong.”

“About what?”

She kisses my jaw. “Fucking youwasgreat for the plot.”

I growl low in my throat and slide my hand over her thigh.

“Careful,” I whisper. “Say shit like that and I’ll fuck you on the kitchen island before the dishes are even cleared and really fuck Archer’s world up.”

She shivers. “So predictable.”

“Consistent,” I correct. “And still obsessed.”

Kendall raises her glass. “To happy endings.”

Skye locks eyes with me and smiles.

“To the plot,” she says.

I raise my glass and toast the chaos that brought us here.

Because it turns out,the plotknew exactly what the fuck it was doing.