Page 32 of Oathbreaker

Not being able to talk to Briar about this is driving me crazy, but since no one has said a word, some sixth sense tells me to tread carefully. Maybe they think Frankie doesn’t know? She most certainly guessed, if that’s the case. But Briar and I haven’t had a moment to confirm or deny it.

In spite of me living in her house, we haven’t had time to talk about many of the things I want to bring up.

“Colt?” Frankie looks up at me with guileless blue eyes.

“Yeah, honey?”

“Do you play Connect Four?”

Banks chokes on his pizza, chuckling.

I give him a strange look but then look down at Frankie. “It’s been a really long time, but sure. I played it a lot when I was a kid.”

“Good.” She gives me a smile I can’t quite decipher, kind of like Cinderella meets Lucifer—it would be disconcerting if it were anyone else. “We can play after dinner.”

“Okay?” I look at Banks, but he just laughs.

“Go with it,” Royal murmurs, clapping me on the shoulder before grabbing some pizza.

Pizza and Connect Four.

Not the way I pictured my return to the family, but it’s pretty cool, nonetheless. If I could just get Dash and Atlas to forgive me, everything would be great.

But something tells me that’s going to be a lot harder than anything else.

Eleven

Briar

I’m doing the dishes.

All six of the cups and the fork that Frankie used to scoop up some of the leftover anchovy guts—barf—after she ate two slices of pizza.

God, of course I have a kid who likes anchovies.

Blech.

But that’s not what has me furiously scrubbing the tines of the fork, trying to erase each and every bit of that anchovy gunk.

It’s that I just sat around on my back patio, eating pizza, laughing with the girls and Frankie, the boys and Colt during Sunday Dinner.

Freaking Sunday Dinner.

Something I created because I wanted Frankie to have what Dash and I didn’t—a family that comes together on the regular.

It’s not every Sunday.

But it’s a lot of them.

And I felt like it was critically important, especially because she didn’t have a dad.

But now?—

A throat clears and I whip around to see Colt leaning against the wall.

“You should be in bed,” I murmur.

He looks exhausted, and just the day before, he was bleeding in the sheets of his motel room.