Page 90 of Oh, Puck!
"Hey, Zo."
"Good morning, boys," Zoey says, already grinning, propped up against the counter at Butter Batch Bakery like she hasn't got a single croissant left to sell. "What's going on? You all look like you're being shipped out."
"We were literally just talking about you," I grunt, looking across to Mason.
"Oh?" Zoey arches a brow. "Should I be worried?"
"You mean shouldIbe worried," I say, eyes cutting sideways at him. "Apparently you two have been texting up a storm this morning."
Zoey's face does this strange little scrunch as she looks at her phone like she's checking a thread that doesn't exist.
I glance at Mason. He's gone very still over his yogurt, like he's been caught out.
My eyes narrow right back at him.
"Oh. I see. Youweren'ttexting Zoey."
Mason has the audacity to look offended. "I… I… I was—"
On the tablet, Zoey's still squinting at her own phone.
"I haven't texted any of you since the other day," she says slowly. "Mason, sweetheart, who exactly do you think you've been talking to?"
Mason's face goes white.
"Could've been a mix-up," he mutters.
He closes his eyes like he's praying to a God who clearly stopped taking his calls the second this family was born.
But I let it go. Because we've been through enough this week, and if Mase needs to deal with what's going on in his own way, then I'm not going to stand in his way.
But if he wasn't texting Zoey…who the fuck was he texting? And why is he keeping it a secret?
I lean against the counter, arms crossed, watching my sister's face on the tablet screen. The slightly too-bright smile, the way her eyes keep darting to the corner of her camera like she's checking her own reflection for cracks.
"So," Zoey says, voice pitched determinedly cheerful. "Road trip! Three games. Big stuff."
"BIG STUFF," Beck confirms from the floor, where he's wrestling Biscuit into something resembling stillness. "Zo, I'm gonna be on TV. Real TV. Not just, like, a TikTok where Mason films me doing burpees because our contract says we have to."
"You're already on TV, idiot," I mutter. "We're a professional hockey team."
"Yeah, but THIS isaway gameTV. Different energy."
Zoey laughs, but it's stretched too tight.
I know that laugh.
I've heard that laugh every single day this week, because I've spent the better part of five days hearing it in my own head, replaying the worst phone call of my goddamn life.
Dad's filing for divorce.
Thirty-one years of marriage, three brothers who built their entire personalities around surviving a household that never quite worked, and one sister who's spent her whole life trying to escape.
Mason looks up from his cereal bowl. "You doing okay, Zo? You look tired."
"I'm fine!" She sings, looking away from the camera. "Just, you know. Bakery stuff. Morgan's school project. The usual chaos."
Liar.I know it. Mason probably knows it. Even Beck, mid-wrestle with seventy pounds of mutt, pauses to look up.
