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“Are you freaking serious?” I muttered aloud as I went to the door and threw it open.
Damien had sent hisfriendsto talk to me? That felt low. Lower than low. Because I really liked his friends. Even though, technically, they’d lied to me just as much as he had.
I hadn’t been dating any ofthem, though, so their deception didn’t feel quite as traitorous or traumatic.
Folding my arms over my chest, I sent them all an aggrieved glower. “What?”
Alec and Foster immediately cringed back with shame-filled eyes.
“Just so you know,” Thane started, lifting his hands in surrender. “Damien didn’t send us. He has no idea we’re here. And this has nothing to do with him, okay?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “Why do I find that impossible to believe?”
“It’s true,” he insisted. “We’re here to apologize for not telling you either. I mean, we all knew and stayed silent. That wasn’t fair to you.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip as I went around, taking in all their expressions. When I saw varying degrees of apology and some outright guilt, I loosened a little more.
“So he told you what happened?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Thane answered softly.
“Not that hehadto,” Foster spoke up. “He’s been such a mess that it was fairly obvious you found out the truth. I have honestly never seen him this destroyed before.”
I swallowed thickly, just as Keene agreed with a snort. “No doubt. If falling in love hurts that bad, count me out.”
Hugging myself, and determined not to feel anything from hearing how miserable Damien was, I shied a step back.
But Thane saw me flinch.
“Hey, no,” he cut in. “We aren’t here to advocate for Damien, I swear.”
Parker scoffed. “Then why the hellarewe here?”
“For Oaklynn,” Thane stressed from between gritted teeth as he sent Parker a hard glance. “To see if she needs anything and to apologize for our part in lying to her.”
“Yeah…” Parker drew out with an encouraging roll of his hand. “But we’re only doing all that in the hopes of buttering her up so she’ll want to forgiveArchernext.” Glancing at me dryly, he added, “Don’t listen to Eisner. He thinks he can be all sanctimonious and high-road right now because he’s the only one of us who outright told Damien to be honest with you. But evenhewants you to forgive Archer.”
“Hey, I tried to give her a subliminal message to tell her what was up,” Alec argued and lifted his eyebrows at me as if I shouldpraisehim or something. “Remember the ghostly movie choices I gave you the first night you were at our house, huh? That was me trying to point you in the right direction. So I should be forgiven just as much as Thane is.”
“Not me,” Hudson spoke up with a non-apologetic shrug. “I outright warned him to keep it from you for as long as possible because I knew you were going to drop him flat when you found out the truth.”
“I didn’t drop—” I started to defend myself, only to break off abruptly because I wasn’t surewhatI was going to do about Damien.
“So youwillforgive him?” Foster wondered hopefully. “Eventually?”
“Look.” I hissed out a sigh and unfolded my arms to lift them defensively. “I don’t know, okay. Right now, I’m just trying to get used to the fact that I—”
I broke off with a gnashing of my teeth when Carly Rae Jepson started playing from above us in Thalia’s room.
“Yep. I’m out,” Alec announced, backing away from the others with lifted hands. “Oaklynn, I love you. But I can’t... I hope you forgive Damien. I mean, me,” he added quickly. “I’ll edit as many news reports for you as you want, no matter what. But I don’t do the ghost thing. To me, they belong strictly in the movies. Not real life. ”
And with that, he turned away and jogged off down Bridleway.
“Scaredy-cat,” Hudson called after him.
“Thalia locked him in the back bathroom on the first floor for about five minutes once,” Keene explained to me. “He hasn’t come back since.”
Meanwhile, Thane was scratching his head as he glanced up at the second-story window above us. “That really is freaky how she does that.”
