Page 138 of Shots Fired

Jack has added you to a new group chat.

Jack has renamed the group chat: Stop Banging My Sister.

Jack: Just leaving this here …

Sawyer: For the record, I have never banged your sister.

Jack: I know. You’re here for moral support.

Me: You can’t complain now that I’m your brother-in-law.

Jack: You know what you did …

Sawyer: *sighs into my beer* What did he do this time?

Jack: Yesterday, we went shopping together. I thought, why not? It’ll be nice to buy baby clothes and spend time as a family.

Jack: The first store—FIRST STORE—we walk into, and Archer’s sneaking off to pay for sexy lingerie.

Sawyer: For himself?

Me: I would look good in a thong. For sure.

From the couch on the other side of Jon and Felicity’s living room, Jack narrows his eyes at me before he gets back to typing.

Jack: I just ate.

Jack: No, Sawyer, for my sister. He snuck off to pay for sexy lingerie FOR MY SISTER while he thought I wasn’t looking.

Sawyer: Which begs the question, why were you looking?

Jack: It was an unfortunate moment. Anyway, that isn’t the worst part or the point.

“Does anyone plan on sitting back around the table for the dessert I made, or should I throw it all at you instead?” Coach—or Jon, as I now call him out of rink time—props his hands on his hips as he scans the room with narrowed eyes.

Looking at Jon, dressed in a blue striped apron withMorgan’s Marvelous Mealsstamped across the front, I’m slowly figuring out why Jack has consistently refuted that he’s turning into his stepdad.

He absolutely is.

Throwing my brother-in-law a grin, I type out my next message without looking, my eyes on him the whole time.

Me: What was the worst part of the shopping trip, Jack?

Sawyer: I don’t want to know. I also just ate.

Jack: I don’t have any hard evidence—thank Christ—but in another store, I’m fairly certain he took Darcy into a dressing room, claiming he was helping her try on dresses, and then … you know … while she was wearing said lingerie.

Sort of correct.

Sawyer: All I want to do is make a joke about hard evidence. But I have a teenage boy and I’m in my mid-thirties. I shouldn’t be this way.

Me: Very perceptive, Morgan. Although it wasn’t my idea. Your baby sister likes me to fuck her brains out in risky places. What can I say? I don’t make the rules. I simply follow them like a good boy.

Jack: …

Sawyer: You’re regretting starting this conversation, aren’t you?

Jack: I’m regretting a lot of things right now.

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