"Oh, Jesus," Rhys groans from behind the wheel.
Lilly barks out a laugh but then turns to meet my eyes. "She's excited to have her Auntie D around twenty-four seven."
"Yeah. So great," Rhys mutters under his breath.
"Fuck off, McGuire." I reach around the headrest and smack him against the back of the head.
"Language, babe," Lilly admonishes, and I can't hide my snort.
How times have changed.
We merge into traffic, and with every passing mile, I chip away more of my white nail polish. I despise the habit I've picked up whenever I'm about to be in close quarters with Marcus Baxter. I probably should just neglect my manicures for the duration of our cohabitation. Anything else would be a waste of money.
"What happened, D?" Rhys breaks the weighing silence.
I anticipated an interrogation the moment I exited the jet. They either didn't want to ambush me, or…does Lilly already know? It wouldn't surprise me if she found out with her talent for information gathering. No, there is no way she would've looked in that direction.
I meet Rhys's brown eyes in the rearview mirror, his concern hitting me harder than I thought it would. He has been a close friend for years, but not as close as I am with Lilly or Wes.
He continues, "Don't get me wrong, D. We are happy to finally have you on this side of the country, but…"
Rhys doesn't have to finish the sentence. This cloak-and-dagger operation is beyond uncharacteristic for me. I've had my future planned out since entering Westbridge High freshman year—with color-coded Post-it notes and a meticulous time line written out in my phone's calendar. My career was set to be in New York.
I avert my gaze out the window, the landscape fading away to memories.
Six years ago,I had expected finishing high school without my friends to be torture. I missed them, but in the end, it was a relief neither of them was a witness to my new reality. They were focused on getting their own derailed lives back on track, unsuspecting of what had come to light in mine. And I kept it that way.
Lilly and Rhys stayed in LA, dealing with the fallout of her family's secret, the kidnapping(s), and her stepping into her role within hernew family. The press ate it all up. In addition to dodging the paps, her and Rhys struggled to move past what had happened to her. She almost got killed, and to say it messed Rhys up would be an understatement. He became the embodiment of a paranoid, overprotective, clingy boyfriend.
Some of his guilt for not being able to protect the love of his life drove him to take actions that, in the end, ruined his friendship with Wes. With a brief separation, while the McGuires were stationed in North Carolina, the two had been joined at the hip since grade school. Rhys lived with Wes for years while he avoided Lilly to maintain his family's secret. When the truth finally came to light, Wes was there. He stood by Rhys, Lilly, and me, never once wavering in his loyalty. While he used to be Rhys's best friend, Wes and I had formed a bond that was uniquely ours.
Just when we had thought the nightmare was over—Lilly was safe—our group of four fell apart, and I was trapped between my two best friends. Lilly was my sister in every sense of the word except the blood relation, and Wes…he had been my constant. He was there when Lilly withdrew after she recovered her first memory—another fun side effect of her hidden past—not to mention when I found my long-term boyfriend, Charlie, cheating on me at a frat orgy. Wes helped me through it.
Neither of them made me choose. They never would've done that. However, the constant pull to defend Lilly and Rhys and to sympathize with Wes's resentment and anger were gradually corroding my insides.
We all entered the public limelight when Lilly announced who she was. We were there when it all started—and ended. But Wes was hit the hardest. He was dropped by his dream school to avoid unwanted public attention. He lost the future he worked his entire life for and had to move to Stonebriar, Montana to get a degree. He broke off contact with everyone but me for years.
I returned to Westbridge, Virginia and finished high school. While the paparazzi followed me too, they mostly observed. The occasional photo of me flipping them off made its way to the internet, but I was left alone in the end. There was nothing to report—at least, nothing the vultures knew about.
Fingers snapnext to my ear, and I zero back in on the interior of the vehicle. Lilly is partially turned in her seat, scanning my face. Once she has my attention, she begins to stroke the light-blonde fuzz on her daughter's head.
"Babe?" Her one-word question is laced with worry and curiosity.
I sigh, and my shoulders slump. The distance between New York and LA has allowed me to keep up my charade, but this is done now. How much I will have to disclose is still in question. The potential that our friendship could change doesn't sit well with me—but neither does keeping secrets from her. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
"I was seeing my boss's son," I state—a fact she knew, but that was about it.
"Yes, but I didn't think it was serious." Her eyes narrow.
It wasn't serious in the sense she's insinuating, at the same time, it was. Nothing I'm particularly proud of, sitting here.
After I found Charlie pounding into that sorority bimbo, I limited my relationships to surface-level, scratch-the-itch urges. None of them were able to reach any deeper than their fingers or dicks—nowhere near my heart. Until Collin. Not that he was the love of my life, but we complemented each other—ambitions, meticulously planned future,andbetween the sheets. Or so I thought.
"A lot has changed the last few years." I lean my head against the back of the seat and watch as her brows knit.
Lilly lets go of Audrey and places her hand on my knee, squeezing. "Do you want to wait until we're at the house?"
She still reads me as she did when we were in high school. It's as unnerving as it is a relief, because somewhere over the last six years, parts of that Denielle got buried under the rubble of my crumbling reality, also known asmyfamily's secret.