“Yep,” I mumbled and nudged past her to get to my room. But my father’s large hand latched on to my shoulder.

When I looked at him, I saw irritation hidden beneath his eyes. The same impatience I’d seen countless times when I didn’t do what was expected of me. “I hope you’ll have an attitude adjustment by the time we get to the dedication.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” I said, stepping out of his grasp.

“Don’t you think of anyone but yourself?” he growled. My shoulder slumped against the wall, my back to him. “He was your best friend. These people lost their child that night.”

My fingers balled into tight fists and I considered using them on him.

“Are you fucking kidding me—you think I don’t know that?” I turned to glare at him. “You think I don’t live with that every single day?”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, young man,” my father said, his top lip quivering.

“Or what, Dad? What will you do to me?” I challenged him. “Take away my college funding?”

“Don’t get smart with me.” His voice had lowered, his anger taken down a notch. I had thrown him off by confronting him. He was unsure where this was headed. Good.

“You can’t punish me anymore than I’ve already punished myself,” I said, my rage deflating, sliding out of me into a puddle on the floor. To be quickly replaced by self-loathing. “I mean, shit, Dad. Almost every night, I consider driving myself off a bridge.”

My mother gasped, her hand crashing down on her mouth. And I’d admit, I liked hearing that sound. Of her being shocked. Maybe it meant she still cared.

If not, then maybe I’d done my job of ruining her perfect façade.

“Why would you say such a thing?” my mother said in a low and horrified voice. “What would be so bad that you’d want to tarnish our name?”

I snorted. It always came back to that: soiling our family’s Goddamn reputation.

“I took someone’s life that night, don’t you get it?” I threw the words in her face and it felt so damn good. So fucking perfect. “How do you think people see me? As a pathetic kid or a murderer?”

“Don’t you dare say that, Daniel Joseph.” She only used my middle name when she was serious. When something was important. “He did it—Jacob Matthews—that man who drove the truck. He admitted it and we took care of it.”

I hunched forward like I’d been punched in the gut. The air had trouble making its way down my lungs. I braced the wall and sucked it air.

“T . . . Tell me what happened that night,” I panted out. “The night all the adults met with Sebastian’s parents. What was said?”

“We won’t talk about that night,” my dad said, as if he was having trouble swallowing. “What’s done is done.”

“So it’s okay if your son—your only child—walks around with all of this guilt. Wants to kill himself for it. That’s fucked up, Dad.”

“Watch your mouth,” he muttered, more out of habit than anything else.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Right, because not using profanity is so much more important than the truth.”

Mom and Dad shared a look. The same look I’d seen countless times when they were deciding whether I was mature enough, worthy enough, to be privy to their useless information. Then Mom gave Dad a slight nod, like they were letting me in. Letting their pathetic child inside their fucked-up lives with their fucked-up logic.

God, how the hell had I been able to stomach this for so long?

“Daniel,” my mom said. “Jacob Matthews admitted that he fell asleep at the wheel.”

My body became numb and my vision blurred, like I was in some fucked up Twilight Zone episode. That was the first I’d heard that version of the story. What the hell? I had the sensation of falling, falling, falling, down the side of a giant mountain.

“He was scared,” mom said. “He apologized to Sebastian’s parents, signed the plea agreement along with other legal documents, and we moved forward from there.”

I moved my lips in a fuzzy haze. “What you mean is . . . you paid people off so that the public didn’t hear about it again.”

“We did what we needed to do to protect our families,” she whispered. I saw how her hands shook as she gripped the counter. “We didn’t need that kind of publicity.”

My father took a step toward me and for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel the need to cower. I felt dead, numb—weightless, even. Like I’d just been gutted and my remains lay in a heap on the floor and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, son.”

My gaze leveled on him. I could tell how uncomfortable I’d made him, glaring at him like that, but he didn’t look away.

“Don’t you get it?” my voice was soft, defeated even. “This entire time I thought you paid him off because it was my fault. You didn’t think I deserved to have that information?”

My hands tore through my hair as the resentment surged to a crescendo again. “You’re my parents, for God’s sake.”

A choking, garbled sound burst from my mother’s lips. “I . . . I wish I’d known you’d been suffering like this.” When I looked up at her, tears were spilling over her cheeks in waves.

But I couldn’t handle it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

It was too late.

I stormed down the hall to my room and slammed the door.

I lay in my bed and stared up at the ceiling, my body convulsing in shock waves. I’d spent so many years trapped in a prison of my own making.

My thoughts naturally wandered to Jacob Matthews. Did this arrangement keep him awake at night as well? Would I have taken what’d been offered to me? Maybe Matthews knew as well as I did that you could never run far enough away from your own damn self.

There was also a small a part of me that wondered if Matthews’s hands had been tied—that he’d felt forced to confess. That maybe somebody had dug up dirt on him—I’d seen it too many times to count on the campaign trail.

It was that kind of uncertainty that Gabby said I’d face for the rest of my life. And there was nothing I could do about it, except try to move on. Try to make something meaningful out of my life.

I pulled myself out of bed, changed into my suit, and soon enough there was a knock on my door.

“It’s time to head to the dedication, Daniel.” My mother’s voice sounded small and quiet. Filled with regret. And uncertainty.

And I could only hope that she got it. Really got it now. Got me now.

Understood that she’d once held me in her arms, whispered soothing words into my tiny ears, and shaped me into believing all things were possible. And then gradually, over time, the rug had been pulled out from under me. It had all been hollow. Useless. Disingenuous.

And then the night of the accident—it was all taken away. Just gone.

My hopes. My desires. My dreams.

And she—they—did nothing to make me feel otherwise. Only considered themselves. Their reputation. Their political standing.

And it was wrong. So Goddamn wrong.

And in that moment, I’d decided never to allow anyone I cared about feel that small. That worthless. That insignificant.

When we pulled into the crowded parking lot, my stomach had tightened into a fist. I realized how many of the people from high school that I had severed ties with would be here. Including Amber.

And in that moment, I wished that Ella had been at my side.

I saw her shock of red hair from the backseat of my parents’ car, and I knew I needed to say something to Amber before I chickened out. “I’ll meet you inside.”

I walked faster to catch up with her. “Amber, wait up.”

She turned, her eyebrows meeting in the center of her forehead.

“Hi, Quinn.” She motioned to her parents to keep going. “What’s up?”

She was gorgeous, with a flowing head of curly hair and pouty red lips. And I realized that the two of us had been high school students with almost-innocent crushes. I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last. And someday she would find a guy who’d feel for her what I already felt for somebody else.

I’d made mistakes. We all had. And it was time to remedy them. Right here and now.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” I said and her lips parted in surprise. “That I keep pushing you away. I’ve been broken up about this for years. Living with my own guilt and I’m ready to be done with it. Move on from it.”

“I’m glad,” she said, a small smile lifting her cheeks. “I’ve had my share of guilt, too. For liking you. Being attracted to you. When I was with someone else.”

“This whole time, I figured you were using me to get to Sebastian,” I said. “I mean, he was the king, the boss, had girls lined up around the corner.”

“And he knew it, too.” We both laughed about our lost friend and it felt good. Too bad he wasn’t here with us, so we could rag on him. But maybe he was somewhere, listening. Ready to pound his fist into my arm or wrestle me into a headlock like he’d done countless times on his front lawn.

I couldn’t blame him for having all of that charisma, unless he was abusing it—like I’d been fearful would happen if he kept traveling down the same path. I’d always hoped that reality would slam into him one day. But not in the way it had. And not at my own hands.

In retrospect, I was jealous of Sebastian. I’d wished whatever it was that he possessed would rub off on me. That I could be as luminescent as he’d been. As beautiful and magnetic.

But maybe it only mattered if one person felt that way about you. That you were the moon, the stars, and maybe even the whole damn universe.